for 18 February 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Weedy Seedy

Your all too
flippant comments on
marijuana must be addressed,
so, why it should NOT be
legalized: 1. Marijuana (mj)
use decreases the need for
alcohol, and this leads to:
a. lower profits for the
distilleries, b. fewer drunk
drivers, so fewer accidents,
and less money for auto-body
shops, and c. hospital
emergency rooms would have to
cut staff. 2. mj use leads to
increased appetites: a.
possibly leading to obesity,
b. helping chemotherapy
patients, thus interfering
with the natural order of
death and decreasing profits
of Western medicine, and c.
increasing the number of
crazed pizza-delivery
persons. 3. mj use reduces
hypertensive disorders,
leading to: a. reduced
caffeine intake - lower
profits there! b. reduced use
of drugs like "Prozac" - same
thing! and c. fewer marriage
breakdowns! heaven forbid!
what will our divorce lawyers
and courts do - reduced
revenue! and finally 4. mj
use may lead to a reduction
in tobacco use (Jesse Helms,
will you please stand up?).

Ralph

We particularly like
the part about crazed
pizza-delivery persons. Were
that there were more of 'em!

Mean, Fishy Male

Subject: Fat people and stuff

Hey, Phyllis:
How many really fat old
people do you know? I haven't
even seen one, and I am
always on the lookout (for
reasons of my own). Why?
BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIVE THAT
LONG!!

Joseph Hammerman
<"jhammerm"@astro.ocis.temple.edu>

Neither do angry people.

Neophyte Webling

Subject: Starting Out

Dear Sucksters,
I was recently introduced to
your online magazine by a
friend and have even begun a
subscription. I am seriously
thinking about starting an
online magazine. Any advice
or pointers for a young
entrepreneur such as myself?
Any feedback
would be
appreciated.

Thanks,
Jeff G. Chicago

P. S. Love your articles! You
guys are a scream!

1. Don't ask for advice. 2.
Don't sink your own money
into it. 3. Have something to
say. Something that's not in
the first person, unless
you're pictured naked on the
site. 4. You've got a strong
back - get a job. 5. Polly
has a cousin in Chicago named
Jeff G. Are you Polly's
cousin? 6. Work your
connections. Being Polly's
cousin won't help you much.
7. If you're not willing to
work 12-hour days, don't do
it. 8. If you want to work
12-hour days, get your head
examined. 9. Shrinks cost
money. Get a job already!
10. Don't take anyone's advice.
Least of all Cousin Polly's.

Cousin Polly

Dating Filler

You've hit it on the head,
with another clever usage of
those beloved charts -
essentially, dating is
hopeless. Studying at a
certain East Coast college
where dating is about as
frequent as students
admitting to being wrong, I
can attest that frequency of
dating decreases as the
square of the inverse of
academic aptitude. This might
be why each generation has
lower SAT scores - the high
scorers never breed. Rather
than trying to improve
education, the government
might want to look into some
sort of covert program to get
all the nerdy kids really
drunk all the time. Now
there's an X-Files plotline
for you.

Josiah Madigan <jmadigan@fas.harvard.edu>

Um, yeah. Or maybe declining
SAT scores point to the fact
that high school students
today have too much
self-respect to take a
vocabulary and geometry test
too seriously, let alone
treat it as a true measure of
intelligence.

Oh, but at Harvard, "How'd
you do on your SATs?" is a
pick-up line, right? No
wonder no one gets laid.

P. S. Does your name rhyme
with "mad again"? Just
wondering.

Fish on Fish

Thank you for your response
to Mike B. Clearly, no one
has pointed out to him that
our three green Canadian M&Ms
will only buy half a brown
tootsie roll on his side of
the border. Implicit in the
practice of NOT putting the
US in front of your $ is the
arrogant assumption that
"everyone will know whose
dollars we're talking about;
after all, what other kinds
of dollars ARE there?"

Camille Pagee (Canadian)<pagee@ca.ibm.com>

At Suck, we make you a
personal guarantee that our
readership will always be
made up of at least 85
percent Arrogant Americans.

Nothing really to do with you
guys at Suck, but people like
this REALLY piss me off. :)

Mike Barthel (naively) wrote:
"Do you really think that
when you write an electronic
column IN ENGLISH that deals
almost exclusively with
American culture, more than,
say, .000001 percent of your
audience is going to be from
other countries?"

Mike, mate, of course the Web
consists of only North
America, with a couple of
European countries thrown in
for good measure. Maybe you
should expand your horizons a
little. Maybe we should all
pitch in and buy you an
atlas. Or maybe Wired could
start advertising prices in
another monetary unit -
Pesos? Yen? Pounds Sterling?
Lira? I thought Suck was as
much about online culture as
it was about American
culture.

Matthew Paxton (Proud to be
in the .000001 percent)
<matthewpa@woodslane.com.au>

P. S. What do you expect from
a country as culturally
"backward" as Australia :) ;)

As Terry likes to say: "Suck:
American. For Americans."

As Joey likes to append: "Or
whoever."