for 12 November 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Emily Ghost's Halloween Etiquette Oh my God, I am going to faint from laughter. Then I am going to email this to all my friends. I hope you are prepared for an onslaught d'subs. As I wished my fiend, I mean friend, who wears spooky contacts to work every Halloween Friday, Vitreous humor, Joanne <yarnspinner@duesouth.net> PS The suggested Edgar Allen Poe reply from you would read, "Eye knew you would say that." Mmm. A punster, huh? Nothing we like better than witty puns from the lips of a true pun-spinner. Except mold and drafty bathrooms and leg cramps that wake you up in the middle of the night, howling in pain. the Sucksters  Sucksters, Did you actually write this?!? "Well, you'll see in time that at Suck.com we have a strong commitment to putting out a quality product, day in and day out. We take all our feedback from our customers to heart, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to let us know. — the Sucksters" Someone must have let in fresh air from outside. Stop that! Quit it right now! Thank you. :) Jeepy "Few things are harder to put up with than a good example." —Mark Twain (1835�) "Stop that!"? Is that a suggestion? A bit of customer feedback? Do you really think we meant it? Please read the good example in the letter above. Few things are harder to put up with than a gullible emoticon. the Sucksters Writing this letter stems from a desperation to be heard, if not by a court of law, then by a court of public opinion. Although not without overlap and simplification, I plan to identify three primary positions on Suck.com's expositions. I acknowledge I have not accounted for all possible viewpoints within the parameters of these three positions. Nevertheless, I, not being one of the many incomprehensible obstinate prevaricators of this world, challenge Suck to point out any text in this letter that proposes it has been robbed of all it does not possess. It isn't there. There's neither a hint nor a suggestion of such a thing. Certainly, any day now, Suck will turn its back on those who need it the most. Strictly speaking, I am appalled that I have cause to write this article. I have this advice to offer: The world has changed, Suck; get used to it. Suck's double standards are despised by everyone but craven desperados. One doesn't need a finely developed sense of irony to note that Suck's vituperations are a pitiful jumble of incoherent nonsense. Even though supposedly distancing itself from unprincipled cheapskates, Suck has really not changed its spots at all. What does Suck have to say about all of this? The answer, as expected, is nothing. Suck's cronies must be exposed and neutralized wherever they lurk, as if it made any difference. Suck's fierce passions and fiendish cunnin; combined with abnormal powers of intellect, intense vitality, and a persistency of purpose the world has rarely seen; and whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and subjection, combine to make it the deadly enemy of all mankind, while its condescending arguments contribute to inflame its wild lust of pelf and to justify the crimes suggested by spite and superstition. It is singularly apt that it is of paramount importance not to let Suck's lackeys burn our fair cities to the ground. It may seem senseless to say that Suck's henchmen get so hypnotized by its simplistic "good guys and bad guys" approach to history that they do not hear what it is really saying. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. The essential point, however, is the following: Some of Suck's atrabilious goals are so self-contradictory they're their own refutation. Following this line of logic, it would appear that it's never too late to listen to others. Suck simply regurgitates the empty arguments that have been fed to it over the years. Suck is mischievous, slaphappy, silly, virulent, pernicious, and nerdy. Need I go on? Once we have absorbed and understood Suck's scornful press releases, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to enable patriots to use their freedoms to save their freedoms. Well, sure; in plain language, I, for one, am skeptical of Suck's efforts to produce a predatory definition of "counterdemonstration," but that doesn't change reality. If Suck wants to utilize questionable and illegal fundraising techniques, fine. Just don't make me faint while it's at it. I, for one, can repeat with undiminished conviction something I said eons ago: Suck flaunts its personal catch phrases and attitudes in front of everyone else. I wish that some of Suck's assistants would ask themselves, "Why am I helping Suck sentence more and more people to poverty, prison, and early death?" We must burn away social illness, exploitation, and human suffering. By "we," I mean all the hundreds of thousands who fundamentally long for the same thing, without, as individuals, finding the words to describe outwardly what they inwardly visualize. Efforts to change this country's moral infrastructure are not vestiges of a former era. They are the beginnings of a phenomenon which, if permitted to expand unchecked, will cause (or at least contribute to) a variety of social ills. An ancient Greek once wrote something to the effect of, "Anyone willing to study and ponder my position on most current matters will decisively find that it is a master of psychological manipulation." Today, the same dictum applies, just as clearly as when it was first written more than 2,000 years ago. I could be wrong about any or all of this, but at the moment, the above fits what I know of history, people, and current conditions. If anyone sees anything wrong or has some new facts or theories on this, I'd love to hear about them. Dr. Tongue Is-on-Duty <christew2@hotmail.com> Is this what you call finding the words to describe outwardly what you inwardly visualize? Keep trying. the Sucksters I'm Spinning Out Subject: You spun me out Sucksters. G'day from Down Under (I say that because I live in Sydney and want to meet your stereotypical expectations of what Aussies are like, but no one in Australia would actually greet you like that). I am a 21-year-old Iranian who migrated to Australia with my parents at the age of seven during the bloody match of Iran vs. Iraq. I bumped into your site via a friend who thought it was very funny. I have to totally agree, but one very massive element of your site struck me as strange. We, living in Sydney, see Yanks as either loudmouthed, belief (Bible) bashing, patriots (because of Hollywood), or extremist, Christian terrorists (because of the news), but you guys don't seem to fit into either of these categories. Not only do you seem to criticize your motherland to no end and think freely from the pledge of allegiance that seems to brainwash most US kids, but you do it with sarcasm and great illustrations. I have to say I love your articles and I agree with a lot of what you have to say. The underlying fact is the United States is not the center of the world and that history did not start after 1492. Your site gives me (and I am sure most others not living in the United States) great insight into the other side of the coin — the fact that no matter what delusional propaganda the US government tries to push overseas of a united, God-fearing, patriotic, and rich United States, the truth is you're like the rest of us and do actually have people (and more importantly, writers) who do actually express what they think about the stupid hypocrisy around them. I thoroughly look forward to reading your site in the future. Thanks, Saman Jebeli-Javan <dr.yen@ tokyo-3.com> Yeah, isn't it weird how there are people in every country who don't fit the worst possible stereotypes you have of the citizens of that country? Really boggles the mind, huh? Now we really must run — time to eat bean dip and beat the shit out of our kids with the butt of our rifles, the Sucksters You're getting some remarkably good responses to your article. Partly this suggests you've hit a nerve; partly it suggests you wrote well enough to encourage others to write well. Either way, it's a compliment. Congratulations. However, I've been wondering if you can really establish a genre of "shamesploitation," or if it is simply a critique of a work you don't like. Compare, if you will, Your Friends and Neighbors with The Sweet Hereafter. The former leaves you feeling dirty; the latter, you leave the theater feeling as if you've just come out of a frozen lake. One is nasty bathos; the other offers the redemption of true tragedy. (It also gives Atom a free pass, as far as I'm concerned, for the rest of his life; like any film by Rohmer, I'll now go to anything his name is on.) Still, when you try to dissect them, are not the pieces pretty much the same — people behaving badly; some trying to do better, others not; pain; "we are born astride the grave." Yada yada. The difference is partly skill, partly caring. Consider the recent Dreamlife of Angels, which, incredibly, played briefly here and there and never had any marketing dollars behind it. It should be a shamesploitation movie; in many ways — looked at mechanically — that's just what it is. But the director's obvious caring for his characters gave its somewhat sour viewpoint a transcendent humanity. Or consider Mike Leigh's films: unpleasant people, unpleasant deeds (especially his earlier work and his stage work). But Mike cares about his people. It's not shamesploitation; it's drama. If the difference between tragedy and shamesploitation lies in a director's skill, you don't have a genre — you have a nice, nasty word to criticize bad drama. Now, if a director deliberately sets out to make a movie that says nothing more than life sucks and so do you, with no further motive or subtext, sure — that's a genre. But does any such film ever get made that deliberately? I don't think so, at least not by anyone who's taking his meds in the morning. And it's not financed by anyone who's taking his meds. See, you got me thinking. That was a fine piece you wrote. Alan Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> I didn't see Your Fs and Ns, but for some reason, I suspect it may be underrated. In any case, I should catch up with it, if only to watch Jason Patric try to prove what an acting genius he is. I'm not the biggest fan of Egoyan. Even though his films are unique and intelligent, they just don't do it for me for some reason. He's the Bergman of the '90s in some ways, with all the good and bad that that implies. I like parts of his films, but rarely the whole. His films don't jump, as I find, for instance, Eric Rohmer's do. (Since you brought him up.) Egoyan is incredibly novelistic, an increasing problem in serious movies today, even though most people think it's the other way around and serious novels are too cinematic. I think serious novels are too novelistic too. But what Fs and Ns and The Sweet Hereafter have in common, I suspect, is that they are not shamesploitation because both have a strong presence with an original view behind them. So also with Leigh. This is not true thus far of shamesploitation. You're right to say that "shamesploitation" may be a name for a bunch of films with similar thematic interests and settings that all happen to, well, suck, but film noir is not really a genre either. Since it's unlikely the category I've come up with will ever have the cachet of film noir, I'm not overly worried about having given the world a critical bastard. Slotcar Heathbar |
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