for 25 August 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Filler was even stranger (if
funnier) than usual today.
Are you drinking plenty of
fluids? Dehydration can sneak
up on you in the summer and
do odd things to the higher
cognitive areas.

Alan S. Kornheiser
<askornheiser@prodigy.net>

OK, but it was funnier than
usual, right? So maybe I
should stop drinking fluids
altogether, thereby making
myself even funnier. Sure,
it'll take a lot of
self-control, but if it'll
make me funnier, hell, I'm
willing to make the
sacrifice.

Man, I'm thirsty.

Screw this.

Polly

Are the email and letters
that you answer in Filler for
real or just another figment
of your awesome imagination?

Marty Plumbo
<marty.plumbo@ uc.edu>

People often ask me that
question, Marty. The letters
seem too strange to come from
real people, they say. But
most of the letters I get are
way too strange to make up.

However, I wouldn't want you
to be less in awe of the
awesome powers ... er,
figments of my imagination,
now, would I?

So, um, I make all of those
letters up. In fact, I made
you up, Marty. You don't
actually exist, outside the
realm of the figment. You
hear that, Marty? You are
merely a figment.

Sorry. I'll try not to forget
you, thus annihilating you
from the universe. You might
want to send me a reminder
every now and then, in fact,
so that I don't carelessly
forget and annihilate you.

(Marty Plumbo! I gotta start
thinking up more believable
names than that....)

Polly

Subject: Sensitivity

Dear Plooy,

Good try on the couscous
column, but what about those
who are allergic to wheat?
Didn't you stop to consider
them for a minute? Is rice an
acceptable substitute, or do
you even know? Also, can bad
couscous break up a marriage?

Just thinking,

Chris
<xpin@ home.com>

Is couscous wheat? I always
slept through those
educational films in high
school. And in Catholic
elementary school, they'd
only show the couple going
into the restaurant, but they
wouldn't show what was
happening inside for fear of
corrupting our wee little
minds. Little did they know
this one kid drew pictures of
couscous in his notebook and
showed it to us, so we were
all vaguely aware of how it
looked.

Rice is fine for some people,
I guess, but it's sort of
like having a yogurt when you
really want a banana split,
know what I mean?

And no couscous is bad.
Couscous is like pizza. When
it's good, it's great, and
when it's not so good, it's
still pretty good.

OK, that's an optimistic lie,
let's face it.

Educational as ever,

Plooy

Polly,

Regarding today's column and
letters regarding children
and pets (when the fancy girl
collie dies it's a frog next
for sure: show me the
frog-specializing
veterinarian), isn't it
much more important to have
a car you can believe in?

Peter Robert

Peter, if I could make up
letters like yours, I'd be a
genius. An unemployed genius,
but a genius all the same.

My other car is a
frog-specializing
veterinarian,

Polly

I can't tell how much of that
article is real. All of it,
none of it, or some of both.

Well, actually, I know some
of it is true. Does that mean
the rest is?

Karen Eliot
<maui@post.net>

Yes, some of it is true —
and that means that all of it
is. This same logic will help
you parse celebrity first
lady interviews, presidential
grand jury testimony, and The
Blair Witch Project.

The truth is out there,

Holly M.

Love the presidential
childhood shtick, but if
you're going to imitate
18th-century writing, get it
right!

"The idle fool if whipt at
fchool"

It should be "is whipt at
fchool." See
http://www.straightdope.com/
classics/a1_110.html for more
info.

Hope this helps!

Art Cohen
<art@stumpworld.com>

Actually, near as I can tell,
the passage should have been
entirely f-less, since
18th-century writers only
used the "long s" (i.e., the
f) in the middle of words,
not the beginning or end. As
in: "My curfed editor at Suck
foifted the damnable paffage
on my piece in the firft
place, and now it is me who
is made to refemble a
philiftine." Thankfully,
everything else in the piece
is 100 percent accurate.

Holly M.

The unanswered question in
the interview with Hillary
was, "If Bill is so fixated
on pleasing women, why did he
do things to hurt you?" I
doubt we'll ever hear that
one in a press conference.

"The idle fool if whipt at
fchool." This sentence never
would have been written this
way by a colonial writer. F
replaces s only in the middle
of a word, never at the
beginning or end.

Have a day, your choice,

David
<Utter-David@GALLS.com>

Well, that was certainly one
good unanswered question.
Another would have been: "How
could an ostensible feminist
icon like yourself stoop to
blame two women — both of
whom are now dead and unable
to defend themselves —
for your husband's
cigar-brandishing
objectification of women his
daughter's age?"

And yes, other
correfpondents have
thoughtfully corrected my
thoughtless appropriation of
colonial ufage.

Holly M.

I have unsubscribed because
you are giving William
Jefferson shit beyond that
which he deserves. He catches
enough shit from the assholes
out there like the Reverend
Falwell, Delay, Trent Lott,
and Gary Bauer without you
assholes piling on.

You suck,

Dave Sullivan
(a Republican who thinks, "Enough is
f*cking enough!")

<davesull@mediaone.net>

Thank you. I have long prided
myself on my quenchless
desire to go to any length
whatsoever to irritate a
Republican. And your eloquent
bons mots at my expense leave
me altogether speechless.

Bravo,

Holly M.

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