for 12 May 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Hi Polly.

Today's Filler was by far the
best I have read in a long
time. I've just returned from
a week in New Orleans where I
grew up and I ran into
long-lost acquaintances
almost daily, each one worse
than the other. It's really
frightening what detailed
things people remember about
you even though they haven't
seen you in almost 10 years.

Thanks for providing some
highly intelligent and funny
humor. I look forward to it
every Wednesday.

The Summer
<summer@learnit.com>

Everyone at my high school
reunion remembered only my
utterly degraded antics, and
promptly forgot my many acts
of generosity and kindness -
generous acts like the time I
did a beer bong with two Goebels
in it, and then waited until I
was well past my friend's
mom's brand-new carpet to
throw up all over the place.
Or the time I held my
friend's hair back while she
leaned over the toilet crying
and saying she felt like she
was gonna die over and over
again until I begged her to
change the subject.

But you're never remembered
for your kind deeds, are you?
The world is filled with
thankless bastards.

Anyway, why am I telling you
this? I don't fucking know
you.

Bastard Polly

So you're a faculty brat, eh?
It makes sense. The condition
seems to be marked by a
niggling sense of
superiority, offset by a
lifelong reality of poverty,
alienation, and recurring
flashbacks. You're not the
only one suffering from this
affliction, but fortunately
the cost to society is
minimal because people just
naturally ignore us. OK,
maybe they just ignore me.
Same difference.

Fuck you too,

Zoltan Magnifico Typhoon
<zoltan_magnifico_typhoon@yahoo.com>

Us, me, same difference? It
seems you may be having some
trouble with ego boundaries.
Perhaps your background is
taking even more of a toll on
your mental health than you
know.

I've found that a sense of
superiority not attached to
class or wealth is helpful in
terms of fostering
self-confidence without the
nihilism and self-destruction
and just all-around
repugnance of the
aristocracy. Plus, I grew up
with a natural aversion to
pseudo-intellectuals and
ism-heads, since it's those
who dream of being professors
and not actual professors who
run around boring the living
crap out of the rest of us
with their snarly
faux-academic one-upmanship.
Hell, I was so
anti-intellectual and
superior that I barely
thought it necessary to read.

Oh, but that was years ago.
Now I just can't stop
reading! Read, read, read -
that's all I do these days.

Fuck U. Class of '92,

Polly

Sometimes it's fun and
satisfying to read a Suck
column, like today. Other
days, I start to read
something like,

"Initial critiques of its
effort were somewhat
Kakutanian ..."

and I just have to move on.
It's early when I read Suck.
There's a cup of hot coffee
at my desk, I have a
hangover, I can see the day
shaping up nicely from the
window near my cubicle, etc.
I don't have the neural
intensity to sound out and
comprehend KA-KU-TA-NI-AN at
these times.

But then I read a column like
today's and I smile, my
headache pounds a little more
softly, and I feel a kind of
sickly-sweet bond with some
of the rest of the people in
the world, which is nice.

Thanks,

Kyle Byron

Well, that's what Filler is
all about: appealing to those
of you who drink too much and
don't like to think or read
big long words.

As today's letters have
evidenced nicely, I'm perfect
for the job.

But, um, that sickly-sweet
bond you feel? That's just
the remaining alcohol
coursing through your blood,
making you think deluded
thoughts, and sweating out
your palms, making you stink.

You stink.

Made uncomfortable by
sickly-sweet bonds thanks to
years of unspeakable
emotional abuse (such as not
being given a moped like the
cool kids at junior high
school, which easily could've
driven me to violence if it
weren't for the fact that I
wasn't a fucking psychotic
asshole),

Polly

Polly,

I love your work. I am
wondering if you are an
intelligent and beautiful
woman or if you are just
intelligent but not a
beautiful woman. It's hard to
tell from the cartoon that
represents you. Sometimes I
think you use your work to
get back at those who hurt
you, especially men. Is this
true?

Just someone who appreciates
your work,

BrainPlug
<brainplug@yahoo.com>

Ah yes. Woman can only be
bitter because she isn't
beautiful or because she was
hurt by man.

I'm glad you can still
appreciate my work without
knowing the answers to these
very important
question-assumptions of
yours.

Time to pull out that brain
plug, eh?

Hurts so good,

Polly

I just noticed something
eerie:

1. Filler is published on
Wednesdays.
2. The Web Onion
is published on Wednesdays.
3. Your Filler character
always wears a sweater.
4.This week's Web Onion has the
sidebar teaser "Sweater
Nice."

What do you think, can I quit
my day job now?

Phil Kos
<pkos@seanet.com>

Only if they pay geniuses
just for being geniuses,
which I know all too well
they don't.

Polly

Subject: Questions for Polly

Hi to she who inhales through
pursed lips.

Polly, you finally managed to
write a column I could truly
relate to subjectwise, and
that also didn't make me
laugh! To this end I have two
questions for you and the
following observations, which
you made very apparent: You
1) are more immature than I
believed, and 2) think locked
in a young woman's
perspective.

First of all, your total lack
of sensitivity with respect
to the subject of the past
clearly showed you have
become an emotional "wedge of
burnt toast," indicating,
IMHO, that although you go to
great lengths to appear
mature and worldly in your
attitudes, alas, you are a
still a young and vulnerable
woman with either a) NO past
(you're still trying to get a
life), or b) a past you'd
personally prefer to forget
(if only you could get your
hands on those negatives,
eh?).

Second, your multiple choice
answer, "d) Lots of
incredibly attractive,
intelligent friends who might
like to give you a blow job
occasionally," to the
question what does your
long-lost acquaintance have,
clearly is a sexist statement
that in all likelihood could
only have been made by a
woman. Why do you assume a
blow job is the end-all
desire of most men any more
than cunnilingus would be for
most women? Would it have not
been better simply to have
used the term "oral sex"
here, or, is it possible the
incredibly firm-assed "bitch"
Polly has a problem with
performing fellatio?

Which is it Polly?

I say these things only
because I notice that as the
aging process has started to
accelerate this last year or
so (I turn a young 43 next
September) and I can begin to
feel death's icy fingers
tightening his grip on my
pencil neck, I have made a
concerted effort to get back
in touch with those special
folks we once called
"friends," and I have
observed this has been a good
and positive experience for
both me and said
acquaintances. I will admit I
am currently living in
Germany, so the chance of me
dropping in around dinner
time or for cocktails is a
low threat. But I have come
to the conclusion that we all
need more love and
compassion, not only sarcasm
and negative vibes.

Signed,

Don (a fan of Suck)

I appreciate your compliment
on my immaturity. I don't
mean to brag, but people
often tell me I'm more
immature than they thought. I
guess until I feel death's
icy fingers tightening his
grip on my pretty young neck
I'll remain blissfully
insensitive.

But who knows? Maybe one day
I'll come to terms with my
hideous past and suddenly
I'll find no humor in jokes
about blow jobs - instead
I'll make grave
gender-neutral observations
about love, compassion, and
the gender-neutral joys of
oral sex.

Until then, suck my dick.

Polly

A funny thing happened on the
way to the IPO.

I have been a faithful reader
of Salon these past few
years, but their redesign
leaves me cold. Before, I
could count on seeing five or
six articles with headlines
that gave enough information
to draw me in.

Their redesign offers instead
a mishmash of bland refers
[what's this?] that are not
too different from any
midlevel daily newspaper.
They lost their attitude in
an attempt to offer "serious"
news, yet I never thought
they were frivolous before
(well, except for their sex
offerings).

Do I really what to read a
story about how Boston police
fight crime without using
Guiliani's tactics? Or
suspicions that the Littleton
killers were gay? Puleaze!

Instead, when I come in to
work, I pull down Suck. I
still visit Salon, but I read
a lot less of it than I did
before.

<bpeschel@heraldonline.com>

While a daily newspaper
written with the
sophisticated style of a
magazine would no doubt be a
hit, the trick, of course, is
to find enough stories that
are not just standard
newspaper filler, and then to
produce those stories on
increasingly short deadlines
with no decline in literary
quality. I'd have to agree
with you that at the moment
Salon isn't really pulling
this off - the only section
that comes close to doing it
is the media section.

Also, it's good to hear
you've discovered Suck is a
much better way to start
one's daily avoidance of work
than Salon. Given that we can
barely manage to fulfill our
current editorial rate,
you'll never have to worry
about being faced with an
overwhelming screenful of
bland choices - we keep our
mishmash confined to one
essay a day and a few random
letters like this.

Huck

Ahem, Sainted one:
Have you actually read Salon
lately? Or is this just the
inevitable result of the
delay between writing and
publication, even online?
While it was always fun to
make fun of Salon, from time
to time they've broken news
and had interesting
columnists. Alas, the remake
seems to have blanded them
down to nothing. There is a
self-proclaimed mandate to
minimize hard news and
politics. In short, they've
morphed themselves into
People.com. Or maybe
VanityFairLite.com.

What the hell. Maybe the
world has been waiting for an
online middlebrow magazine
with nothing to say.
Presumably they did their
homework, conducted surveys,
read the entrails, hired
consultants.

I still say it's spinach. And
I give it eight months, tops.

Alan Kornheiser
<Askornheiser@prodigy.net>

I am unfamiliar with the
self-proclaimed mandate to
minimize hard news and
politics - did I miss it in
the S-1 or the attendant
press releases somewhere?

Re: Its increasing blandness
- you are right on this
count, I think. In part,
Salon's editorial appeal has
always hinged on its bland
brand of provocation, but
with new attritions like the
People section and the
obituaries, it is certainly
diluting the impact of the
worthwhile parts. While I do
think a national, daily
version of the Observer holds
great promise, it does indeed
seem as if Salon is moving
much more quickly toward
Vanity Fair for Dummies, or
People for People Who Claim
They'd Never Read People.

Huck

St. Huck,

In the words of one of your
esteemed colleagues: "Jesus
Fucking God."

With regard to your piece
"Worm's-eye View," how could
you have possibly missed our
site? Truly hilarious,
really: "A Web cam that moves,
that talks?" "Ask and ye
shall receive ...," and all
that.

http://www.hereandnow.net/

Your piece was well argued,
but you seemed to have
glossed over a few of the
more pertinent issues at hand
(understandably, of course,
since I myself am only just
now beginning to discover
these by actually living
through them).
Erik
<erik@hereandnow.net>

What can I say? When I read
about your site elsewhere, I
said to myself, "Jesus
Fucking God, why did they
send a press release to Salon
and not to me?"

In any case, I now know about
the site and plan to start
watching, especially if you
guys start solving crimes or
something, or at least break
out into the occasional
spontaneous game show.

Best,

Huck

The Shit

Left for Dead in Malaysia, Neil Hamburger, Drag City, 1999 The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Mark Dery, Grove/Atlantic, 1999 Crazy from the Heat, David Lee Roth, Hyperion, 1998 Keep It Like a Secret, Built to Spill, WEA/Warner Brothers, 1999 Abbott's Pizza Company, near the corner of Abbott-Kinney and California, Venice Beach, Los Angeles (delivery hours limited) Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd, CD remaster, EMI 1994 Motorhead, CD remasters, all Det Som Engang Var, Burzum, Misanthropy, 1998 Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, Nashville, Tennessee A History of the Modern Fact, Mary Poovey, University of Chicago Press, 1998 V., Thomas Pynchon, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999 The Coffee Mill, Emeq Refaim, Jerusalem, Israel The Salesman and Bernadette, Vic Chesnutt, Capricorn Records, 1998 Good Morning Spider, Sparklehorse, Cema/Capitol, 1999 Third Floor, Anderson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art