for 12 October 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Canadian Mail: The Fun Never Ends I read Suck relatively frequently and, quite honestly, enjoy it (the shame!). Paradoxically, I also happen to be a proud Canadian. The thing is this: Canadians in general have no problem with Americans making fun of them. The Simpsons do it all the time, and I'm laughing as loud as the next guy. South Park does it with the trash- can kid and the Baldwin bombers, and again it's quite funny ... well, as funny as that genre of humor can be. Getting picked on by Americans is sort of like the members of NATO being called Nazis in Yugoslavia: It's so ridiculously inane and the product of a very warped mind that it's funny. There's no way we can take the insult seriously. I remember walking down the street as a lad and having someone yell "Honkey!" out a car window at my paper-white facade. Oooh! I was DEVASTATED! Not that anyone should be emotionally upset over any racial slurs, as it's obvious that the vomit-mouth spewing is just a rather sad specimen of Darwin's laws being defied by modern medicine. But being called a honkey in a overwhelmingly white town struck me as interesting. The problem is when the "some Canadian guy gave my wife some lovin' and now my little made-in-the- USA-schlong can't please her" sort of fellow comes on, wallowing in his own crapulence (credit: M. Burns), and goes on some self-righteous tirade about those damn, pathetic Canadians. It's such a bitter act of a vulnerable person that it truly is saddening, and I'm sure these people are right there in the Springer audience ready to do the seal clap at the proper minute. Give 'em $50, and they'll go running onstage, arms a- flailing. This same observation also applies to some of the Suck alumni who have one single subject for many of their stories: Slamming Canadians. Who cares about what or why or if it is just so drawn out and forced it isn't even remotely funny. Just slam 'em and hope the hit meter spins, while they come to get a kick at yet another American defining the human experience from their never-traveled-outside- of-their-bumpkin Infamilyfornicate, Kentucky. Most of us just hit back and move on. The scene is worse than a Sally Struthers telethon (she is asking for money to feed herself, right?) or looking at a dead animal on the side of the road: Our eyes turn elsewhere. So in conclusion, the whole anti-Canadian thing is old. I work with Americans, I am friends with Americans, and none of them display the sort of gross ignorance that is doled out on Suck regularly, so I can at least feel comfortable that it's just the sad fringe element that takes humor in bashing those friends North of the border. (For those doing the math: Yes, I have 230 million American friends.) Dennis W. Forbes <dwforbes@ home.com> Well, Suck doesn't actually bash Canadians; we just provide a forum for others to debate this fascinating topic at length. That's right, Dennis. Without you, there is no road kill. Thank you for fueling the flames of a long tradition! the Sucksters  Ever noticed how every time you guys take a shot at the syrup chuggers up above you get moronic responses claiming that all of us Americans only know stereotypes about Canucks and that they don't all live in igloos, don't all guzzle beer by the keg, and don't all play hockey, etc., etc. And that if we would just quit watching Springer, quit eating at Mickey D's, and stop driving our pickups with the gun racks maybe we would be more knowledgeable and enlightened about the other cultures of the world. Come to think of it, I'm not sure they would even qualify. Here's to mocking your ugly twin. Bradley Messmer <messmeb@rockvax.rockefeller.edu> Don't go thinking Canadians are uglier than Americans. Celine Dion's just one person in a country of well over 1,500 people. the Sucksters I gotta say: People tell me all the time I am really smart. It was getting so bad that I was starting to believe them. This, of course, was causing my already large ego to inflate dangerously. Thankfully, I have been reading Suck faithfully for several years now, and you folks always manage to make me feel like an ignorant, undereducated knob. I've even written a few carefully worded letters, and I usually receive a reply that puts me in my place. You have probably saved me (from what I'm not quite sure). Anyways, thanks for the verbal spankings and the often rancid cynicism! Keep it up! A friend, Jim Van Meggelen <jim@ttw.net> We could've told you that you're not smart years ago. Takes one to know one. Ignorant knobs, the Sucksters Get Yer Ya-Yas Out enjoyd suck essay on bennett, but as a ragin' pagan, do have some little problems w/applying certain elements of our hallowed nomenklatur, such as "coven" to worthless right wing extremists/immoral fungoids like bennett and his ilk. and no, didn't miss the irony. still n' all, thought u might want to remember, a small addition to yr general knowledge base an old law of the euro-ancients: a bard of the higher order, a Truth Sayer [a judge and prophet, whose word was law, who saw far, and of whom Caesar himself was in mortal fear], if you will, caught using satire [a right and patent of the honorable domain of the lesser order of bards] was never permitted to prophesy again. why'd i recount that ... i luv satire. just came up. anyway, here's hopin in times of constant Constitutional erosion such as these, i hope you use all the tools in your considerable talent toolset to expose these no-good dominator paradigmers and all their thoughtless, funless Big Lies. also, could u pleez find a way to pack more terminal position alphabeticals in your fontographically stylin nom de guerre? may the greedoid naysayers and the rabid ignoramus gayslayers all the neo nazi bombers and their crypto rightwing racist sponsors the unpartiful, unartiful, thoroughly unoriginal unswingers the utterly boring and the left-brain bereft and all those fitfully so-obsessed with the half-life of guilt-instead-of- happy-multi-luvi-sex: may they all soon, and quite communally find themselves to a man maroony where the hell-on-earth they promoted is just precisely the real estate The Keepers of The Afterlife devoted and may they find themselves stuck all the hereafter on a nuclear waste polluted and deserted and desert island all lava rocky and convoluted in a superficial galaxy far, far away where no sentence is commuted and there is nevah evah no conjugal visitin'-type day and they're without a single raft there, or any other means of literal escape from the interminal undiluted politically fillibustered and demagoguically extruded hateful n' hot hot hot air that was, after all, their principal stock in trade; so may it be exactly the hell and brimstone they believe in and may it be long eons til' they're perceivin any window of emergence into that harmonic-style-convergeance into which we shall all happily enter just as soon as they have raptured into the hellish bad hereafter that their original perversion of the Life Force doth dictate. [nope, it's clear i ain't no bard, and i'm reeeeally clear i got no bardic pretensions, and dammit, i hate rhyme.but thought u might get a grin from a quasi retro invocation that just rolled right off my keyboard since I was so mad I couldn't sleep.] happi spellin, good samhain keep up the important work thnxs 4 adding laughter 2 da mix. jakwitch <devgreen@earthlink.net> Dear Jakwitch, Yeah, sure. But tell us, is Sabrina really nice in person, or is that all just an act? Mr. M As a white, Protestant male raised in the South, I realize that I represent possibly the only geo-ethnic group of people that it is still OK to make fun of. Whatever; that's fine. I take no real umbrage at Suck's insouciant and sometimes harsh characterizations of the South. What I don't understand is why everyone seems to see Mississippi (see your article today) as the nexus of all Southern backwardness. It should be, in my estimation, Arkansas and, to a lesser extent, Alabama. Western Virginia is in a class by itself, and Eastern Tennessee is pretty bizarre as well. Maybe Mississippi jokes just play better ... all those "s"s. WDJIV <wdjiv@yahoo.com> Last time we checked, the supply of Dago, Mick, Hebe, et al. jokes was running pretty high — in fact, the joke factory is so overstocked, people are giving 'em away for free! And you are of course correct that Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia, Tennessee — not to mention the rest of the United States and its worthless possessions — are filled with comic possibilities. So why Mississippi? Sure, part of it is alphabetical — that "pp" is fall-down funny. But two words explain a lot of it: Trent Lott. Mr. M Hi, I think you should incorporate the Web site I made for my ex-boss (A-hole) into a daily Suck. You could do some sort of story about how the Internet allows people to get revenge on evil jerks. Check it out here: bobdevine.homepage.com. Thanks, Bipple <bipple@hotbot.com> Dear Bipple, As a responsible news organization that enjoys the full protection of the First — and more important — Second amendments, we refuse to use this liberating technology merely to mock people and settle personal disputes. Most of the time. Professionally, Mr. M I read the entire article and it made sense. There is just one thing I had a question about. "... Mississippi — a state that's generally considered to be among the most demonically possessed places in the contiguous United States ..." Does that mean there are parts of our country that are outside "the contiguous United States" that are more possessed than Mississippi (say Hawaii, Alaska, or even Puerto Rico)? It makes you wonder why people want to take vacations in those places. <mquinn@ ece.vill.edu> Get yer head on straight, buddy boy. If you've been reading Suck carefully, you should be wondering why people take vacations at all. Mr. M |
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