The Fish

for 29 February 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Joey Anuff
Editor in Chief

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

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Art Director

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Senior Editor

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Copy Editor

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Production Editor

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Co-Founder

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Executive Editor

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Suckgineer

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Copy Editor

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Production Manager
& Ass Kicker

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Production Manager

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Ghost in the Machine

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Development Manager

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Production Editor
& Pool Monitor

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Production Manager
& Rhythm Guitar

Ian Connelly
Marketing Manager

Filler: Men to Avoid

Hmmm...let's see: Roughly 30%
of the Filler columns I've
read over the last two years
have had some content
suggesting extreme romantic
(and, obviously, sexual)
dissatisfaction. And, of
course, every February I am
"treated" to the unspeakable,
cacophonous howl of
unrequited longing that is
the "Men/Women to Avoid"
columns. My prognosis?

Suicide.

Robert Anderson
<andersonr@hotmail.com>

Oh dear, I'm made quite
uncomfortable by the painful
accuracy of your statements.
All these long years of
romantic and sexual
dissatisfaction, all so
obvious to the casual
observer! Perhaps you've also
noticed the very
dissatisfying, unhealthy
relationship I have with that
little squirrel friend of
mine, and maybe you also know
all about my sordid history
working for the "offices" of
Duck Wong and associates. Oh
god, then you've probably
also picked up on the fact
that I've resented my fish
friend ever since he made a
million from that Bubble Goo
IPO of his.

I feel so exposed! I should
just end it all!

Two years, and such anger in
you! My prognosis? Stop
reading Filler.

Polly

Hit & Run

this is a prime target for
you guys to yack about:

http://www.buddyhead.co
m/other/hessian/love/page/

question- what does a
regional germanic people
known for their work as
mercenaries for the British
in the Revolutionary War have
ANYTHING to do with heavy
metal rednecks?

just wondering.

<rob.e.g@planetarymotion.net>

Work on that short-term
memory, Rob. You got to that
page by following the link
from today's Suck, remember?

Anyway, if you are unaware of
the strong connections
between heavy metal and
Teutonism, you've missed some
crucial chapters in the
history of American low
culture. I spent years
waiting for some band of
headbangers to complete the
illusion by dressing in
powdered wigs and pantaloons
like Frederick the Great, but
for that we had to depend on
Falco.

yr pal,

tim

I deeply enjoyed your
interview with Christopher
Petro. Being just a great big
teenager, I love to see more
pranks and anarchy in the
world, especially on such a
grand scale as a presidential
"chat." It illustrates just
how silly the traditional
media has gotten with their
having-to- tie-everything-
they-do- into-the-
internet-to- feel-cooler.

However, I was horribly
dismayed that near the end of
this interview, the
opportunity was given to
display opinions and shovel
shit about the candidates in
the current presidential
election, which is hopefully
still months away. This is, I
realize, a common practice
these days, what with it
being an election year. But
please stop. There was not
enough irony in that exchange
for me to suppress my nausea.

Everybody in the presidential
race this year is
borderline-retarded. You know
it too. The leading
candidates might as well be
Britney Spears and Pikachu.
When you actually ask someone
his or her honest opinion of
the presidential race, it
reduces the coolness level of
the interview to that of
Entertainment Weekly, a
publication reflecting the
mentality of humankind in the
weeks before we came out with
fire. You know and I know
that news on the presidential
race is little more than
celebrity gossip. Please let
more nihilistic cynicism show
when you talk about that
crap — that's what we love
from Suck.

Love and vitriol,

The Pie Guy

You said it, Pie Guy! When
are the inside-the-beltway
politicians going to wake up
and realize that the American
people don't want business as
usual! We want real change!!
I've had it up to here with
all these special interests
and these professional
politicians who kowtow to
their lobbyists!!! And don't
even get me started on the
so-called "Media Elite!" They
just don't get it!! Let's
send a message to the whole
professional Washington crowd
that we don't want to hear
their baloney anymore!!! It's
time for these turkeys to
stop wasting our time with
negative campaigning and
start focusing on the issues
that matter most to
Americans!!!! Hopefully there
will be an election or
something in the next couple
months so we can let them
know that we want real reform
and real results!!!!!

yr pal,

tim

Re: PIX!

You mean like the OLD days,
when kids called up and did
some voice-controlled video
game stuff?

Damn, I haven't thought of
that in years....

Aidan

No, Aidan, it was some other
Channel 11 show that
encouraged kids to yell "PIX!
PIX! PIX!" over the phone as
fast and loud as they
possibly could.

But do you remember another
signal event in the WPIX day
- the opinion minute, in
which some ageless anchorman
washout would stand in front
of the building and make
these impossibly bland
editorials: "President Ford's
refusal of the City's bailout
request means New York will
have to look elsewhere for
fiscal solutions... Mayor
Koch's neighborhood policing
initiative will mean changes
in law enforcement throughout
the city.... City Opera's
plan to offer affordable
tickets creates both
challenges and
opportunities..." Then the
big finish: "What's your
opinion? We'd like to know."
In all the years I watched
him he never seemed to
change. I suspect he had
formaldehyde in his veins. I
seem to remember him getting
crazier toward the end, so
that eventually he was saying
stuff like, "Even the most
open-minded New Yorkers now
agree that Haitians are a
blight on our community.
What's your opinion? We'd
like to know..." But that may
be my imagination.

Or maybe he was on Channel 5.

yr pal,

tim

I was just wondering, and I
know you guys didn't write
it, but since when is Tabitha
Soren an über-prom queen?!
That guy must be an even
bigger dork than Michael
Lewis. Maybe I just don't get
the MTV. I'm also really
tired of people giving a fuck
who someone else is married
to, dork or wonderbabe.
Anyway, you probably don't
care, but I'm at work and I'm
bored and I've read today's
feature and I even went to
the archives to see if there
was anything I hadn't read
and now I'm going to go do
some actual work. Or maybe
I'll just go surf for
Tabitha-related websites.

Jessica Ardis
<j.ardis@mail.utexas.edu>

We have only the highest
regard for Ms. Soren's work
and take no responsibility
for opinions rendered by our
readers.

But did you really look
through the whole archive to
make sure you didn't miss
anything? Did you read the
October 9, 1995 issue of
Suck, for example? If not,
what are you waiting for?

yr pal,

tim

Re: Mark's reply to recent
Hit & Run item on Michael
Lewis and his marriage to
Tabitha Soren:

"uber-prom queen?"

"A-list?"

Are there, like, two Tabitha
Sorens?

I didn't even know high
schools had an uber-prom. I
guess I wasn't invited.

Untermenschly,

Uncle Clam

Did you have a goober prom?
Did you call people goobers
when you were in school. We
did. "Fuckin' goober!" That's
what passed for an insult in
those innocent days.

yr pal,

tim

So Where Are The Little
Girl's Underpants?

Cher barTel,

Your piece on the nouvelle
banalité of American writing
from Paris is a masterfully
depthless reflection. Why it
is almost as flat as Michael
and Tabitha's snapshots from
the train ride to Italy, or
that bit on Salon by that
half-German woman about how
Europeans really know how to
flirt. The only thing that
mars the surface is your
positioning of the Suck crew
on a continuum "somewhere
between key grip and adult
film star". I don't know what
happens in Hollywood, where
there are unions and things,
but in sunny Cape Town (where
straight-to-video specials
like "From Dusk 'til Dawn II
- Texas Blood Money" and
numberless international
commercials are filmed) grips
are hugely muscled and sweaty
men who work very hard
indeed. They all own big
trucks full of heavy gear and
have a reputation for beating
people up on slight
provocation. I know "key
grip" is one of those
meaningless titles you see
when you are with one of
Polly's undesirable men and
he makes you sit through the
credits, but I really doubt
whether you want to associate
yourselves with this
particular craft or its
practioners. It ranks really
low in both instant
gratification and minimal
effort.

yours, humping bits of the
crane over a sand dune,

Nicholas Dawes

Thanks, Nicholas. That's why
it's a continuum, with the
key grip side offering much
toil and little immediate
gratification, and the adult
film star side offering much
immediate gratification in
exchange for minimal effort.
The job of a suckster is
neither as painful as the one
nor as rewarding as the
other. Although "Key Grip" is
a good shorthand for
movieland drudgery, I'm sure
"Assistant to Ms. Judd" is
infinitely more painful.

yr pal,

tim

Yeah, but Adam Gopnik's
recent How to Have a Baby in
France* was just so durn
cute, touching even; so what
if followed your
Paris-correspondent formula
to a tee? (U-turns; sigh.)
Also, I don't believe for one
second that you saw him
buying a t-shirt, since no
one has any idea what he
looks like.

* Or whatever.

Steven M. O'Neill
<steveo@panix.com>

Oh, who cares what he looks
like when his writing makes
me feel so warm and velvety
inside!

yr pal,

tim

There's No X in Team

Hey Boob:
Good, if sad, timing on Tom
Landry. A real class act,
even if he was on the other
side of the field
(I'm a lifelong Redskin fan).
You don't see that calm,
serious, thorough -
honorable! - approach to
football much these days. Joe
Torre of the Yankees is the
closest parallel that I can
think of in the major sports.

You're right on the mark on
why XFL and its ilk will fail
to make a dent in the
popularity of the major
sports (except, possibly,
basketball, which is already
watched only for the
highlights by many). Fans get
to know the people who play
and coach the sport, and get
very personally engaged in
it. The spectacle is
secondary to the competition,
and the very human stories
behind it; in a good sports
town, the teams become like
family.

Somehow I can't see
this happening with "Football
Smackdown," or whatever they
want to call it. I certainly
hope not.

Andrew Sullivan
SF, CA
<ajsullivan@att.com>

Too true! But as the
popularity of wrestling
seminars spreads, maybe
you'll see a Pop Warner
league for the XFL develop
too. As Whitney Houston once
sang, "I believe the children
are the future." The sooner
we can get moving turning
them into crazed,
steroid-enhanced cyborgs the
better off we will all be.
The crowds howl for action,
and the geometric and
dispassionate analysis that
was the specialty of coaches
like Landry is going the way
of the jump pass and leather
helmets. There's something
about such cold intellection
that is as difficult to love
as it is to hate. Maybe it's
all for the best.

yours,

Jonathan E.

IP, Freely

While
the general message of your
column is true, there are
several factual inaccuracies
that you should know about.

First of all, and I don't
understand why more people
don't know this, the Internet
was not created with military
intentions at all. True, it
was funded by the Pentagon,
but through ARPA (Advanced
Research Projects Agency). It
was intended to connect
universities to each other as
a research aid, and to share
valuable computer time.

Second, IP wasn't created in
1969 as you say, but about a
decade later when the ARPAnet
was connected to other
networks. The Inter-net
Protocol, as the name
suggests, was written to
connect networks using
different protocols. For a
good history of the early
internet, try the book Where
Wizards Stay Up Late, by
Katie Hafner and her husband
who's name I can't remember.

Also IPv6 isn't quite as rare
as you say. Most operating
systems and routers being
produced today have at least
some support for it, and many
large university networks,
including the Internet2, are
running on IPv6.

The Internet
definitely needs to be
upgraded to ensure it's
stability and future growth,
but your ideas would carry
more weight if you got your
facts straight.

Roy Berman
<royb@eden.rutgers.edu>

Ah, but then why bother with
packet switching? The
advantages of data capable of
finding its own way to a
destination fits snuggly with
routes suddenly disappearing.
Which was certainly a concern
a few decades ago, what with
that whole nuclear armageddon
thing hanging over our heads.

DARPA may very well have had
simply connectivity issues in
mind with the ARPAnet
funding, but to think that
they weren't interested in
its military capabilities is
naive, I think.

Greg Knauss

Your statement of the IP
problem was well framed. The
article provided a number of
links with equally meaty
supporting information. Good
job on research, and an
equally good job on writing
up your conclusions in a
clear and eloquent fashion.

PS. Probably no point in
publishing my letter in Fresh
Fish, since I can't imagine
there's anything to make fun
of other than this
postscript.

Cheers,

Rob Fagen
<fagen@bigfoot.com>

Actually, Robert, your
impression that a Suck
article is well framed,
supported, researched and
eloquent pretty much puts you
in the mockery cross-hairs.
The postscript helps, too.

Greg Knauss

Subject: IPV6 traceable?

I've never seen
any documentation about the
tracability feature of IPV6
that you mention on suck.com
Could you tell me the name of
the feature so I could look
it up? I've tried some
searches, and found nothing.

David Maxwell
<david@fundy.ca>

IPv6 doesn't
explicitly provide a
trace-back feature, but it
does include crypto to
prevent the header from being
munged. With guaranteed
header integrity, it's
impossible to spoof the
source of the packet. And out
of that falls tracability.

Greg Knauss

Greg-

As I've been reading all the
uninformed crap that is
accepted as knowledge about
the latest DoS attacks, you
appear to be the only one
who's really identified the
culprit...IP. It's development
decades ago never considered
security as a key issue; ease
of heterogenous connectivity
was its raison d'etre.

I'm just surprised
that it's taken this long. My
bet on the ultimate suspect
would be someone a little
more advanced than a script
kiddie but nowhere near a
Mudge or Mixter in skills.
Hopefully (regrettably?),
he/she has hired a great
entertainment (not defense)
lawyer on retainer, brushed
up on his/her media skills
(I can see them practicing in
front of the mirror now) and
have already planned the book
signing tour.

Meanwhile, dot com valuations
keep climbing as the technology
impaired keep rushing in. Any
advice on when you think we
should start shorting the
NASDAQ tech stocks? Keep
up the great...uh...sucking.

Regards,

Kevin J Cunningham
<kjcunnin@comdisco.com>

You'd be surprised how much
the quality of our sucking
comes up. And given the
resiliency of Amazon's stock
in the wake of the attacks,
geez, there doesn't appear to
be any point when you should
short them. If Wall Street
can dismiss the ability of
any kid with an attitude to
shut down a site, they'll
ignore pretty much anything.

Greg Knauss

Hi. From your
recent article at suck.com
you seem to condone the
hackers and applaud them for
pointing out the weakness in
IP. Although IP does have
weaknesses, exploiting them
because "you can" and "they
are there" is a terrible
waste of time. Let me give
you a concrete example.
During the summer, I
sometimes leave my window up
during the evening, and feel
pretty secure about it as I
live on the fourth floor.
Now, there is always the
chance that someone could
climb four stories, crawl
through the window, get
inside, kill everyone in the
house and take all my things.
The hackers would have
everyone take out there
windows, fill them with
concrete, and install big
metal doors with fingerprint
and retina scan access. But
still, I'm not safe because
someone could blow out the
foundation of my building
with dynamite, and then I'd
be in a sorry spot. So I
better design a hover craft
like house with radar
controlled anti-missile
systems (in case someone
wants to shoot me). So where
does it all end? I don't want
to live in a world that
paranoid, as I'm sure you
don't. As___ said in the
cuckoos egg, networks are
more than packets being
switched between routers.
They are gateways of trust
that transcend physical
boundaries. When this trust
is repeatedly broken by so
called "hackers", the freedom
and beauty of the network
starts to fall apart.

What did the hackers really
accomplish? Did they throw a
wrench in the evil capitalist
system, and bring down the
abusers of the proletariat?
For a couple of hours, sure.
Although in the span of time
that these companies have
been running, this is hardly
earth-shattering. If the best
"hackers" on the planet, with
all their minions and tools
of evil at their disposal can
only take out a site for two
hours a year or every two
years, then we have nothing
to worry about. I'm sure
those servers are down more
to Microsoft bugs and
hardware glitches than
because of "hackers".

What they really accomplished
was a panic that immediately
swept up the ranks of
government, and is set to
hurt the very "oppressed"
masses that they sought to
liberate. The worst enemy of
the internet is legislation,
and hackers give legislators
the excuse they need to
legislate and take away our
freedoms. If there were no
hacks ever, the legislatures
wouldn't have a leg to stand
on. So when all the fanfare
is over, and the Warez
channels are through with
applauding the "smart"
hackers for finding these
"blaring security holes" like
bragging kids who stole their
parents car keys, I would
just like to wish a very
merry fuck you to all the
hackers who gave the FBI the
push it needed to tap
everyone's phone, internet
connection, and email.

Nathan Good
<good0214@tc.umn.edu>

I didn't - and don't -
"condone" the attacks. I
simply said that the people
who have benifited from the
Net, and therefore have the
most to lose, might want to
protect their investment.
Which they can't do with the
current version of IP.

Greg Knauss

The Shit

Fully Committed, Becky Mode, the Cherry Lane Theater, New York, New York

Paris in the Twentieth Century, Jules Verne, Del Rey, 1997

Chow Yun Fat's haircut in Anna and the King

A Comment on Mini-skirts, Thornton Dial

"Leonardo's Grave," Ian Jacks, Granta #67

The Long Swift Sword of Siegfried, directed by Adrian Hoven, 1971

The annual reappearance of cheap clementines in bodegas

The New Meaning of Treason, Rebecca West, Penguin Books, 1985

Five-Card Nancy (a card game played with individual panels of Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip)

The Birthday Party Live 1981-82, Four A.D., 1999

Black Sessions 10/22/98, Belle & Sebastian , (unreleased)

San Lorenzo's Blues, Nuzzle, Troubleman Unlimited, 1999

The Story of Time, exhibition in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England

Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery, John Michael Vlach, University of North Carolina Press, 1993

for 29 February 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.