for 24 November 1997. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Ad It Up

And then of course, one that
may have gone unnoticed south
of the border. Canadians were
bombarded last year with the
Bank of Montreal's online
service ad campaign, which
used crowds of children
à la "I'd like to
Teach the World to Sing" all
happily mouthing, "The Times,
They Are A-changin'" along
with Bob Dylan.

But for all the expressed
outrage at the bank's
shameless use of a
counter-culture anthem - the
boomers craving an apology
while gleefully setting their
modems to receive 24-hour
mutual-fund updates - nobody
asked Dylan why he had done
it.

I think perhaps that people
are afraid of the answer....

Chris Corrigan

Fuckin' 'nucksters. Dylan
never would have met with the
pope if the Bank of Montreal
hadn't started him down the
slippery sell-out slope.

Ersatz

And I thought I was the only
one that got a kick out of
closed captioning. The best
places are the live shows,
especially news. When I watch
some live, unrehearsed event
on CNN, the only thing that
keeps me from switching is
watching the closed-
captioning guy struggle to
keep up, horribly mutilating
the words and then finally
giving up and inserting a
[unintelligible]. Makes you
feel sorry for the deaf
people out there. Maybe we
can start a support group.

By the way, I love your work
there at Suck. Feel free to
make fun of me in the Fish.
I'm sure you will anyway, but
I don't care.

Scott Martin
<scott@centex.net>

It's [unintelligible] people
like you, Scott, who
[unintelligible] our day and
make us want to
[unintelligible]
[unintelligible].

Ersatz

Filler

Dear Suck,

My routine viewing of COPS
after wolfing a roast-beef-
and-cheddar was recently
interrupted by a three-hour
Suddenly Susan special in
which Brooke Shields brings a
cigar and a Beanie Baby to
Bob Hope on his deathbed. I
could hardly blink. In my
transfixion, I failed to
notice that my chair, made
entirely from best-selling
Stephen King novels, had
become clammy with diet soda
spilled when I was switching
over from Seinfeld to Car
Talk earlier in the morning.
Normally, I like to listen to
comedy that's actually funny
while reading books written
by smart, interesting people,
but ever since my melted
cheese melted on my vinyl
copy of Spiderland, I haven't
been the same. Mostly I take
long naps between shifts at
Chick-Fil-A. Sometimes I
dream the Car Talk guys are
Beck and Matt Groening. When
I wake up I like to pretend
my pubic hairs are curly
fries.

Of course, when my son is
around, I have to deport
myself more respectably,
listening to Radiohead while
Sponge waits on the stoop for
the delivery from that good
Indian place next door.

Yours,

Ed Skoog

You can be in our club any
time, Ed.

The Suck School of Comic Art

Subject: Now I'm thinking of ...

Moving the 'puter into the
excremeditation chamber, so's
I'll be more comfortable
whilst reading and performing
plastic extrusion.

I mean, with stuff like Suck
for my perusal, I'm sure to
pass something else besides
laughter and hoots of
derision - especially for
those that are so deserving
(having shot themselves in
the mouth while changing
feet).

A fish, a barrel, a smoking
gun. Yeah, yeah! Now the
question is: How many people
write asking you to explain
it?

Keep it up, at any rate. Like
Bill Griffith's "Stupidity
Patrol," the task is one that
is Sisyphean.

Ryan Grimm
<GRRimm@aol.com>:

You misunderstand, Grimm, we
don't shoot ourselves in the
mouth while changing feet -
we shoot our mouths off while
inserting our feet!

Hit and Run

Hey,

I am sure William Safire has
already jumped on you for
this one, but "the loneliest
monk" does not actually
qualify as a spoonerism. A
spoonerism is an inversion of
usually initial sounds,
sometimes entire syllables,
as in these classics from the
late Rev. W. A. Spooner:

A well-boiled icicle, It is
kisstomary to cuss the bride,
and my favorite, picked up
from some book or another,

When Neil Armstrong said,
"One small leap for man, one
giant leap for mankind," he
did not make a spoonerism, he
spake a moonerism.

Sarah

William Safire has never
jumped on us in his life. We
shudder to think.

Suck: One small sigh for
mankind.