for 25 February 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Nasty Habits

Subject: PSAs suck

Kudos to you, who boldly
singes the feathers of my
most hated enemies:
Microsoft, Disney, and AOL.

I must be leaving now, before
the five o'clock robot parade
comes through and takes my
children for these slanderous
words against the state.

Tristan Tomaselli
<tristan@servtech.com>

'Twas nothin' - those are the
feathers of sitting ducks. I
only wish someone like the
Nature Conservancy would join
the PSA club, just to make
things difficult.

Don't forget to separate
blondes and browns for
curbside pick-up,

DJ Abe

Yeah! Right On, Brother! FREE
ARTHUR LEE!

Incidentally, a friend is
currently researching the
feasibility of small-time Net
porn by setting up "humorous"
Web sites - i.e., (faked-up)
Hutchence death-scene tribute
site, Monica Lewinsky Naked
site (utter hoax) - and even
though none of them deliver
anything save for scathing
scorn, we sit back, light up
a fatty, and watch the
counters fly.

But that's people for ya.

Nice One,
Ace

I'm impressed by the
willingness of people to pay
in advance for what they know
they can't have. In some
ways, it's a perfect
transaction - all the
splendid fantasy of a lottery
ticket, with none of the
messy tax encumbrance.

That said, I'll sell you GIFs
of Arthur Lee's genitals for
5 quid a pop.

DJ Abe

Liked your piece about
policing Internet smut.
Especially the notion that
paranoia sells, but only when
the object of fear is cloaked
in mystery. Once revealed,
the initial shock wears off
and the fear evaporates -
permanently. So do the
profits. Of course, kids
deserve plenty of innocent
years, but, when they get
curious, information works
better than warnings.

Best part, though, was your
phrase along the lines of "we
need new illusions." I go
more in the direction of "we
need new images, new
visions." As a poet, I'm
trying to beat out some kind
of new images. The process
itself is a great antidote to
exposure to mainstream junk.

Thanks!

Jack Garman
<jackgrmn@cruzio.com>

I agree: I think warnings are
one of the worst and harshest
cures for the innocent years.
Disney better open up a
psychology branch to properly
profit from this dip into the
PSA pond.

I'm only surprised McDonald's
isn't involved in this
enterprise somewhere. Maybe
the PSAs will play on
placemats.

DeeJay Abe L.

The real question, raised by
your insightful article, is
whether the disney.com
opt-out at adult sites
happens by chance or choice.

On the chance side, it's true
that cartoons are pornography
for children and that
pornographic films are, in
Nina Hartley's words, "live-
action cartoons" - making it
entirely plausible that the
respective webmasters of
these sites, when considering
a happy rejection to the
underage, brought Disney to
mind without any real effort.
The difference between mouse
ears and rabbit ears, after
all, is strictly a question
of size.

On the choice side, it's not
entirely impossible that the
cunning hyper-linkuists at
I-Traffic have used the seamy
side of the Web to take
marketable advantage of the
pornamation coincidence, and
actively promote Disney
link-offs as the escape route
of choice for underage
jerk-offs.

In either case, it's not so
much a joke as an
inevitability. Disney will
only really be able to offer
cradle-to-grave fantasy if
they buy Playboy enterprises,
and the future likelihood of
that seems increasingly
possible.

Regards,
Read Mercer Schuchardt
<Read@Schuchardt.com>

Cradle-to-Grave Fantasy? Is
that some kind of
role-playing game?

Minor Threat

Very bold - I'm not usually a
big fan, but you did it
today.

"The Times, where Middle
Eastern theory runs the full
spectrum from Labor to Likud
..." is a great description
of that paper's
sensibilities. I hope enough
people realize that those are
Israeli-only parties and you
get sufficient hate-mail.

I didn't get the
Safire/black-glove reference,
though.

Amazing, not a single mention
of oil in the whole piece.

Again; very bold - unless
you're a black Muslim from
Israel. Or, you had a
pseudonym.

Steve McNally
<steve.mcnally@prodigy.net>

The black glove reference was
an allusion to the movie Dr.
Strangelove, in which Peter
Sellers plays a think-tank
theorist who gets so ecstatic
when going over nuclear
exchange scenarios that he
can't keep his right hand
from throwing fascist
salutes. I guess it doesn't
sound too funny, but it's a
laff riot in the movie.

I didn't mention oil, it's
true. That's because the
no-blood-for-oil argument 7
years ago had as much impact
as a banana cream pie 10 feet
in diameter, dropped from a
height of 10 feet. I think
we're even more likely to go
to war if we think it's about
oil.

BarTel

Our greatest fears are made
evident in short news clips
of Arabs wielding guns and in
fighting to get a chance at
burning the American flag.

But compared to the WWF, it's
nothing. I'm far more afraid
of this country (that has
produced Hulk Hogan, The
Undertaker, and The Hitman
Hart) wielding nuclear
weapons.

Anonymous

Good point. We're all worried
about who's minding the nukes
in Russia and the worst they
had was Andre the Giant.

BarTel

Here's a novel idea - How
about we give the Arab people
and their culture a little
respect? Let's try to
remember that those folks are
doin' the same drudgery that
we are - trying to put some
food in their bellies and an
occasional smile on their
faces.

Jason Angelus Portland OR
<jangelus@selectron.com>

They try to put food in your
belly, too. Take my advice -
get yourself invited to an
Arab house. They'll feed you
like a horse.

Did you catch the Arabs in
Titanic? Just for a second,
as they're evacuating the
ship, there's a shot of an
Arab family, with the father
wearing a fez and everybody
going, "Yella, yella!" I
guess that's Cameron's
penance for True Lies, but
since I kinda doubt the Arabs
made it off the ship, it's a
pretty feeble gesture.

BarTel