for 29 September 1997. Updated every WEEKDAY.

More Royal Icing

I realize that various others
have commented thoroughly
(and better than I will, more
than likely) on Royal Icing
already, but I thought I
might let you know that it's
helped me reach a decision
about what drives the media
engine that drove Diana's car
into a wall: Money.

I'm spending mine on Suck
stuff, because I think that
work of the quality of Royal
Icing - infrequent though it
may sometimes be - deserves
reward. The implicit message
of Suck seems to be, "Applaud
if you like, but please throw
money." OK....

It's always pleasing for me
to see Suck really take an
insightful stand on an issue;
cynicism and irony are the
crack and heroin of modern
dumbass rhetoric, and come
cheap. Real hardball thought
is, as always, a hot
commodity. Which I'm now
"buying," I guess.

Funny, some of the other
liberal types I meet at
college forget that, in
opposition to supply-side
economics, there's also
demand-side, too.

Brian P

Enough talk. Send us the
cash.

Pleased to Meat You

Enjoyed your essay. A
correction, however.
Christians do have a
little-known food
restriction. An early Pope,
about 5th or 6th century-ish,
forbade the faithful from
eating horse meat. Horses were
in short supply, I guess.
This restriction was never
rescinded as far as I know,
so it's still binding.

An excellent treatment of
food attitudes and customs,
from an anthropological
perspective, is Good to Eat
by Marvin Harris.

Bite down hard,
<Paul_Thran@candle.com>

Uh oh. Looks like we'll have
to take our dog to confession
again, the little heathen.

Filler

So, I just finshed spewing my
guts onto the screen in a
vain attempt at trying to
write The Great American
Novel, and I think that I'll
relax and poke around on the
Net before going to sleep.

Naturally, I go to Suck, and
I am immediately deflated.

Thank You.

For I was beginning to feel
that what I was writing might
actually have a prayer of
being decent, but now I know
better and I should just go
back to not having any hope
at all. Now where did I put
that Cure CD? And to think
that I gave all my black
clothes back to Goodwill.
Damn.

Thanks for sucking.
jbdeal
<jbdeal@aros.net>

Suck: Keeping Bad Writers
Appropriately Insecure and
Pessimistic for over Two
Years

Hit and Run

Dear Sucksters:

Great; two of my pet peeves
(down, peeve, down) in one
column. Oh frabjous day.

The best critique of Slate
isn't that it's West Coast
(as you note, why should that
matter), badly written (it
isn't, really, although it
could use some sharpening),
unfocused (hey, it's young),
or not read by enough people
(compare its readership to -
say - The Nation); the real
criticism is that it isn't an
online magazine at all. Not
only is there no observable
interaction between the
writership and the
readership, there's not even
a mechanism for one; for that
matter, does Stein (to choose
an especially egregious
example) even HAVE email?
Rather, it's an old-fashioned
print magazine, modeled on
The Atlantic as a guess, that
saves on production costs by
being online. This may
actually be an OK thing -
lots of relationships have
been ruined by too much
honest communication - but
it's pretty odd coming from
Microsoft....

Alan Kornheiser
<ASKornheiser@prodigy.net>

Right. Unlike Suck, which is
really quite interactive.
Yes. Why, if there were any
more observable interaction
between the writership and
the readership, somebody
would have to call the police
and arrest us for public
performance of lude and
lascivious acts. That's
right, there's so much
interactivity it's a
veritable orgy!

Naturally, our editorial
policies are formed solely by
reader opinions. At Suck, we
take our reader's comments
and criticisms to heart. If
we agree with them.

OK. Now go away,
calloo callay.