for 22 July 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Sucky Sucky

Please don't stabilize the
baht 'til late December. I'll
be in Indochina at the end of
November, and the weaker the
baht is, the better my bucks
will look in Phnom Penh and
Vientiane. Don't
underestimate your fearsome
power. In some circles of
economists, finance
ministers, and guerrilla
insurgents in Anlong Veng,
Suck's words are scrutinized
even more closely than
Greenspan's. What do you
think His Majesty King
Bhumibol clicks on first when
he logs on? Some flip remark
about stabilizing the baht
could turn around the Thai
economy, resulting in
decreased productivity in the
Golden Triangle, causing
heroin prices in the United States to,
um, shoot up, resulting in a
CIA budget crunch, resulting
in an "innocent" Suck staffer
having an "accident." Think
about every word before you
say it! Maybe Terry's
incident with the Guzzi was a
warning?

The cry is heard at every bar
in Bangkok: "Sucky-sucky, 100
baht." This has meaning on a
deeper level, Mr. Beers.

Erich Von Hollander
<hh@xcf.berkeley.edu>

That reminds me, I have to go
drain my spaghetti....

Filler: The Joy of
Distractions

Hey Polly,

You had to go and break the
illusion your readers have of
this daily ritual of ours
being necessary, and replace
it with an implicit
comparison of Suck to the
Yankees. See if I ever read
you again. Well, at least
until I hear the final word
on Terry. (We're all pullin'
for ya, guy! I keep my eyes
peeled for Hondas with dented
driver's-side doors all the
time now.)

Despite my disappointment in
the revelation that Suck is a
mere distraction, I took
pride, in the way only a true
distractionist could, in the
fact that I am currently
involved in seven of the
twelve tasks itemized in the
"Joy of Distractions"
graphic. I will make an
effort to expand my
participation in the coming
weeks. Of course, you forgot
to mention the number one
distraction for your core
demographic: "Are you
inadequately distracted by
porn mags? Then why not
methodically canvas Persian
Kitty?"

My erstwhile girlfriend
(current wife) would do well
to take on another
distraction as pinup girl for
the distraction rehab center.
No one would dare bring her a
black couch.

cramboneone
<cramboneone@yahoo.com>

Wives take secret night
courses in distractions
before they get married. It's
essential to a neurotic
woman's survival, especially
while pursuing a domestic
setting/situation in which
you have to make nicey-nice
(not to mention peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches).
Especially when your husband
is inadequately distracted by
Persian Kitty. Persian Kitty
and Pottery Barn should
consider a cross-marketing
deal.

Forget what you just read
immediately.

Polly

Subject: You give meaning to
my life.

Without Suck as a
distraction, I would have
already devolved into some
type of howler monkey,
instead of sitting here at
work not working.

John Muller
<a-jmulle@microsoft.com>

Howler monkey! That's
EVOLUTION, not DEVOLUTION,
John.

Polly

This is the second time in a
week that Suck has mentioned
the film Safe. Given that no
one saw that film (even fewer
people than saw Poison) I
sense a conspiracy. Are you
in a movie promotion deal for
Velvet Goldmine? Or is Safe
suddenly culturally relevant?

Nelson Minar
<nelson@media.mit.edu>

Does everything we write
about have to be culturally
relevant? God knows, we wish
we had a movie promotion
deal, but this is merely a
coinkydink.

Move on. Disperse. Scat.

You've neglected one of the
greatest distractions ever
invented: role-playing games.

I'm not talking about Doom,
or Exile, or any of those
other masturbatory computer
exercises. I'm talking about
systems like Earthdawn or
Blue Planet, where you get
together with a few friends
who also need distractions,
and spend several hours a
week living a complete second
life. Hey presto! Relief for
all your frustrations!

Hate your boss? Name a
villain after him, and spend
your role-gaming time hunting
him down and feeding him to a
chipper-shredder! Too many
bills? Your GM provides a
handy chest of treasure, and
your characters can throw a
block party!

It's better than soap operas,
more engrossing than
houseplants, and yet safely
confined to a specific time
on the weekend so it doesn't
become a detraction. Plus, it
exercises that creative side
of your brain that you have
to keep under lock and key
all day at work, so you don't
end up falling over to your
left constantly from
dextro-hemispheric atrophy.

All you have to do is
overcome that pimply teenage
stigma attached to the hobby,
and you're on your way. We're
already teaching our children
how to do it!

Andrew Ragland

I have no problem with
role-playing games, as long
as whips aren't involved. My
brother actually still plays
Dungeons and Dragons,
unabashedly so. He has no
pimples. Luckily, the game
has evolved into something a
little bit more sophisticated
than the version he played
mid-puberty, which mostly
featured hitting on women
with high charisma stats.

Is that what you're teaching
your children to do? Sicko!

Polly

Class Struggle

Vicki -

I couldn't tell if you were
lampooning the problems in
the school system that create
the urge to drop out in our
students or if you were
lamenting that dropouts seem
to be doing well in this
society.

As a college dropout (16
credits short of a BA from
NYU) I agree with you that
the purpose of school is to
convince us "that life is a
rat race." I'm only sorry it
took me 12 years of public
school, plus five years of
very expensive college, to
come to that conclusion. A
former roomie of mine,
recently married, has now
completed his masters in
psychology and earns exactly
the same salary as I do. His
new wife, with a BA and eight
years of experience in
advertising, earns three
times either of our salaries.
It would seem that there is
no connection between degree
status and income, even if
one leaves Hollywood and
looks at the local office.

The true irony is that I now
work for a university in the
departments that train
teachers - Catholic school
teachers, no less. In teacher
education, sacred or secular,
there is one purpose: As St.
Ignatius said of his Jesuit
education system, "Give us
the boy till he is 10, and
we will be responsible for
the man." Thank the stars,
techno music, Hollyweird, or
even smart drugs and pot that
the kids are learning faster
how to get out of the maze -
and go learn what really
matters.

Of course, autodidactic
education, like all socially
Darwinian tactics, creates
its own class system.
Generations X, Y, and Z may
be the first batch of kids
since the Industrial
Revolution to sign most of
their names with a mark on
the line: they may also be
the first ones using the
Internet to put that mark on
the paychecks of their
over-schooled but
under-educated employees from
a vacation villa in the
tropics.

Yours,

Bill Bailey
<bailey@usfca.edu>

Yeah, Bill, those Generation
Z kids are sneaky little
devils. I'd think twice
before underestimating St.
Ignatius, though. The Jesuits
may not look so rich in their
little skirts, but they're
always pulling the strings
somewhere in there with the
Freemasons and the Trilateral
Commission.

Vicki

Vicki,

I really liked today's
article, "Class Struggle."
Now, when I hand my money
over to the school at a rate
of 30K a year, I can think
"Wow. Maybe someday, with
enough hard work and
determination, I can own a
life raft with my name on
it." 'Cept the government
will probably take that to
pay off my loans, which I
can't get increased (I don't
have 30K a year, obviously)
because I have credit cards,
but then, of course, the
credit card companies will
still tell me that owning 10
different Mastercards and
being hundreds of thousands
of dollars in debt is not
only "good for everyone, but
good for establishing a line
of credit" (actual quote from
Mr. Dick Telemarketer, who
likes to call me every week
now and offer me some
wowie-zowie credit card). And
amazingly, with the new GTE
Super Duper Whamo Zammo card,
I can earn a big fucking 20
dollars back in calls to
Jamaica between the hours of
3 and 4 a.m. on Sundays in
March when it's cloudy
outside for more than 10
hours that day.

Sometimes I wonder why
everything sucks so much, and
why it seems that there is a
subliminal message being
perpetrated by the government
- that the middle class don't
deserve to be educated. The
message that some lame-o with
30 billion dollars whose
biggest academic achievement
is passing the third grade is
somehow better than someone
with the perseverance to get
a Ph.D. from a major
university. The message that
academia sucks, knowledge
isn't worth having, and that
the meaning of life is
getting a lot of credit cards
and having lots of revolving
debt. The message that it's
the middle class, their stair
masters and ab rollers, their
salad shooters with the
optional fellatio attachment,
their QVC credit cards, their
big fucking cars at 300
percent interest, their work
and taxes and toil that keeps
this fucking racist elitist
system in place.

When I think like that I
usually start drinking.
Suck on,

Justin Baugh
<baughj@rpi.edu>

I'd rather say "I be rich"
than "I am po'."

Moses Malone

Beautiful Dwarf Buddies,
Etc.

Your article on Howard
Stern's beautiful dwarf
buddy, Ataturk et. al. failed
to mention one of the great
betrayals of all electoral
history.

When David Bowie (who has
long made sad and
unsuccessful attempts to
identify himself with
technology, the Internet, and
interactivity in his public
persona) was promoting his
comeback tour of the UK in
1990, he ran a computerized
phone-poll so that fans could
"vote" for the oldies they'd
most like to hear.

The process was promptly
hijacked by the UK's most
credible music broadsheet,
the New Musical Express, and
its many readers were
encouraged to vote en bloc
for "The Laughing Gnome" - a
'70s novelty hit that Bowie
would very much like to
forget.

He could have earned himself
so many credibility points if
he'd had the good grace to
come up with a
"Major-Tom"-style parody or a
cod-Serious-Moonlight
pastiche or a
look-how-far-we've-come retro
cut-and-paste gag version,
but he chose to dismiss the
votes for any song not on the
approved list.

If it's any consolation, I'm
sure he stole the idea from
Elvis Costello's late '80s
Wheel Of Fortune-style "Wheel
Of Oldies" anyway....

John Horner
<johnny99@sydney.dialix.oz.au>

Wow. That's a nice little
early-adapter anecdote.

Wishing we had written:
"cod-Serious-Moonlight
pastiche"...

Sucksters