for 23 January 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Today's Suck was the good
old-style, full-bore, uncut,
push-the-plunger-
down-and-pull-it-back-up-to-
get-the-very-last-drop kind
of Suck I look forward to
every day. Treat yourself to
a martini this afternoon.

Erich Von Hollander
<hh@scam.XCF.Berkeley.EDU>

While you're clearly that
rare strain of man they dare
call "genius," we simply must
wonder: Have you noticed that
your name rhymes with
colander?

More Fun with Rhymes

Subject: Biggity-bam!

Considering how much
computers do for us, it's
only appropriate to give them
credit where it's due. Here's
an "Ode to My Computer":

Humming like the wind at my
window, buzzing like a
thousand mosquitoes. With
pale green lights, and odd

A big glass wall, emitting
more light. Beeping and
buzzing all through the
night.

On top of a pad, a soft dark
blue pad. A mistreated
animal, always getting poked
on the head.

And click, click, click,
there are the words.
Appearing as if by magic, but
not.

Tiny little electric waves of
ones and zeros, changing so
fast, faster, and faster now.
Zooming through a copper run,
on a silicon wafer. Jumping
and crashing through
resistors and diodes alike
not caring what it runs into
only carries its number to
the appointed destination.

Boom, boom, boom, the wall
explodes into colors. 3-D on
a 2-D screen. Flatly shadowed
to look like it might've been
but a mystical way to
entertain. A tiny little man
runs to the next door,
shooting all along the way.

Prompt me again, ask me if I
want to quit this violence,
my answer will remain the
same.

- pot-smoking computer tech

We're wiping the tears from
our eyes. Thank you. Thank
you so much.

I enjoyed the article
'Ne'errative Do Well' & just
wanted to let you know....

Mr. Snid <mr.snid@kc.net>

Thanks, Mr. Snid! You have
excellent taste.

And you're in good company,
too. New York Times Book
Review editor Charles "Chip"
McGrath also seems to have
liked this article - so much
so, in fact, that he
published his own version of
it several weeks later in the
New York Times Magazine.
Entitled "Giving Saturday
Morning Some Slack," it
featured the following bit
that sounds suspiciously like
... well, you be the judge:

LeTeXan: "[D]espite all the
action and color and barf
jokes, there's a certain
special ingredient missing in
almost all contemporary
children's programming:
narrative....

Le Chipster: "Children's TV
doesn't need fewer cartoons;
it needs better cartoons,
better drawn and with better
characters. It needs
narrative...."

Is this a sign that
mainstream tastemakers read
Suck? Or does it merely mean
that I, a Suckster and
supposed angry antinomian, am
actually nothing but a
middlebrow hack? Or are the
middlebrow hacks at the New
York Times becoming "edgy"
and more Suck-like? Will I
ever live to see my work
published in the Times
magazine? Or has it been
already?

For the answers to these and
other questions - stay tuned!

LeTeXan

Fuck the Cyber Po-lice

Did you know that
www.thesuck.net is blocked by
CyberPatrol? I was trying to
go there from work and was
denied.

Sam Peterson
<spmaster@hotmail.com>

The pigs! The pigs have it in
for us! We're ruined!

Gratifications Means Welfare

Subject: Governor Wilson
shills for Nike

Anyone notice the neat
product placement in Governor
Wilson's state of the state
address?

"Every way we can, we're
making clear to the Nike
generation that it's just
irresponsible to "just do it"
... to yield to sexual
gratification when the result
is a fatherless child, facing
a childhood and a lifetime of
poverty and public
dependency."

Source:
http://www.state.ca.us/
s/governor/sos98.html

Eric <ejr@clari.net>

That's beautiful. Young
people today should know that
sexual gratification leads to
a lifetime of poverty and
public dependency ... for the
poor, that is. Of course,
rich kids can do whatever the
fuck they want without
hurting anyone, aside from,
say, the occasional totalled
Range Rover....

Post-Holiday Depression

Subject: Grad Students

Hey Polly,

I don't know what you were
saying about grad students in
your post-holiday depression
piece. Maybe they overanalyze
things or something??
Actually, grad students tend
to have a really severe case
of post-holiday depression.
Instead of three days of
freedom they get three or
four weeks of going back
home for Christmas/Hanukkah,
burying their
atheism/agnosticism and anti-
consumer societyism to
celebrate the holiday and buy
and receive presents. The
holidays are a time for
observing your family's
empty values firsthand and
also sleeping on a bed-couch
without having to put up with
the musical choices of your
19-year-old, upstairs
neighbor enjoying his first
apartment. In between
explaining to family members
what deconstruction is and
why anyone would want to
study it, the
holiday-experiencing grad
student gets to temporarily
live in an environment where
people react to each other as
people, not intellectual
competitors. There's maybe
even a little bit of love
amid the tension. After a
week of home life, they get
to spend another week or two
sitting around their dingy
apartment watching the snow
fall and trying to block out
the bass line coming through
the ceiling, all the while
pondering a) the meaning of
existence and the political,
social, cultural situation of
our times, b) why I am in
grad school, c) what will I
do if I don't get a teaching
job, and d) will I ever have
a relationship, marriage,
children of my own? Will I
ever be fully an adult? They
know that this is the time to
1) read a lot of books
they've been meaning to read
and now have the time for, 2)
get ready for exams, theses,
dissertations, next
semester's courses, and 3)
catch up on a lot of TV. They
also wonder when all their
friends are going to come
back to College Town and
whether they should try to
run into said friends at one
of the old hangouts?
On 9 January, grad
students are still on
vacation. The get a longer
period of holiday depression.
Post-holiday depression
doesn't set in untili the next
week when they realize that
the freshmen they're teaching
don't care about all the
innovative teaching ideas
they have, that their courses
are really a little boring,
and that the older grad
students on the job market
still haven't gotten jobs
yet.

I spent more years in grad
school than I should have,
and that's the way it was and
probably still is.

Albert Cinelli
Lafayette, Indiana aec114@aol.com

Sounds like some of the
reasons I love hanging out
with grad students. After
all, who could be more fun
than an alienated,
self-pitying intellectual
competitor, spilling over
with existential angst and
self-doubt? They endlessly
bemoan the drudgery and
poverty of their lives, yet
it's clear they view your
life as that of a thoroughly
unexceptional, unthinking,
consumer/worker drone. The
only thing most grad students
have no doubts about is that
they're smarter than you. Big
fun! I wish I knew more of
them.

Polly