for 4 August 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Subject: Fantastic

Dear Plooy,

You are such a great Suck
writer! What kind of mail can
I send to help you get ideas
for your next article?

With hesitant admiration,

Spin
<xpin@home.com>

I don't know if the
compliment "great Suck
writer" brings me that much
satisfaction, frankly, but
there's got to be a joke in
your spelling of my name. On
the other hand, making fun of
dyslexics is stooping a
little low, even for me.

Maybe I'll just change my
name to Plooy and call it a
day.

It's a day.

Plooy

Subject: The kids column
today

How long have you been spying
on me and my family?

Dominic Collier
<dcollier@agency.com>

For several weeks. Why do you
guys make so many kissy
noises at each other? Do you
think that's cute? And did
you notice your youngest son
is throwing all the food he
doesn't eat behind the
refrigerator when no one is
looking, and that your dog
repeatedly pees under the
living room table? I'm
surprised you haven't noticed
the smell yet.

You people sicken me.

Plooy

Subject: Congratulations!

Polly,

I had no idea you were
expecting a column on having
kids. Congratulations! It
seemed like just a year ago
you were writing columns
about going out every night
and meeting different men,
and here you have a column
about settling down and
having children. Well,
congratulations.

But writing columns about
kids isn't an easy task. I
mean, just look at your
parents, or, um, Erma Bombeck
— they had to write
columns about kids every day.
They were forced to get up at
2 a.m. and 4 a.m. to walk
that column around and edit
words here or there, or wait
in a crowded editor's office
with a bunch of sick columns
waiting for the editor to
blame it all on them and say
they were bad writers.

This is hard work, and women
who spend their time writing
columns about kids do not get
the respect they deserve. In
other countries, some women
get like six months off their
normal columns to write
columns about children, but
the United States is so
profit driven they want you
up and out and writing
columns about business in
like six weeks — and you
only get to write columns
about hospitals for one
night! Damn HMOs!

Anyway, if you want advice, I
have some friends who are
really cool and just finished
writing their second column
about kids (I thought for
sure that first column
would've been enough for
anyone!) and they could
probably offer you some great
advice. So good luck to you
and that little column. Did
you have any tests run to
find out which column it was?

Don Smith
<dsmith@qrc.com>

Just because I write a column
on having kids once doesn't
mean I have to write columns
about having kids from now
on. I mean, I can always pay
someone to write columns on
having kids and just show up
now and then and approve
everything and get all the
credit for it.

Then I can write self-pitying
columns on how I don't even
know my own children.

Why, I feel sorry for myself
already.

Plooy

I can't speak for all our
readers, but when it comes to
TV, the people participating
in our Cafe Utne Web site
seem more fans than fascists.
My God! There's even a TV
conference with 88 topics.
And whaddya know? One of them
is Sports Night.

Tom McKusick
Publisher
Utne Reader
www.utne.com

Tom,

That is a ringing endorsement
for Cafe Utne, all right, and
speaks to the egalitarianism
of its hard-core, middlebrow
audience — unlike Cafe
Suck, of course, where all
the talk is on the new
quickcam technology being
used by Russian whores.
Still, I imagine a high
degree of self-regard,
despite their guilty
pleasures, is one thing both
our readerships have in
common.

Hans Moleman

Moleman,

While being gay is more
acceptable today than being
Christian, I'll come out of
the Book long enough to
assert that Jesus is the
Christ. Since I'm out, allow
me to say that sweating about
eschatology is about as
scatological as worrying
about the fine print on the
architecture of reality. Both
topics have their interesting
points but yield little in
the way of immediately useful
material. Please do not
confuse understanding what
life means with having a
lobotomy.

Love you guys,

Christopher L. Smith
<smitty_one_each@bigfoot.com>

Dear Chris,

We love you too, even if you
are one of those "#$!*%
Christians," as the bad guys
say in Chick tracts. But
where does scatology come
into it? The end of the world
don't mean shit to us.

Yrs,

Moleman

Junior

Subject: John-John Who?

Whilst innocently waiting to
see The Blair Witch Project
(more an experiment in new
advertising than a film), a
group of friends and I were
approached by a journalist
from the San Jose Mercury
News and asked how we felt
about Jr.'s death. Evidently,
the thirtysomething
generation is all broken up
about his death and wanted to
know if we, the
twentysomethings, felt the
pain of loss they did. Well,
death is always sad, but
honestly, when queried, I
couldn't say it struck me
much at all. I felt a deeper
loss when Shel Silverstein
died.

I can't say I recall what
John Jr. looked like or
anything of import he'd done.
Someone had to remind me
about that magazine —
heaven knows I never read it.
I'd love to say it's the
media's fault for blasting
his death all over the news
while the death of Mother
Teresa (I don't agree with
her religious beliefs but she
still did a lot of good work)
was forced to play second
fiddle to Di, but the fact is
it isn't. The media is
composed of minstrels singing
for their supper. They have
to print or air what people
will read and watch. I'm glad
I got the opportunity to say
I don't want to hear the
minute and often ugly details
of the lives of stars, but I
doubt my 15 minutes of fame
are going to radically change
the way news is reported.

I put the question to you
Sucksters: Is it possible to
maintain journalistic
integrity and still get
people to read what you
write? Can the media train
the unwashed masses to look
for real news by slowly
slipping it into the
mainstream? Or are the real
stories bound to get left
behind and replaced by a
heartwarming story about a
puppy who dialed 911 when his
owner fell down the stairs?

Liz Cantrell

A puppy dialed 911 when his
owner fell down the stairs?
That is so amazing! When did
that happen? Where can we get
the full story? God, that is
so incredible!

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