for 31 October 1997. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Who's Sorry Now

Subject: huh?

Don't intend to sound stupid,
but what is the point of this
site? What message do you
hope to have people leave with?

And why are Canadians just
plain sorry?

firesign
<firesign@istar.ca>

Excellent, Grasshopper -
excellent. You are asking the
hardest questions.

Our work here is done.

LeTeXan

P.S. The answers to your
questions: 1) Don't know. 2)
Return daily, addicted to our
wit and wisdom, then go out
into the world and buy our
book. 3) Because adding
sprinkles costs extra.

Alan Kornheiser Letter of the
Week

Nice article. Alas, it ended
just when it was building up
a nice head of steam. Any
chance of an expansion or a
followup, perhaps somewhere
else?

Alan Kornheiser

P.S. As a Baffler addict, I'm
sure you're pleased to know
that there's now a collection
of their best (?) work in
print. Check your friendly
local bookstore.

Dr. Kornheiser,

Thanks very much for
appealing to my vanity - much
appreciated. There's a
variation of the "Size
matters" joke in there
somewhere, but I can't quite
figure it out just now.

While I haven't yet
commodified my dissent by
buying the Baffler anthology,
I have looked into Stephen
Duncombe's Notes from
Underground: Zines and the
Politics of Alternative
Culture (Verso), which makes
for a charmingly
self-reflexive gloss on The
Baffler's mainstream success.
(Duncombe is a regular
Baffler contributor.)

LeTeXan

Dear Sucksters:

Your instructions on How to
Get Your Letter on the Fish
Page are in need of
clarification (one should
always strive for clarity,
wouldn't you say?).

If I fulfill requirements 3
(write huge volumes of
strangely gratifying
nonsense) and 4 (insult a
writer ruthlessly) in the
same letter, is requirement 5
(insult a writer ruthlessly
employing strangely
gratifying nonsense)
automatically satisfied? Or
does the strangely gratifying
nonsense have to specifically
by its content ruthlessly
insult a writer? Also, please
explain the following: (a) If
i'sn nonsense, how do you
determine that it is
insulting to a writer (please
list criteria)? (b) Do you
mean any writer, such as
James Michener, or
specifically a writer for
Suck? Furthermore, regarding
requirement 9 (declare the
formation of a fan club for a
particular writer), would
James Michener count? And, if
not, would the president of a
fan club for a particular
Suck writer be a paid
position, and, if so, how
much? Then, returning to
requirements 3 through 5
again, what criteria (please
list) do you employ to
determine that nonsense is
"strangely" gratifying, as
opposed to just gratifying in
a normal way?

Your timely response to the
above will be appreciated. In
the meantime, I've completed
the balance of the
requirements. Requirement 7
(write an extremely
pretentious epic poem about a
Suck piece) is probably
satisfied by the 7 stanzas
that follow, depending, of
course, on one's definitions
of "epic" and "extremely
pretentious." Naturally, I
expect these stanzas to meet
or exceed any of your
expectations. Requirement 1
(seek employment at Suck) is
satisfied in the second and
last stanzas. Requirement 6
(confess something deeply
personal) and requirement 8
(use the word "slut") are
satisfied in the fourth
stanza. Requirement 10
(compliment one Suck writer
while insulting the rest) is
satisfied, albeit
backhandedly, in the fifth
stanza. Requirement 1 (be
famous) is addressed, if not
yet fulfilled, in the
penultimate stanza.

Upon reflection, I think I
can claim that requirement 3
is satisfied after all, since
to most of you pea-brains the
foregoing must appear as
nonsense, yet you will
doubtlessly be gratified that
one such as I would take the
time to write it. So, in the
end, the only requirement I
feel can't be met is number
11 (claim to be cashing in on
all of Suck's good ideas). I
couldn't find, despite
interminable "browsing" among
your archives, punctuated by
increasingly peevish "cookie"
cancellations - as I say, I
couldn't find a single idea
that could be called "good."

"Sucking the Big One"

a poem

'Twas the start of the year
when I first read your zine,

The day you unveiled your new
format.

And though your most
faithfulest fan I have been,

I've been treated by you like
a doormat.

You've ignored all my
letters, you treat them as
though

They were written for
Polly's enjoyment.

How clear must I
make it? All right,
then, here goes:

"Dear Sucksters,
I'm seeking employment!"

You've surely perceived what
incredible talent

I have just from
reading my letters.

Were it anyone else,
I'd be hired by now.

But you clearly recoil
from your betters.

I've had it. No more
will I beg for attention

Like some kind of
miserable mutt.

I took a good look at
the man in the mirror

The man in the mirror's
a slut.

You're all vile assholes,
you're puss-seeping scrota,

The lot of you - all but St.
Huck

(Although he's no
genius, at least he adopted

An alias rhyming with
"suck").

I may be unknown, but I'll
remedy that:

I'll be famous, and
Oh! How you'll rue it!

I'll jump from the top of the
Golden Gate Bridge,

With a note stating
"Suck made me do it"!

You scum-sucking toads! You
pretentious baboons!

I can't wait till you're
all sacked by Wired!

I will dance on your graves!
I will spit on your shoes!

That is unless I am hired?

Love,

A faithful reader

Now see how far following the
rules will get you in life?
All the way to the letters
page of an online magazine.
Congratulations!

Who's Sorry Now

Most times, sorry just
doesn't cut it. Even a
sincere apology doesn't make
up for the act. For example:
Sorry 'bout that bomb thing,
hey, who knew? Sorry 'bout
that Inquisition thing, when
we killed lots of people
because, well, because. And,
that whole slavery thing, man
are our faces red.

Yeah, sometimes sorry just
doesn't cut it. But what's
the alternative?

Imagine Pauly Shore: "I know
sorry isn't enough to
alleviate Bio-Dome, so I'll
just hang myself by my feet
until my brain explodes or I
say something funny."

But, would an upside-down,
brain-exploding Pauly Shore
actually make up for the 10
minutes of my life I spent
watching Bio-Dome? Or the
almost 2 hours of Son-in-Law?

I don't know. Would I respect
Pauly Shore if his brain
exploded? Probably not.

If Pauly stood up and said,
"Hey you lousy no-talent
cruds, someone is paying me
truck loads of money to do
this. Just 'cause I'm not as
good a friggin' actor as
Stallone (I've never even
thought about beefing up for
a role), I'm not apologizing
for anything, especially
Bio-Dome. Now excuse me, I
have to get back to my
mansion, there's a
22-year-old blonde wading in
my indoor swimming pool, and
she wants a shot at the next
Pauly Shore flick," would I
then respect him?

Still not sure, but it'd be
close. So I guess the point
is, if you don't think you
need to apologize, then
don't, 'cause it means dick.

Now, I have to get back to
work because later I have a
doctor's appointment. I think
I'll need some minor surgery.
The doc says it's not
completely necessary, but
what the hell, it's not like
it costs me anything. Later
tonight, I'm going to walk
through the heart of downtown
Toronto, alone, to meet a
friend. I think we'll go have
a couple of beers, you've
probably heard about our
beer.

Take care Sucksters, keep it
up, and don't apologize for
any-friggin'-thing.

Matt Hames
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
<lmnop@istar.ca>

Matt, your shrewd comments
not only undermined the Pauly
Shore Example (I took my cue
from Robert Nozick's Wilt
Chamberlain Example -
something about banging
20,000 women for a quarter),
but you've also cut me to the
quick about the relative
merits of living in Toronto.
Friends, beer, free minor
surgery - sounds like a
goddamn paradise!

And all I have to show for it
is my next screenplay pitch:
Pauly Shore, upside-down,
brain explodes, 22-year-old
blondes ... I'll call it Head
Games. Yeah, that's it!

LeTeXan

Mush-mouth, maybe, waffler,
perhaps, out-of-touch
elitist, probably, but I
think you've chosen the wrong
word in describing President
George Herbert Walker Bush as
"milquetoast." (17 October
1997)

Bush was the youngest fighter
pilot in WWII and was shot
down in combat. As president,
Bush fought and won a war in
100 days (like it or not). In
retrospect the war was easy -
but that wasn't obvious
beforehand.

A milquetoast is a weakling.
Like him or not, Bush has
never been a weakling.

Geoff Brown
<geoffrey@softmed.com>

Oh please!

I'm glad you gave his full
name, because this way we
both know we're talking about
the same mushy apple from the
same rotting family tree.

GHWB, as I'm sure you're
aware, is named after his
maternal grandfather, George
Herbert Walker, a no-doubt
very courageous racing
commissioner for the state of
New York. His father,
Prescott Bush, was a
second-rate politician whose
1952 campaign for the Senate
elicited charges of
anti-Semitism, and whose term
was characterized, in the
words of Garry Wills, by the
favoring of "censorship,
loyalty oaths, and the
removal of 'dirty' artifacts
[like Edward Albee's The Zoo
Story] from the cultural
exchange." Without Eisenhower
in the White House, Prescott
slithered back to investment
banking and golfing.

In the matter of Ensign
G. H. W. Bush, WWII fighter
pilot, declassified
historical evidence strongly
suggests he committed a
serious war crime on 25 July
1944, by strafing a lifeboat
with his squadron in Kayangel
Langoon, shortly after
sinking a trawler off the
Palau islands. This
information was made
available to three major news
organizations prior to the
1992 election, but they all
passed. The less-than-smoking
but more-than-overwarm
documentation of this sordid
matter was later published in
Harper's magazine.

The Gulf War thing - well,
you got me there. A hundred
days, indeed. Nice how the
region has settled down since
then, isn't it?

Oh yes, and his son's doing a
really jim-dandy job down
here in Texas.

In sum, to call former
President Bush a
"milquetoast" is not
necessarily to make any claim
as to his physical strength,
which is how I take the word
"weakling." For all I know
the guy could drop me with
one punch. However, his timid
little peep of an apology for
picking Dan Quayle as his
running mate has
"milquetoast" written all
over it, and stands as yet
one more reminder of his
family's distinguished record
of self-serving opportunism.

LeTeXan

P.S. Sorry to get so carried
away there....