"a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun"
for 8 February 1996. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Almost as exciting as signing the
petition to get a cig machine
installed into the high school
cafeteria, we've made our page
black, to join the Voters
Telecomm Watch-sponsored protest
of the signing of the
Communications and Decency Act
into U.S. law. Did we say
protest? Well, OK, maybe we
don't need to leave the office,
but we promise to play some
tracks off of that "Protest
Rock" disc we picked up at the
local Tower Records outlet.
Admittedly, it probably took us
about as long to turn our page
white on black as it did the EFF
to Photoshop the AIDS ribbon
blue, but no one ever said
raising awareness would be easy.
Maybe if John Gilmore says "The
net interprets censorship as
damage, and routes around it,"
once more, it will all go away.

 




What does it take to leap from
the Yahoo Parody listings to
actual humor without falling
into the irony gap? We're not
exactly sure, but if it has
anything to do with repeated
references to anal sex, then the
Dilbert Hole is onto something.
Much like the Dysfunctional
Family Circus, the brilliance of
Cafe 22's not-so-subtly tweaked
Dilbert strips lies in its
fidelity to the source: though a
lot of people seem to love
Dilbert because it is "amazingly
accurate", we find the strips
contained in the Hole to be
equally resonant of life in the
cubicles. Sure, the level of
humor is along the lines of
adding "in bed" to the end of
Chinese cookie fortunes, but
we're always heartened to
reaffirm our belief that
détournement will never be passé.

 




Even in 1996, it's still far from
OK to pass gas loudly in a
crowded elevator. The act of
simultaneously admitting one's
error and salvaging one's suave
composure, while interesting as
a hypothetical, borders on the
impossible in practice. Luckily,
those willing to forego the
obvious anal-fixations in favor
of the more resonant
psychological terrorism aspects
of stunts like this may still
find outlets for their
aggression. Howard Stone, a
budding auteur of the aesthetics
of social passive-aggression,
sums up his workaround to this
dilemma neatly: "I discovered
that the van I had to drive
could very easily be persuaded
to produce very loud,
frightening backfires as and
when I wanted it to and as I've
always been keen on photography,
I tried an experiment." As
everybody knows, the motive for
shouting "fire" in a crowded
theater is as much the desire
for better seats as it is a
search for a simple answer to
the nagging question, "is anyone
alive in here?" The visual
evidence is in, the answer would
appear to be yes, and that nasty
lingering odor? Fire, fear, or
fumes - what's the difference? 

 




Clinical studies may or may not
show that a combination of
hypnotic carpet designs, Ladies
Home Journal chocolate cream
dream pie recipes, and Muzak
versions of "Owner of a Lonely
Heart" relax dental patients
enough to obviate the need for
nitrous oxide, but we oftentimes
find that the Muzak alone makes
the visit worthwhile. So you can
imagine our delight at the
discovery that not only is Muzak
launching a new Web division for
music retailers, radio stations,
and record labels, but it's also
well on its way to piping its
soothing tunes out of a PC near
you: "In the works are
SiteSound, a service that
provides audio to enhance
commercial Web sites." The drama
and glory that is Suck only
needs a soundtrack, and you can
bet we'll bypass both Pavement
and PJ for such rousing Muzak
classics as "Nobody Does It
Better" and "The Winner Takes It
All." 

 




We hope Nicholas doesn't hate us
for failing to resist the 24
Hours in Cyberspace launch
party, what with the free vodka
and all the chocolate-covered
biscotti we could stuff into our
pockets. The night was made
complete when Kevin Mitnick nicker
Tsutomu Shimomura strolled into
the warehouse festivities.
Though the New Yorker might have
ridiculed the mountain-biking,
cliff-climbing,
girlfriend-rustling
embellishments he gave to the
tale of "trapping" Mitnick,
Shimomura's literary pretensions
earn him the Suck badge of
approval - the world needs a
hacker hunk in much the same way
Peanuts needs a crazed
pedophile. True to form, he
graced the 24 Hours gig wearing
an "I just got off the slopes"
parka and skin-tight short-short
cycling togs, his manly-muscled
legs ending in high-tech open
sandals. Duke tried his hardest
to live up to his reputation as
professional pain-in-the-ass,
asking annoying questions on
Shimomura's feuding with Gilmore,
the ethics of packet sniffing,
and cypherpunk politics, but
Tsutomu maintained his
consummate laid-back nonchalance,
with just a hint of quizzical
pity for the young punk. Though
the humiliation would've stung,
we'd have liked to see Tsotumu
"take down" our blowhard brother
with a swift blow to the dome -
the wash of blood on the stack
of complimentary calendars
would've scored a fold-out in
the coffee-table book, easy. 




courtesy of the Sucksters