for 22 December 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Filler: Reader Survey Mostly I just want to read about how ridiculously fucking impossible it is to find anyone even remotely worth spending time with unless both of you are so fucked up on drugs your personalities have been completely wiped clean by the E. Also, make sure you get some digs in on those supposedly "happy" couples. Fucking posers. The Mystic Monsignor OK. See, if you don't believe in love (e.g., you think all happy couples are "posers"), you're not gonna find love. I swear. You have to have faith that someone who's not utterly horrible is going to wander up eventually, or else you won't notice them when they do. Instead you'll spend all your energy on "getting in some digs." Like me. Don't be like me, MM. Use the force. Let it guide your actions. Inactive, Polly  Dear Polly, How 'bout you do a super crossover special where the fish, the hack, the angry little squirrel, and the Canadian rabbit on crack meet all of your bitchy self-absorbed friends. It would be fantastic!!!!! DL <DLX55@ aol.com> Very interesting. What if I just start depicting my bitchy self-absorbed friends as little animals instead? Feeling fantastic, Polly Polly, Is it OK to watch The Real World if you know somebody who is on the show? I'm being preemptive here. I have a friend who just got picked for the one that starts this spring. She's in LA right now getting the final details and shit like that. I mean, at least I should be able to watch the first episode right? She's really slutty. I'm gonna watch anyway, but I feel better consulting you first. I might even go visit. Then I'd write and tell you to watch, and then you could say that a person who had written you guested on The Real World. Everybody's got to have a claim to fame. Tim Wagner <badgerking@hotbot.com> Dude. If you want a claim to fame, why not get it through some talent other than kissing some lame-o's ass to get on The Real World. Honestly. I can't even say I watch the show without blushing, and you somehow think I'm gonna run around bragging that some person who sent me an email guested on the show? OK, you got me. Do you think you could wear a Filler T-shirt while you're on? Really slutty, Polly Subject: What I want to see more of ... ... all of the above on the list and then some. Story idea for you: Picture it — girl meets boy, girl fucks boy, girl and boy date for five years, boy misunderstands things, boy very harshly dumps girl and refuses to reply to email and phone calls, girl is bitter but moves on with her life, boy is probably very surprised that girl would suggest their relationship woes to Suck.com (which he reads on an almost daily basis), girl lives happily ever after. Moral of the story: Chinese food is good. Jennifer Na <uberjenn@hotmail.com> Wow, this is getting more and more like Loveline, isn't it? In that spirit: Look, guys — it's not to cool to date someone for five years and then dump them without explaining anything. Yes, there is no explanation. Yes, you just woke up one morning and the relationship looked like pure shit and you just had to get out of it. But you still have to talk to the person you dated, because if you don't, you keep them in purgatory for at least double the time they would be otherwise. Are you really that vengeful? You are? OK, then. I guess we're justified in publishing this vengeful letter. Friend to the vengeful, Polly Battle Figure Coolness and ironic detachment are great, but they work a lot better if one actually knows what one is talking about. It is clear that as far as "freedom" of trade (more accurately, "freedom" from labor and environmental restrictions for investors), inequality of terms of trade (hint: Chinese factory workers' wages as a fraction of American ones, adjusted for productivity), historically successful strategies for third-world economic development (hint: South Korea), and US economic history (hint: tariffs), you are in desperate need of a clue. Here's a good place to start: http://www.prospect.org/ columns/sawicky/ sa991203.html Enrique Diaz-Alvarez <enrique@ee.cornell.edu> I followed that link hoping to get some big wonkish policy analysis but found just another rant. Are you aware that the WTO was designed to reduce those "tariffs" you claim make up the whole of US economic history? Is anybody actually aware of what the WTO does? Yr pal, BarTel I'm afraid you failed to mention one of the main lessons of the Battle of Seattle. With his "resignation," Police Chief Norm Stamper provides a much-needed scapegoat for Mayor Schell's bumbled handling of the protests. Doug Henwood, among others, is correct when he points out that had New York Mayor Giuliani been in charge, things would not have spun out of control. Il Duce would have denied all parade permits and would have flooded downtown with regiments of New York's finest who, as you know, would have jumped at the chance to beat puddles of blood out of festive protesters and probably would have left a few popsicle-sticked with their own signs, à la Abner Louima. Mayor Schell, to his eternal regret, was more concerned with free speech than with law and order, not to mention the right to make a bundle during the holiday shopping rush. No doubt the nation's mayors have understood the moral of the story; even so, I bet the next convention takes place in somewhere like Jakarta or Singapore. Peter Kilander — an avenging lesbian trapped in a man's body <peterk@enteract.com> Yours has been the only letter expressing anything approaching sympathy for the mayor and the chief of police. I'm inclined to your view, but most of our readers seem a bit more image driven, and will condemn cops in helmets even when the cops are trying to stop people from breaking windows. Yr pal, BarTel Comparing the Nazis' atrocities launched on Kristallnacht to anarchists smashing Nike windows? Do you have any scruples at all? Luckily, the market for easy, thoughtless, detached "irony" from flush twentysomethings with vacuum chambers where their knowledge of history should be is just about over. Elizabeth McLellan <orlando2k@earthlink.net> Sadly, the market for cliché-slinging bores affecting pointless umbrage appears to be infinite. Yr pal, BarTel |
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