for 10 February 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Dear Sucksters:

I've been a faithful reader
from the Very Beginning, way
back when you were pirates in
Wired's oar room, not first
mates above deck.

I have brought my Web site to
your attention more than
once, and you STILL haven't
made any comment about it
online!! C'mon guys - this
has been going on for more than
three years now!! I don't
understand!!

OK. One more chance:
www.tigerthekitten.com

Older than you,

Jeremy David Stolen
intellectual provocateur
<cycle-boy@mailcity.com>

P.S. I have exchanged email
with Carl Steadman, Ann
O'Tate, Owen Thomas, AND
LeTeXan. What else do I need
to do?!?!?!?

OK. You've sent the URL again
and again and yet you don't
tell us what we'll find
there. Instead you whine
about the fact that you're
being ignored and mention the
names of several
semifictional characters,
many of whom are known drug
abusers. On top of it all,
you refer to yourself as an
intellectual provocateur,
which mostly provokes nausea.

You're really gonna spark a
revolutionary new trend in
press releases if you keep
this up. PR types across the
nation will be exploring this
new whiny, info-free format,
guaranteed to work editors
into a state of nauseated
sniping.

Well, you got your comment.
Are you happy now?

No provocation is bad
provocation,

Sucksters

Filler: Mr. Flinchy Strikes
Back!

Dear Polly,

Just remember that behind
every Mr. Flinchy there is
also the cold-hearted wench
that made him fearful of
commitment. Not that it is an
eternal excuse for malevolent
behavior ... all I am saying
is you put down your baggage,
and I'll put down mine, and we
can solve this thing
peacefully.

By the way, what's the deal
with the recent spate of
men/women
relationship-related Fillers?
It's interesting from my
viewpoint (A little of Sun
Tzu's "Know the enemy and
know yourself and you need
not fear the result of a
hundred battles") but it
would lead enquiring minds to
speculate what is going on in
your own personal life.

Bartholomew Roberts
<chuangtzu2@hotmail.com>

Speculate all you want; I
have no personal life. I'm a
cartoon, stupid.

Relationship-related Fillers
are a February tradition, in
honor of ... the end of
football season, I think.
Reemphasis on intimacy.
Conflicting interests when it
comes to matters of the
heart. Leo plays a role.

Polly

Subject: Syphilis! Free
inside!

polly,

the thought occurred that you
might not want free syphilis.
the tag was false advertising
anyway. i'd have to roll the
vagrant sleeping under the
porch, surreptitiously graph
his chancre-encrusted
cake hole, find a centrifuge,
extract the writhing
spirochetes, and find an
insulated petri dish. and if
i were to go to all that
trouble, i'd rather give
syphilis to kathy lee
gifford.

whatever, eh. the purpose of
this was to find out if you
could give me any info on
suck and it's constituents.
i'm writing a review of it
for the [name withheld]
review of journalism online.
i'd be especially interested
to know if any of you are
j-school grads (or drop-outs)
and, if so, what sort of
experience you had (i'm
looking for negative, bashing
sort of shit).

please humor me,

Name withheld to protect the
artist as a young man

p.s. i'm no sycophant, but
suck is the second best thing
to come out of your
crime-infested,
right-of-right-wing,
god-fearing, inbred country.
the first, of course, is
taco bell.

None of us went to journalism
school because journalism
school sucks!

How was that?

Also, cartoon characters
can't get into J-school. But
we can't get syphilis either,
so probe all the cake holes
you want. (What an enticing
lead paragraph. Is that what
they teach you at J-school?)

Polly

Speech Therapy

Ambrose,

As usual, the one joy of
turning on the computer
today was reading your
column. Headlines from
today's AP news only add more
surrealism to your poignant
comments on the State of the
Union:

"All states and school
districts must adopt and
implement discipline
policies." AP News, 26
January 1999, Headline:
Parents of Truants Face Jail
in MD. (Sentencing is on 12
February, but in December a
Kentucky woman already got
SIX MONTHS OF JAIL because
her two daughters missed a
combined 116 days over 1.5
years.)

Clinton, 19 January 1999:
"For the first time in three
decades, the budget is
balanced. (Applause) From a
deficit of $290 billion in
1992, we had a surplus of $70
billion last year. And now we
are on course for budget
surpluses for the next 25
years." (Applause) AP News,
26 January 1999, Headline:
5.4 Billion Budget Deficit
Recorded. (The source of the
deficit was, you guessed it,
Social Security payments, the
very thing that was going to
be saved by the budget
surplus!)

Clinton, 19 January 1999:
"America is a strong force
for peace from Northern
Ireland to Bosnia to the
Middle East." AP News, 26
January 1999, Headline: US
Admits Iraq Missile Mistake.
(Whoops, maybe putting video
cameras on the AGM-130
missiles wasn't such a smart
idea?)

Please do us all a favor and
do a follow-up story on your
State of the Union follow up,
because there is so bloody
much to follow up, and these
three just jumped out at me
this morning, but certainly
there are dozens of others.

Cheers,

Read Mercer Schuchardt
<read@schuchardt.com>

Good to hear from you again -
how's the juggling act? (Can
we call you Dr. Schuchardt
yet?)

You know, this thing on
Clinton began to bum me out
about two minutes after I
finished it. I think it's
pretty lazy, compared to the
available material and what
could be done with it, but I
think I know why: I've
completely lost my sense of
humor around the subject of
Bill Clinton. The era of big
government is over! And we
must expand federal
involvement in local schools,
increase military spending,
insert the government into
the stock market ... Not sure
there's any sentence under
the sun this man couldn't
speak with courage and
conviction.

So I think I need to take a
break from writing about Bill
Clinton, or risk turning into
that writer character in The
Shining - with, like, 500
pages that say Clinton is bad
Clinton is bad Clinton is
bad....

Oh, good lord: Speaking of
fascinatingly ironic AP
stories - did you see the one
about the White House hosting
a banquet for Muslims at the
end of Ramadan? (Sorry about
all those dead Iraqis - want
a muffin?) Actual Hillary
Clinton quote: "I used to
feel so strongly as a young
girl ... that religion should
not serve as a weapon of war
and division but as a bridge
to peace." That was one
passionate toddler.

Jesus.

Ambrose Beers

Letter to the editor.

One of the late-show hosts
made a joke about how
President Clinton, when
meeting with the pope, asked
the pontiff if he would
redefine sexual relations.

This reminded me again of an
issue that I have seen no
writer address, even amid
the thousands of editorials
dealing with the vagaries of
that phrase. And it seems
such an obvious and important
question to ask: How does the
Church, or the state for
that matter, define sexual
relations?

Consider a partner in a
newly married couple, who is
seeking annulment of the
vows. What if that couple has
not engaged in intercourse,
but has only had oral
sex? Would that marriage be
considered consummated? I do
not believe it would be.

Does that make the issue more
clear or more confused?

James Holland
<JH2z3y@aol.com>

More confused and much, much
less interesting.

Rolling Blunder

Ambrose

In your Fish response today
to Barry Munden, you start by
agreeing with his support of
the goals of Desert Storm:
"The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
was clearly unacceptable and
Desert Storm was clearly
successful at liberating
Kuwait ... "

Wait a minute. Kuwait has
been liberated? Last I heard,
Kuwaitis were subjected to a
dictatorship. Was there some
successful campaign to
liberate them that I missed?

Back in the days of Desert
Storm and the New World
Order, the slogan I remember
was: "Bush's 'brave new
world' would be a planet safe
for monarchy." I thought that
part of the plan, at least,
had been successful.

Jim Burrill
<jimburr@hotbot.com>

True, true. But the invasion
wasn't benevolent, either. So
why don't we settle on:
"Liberated from the Iraqi
occupation, which returned
the Kuwaiti emir to his
throne."

I remember shrieking this
very point out in front of
the federal building in West
LA, back in the first days
of Desert Storm, but I also
had more energy then....

Ambrose Beers