for 23 May 2001. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Ok, after today's column you now have my respect again. But then all you have to do nowadays to earn it from me is 1) know your Latinate and/or Greekesque affixes and 2) be able to convincingly reference "moisture gestures" (palms hovering over cheeks in an uplifting-circling motion or delineating the "T Zone".) And it works for ANY idea-free product or service! For example:

Body Shop: It revitalizes, AND it emoxulates. (moisture gesture)

Rolo: It promasculates, AND it enmusculizes. (delineate large testicular sac ; flex biceps)

Derrida/Foucault: It deconstructs, AND it reifies. (ASL for "bullshit" appropriate)

Two Bong Hit: It perseverates*, AND it promulgates*. (dreamy, fluttery inexact "like" hands)

* denotes actual word. See OED.

Do you see what I mean? Why did I not take that job in Miami for a marketing firm, naming new products? And to think you're getting this aesthetapeutic brainfart for free.

P.S. I think "two bong hit" is the punch line to some REALLY funny joke involving the PRC, in case you need to milk this for another week. Don't credit me, sweetcakes, just be a dear and use that someplace, k?

Justa documentin' and testifyin',

Andrew
<slithe@speakeasy.org>

Please imagine me making dreamy, fluttery inexact "like" hands while reading your letter — although I think ASL for "wanking" is more appropriate for a Derrida reference, don't you?

Q: Why did the moron throw two bongs out the window?

A: Because he wanted to see two bong hit the ground!

Is that what you had in mind? Or is insulting morons currently frowned upon? (ASL for "bullshit") Or is your T-zone so oily you can't concentrate? (moisture gesture). Hey, same here, man!

Oilier than ever,

Polly

Yah, whatever. Shakespeare, Shmakespeare. Polly, my love, are you feeling all right? Is a sabbatical in order? Why not come north and get lost in the Canadian wilds for a summer and recharge your batteries? Hey, the Canadian wilds are good enough for Mike Moriarty, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, et al. It would be great. But bring bug repellent. And wet-weather gear. And boots. And a shotgun. A big one, at that. No, it would be for the mosquitoes the repellent doesn't work against. Trust me. See you soon.

Will Murray
<Will.Murray@EC.GC.CA>

Will, it's nice to know that you'll murray some day, but who will you murray?

Q: Why did the moron throw Will Murray out the window?

A: Because he wanted to see Will Murray hit the ground.

Goddamn, that's funny!

Polly

Your Chinese translation does not match the characters. And for good measure, your "Chinese" includes some Japanese phonetic symbols.

BTD

Yes, well, Terry doesn't know Chinese. Short of firing him and hiring an illustrator who also knows Chinese, I'm not sure what to do, since I'm no longer dating someone at etranslate.

Effortlessly offensive,

Polly

I noticed in the last couple of months that Filler often points to old Fish (though with-it as I am, I know to just edit the URL to today's date). Today I finally bothered to write you about it (you'll note that today's Fish link points to Monday).

If this is some technical detail that's out of your hands, I do apologize for bothering you, but it definitely happens more to Filler than to Suck in general so I thought I'd start here.

Allen K.

Thanks Allen. I never noticed that and apparently neither has anyone here. Please, someone, anyone, be like Allen and bug me if there's a problem like this in the future. I'm far too busy writing Moron Jokes to take care of all the little details. I'm not very detail-oriented either, as should be plainly obvious.

Q: Why did the moron throw the non-detail-oriented moron out the window?

A: Because he didn't update the link to the Fish page.

Oh, the comedy!

Effortlessly unfunny,

Polly

Polly,

Thanks for a nice simple funny Filler this week. Even if next week you venture back into the office soap opera and Writer vs. Reader games that were just about to grow tedious, you gave us this one. I could read it in less than five minutes, it didn't refer gratuitously to other episodes (X-file syndrome) and paranoid Communist Chinese officials will always be funny...well, the Chinese will, anyway.

You always know just where it itches,

Malfred
<maelliot@hsc.vcu.edu>

I do NOT know where it itches! Perv!

Itch it yourself, pervmeister!

Scratchily,

Polly

Subject: Filler eases the pain

Dear Polly,

Having been recently laid off by an internet start-up, my Wednesdays for the past month have been filled with movies on cable, trips to the beach, and — oh, it's almost cliché now — bong hits. It's been odd having my Wednesdays filled with THINGS instead of being filled with, you know, Filler.

For the past two and a half years, I've read Filler every week. But I've also been a full-time worker, required to be in front of a computer, in a cubicle, for the past two and a half years. I just started a new job, so I'm reading Filler again.

Originally, I wanted to write you and let you know how much I really enjoy reading Filler and how much I've missed it during my month of unemployment. But now I'm feeling like everything I truly enjoy is just a matter of convenience for me, which kinda makes me feel like shit.

At any rate, Filler does take the sting out of the corporate American Wednesday, and I do thank ya for that.

Sincerely,

Jay Allen
<mr_kilowatt@yahoo.com>

Oh, I can make the things you enjoy intensely inconvenient for you, Mr. Kilowatt. Yes I can. Like, for example, if you wanted to send me a large check that would make it impossible for you to pay the rent in a timely fashion — that would be inconvenient, wouldn't it? It would hurt. But it would hurt so good, because with the pain would come the realization that you've finally grown up; you're finally willing to work hard for what you enjoy. Think of how satisfying that would be!

You can always go back and read the old Fillers, and when you're older, you may even be able to look back at your life and say "I have no regrets." But will you be able to look back and say, "I enjoyed that moderately amusing writer so much, I wrote her a big fat check!"

Not if you don't write me a big fat check, you won't.

Comfortably dumb,

Polly

Dear Polly,

Your page one analysis of the new president was the best I've read. By far. You put your finger on exactly what has been troubling me about the administration, although I had not been able to verbalize it until now. It was not only insightful, but also clever enough to be funny. I took it seriously, but that's just the mood I'm in. I guess I'd call it seriously funny.

Yours,

Richard
<rkbanks@swbell.net>

Oh, I put my finger on the fact that they're monkeys?

That was easy! I should be on Crossfire or something!

Seriously runny,

Polly

Interactive poll: bad. Suck is my coffee reading. If I want to dick around with the internet, I just click "Home" (which Microsoft keeps resetting to MSN).

The words and pictures were funny, and the concept of a pointless poll is funny too (though you've covered that ground before) but the whole thing was weak. I assume you already noticed this, but the number of responses to each subsequent question drops. It's not because we were so distracted with laughter that our connections timed out.

Benjamin
<bduranske@mail.com>

You had us going until you tried to prove your point. In fact, the number of responses goes up and down throughout the quiz, and there's only a seven percent drop from the number of responses to the first question to responses to the last — a smashing success by the standards of web click-through.

Besides, if the words and pictures are funny, what the fuck more do you want?

Sucksters

Hi,  

Will there be more of these?  My only complaint is that it was too short.  Keep up the great work.  

Cheers,  

P
<seguin.patrick@wvb.com>

Thanks, P. Readers were all over the map in their responses to the Suck Reader Poll — many hated it, and many loved it. We agree with Radio Raheem, that Love must beat Hate.

Sucksters

I want to thank you for giving me the option to dump that Bloom County guy into Mt. St. Helens. Although I am a tax-and-spend liberal who lived through the Reagan years, those smug, warmed-over Doonesbury animals pissed me off more than James Watt, Phyllis Schafley and Ronald Reagan combined.

Nat Pierson
<npierson@energyguide.com>

We're with you, Nat. However, whether it was memories of loving Bloom County back in the day, or (we hope) the possibility that people have forgotten the strip entirely, Berke proved a surprisingly unpopular candidate for incineration in the hot lava of Washington State's most famous corker. Go figure.

Sucksters

Hey Sucksters!

About that poll--a fine peice of work! I found myself challenged to decide between throwing Reagan or the well-girl out of the balloon, but ultimately I made my choice (Reagan) and moved on to even harder questions--like rap styles. My only problem was, why wasn't good ol' DEMOCRACY listed as an option amount the other high-larious government styles? I think 'D' would have taken the cake, so to speak!

Thanks for listening!

Your loyal reader and poll responder,

Dave Zink
<d-zink@northwestern.edu>

Another surprise, Dave. We figured Monarchy was indisputably the funniest of all political systems. Poll respondents felt otherwise, and you are one of many readers who wrote to object to our leaving Democracy off the list. Maybe it's funny, people voting and waving signs and such... But still, in a Monarchy people get to wear crowns. And there's always the possibility that you'll get stuck with a short king, who wears a big crown! Come on, what's funnier than that?

Sucksters

Don't know how, pretty sure when ... but Suck went from mostly entertaining to mostly insipid.

Shep.
<Shep@cvdds.com>

Oh, when was that, Mr. Expert?

Next time we do a poll, we'll include "When did Suck really go downhill?" as one of the options. Don't forget to speak up!

Sucksters

Way below SUCK level.

As digestable as plastic.

Only the pictures were up to your standard.

Paul te Stroete
<testroete@hotmail.com>

Duly noted.

Sucksters

Aw, jeez, I'd hoped the Reader Poll was going to integrate the responses into some kind of dynamically-generated punchline at the end. While I'm not sure what a Fascist Hutu Prog-Rite is, I'm sure it stands for something.

-Michael
<mikeedmo@voicenet.com>

It's more of a touchy-feely conclusion, Michael. You look at how your fellow readers responded, then decide what that says about us as a people. We tried various stochastic models for forming a precisely average reader model, but ultimately the average reader had to come to us...

Sucksters

your poll missed in two regards: First, you didn't include GB Trudeau as an option of people to punt off the balloon into mount St. Helens; Second, on grocery store options, you did not include "wiggly".

Other than that, right on.

Paul E. Clark
<paul@ccnlegal.com>

G.B. Trudeau was already an established figure in the 1970s, and we were trying to limit the options to people who reached some sort of apotheosis in the Greed Decade. Maybe Garfield creater Jim Davis would have been a better choice. Jokes about cats eating lasagna, boy: Works every time!

As for "wiggly," we have no excuse.

Sucksters

Hey, I got them all right!

What's my prize?

Robert St. James
<rjames@infrastructureworld.com>

Your prize is the quiet pride of having your complete averageness mathematically quantified.

Sucksters