Faithful readers of Suck will no

doubt recall our 2 October piece

on the NoShit Proxy Server, a

useful if somewhat contrived

filtering technology to purge

the bane of advertising from

your Web surfing experience.

If that scheme seemed

unpractical, how much more so

the challenge of screening out

commercial aggression from

traditional media? To a certain

extent, you're already doomed:

the medium is the (commercial)

message. But that doesn't mean

you have to sit back and take

it...

At Suck, we're magazine junkies.

Most of the rags we get excited

about don't really boast huge ad

sales departments, but every now

and again we find ourselves

grooving to the talk of a thick

glossy, replete with fragrant

fold-outs, back-cover booze

subsidies and Philip Morris out

the culo. It's easy to breeze

through the noise when you're

lounging at the dentist's office

with a battered New Yorker or

just hunkering down for a little

orgy-of-one with a copy of

Naked in a Greyhound Station

restroom stall, but the real

question is: how does an

impatient Suckster cut through

the clutter of his/her favorite

mags, the ones he/she

subscribes to?

Take Wired, the Microsoft of

digital culture boosterism.

We'll refrain from either

lauding embarrassingly

overwrought praise or joining

the emerging cottage industry of

Wired-bashing - both sides of

the same coin, after all - and

concentrate on implementing an

efficient solution to the

problem at hand: gross

over-saturation of advertising.

We studied issue 3.09 (the one

with Arnold Schwarzenegger on

its cover) and were not

surprised to discover that of

its 206 pages, 90 were full page

ads. (If you include 1/2's,

1/4's, and pull-outs the ratio

jumps to a clean 50/50 split.)

The result of this Cosmo-esque

ad bonanza is a huge number of

pages with double-sided selling

action.

One of Wired's least-celebrated

features, however, is its

structural integrity. You may

not have realized it, but the

magazine is built with an

exceptionally sturdy spine.

Follow closely as we exploit

this quality to our advantage.

The process is simple: start with

the magazine layed out flat and,

using your thumb and forefinger,

grab the offending ad pages as

close to the spine as possible.

Make a small tear, moving your

hand to the edge of the page(s),

tearing slowly up towards

yourself. If done correctly, the

elimination will be immaculate!

Repeat at all occurrences of

offending material. Negroponte is

optional.

Here's a trick for dealing with

those maddening two-page spreads

that plague each issue:

Secure a single can of

spray-mount. (Well worth the $4

investment - one can is

ammunition enough for a full

year.) Lay the magazine over

newspaper, and apply a light

dusting (remember: a little

spray-mount goes a long way).

Cleanly brush the pages together

for a super-clean bond.

Now behold the fruit of your

righteous labor! A much thinner,

but far more readable package.

Kudos to Wired for producing

such an easily de-mutilated

product!

Extra bonus: don't be too quick

to toss those extracted ad

pages! Many of them have

badly-formed URLs hidden

somewhere in the copy. We

suggest visiting these sites, as

the crass digital hype offered

can make the paper equivalents

seem quite palatable. Who knows?

After visiting enough of them,

you may realize just how easy it

would be to open your own online

outpost, dedicated entirely to

cheap (but well-deserved) shots

at the digital vomit of

desperate ad execs. But, if we

were you, we wouldn't become too

self-important in your little

endeavor - because, after all,

whether they're "sponsoring"

your pages or are the reason for

them, you're still linking to

the damn ads.