for 14 April 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Telling Baby No I love it. I am one of those Baby Boomers. I survive by employing the "Me Inc." strategy when it comes to the work world. I have one core part-time job with great benefits. I switch hats and work other part-time jobs. If my second part-time job does not work out (usually it's one of those "flexible hours and great place to work jobs") I'm out of there. As long as I can get out of bed I will always have some sort of part-time job. I live modestly. I am a single Dad with a teenage daughter. I am home at different times of the day. I used to work from dark to dark. Who needs that. I dumped my Costco membership. Just more stuff. I love it! Don't mess with me. SWWM. You won't have a problem with me pally, just so long as you register all your gun purchases. I have to say though, you probably have come across a good way to deal with corporate job situations. I think the angriest people are the ones who sign on to companies and pin all their hopes and dreams on them, only to get frustrated when the machine doesn't pay off. With your way, you've got more control day to day than most people. Glad you liked the comic, Bert  Admit it. You're jealous about sex and the drugs, right? <scarrif@deltanet.com> No, Larry, it's the herpes and short term memory loss that's got me jonesing. No, there's lots of sex and drugs out there - don't you old timers read MAXIM? Disco Rules, Bert This is awesome. It reminds of my father in law's company. I work for MCIWorldCom Network and Data Solutions. I would be interested in how your company is structured. Ken Minton <kenneth.minton@wcom.com> SUCK is structured on the policy of Might Makes Right and If You Don't Like It, Jack, There's Always Salon. It's pretty tough around here. SUCK's idea of a health plan is If You're Not Healthy, Plan to Look For a Job. You know what I'm saying? It's a long work week, too. As I was told, "Bert, if you don't want to work on Saturday, don't plan on coming in on Sunday." If you really want to know about SUCK, write Tim Cavanaugh (tim@suck.com), cause my whole work experience here is structured all around him. Bert Man, you made my day. Used to work at this strange job, editing the transcripts for National Public Radio on the far outskirts of the DC metro area. My average transcriber's age was 45. At one point, I had four lawyers working for me. Seething mass, dude, seething mass. Tee, hee, hee. <D.leach@elsevier.com> Wow, Talk about your front line veterans! As John McCain would say, "Thank you for serving, sir." Glad you liked the strip. I've had some angry boomers writing in and some letters like yours. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, I guess. The Ageist of Aquarius, Bert Subject: yeah, well, ur site name pretty much sez it all u suck... i see, so baby boomers are stupid old hippies and disgruntled workers..and teenagers are gun toting psychopaths..... but not the gen-x'rs .... hell no.. u guys are level headed, completely sensible, well adjusted young adults... bite me... i dont hav anything to learn from the generation that made bands like 'poison' and 'motely crue' and 'ratt' and 'cinderella' rich... not from people that would get all teary over 'power ballads'... such crap... ur a cookie cutter generation... no substance.. all hype... even ur drugs are lame copies of the real stuff.... suck.com is right... u suck... Trip <TripTampa@aol.com> Cinderella? Ratt? Crue? Nobody was more disgusted than me to see those baby boomer metal acts conning decent kids out of their cash. Well "Trip," sorry you weren't into "Telling Baby 'No'". I tried to say nice things about Carly Simon and Bill Clinton, but you can't please everybody. I'm just doing it for the kids, Bert Blecht Hit & Run Is there any possibility that someone could notify when the current mcsweeney's publicity stunt has ended? It's true that I will endure almost endless tedium when it comes to Internet magazines (I am a devout reader of suck.com after all), but the current state of mcsweeney's exceeds even my endurance. It seems to me that if a publicity stunt is only marginally funny and/or interesting to begin with, dragging it out for an extended period of time will do little to improve it's level of humour or interest. Mcsweeneys's was never terribly consistent to begin with, but at least that was because of the variety of writing. Inconsistency is vastly superior to something with the consistency of cold oatmeal. Cheers, Matthew Dorrell <matthew@silverorange.com> Don't knock cold outmeal, Matthew. There are over six billion people in the world today, and oatmeal will keep more of them from starvation than good writing has ever managed to do. As for the publicity stunt, I think you should steel yourself to the notion that it will never end. But look on the bright side - since McSweeney's itself has always been something of a publicity stunt, its year-plus existence has already built up your publicity-stunt endurance. Though not as effectively as Suck, which is rapidly approaching its fifth year of shoveling out inconsistently tedious oatmeal. Sucksters Evidence for the claim that the McSweeney.com bail-out is a hoax: the McSweeney children swim on the "Melrose Sharks" team. This same swim team name was used in one of the fake reviews posted for Egger's book. One of the dry wits was too attached to this darling name and reused it. Now, I suppose if someone were industrious enough to do actual research, more compelling evidence could be found. But I'm not that someone. Tim Mitchell Crack Rabbit Cove British Columbia, Canada <tim.pitas.com> Or one of Eggers' minions saw the swim team at McSweeneys.com and worked the name into the fake book review. Or those bad boys at McSweeney's went to the trouble to set up a dummy real estate firm in Woburn Massachussetts, which is listed in the Woburn phone book, mentions "Gerry McSweeney" as an employee on its web site, and refers calls for "Gerry McSweeney" to a guy who identifies himself as "Gerry McSweeney." Or they really did the deal but no money changed hands. Or they didn't but it did. At some point, if they're willing to go to that much trouble on such an uninteresting prank, you've got to concede the point and say "Knock yourselves out, fellas!" Sucksters Hasn't anyone noticed that www.mcsweeneys.com hasn't changed? Shrug, Chris Piuma Editor, flim.com <piuma@flim.com> Oh sure, go on with your crackpot Kremlinology! You know, it's cynics like you who make it hard for good folks to come together in honest and uncomplicated amity. Sucksters Subject: Re: pranks by the "alternative news media" I think what's even more interesting is when in the middle of the year, a New Times paper writes a hoax article about a judge who sends a kid to jail for writing a book report about Where The Wild Things Are. Now, it might be easily dismissed as satire, except for a few kickers. The thing with Chris Beamon (kid writes story about getting high and killing teacher, etc) happened around here, and the judge who did it was named Darlene Whitten. The judge named in the article is a... Darlene Whitten. And there are quotes. Try searching for her name at http://www.dallasobserver.com - she's now suing the paper. Andrew Hime <hime1@gte.net> You should read Warren Hinckle's book and you'll find, once again, that they did it better in the sixties. Ramparts, which had already distinguished itself as the nation's leading voice in JFK assassination theory, then decided to self-deprecate by running a parody review of a fake four-volume book of extreme Oswald-Ruby-Johnson conspiracy theories by" Ulov LeBeouf." The magazine's JFK assassination buffs recognized the parody immediately and were incensed, but the LeBeouf book ended up being cited in the bibliographies of several later JFK books. yr pal, BarTel The Suck Crassroots Movement Well, I tried. I sent the following to the Talk of the Nation installment today that featured The Onion. Often they'll read an e-mail on the air, especially something contrarian, but not a one today: "Subject: Better than the Onion, funnier than all of them. The Onion is cute and chuckle-friendly, but it lacks the gravitas, the moral center, that makes real satire, and soul-stirring belly-laughs, possible. For the real thing, and the best writing on the Web, go to the best magazine on the Web, www.suck.com. Please ask your guests about Suck. Randy Ratliff Kansas City,MO" I won't ask for the smart Suck ball-cap or t-shirt that I crave. I just wanted you to know your demographic is on the march. Randy Ratliff <rratliff@acgtech.com> Thanks, Randy. All efforts touch our hearts. I can't emphasize this enough - TELEPHONE! Telephone, Telephone, Telephone! Use the telephone. This is 2000: everybody knows about email; they're used to ignoring it, and in every subject line they see a subtext note reading "I secretly want you to disregard this message." Why do you think everybody is willing to give out an email address and nobody is willing to give out a phone number? Because they know one doesn't work and the other does. The phone was, is and will continue to be the only proven method for pestering people and getting their attention. This is straight-up advice I'm giving you here, and it applies as much to your work with Applied Communications Group as to any future guerrilla warfare on Suck's behalf. Whatever it is you're trying to accomplish, use the phone! And maybe we should cheese it on the "Suck is better than So-and So" business. Who's got time for the pissing competitions? Try just going with a nice, round, oracular phrase like: "You and I are just passing through history. Suck is history!" yr pal, tim |
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