for 14 July 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Subject: ABLAGABLKHABLAG

Dear Polly,

I spent some time reading the
archives of Suck recently,
and I found that the issues
of big-headedness,
no-neckedness, and even
hassling the illustrator had
been touched on in the past.
I didn't realize there was a
moratorium on remarks about
your appearance (declared in
response to reader mail on
... uh ... one day or other)
and so I must apologize for
the content of my previous
letter.

I would express this with a
tasteful card or floral
arrangement, but I'm sure
that, in your eyes, the most
appropriate action would be
self-flagellation with tire
chains or Pasta-Roni noodles.
I know as well as you do that
physical discipline is the
only effective measure for
suppressing the urge to make
derogatory comments about
others' appearances, no
matter how uproariously
funny.

I just know that one day
Terry will decide that a
reader has criticized his
style for the last time, and
he'll give everyone necks and
ordinary proportions. And
suddenly Suck will look
exactly like Prince Valiant
(heaven forfend).

Sincerely,

Andrew
<burnt@satanic.org>

That's so weird, because in
real life, I look exactly
like Prince Valiant!

No, actually I look just like
Steve Roper. I mean Mike
Nomad. I mean Mary Worth. I
mean Marmaduke.

I'm a little bunny rabbit,
actually. No, I'm a shoe
horn. No, I'm a very thin
slice of lunch meat.

That'll learn you fer reading
them archives, boy.

Dizzy, disoriented, neckless,

Polly

Subject: Shiny, happy sheep

Polly,

Your cynicism continues to
touch me on a deep,
pseudo-spiritual level.
Sometimes it even fondles me
there, but your cynicism
always is a bit cheeky.

I avoided the curse of
Catholicism by being raised
with the curse of Southern
Baptism. The chief difference
between the two is that the
repression in Catholicism is
much more ritualized, but at
least you guys get to drink.
I can't pinpoint exactly when
I realized it was all pretty
silly, and I certainly didn't
go through all those
epistemological stages you
did as a little
atheist-in-waiting. But I
think I came out OK despite
my rather sudden and inexact
awakening.

Because of my generally
healthy attitude and my
boundless, dirty monkey love
for you, I'm inviting you to
join my new religion. It only
has a handful of tenets, and
aside from the biggies in the
Ten Commandments, now easily
found in any public school,
there are really no
prohibitions. You have only
to follow these three simple
rules:

1. Never, ever wear a fanny
pack for any reason.

2. Be kind to your fellow
humans unless they cut in
front of you at the video
store, vote Republican, or
bogart the joint. In these
cases, you are encouraged,
nay required, to verbally
humiliate them until they cry
like little girls.

3. Anyone caught without a
pornographic film in their
possession will be
excommunicated and forced to
watch reruns of Charles in
Charge until they repent.

There, isn't that simple? So
far the only member is me,
but as soon as my Web site,
www.preachdatfunkyshit.com,
is up and running, I expect
the acolytes to come flooding
in quicker than shit through
a goose. Can I sign you up?
There's an initial fee of
US$50 to cover the cost
of your membership packet,
which includes a subscription
to Mother Jones, an official
"High Priest Ty Webb Laid
Hands on Me" T-shirt, and a
Jello pudding snack pak. Just
leave the check in your
underwear drawer before you
leave for work, and I'll get
it when I do my daily
rummaging.

Yours in beatific stupidity,

Ty Webb

Is the subscription to Mother
Jones some kind of punishment
ritual, sort of like hazing?

Can't we add a fourth rule
that requires followers to
watch The Real World and talk
about the people on the show
like they're close friends?
Shouldn't we have a rule
about stashing away candy
bars for a rainy day? Or what
about a rule requiring the
faithful to drink to excess,
pinpoint the insecurities of
others (subconsciously, of
course), and then ruthlessly
attack them based on those
insecurities? You know, if
you're going to join our
religion, you have to show
signs of being seriously
fucked in the head.

Speaking of — next time
you're rummaging through my
underwear drawer, could you
not eat the Snickers bars I
keep stashed in there?

Polly

Hit and Run

G'day,

"All this guy knew was that
his friends were more
computer savvy than he was.
He didn't have a computer or
anything, and he believed his
friends were going to use
their knowledge to mess with
him and embarrass him."

Ha, imagine if he read this —
his paranoia would skyrocket!
A site called Suck, writing
about his inadequacies,
sponsored by Bill Gates!

(Although Suck tends to have
that effect on me anyway.)

"What he thought was that he
was so under the Internet's
spell that his friends, once
again, had made this Web page
that contained photos of him
masturbating and had put in
these links just so people
could come along and mess
with him some more — make
him jump and kick. Actually,
when we were seeing this
gentleman, he was kicking and
moving his arms around and
saying, 'See? This is all
part of that Web page.'"

Hmmm. Not so far fetched. I
remember meeting Stelarc (a
veteran performance artist
into prosthetic arms, etc.)
while he was planning a
project to hook himself up to
the Internet with electrodes
that made his limbs twitch
and move.

The idea was so that people
around the world could log on
to a body part and control
it. I think it was planned
for October 1995. Anyway, I
forgot to actually log on to
his Net-stimulation when it
happened, but I did get to
send a buzz through his body
locally, and try on his robot
arm.

Bergaak,

David Sheehy <dsheehy@
vic.bigpond.net.au>
Panoramic New Media

Did you have to remove your
own arm in order to try on
his? That seems like a pretty
decadent length to go to in
search of stimulation.

Yr pal,

BarTel

Mr. Skinner,

Er, whatever the citizenry of
Des Moines did to displease
you, I fail to see how it
could warrant today's
unfunny, unimaginative essay
on the city's purported bid
to host an Olympiad. If they
did in fact compete with
Turin for the 2006 games,
perhaps you'd have a point.
Seeing no evidence to support
such a claim, it seems only
that you've chosen to
fabricate an Iowan bid of
straw, which you then proceed
to burn.

Iowa's flat! Imagine that. Oh
no, they like mayo! These are
some quality yuks you're
serving up, yes sir. What
about the jilted Swiss, whose
bid possibly lost out of
whistle-blower retribution?
Surely there's enough
material among the
cheese-clock-,
utility-knife-anonymous bank
account cultural reference
set (ages 4 and up). Maybe
you could even bring in the
Nazi concentration camp gold
story for some broader
cultural significance —
that, or at least a Swiss
Miss marshmallow-cleavage
joke.

Regretfully,

Zack Haberer
<zhaberer@ibm.net>

We appreciate your taking the
time to analyze the complex
vectors of reality and parody
in "Host with the Most" and
regret that you found it
uninspiring.

While we might have weighed in
with a pithier perspective on
the IOC, Swiss time pieces,
and cleavage in general, we
never lost sight of the fact
that you didn't pay a damn
thing for Suck this month.
And we can't afford to waste
time actually researching our
"topics" with the water bill
due and the lights flickering
out.

When you're trying to decide
whether or not we're being
funny, topical, or oblique,
it pays to remember that
pragmatic old chestnut of
common sense: Sometimes a
cigar is just a big, black
phallus.

Best,

E. L. Skinner

Up yours, you smirky little
pissant. Des Moines may be
easy to make fun of from a
distance, but that just makes
me wonder why someone as
lofty and sophisticated as
you would even bother to do
so. Do Des Moines a favor and
stay in your pansified,
big-city world, because the
people of Des Moines have no
use for snobby dickheads like
you.

graham.benson
<graham.benson@damark.com>

Keep your pants on, Graham. I
happen to love Iowa, its
being the home of both Greg
Brown and the Amana Radar
Range. As a native Minnesotan
who grew up within spitting
distance of Mason City, I'm
under obligation to produce
at least one Iowa joke a day.
As you know, we only hurt the
ones we love.

I think you're exactly right
about the people of Des
Moines, though; I've found
Iowans as a whole to be
unpretentious,
straight-shooting,
no-nonsense folks — if
they have any single fault or
flaw, it would be a distinct
lack of humor in some
circumstances.

You think Iowans are mad about
that Suck piece? You should
see what the IOC is saying
— it's truly scandalous!

E. L. Skinner

The Shit

"Gary's Trajectory," A Wanderer in the Perfect City, Lawrence Weschler, Hungry Mind Press, 1998 The Parallax View, Alan J. Pakula, Paramount Pictures DVD, 1974 Rogues to Riches: The Trouble with Wall Street, Murray Teigh Bloom, Putnam,1971 Actual Air, David Berman, Open City Books, 1999 Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, Peter Hall and Michael Bierut, editors, Princeton Architectural Press, 1998 Canary-wing parrots, Dolores Street, San Francisco Super Shitty to the Max, Hellacopters, Man's Ruin Records, 1998 Request magazine (any issue after June 1999) On the Road to Vietnam, Bob Hope, Cadet 4046 vinyl, 1964 The Flying Ballerina, Drums and Tuba, TEC Tones, 1998 Dino, Nick Tosches, Delta Alpha Publishing, 1999 The Soft Bulletin, The Flaming Lips, WEA/Warner Brothers, 1999 Big Red soda