========================================
*** THE INNER SWINE ***
Volume 4, Issue 3, September 1998 
www.innerswine.com 
========================================

"In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always something to be thankful for;
as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican." - H.L. Mencken

CONCEPT BY: Jeff Somers, Robert Gala, Ken West, Jeof Vita COVER ART BY: Jeof
Vita EDITOR: Jeffrey Somers PUBLISHER: Cassie Moore WEBMASTERS: Jeof Vita & Ken
West ADVICE & FREE DRINKS:  PROOFREADER EXTRAORDINAIRE: Karen Accavallo OVERALL
OFFICIAL COOL CHICK: Lauren Strutzel

OFFICIAL MOTTO: "Everyones an Asshole  -Especially Us" The Inner Swine Believes
in the basic evil nature of man, our innate selfishness, and lack of purpose in
this accidental existence of ours.

FRIENDS OF THE SWINE: Lauren Leigh Jennifer Strutzel, whom I love tremendously,
for always being there in all situations and for being a fearless test-reader;
Jeof Vita, as usual for giving us the good art drawed while we wait, and for not
abandoning The Swine now that his work is getting national exposure; Misty S.
Quinn, my great friend, who is always generous with her time, and who always
smells darn good; Cassie Moore, the most babelicious Publisher on the planet;
Karen Accavallo, our lovely assistant, who proofreads every issue as best she
can, which we appreciate as best we can; Ken West, for loaning me Duke Nukem 3D
on CD-Rom despite the fact that Ive never done anything for him; Elizabeth
Augoustiniatos, who owes me dinner and whom I love very much and miss every time
she travels south; Rob Gala, for having drinks with me back in July in good
humor; RA, who remains a stalwart friend and who will, I assume, be teaching her
daughter the Ways of the Swine (if she wont I will); All of our corporate
sponsors, whether they realize they are sponsoring us or not.

======================================== 
TABLE OF CONTENTS
========================================

EDITORIAL: "Fucking the Monster: Entertainment and the Decline of Western
Civilization" 
INCOHERENT RAMBLING: "Misconnected Dimensions Resulting in
Rippling Distortions in the Subatomic Connections of Our Visible Universe
Causing the Sun to Douse, Planets to Explode, Destruction, Despair, and
Eventual...Death.Or: The Inner Swine on Relationships" 
COMMENTARY: "No One Cares What You Think" 
COMMENTARY: "Roach Motel A-Go-Go" 
COMMENTARY: "The Friends of Kenny Starr"
FICTION: "Let the Summer Come Again" 
POETIC BULLSHIT: "10 Haikus About The Inner Swine" 
COMMENTARY: "American Wedding Confidential #6: Touch Me Im Sick" 
COMMENTARY: "You May Already Be a Moron: Stupidity and Internet Spam"
MISSION STATEMENT: "How to Tell if Youre a Swine" 
COMMENTARY: "Suck, Inc."
COMMENTARY: "A Virtual Tour of The Inner Swine" FICTION: "Jeffs Ongoing Fugue of
Pain"

---------------------------------------- 
The Inner Swine Volume 1, Issue 1
(ISSN: 1527-7704).  Magazine published March, June, September, and December by
Oinking Sow, Inc. (C) 1995-2002 by Jeff Somers.  (There is no company, really)
Individual subscription rates: $5.00 (cheap!) per  year in U.S.; $6.00 (cheap!)
per year foreign including Canada. Single Copy  $2.00 (cheap!) but stop teasing
me, you're never going to order a subscription,  you heartless bastards. Free
trades are absolutely entertained, send me  something, and I will mail you
treats. Checks payable to Jeff Somers, Editor.  Address submissions and
correspondence to Jeff Somers, The Inner Swine, POB  3024, Hoboken, NJ 07030,
mreditor@innerswine.com. But let's face it, when was  the last time we published
anything not written by me or one of my cronies?  Other people's pimply writing
gives me hives. Still, all submissions or requests  for Guidelines (there are no
guidelines, though) must be accompanied by S.A.S.E. Misty Quinn (above, in
disguise) large sums of money to unleash Irish gal whupass on people.

========================================
WHAT THE FUCK'S BEEN GOIN' ON?
========================================

ISSUES come and issues go, kids. This is our twelth issue. Thats over 700 pages
of this crap, spilling out into the universe, ignored, reviled, and somewhat
cathartic.

In the words of J. Peterman on Seinfeld: "Congratulations on a job...done."

There are no naked photos in this issue: in the three months since 4(2) bubbled
up into the collective consciousness of all those lacking the funds and
insulating support staff  to avoid it altogether, the one thing that has really
bothered me is people complaining that 4(2) wasnt all that outrageous, all that
shocking. I guess after putting a fake nude picture of Bea Arthur in 4(1) people
thought that was what theyd get every issue: cheap lurid digitals. This attitude
annoys me, this belief that only the shocking or gross is interesting. You see
this in zines all the time, but I always assumed that was simply because most
zines are written by 16-year olds. Smart, motivated sXe 16-year olds, sure, but
still adolescents who think articles about bodily functions and sexual fantasies
are interesting.

Guess I was wrong. Sigh. The mission of The Inner Swine has always been simply
to be a place where I can puke out my otherwise largely-ignored opinions.
Sometimes these opinions are weird and lurid. Sometimes they are dry and
academic. Live with it.

Mundania needs women: otherwise, I have been existing, taking of space,
breathing, that sort of thing. Watching baseball. Writing. Nothing special. Your
editor is in a rut, kids, a close-your-eyes-and-take-your-hits
summer-in-the-city kind of rut that leaves you with that look on your face every
night, days blurring together into one grey featureless expanse of wasted time.
Except for the baseball games. Watching baseball is never a waste of time.

Swine Inner Circle member and all-around fun-at-parties kind of guy Jeof Vita
has been creating original cartoons for various sports-related publications
these past few months, though, proving once again that its not what you know its
how long your hair is. Jeofs immense talent can be viewed, collected, and
studied in such magazines as Touchdown Illustrated. Check it out and let the
world know you require more Vita in your lives, in whatever way you have of
communicating with the world.

You can see it now: Jeof twenty years from now, emerging from Moomba or whatever
trendy bar has taken Moombas place in 2018, his entourage and wife #4 around him
(I am ssuming, naturally, that Jeof and Misty will marry and divorce each other
several times as star couples often do, making her wife #s 1,2,3 and 4) and I
will rush forward, break through security, and accost him. Remember me? Ill ask.
Not really. Hell reply, signalling his bodyguards subtly. And then Ill push this
issue into his hands, where hell be reminded that I did once support him in
these hallowed pages. Hell be touched, and for a moment hell remember the close
friendship we once had, and out of respect for that....hell whisper to the
bodyguards that they dont have to hurt me too much, unless they feel like they
need the exercise. But it wouldnt be a requirement.

And now: on with the zine!

========================================
THE LOVEFEST 1998:   Heres what they're saying about ME:
========================================

TAIL SPINS sent me #30 the other day along with some trade ads. When they sent
me #29 I never read it, mostly because it was one of those dense, newsprint
publications with lots of ads littered amongst the writings and I never like to
work hard. However, #30 caught my eye and I dug into it, and am pleased I did.
Its a zine-friendly and interesting issue with a great article on the history of
cannibalism. I enjoyed it somewhat more than I usually enjoy written works not
my own, which often hovers around zero. Interested parties: get a sample issue
for $3 (USA; $5 foreign) from POB 1860, Evanston, IL 60204. See the
advertisement elsewhere in this issue.

Lynne Shuttleworth requested a copy, read it, said "Well, I had a good laugh
reading your zine, both issues. I have to say I agree with most of your
opinions, which means who knows what? Anyway, I am getting out of this basement
(where I "work" sometimes, not today...) and going out into the daylight now.
Thanks for sharing your ideas." but did not ask to ever see our pimply writing
again. Sigh. Some people are not moved by the Swine, and thats: okay.

Pervesion in Utah: In the last issue of TIS you may have noticed I ran an ad for
Innocent Mind Productions, hawking Jake Corodvas film "Broken Minds". At the
time, Jake offered to sell me a copy at a discount for being nice enough to run
the ad. At first I thought to myself "That money could be better spent on drugs,
booze, or cheap sex. I could feed myself Ramen Noodles into next month on that
kind of dough." But after weeks of seeing that leeringly bloody face in the ad
as I reviewed 4(2), I broke down and sent the guy a check. Hell, I was curious.

(For those of you who are now thinking, in shocked silence: is it possible that
our style guru Jeff Somers would advertise something he not only doesnt fully
endorse, but which he has not the slightest inkling about? I answer: damned
right. Thats the American way. Id do it again.)

Anyways, I got "Broken Minds" (autographed!) in the mail the other day and
watched it. A few years ago Jeof Vita, Ken West and I decided to make a horror
movie, too (no joke!). We borrowed a video camera, I wrote a rather loose and
ad-lib dependent script, and six months later.....we had a two hour video of us
farting around, making jokes, and exposing ourselves to the camera. I mention
this to underscore that I appreciate the sheer amount of effort, discipline, and
skill that goes into making an amateur movie with your friends as the cast -not
only making it, but somehow making it coherent and interesting to boot. "Broken
Minds" aint Shakespeare, but its funny, its got spirit, and the editing and
direction is actually damned good. Jakes brother Rob made me piss my pants as an
amorous woodsman a little too fond of his "wood". Anyone looking for a good
laugh or interested in seeing a sincere artistic effort (and who can spare the
$10) can check out their web site (see ad elsewhere in this issue, or link from
The Inner Swines URL).

Ken Bausert of "Passions" (sample copy: $3.50, Ken Bausert, 2140 Erma Drive,
East Meadow, NY 11554-1120) wrote to tell me that he enjoyed TIS 4(2): "...I
look forward to seeing whats in some zines more than others. I guess the Swine
has the dubious distinction of being in that category....I thought "Fade Away
Comes Later" was one of your best stories yet." Its hard to stay cranky and
mean-spirited with this kind of love coming our way, so we may have to resort to
insulting Ken until he writes nasty things about us. No, I guess not. Included
with the letter was Passions #12 which once again contains an eclectic and
spirited collection of writings from people who obviously love their craft. If
you like to read, Passions is a good bet for you.

Paul Olson (Ole Olson) sent me a "Memo from the Olsonville Bureau" concerning
outhouses and their role in our society. Its very funny, and he plugs The Inner
Swine not once, but twice (calling us "an awesome zine"), so we love him. You
can read this memo (and others) and get more info on where to find Pauls stuff
at his web site http://members.aol.com/virtualole/world.html. Here you can find
samples of Pauls grand Mars Needs Lawyers! and other fiction, as well as a guide
to what zines are publishing Olson art and fiction. There is, ominously, a
SubGenius link on this page as well. I am beginning to dream of Bob. This is
complicated to bring up in conversation because my lovely assistant Lauren is
dating a guy named Bob. Misinterpretations and tears are easy to come by. I
advise all pigs to check out Pauls site and his writing.

I got Bulldada #6 from S.E. Mills Gravelle and Ron Gravelle in the mail in July
"for trade and review". Its a snazzy-looking publication, four color and smooth
layout, put out by Yendie Boox Publishing. They seem like a cool bunch; their
web site, while not very exciting or informative, asserts "vigorous" support of
the independent writer/publisher and "vigorous" defense of the first amendment,
both sentiments that warm the Swines heart, kiddies. The publication itself has
a comic-book focus with a lot of reviews and non-comic rants as well. Comics
make me yawn, of course, but they seem quite knowledgeable and write well, so
why not check em out? They also seem to offer books, comics, buttons, magnets,
and "all sorts of other stuff" via a catalog which you can inquire about. If
youre into comics and insider stories thereof, this might be interesting for
you; if youre like me and comics frighten and confuse you, it probably wont.
Contact: http://www.netcom.com/~sgravell/index.html or $4.50 to Yendie Boox, PO
Box 3223, Frederick, MD 21705-3223.

Your Editor once again proved he is adept at attracting teenage girls when Faye
Lynn from New Hampshire wrote The Swine with some essays back in July:

---------------------------------------- 
For a Good Time Call...
By Faye Lynn

Due to my own admitted weirdness, I do a lot of strange things. Sometimes they
are things that could get me into loads of trouble.

OK, I like to put my own phone number in phone booths just to see what will
happen. I write: For a good time call.... I just want to find out if anyone will
actually call. I have purposefully left my number in phone booths all over New
Hampshire.

One afternoon, I was awakened by a telephone ringing. Upon saying a groggy
hello, a slimy, pedophile-ish voice invaded my phone. He stated to me that he
was just calling for a good time. I was shocked. Never did I think anyone would
really waste their time calling. At first I had forgotten that I had left my
number everywhere, but then I remembered, told him to go away, and hung up the
phone. If he hadnt sounded so scary I would have talked to him.

I laid there in bed for a while, completely flabbergasted. Then I put on some
music and began to go about my usual wake-up routine, which is trying to go back
to sleep. About half an hour later, he called back, and his voice was even more
slimy this time. He kept asking me my name, and instead of telling him I asked
what his was, after all he was the caller. He explained to me that he "just
wanted to get off real quick" and that he was not trying to cause a problem, he
was only doing what it said to do on the phone booth.

Following his comment about "getting off", I sighed into the phone and hung up.
He never called back after that.

Everyday I think about this slimy guy and wonder, he could walk by me on the
street and neither of us would know it. I just hope hes not psycho enough to
track me down by searching an entire phone book. Then Id be in for a real treat.
----------------------------------------

What can I say? Faye did indeed include her phone number with her mailing, but
having been burned once on the phone with teens [see "My Eventual Stalker", TIS
3(3)] I refrained. I did enjoy her essays, however. Good luck, Faye! Maybe shed
like to write a regular collumn for us....

We love mail, folks. Keep it coming. One rule: it will usually only get printed
if you say something about The Inner Swine, positive or otherwise. Exceptions
like Faye above are rare, so start kissing our big pork-flavored ass!

========================================
*** EDITORIAL ***
Pig in Shit #12:
Fucking the Monster: Entertainment and the Decline of Western Civilization or,
how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Telecommunications Hookup
by Jeff Somers 
========================================

Lets face it: human beings will pretty much screw themselves blind if given half
a chance. Selfishly obsessed with our own desires, were collectively like those
cocaine monkeys they experimented on back in the eighties, the ones who
eventually stopped eating, sleeping, or fucking and just filled their days
self-administering cocaine blasts until they died. The only thing that stops us
from doing the same thing to ourselves are the forces of society: the people who
give in to that glamorous life are usually arrested and beaten by burly Irish
cops who still call people "Boyo" before being sent off to a
Midnight-Express-esque prison setting where they are buggered to within an inch
of their lives, nightly. In other words, complying with the wishes of society
(that we perform some service useful to it) is much, much easier than not
complying. If we could pursue our own pleasures and tell society to screw off,
we would. Unfortunately even the rich and powerful have to fuck the monster a
little.

Fucking the Monster 101: Society is a system of rules and regulations designed
to postpone our enjoyment of life until our work is done. The system of rewards
for services rendered has existed since our earliest histories: the entire
concept of wages for labor performed is the most simple example, you do
something youd rather not do (labor) in return for something youd like to have
(money). Its that simple. Think of it this way: our desires and lusts are an
incredible energy source. Society is merely an engine that taps into those
boiling cesspools of need and addiction to put itself into motion. The rewards
it grants us for playing along are its exhaust, and most of us are greedily
sucking the pipe until we die. This is the fundamental way society works.
Rewards and pleasures are delayed until our work is done, otherwise no work
would get done.

In recent years, however, this system has begun to break down. Increasingly, the
human race is capable of self-administering its own rewards, in the form of
entertainments of greater and greater skill, power, and quality. The dividing
line between work and leisure is blurring and disappearing, and with it the
traditional impetus of society in general. Pretty soon well all be banging those
buttons in our cages, medicating ourselves into blissful suicide, unaware and
unconcerned of the consequences of our inactions.

Heres why:

1. The Creeping Evil of Choices: As Americans, were bred to believe that the
more choices you have, the better off you have it. This serves our consumerist
society well; we believe that quantity is quality, allowing corporations to sell
us a lot of shit we dont really need, and we take comfort in the fact that we
now have oh, lets see, four or five nationally marketed brands of lemon-lime
soda to choose from, ignoring the fact that fundamentally they remain, well,
just lemon-lime soda.

Were animals, after all, piggies, and if given a choice we will choose, form
opinions and preferences, and then adamantly defend them. The more choices you
give us, the more we will indulge in fine-tuning our preferences, and all of
this consumes time and energy. Time and energy which used to be used towards the
more practical concerns of the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, now
wasted on deciding which movie to see, which book to read, which web site to
explore. Now that we have so many things to do, its hard to decide which one we
will devote our time to; weve gotten to the point where we are videotaping the
television shows we cant watch because we are watching other television shows.

Personal anecdote: at any given moment, I can be sitting at my desk at home,
listening to Too Much Joy on my CD player, online with
WWW.KarenAccavalloisNuts.com through Netscape, playing Quake, watching the Mets
game on channel 9 with the sound off, intermittently reading The Getaway by Jim
Thompson. I am awash in entertainment choices, and the only thing those choices
accomplish is the ever more thorough wasting of my time.  It used to be that
mans time was filled with a lot of free time, periods when a person could think
and create and maybe just sit peacefully and ponder. Nowadays, its almost
impossible. It requires a force of will, really, to make something like that
happen, and when it comes to willpower and the human races ability to deny
itself entertainment I refer you to the aforementioned monkey/cocaine allegory.

The human race will take every new choice given it and add it to the menu,
extending the amount of time, energy, and thought we have to put into simply
deciding how to spend our time. Before long, we dont have much time for anything
else. Weve been conditioned to believe that more choices equals a better life,
more power, but in reality, more choices equals more of our time spent deciding
which channel to watch, book to read, tape to play in our walkmans  -while it
seems like we ought to be enjoying more of our lives as we get richer and
fatter, the fact is we arent. Were scrambling to keep up, to stay informed and
in touch with a media source that has swelled to the size of Jupiter in just the
past few years. You cant keep up, but you can certainly run yourself ragged
trying.

2. Immersing Ourselves in Corporate Suck: There was once a time in this sad dim
world when you were forced to be alone with your thoughts, believe it or not. On
a bus, waiting in line, trapped in an elevator rapidly filling with water 
-these were once moments when our cow-brained brethren were forced to sit still
and ruminate. No more! Today we are surrounded by a continuous and sometimes
seamless entertainment experience. With our personal stereos, paperback books,
magazines, newspapers, computers, Internet connections, and home theaters we
find ourselves in the unique position of never being away from sources of
entertainment. At work, in transit, at home  -anywhere. Where our ancestors were
sometimes forced to actually think for a moment, these days the less motivated
amongst the herd can move through their meaningless lives without once missing a
beat or being alone with their thoughts....or the cavernous shell of emptiness
that passes for their thoughts.

Naturally, not all of us are quite this stupid, or this closed off from reality,
but for the first time ever the possibility exists, and where there is a
possibility these days often there is a reality. If we arent stupefied into
blissful ignorance, we are definitely isolated: this immersion in entertainment
cuts us off from the rest of the population. The entertainment technology is
increasingly designed to shield us from the nasty, boring, unentertaining real
world  -weve all witnessed buses and rooms filled with people wearing walkmans,
unable to speak to each other even if the desire bloomed, or a family room
populated by silent, staring family members, watching TV  -using entertainment,
actually, as a way to avoid speaking to each other. The entertainment being
spewed out by corporations fills the air around us like water in a pool and we
are all floating in it, absorbing it, breathing it, adjusting to its feel and
temperature. Now and then we go diving and cut ourselves off completely from the
rest of the world.

Easily forgotten in the warm wash of such a life, is the fact that there are no
innocent artists in the entertainment industry. Entertainments are presented to
us with the ultimate purpose of making money, of convincing us to part with the
pesos for some product or other. If were floating in a placid sea of
manufactured entertainment, then we are also, in effect, floating in the
commercial messages these entertainments were designed to direct our attention
to. Were immersed in and surrounded by commercials, propaganda, endorsements,
and come-ons, and just as our skin will adjust its temperature so the cold water
begins to feel normal after a while, so will our suck-o-meters adjust to the
irritation of the constant and seamless commercial life in general has become.

Surrounded and immersed in entertainment, pretty soon we stop being aware of it.
It becomes reality, a reality pretty easily manipulated by the people and
corporations creating it. We suddenly find it impossible to live without things
that weve lived without all along  -the Internet, our cell phones, laser discs,
DVDs, whatever. Things we could live happy lives without become necessary and
essential, simply because we have been saturated by them.

Hear that sound? Its the click of that button in your cage being pushed, over
and over.

3. Watching Rambo Movies in Surround Sound: Inundated with a constant stream of
entertainment, its easy to forget just how amazing the technology has become.
Advances in technology used to apply to scientific or medical advances  -no
more! My home computer can show me movies. Why this is necessary, I have no
idea. I can also edit sound files digitally. Why this is necessary, I have no
idea. Hell, I can do lots of fun stuff on this computer, none of which I
actually need to do, most of which I never will need to do. When I bought this
damned thing I tried desperately to not purchase the speakers  -couldnt do it!
They wouldnt let me! Why I need to hear the music from DOOM in digital clarity,
I cant say. What I can say is that all of it  -the advances, the technology, the
capabilities- point in one direction: the simulation of reality.

Virtual Reality was the hot-button word for the soft news stories a few years
ago, thats not what I mean. VR was a bullshit subject no one really cared about.
But think about all the technical wizardry packed into our movies, our games,
all entertainment. Its all a concerted effort to make our entertainment seamless
with reality. The computer games have realistic sound effects. The CDs have
surround sound. The movies have digital effects so good I would swear there are
dinosaurs ruling the earth. We can alter photos, bring dead actors into modern
movies  -anything, and were getting so good at it you cant tell where the real
world ends and the fake one begins. None of this is part of any diabolical
conspiracy, but it is making it easier for us to fill all our free time with
entertainments, because it is now so effortless and automatic. No suspension of
disbelief is necessary, any more, because we have no reasons to disbelieve.

Why is this bad? After all, weve only got so much time on this rock, isnt it
nice that we can at least enjoy ourselves while were here? Even I have to admit
that the fact that my ancestors had to amuse themselves by playing with rocks
and waiting for nature to burn down the barn makes me very glad to have my VCR
and Internet link.

The business of the world is no longer business, though  -its now entertainment.
And were so happily amused all the time we may not notice that other aspects of
our lives are getting crappier by small degrees every year. While living
conditions, wages, retirement scenarios, health care, privacy issues, and the
environment worsen and get eroded by society, the quality and quantity of
entertainments increases. This doesnt seem to make any sense, but no one is
complaining, because were so distracted we cant get any time to have any
realizations, can we? Too many of us confuse the quality of our entertainments
with the quality of our lives.

Oh well. I still go to movies (I even saw Disturbing Behavior, which Im not
proud of. I blame Misty) and I still buy albums, and I still watch TV and I surf
the net as much as anyone, mostly searching for information on my favorite bands
and the occasional fake nude photo of Bea Arthur. Im swimming in the deep end of
the Fun Pool with the rest of you and loving every minute of it. Its just that I
like to climb out and dry off and look around sometimes. When I die and my life
flashes before my eyes, I dont want it to be a bunch of screens and headphones
and bullshit vicarious experiences, but to accomplish that, you have to work at
it, pay attention, and sometimes miss an episode of Ally McBeal.

Hear that? Its that button again.

========================================
*** INCOHERENT RAMBLING ***
Misconnected Dimensions Resulting in Rippling Distortions in the Subatomic
Connections of Our Visible Universe Causing the Sun to Douse, Planets to
Explode, Destruction, Despair, and Eventual...Death. 
Or: The Inner Swine on Relationships By Jeff Somers
========================================

If I could somehow bottle the tension and hostility present in your average
romantic relationship  -just one- Id be able to focus it through a lense and
destroy entire planets with a flash of light so intense that any survivors would
be blinded, their palsied eyes useless for eternity. Of course, to harness this
power we would first have to define it. In most relationships this bubbling
hostility is a diffuse and formless presence looming between the principles,
unnamed, denied, ill-defined.

Oh, but its there. Scorching innocent bystanders with static discharge,
enveloping lovers in fear and loathing  -its there all right. Most of us,
however, are so trained to fear being alone, so conditioned to desire a partner,
that wed rather put ourselves through hell than find peace in solitude. In
short: so afraid of the single life are we that we gladly embrace the soul
erosion, time-suckage, and misery that most relationships  -if only we were men
and women enough to admit it- represent.

This, of course, begs the question: why do we then spend so much time pursuing
relationships, if they suck so much? The answer to that depends on many factors.
I am but one mildly bitter young man, however, so I decided to turn this dilemma
over to a qualified panel of experts, forming a sort of round-table discussion
group of celebrities. As all of us who watch Entertainment Tonight know full
well, Celebrities can answer any dilemma, because they are the best people in
the world.

The Entertainment Division of Oinking Sow  -The Inner Swines parent company- has
a long reach in Hollywood, and it was easy to gather a strong team of well-known
stars at my small Jersey City apartment one sweltering July evening. With no air
conditioning and eight people  -one of whom was smelling quite aromatic (those
kooky stars!)- things were a little sticky, but the erudite and serious subject
matter at hand kept everyone in a contemplative and calm mood throughout the
evening.

THE DISCUSSION GROUP CELEBRITIES:

Jean-Luc Picard, Captain, Starship Enterprise Frank Sinatra, Recently Deceased
Lounge Singer Jenny McCarthy, Amazing Animatronic Doll, as seen on TV! McLean
Stevenson, of "Hello Larry!" fame "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, former Wrestler in the
WWF Bea Arthur, formerly known as our beloved "Maude" Jimmy "Dyn-o-Mite!"
Walker, from "Good Times" Dana Plato, the lovable moppet turned slutty criminal
from "Diffrent Strokes"

I acted as moderator and host. My main duty would be to keep the discussion
going if it ever lagged, and to make sure that the various "riders" on their
appearance contracts were fulfilled. This was not always easy. Captain Picards
contract, for instance, insisted that I refer to him as "Patrick Stewart". I
figured this odd request had something to do with a covert operation involving
the Klingon spies in my apartment building, but was afraid Id forget and slip
up. Jenny McCarthys contract demanded a separate dressing room and two bottles
of iced champagne, so I was forced to convert my bathroom into a "dressing
room", which I accomplished by cutting her name out of construction paper and
taping it to the bathroom door. I didnt have any champagne, so I filled the sink
with ice and put two bottles of Olympia Beer in it. I hoped she wouldnt notice.

Mr. Sinatras arrival was a little more complex. I had to pay Ken West two
thousand Japanese Yen to fetch the Chairman. Only two minutes before we were
scheduled to begin, a light tapping at my bedroom door turned out to be Ken,
dangling from a hovering helicopter and dressed in his "Cat Burglar" outfit,
which is a pair of pitch-black fatigues and infrared goggles.

"Where you want it?" he shouted over the roar of the copter blades.

"Right through here!" I shouted, indicating the door leading to the living room.
After several minutes we had Frank leaned up against the wall. Frank had no
contractual obligations, per se, but he ended up requiring several dozen Glade
air fresheners.

Dana Plato and Jimmy Walker had each been promised two hundred dollars for
making the appearance, but upon arrival I had to sheepishly admit I had spent
all my liquid assets on acquiring Frank Sinatra, so I offered them each ten
dollars worth of McDonalds gift certificates. Dana was elated, but Mr. Walker
became ill-tempered and verbally abusive. Eventually he settled down. Dana
offered to have sex with me for another coupon book, but I reminded her that we
had work to do.

McLean Stevenson, who had once been Colonel Blake on the hit show M*A*S*H,
seemed happy to be involved and smiled politely at everything I said. He had no
contract. He sadly explained to me that hed lost his agent and any chance of
ever working again shortly after Fantasy Island went off the air. and that hed
recently died. I gave him a book of Gift Certificates because I felt sorry for
him, and he seemed pleased. Dana Plato was upset at this.

Bea Arthur showed up just long enough to serve me with some court papers having
to do with the previous issue of The Inner Swine, and then attempted to leave.
Ken West was still cleaning mud off his fatigues in Jennys dressing room, so I
asked him to subdue Ms. Arthur, which he accomplished with duct tape and a
hard-backed chair. He charged me another fifty bucks though.

"Rowdy" Roddy Piper showed up pretty drunk and offered to stay only if I could
supply him with booze to "fortify" him. I only had a half-full bottle of
Jagermeister, which he accepted cheerfully.

Now that we were all present and accounted for (Captain Picard looking almost
normal in his 20th-century costume, which didnt strike me odd because its
standard Starfleet procedure when traveling backwards in time to change history,
which is pretty obviously what was happening here) I moved everyone into the
living room. I didnt have enough seats. Captain Picard, Jenny McCarthy, and
Roddy Piper sat on the couch (Picard seemed unduly interested in Ms. McCarthy,
and I made a mental note to discourage this; love and the Prime Directive do not
mix!), Dana Plato sat in the recliner, Jimmy Walker took up position in the
chair next to Frank, and I brought in chairs from the kitchen for McLean
Stevenson and Bea Arthur, who was already conveniently tied to a chair. I sat on
my desk with an official-looking clipboard, and began the discussion.

JS: On behalf of The Inner Swine Id like to thank you all for coming -

JW: Hey, man, you got anything to eat around here?

JS:Um...the discussion has started, Mr. Walker.

JW: Aw, man  -Im starving! They usually cater these things.

RRP: Yeah, pig-boy! Im hungry too!

(At this point Roddy Piper made an obscene and threatening gesture towards me
with the bottle of Jagermeister)

JS:Uh....all right. I think Ive got some Doritos in the kitchen...

JS: Okay, lets start this again. Id like to thank you all for coming. As you
must all be aware, love and relationships is one subject we all have to deal
with on a daily basis; the pursuit of love is one of our primary obsessions and
yet it seems to bring us more misery and violence than satisfaction and joy.
Tonight our goal is to serve our fellow man by plumbing the depths of this
dilemma and -

CPOTSSE: Excuse me?

JS: One moment, Captain. As I was saying, were going to solve this dilemma as a
service to our fellow man. As celebrities, you have access to experience and
wisdom denied us scuttling rejects known as your public. Would anyone like to
start us off with a personal anecdote? Mr. Sinatra  -Frank, if I may- you have
been a national symbol for romance and style for four decades. Any overall
thoughts on the nature of love?

FS: ----------

JM: Eeeew! Is that a freakin body?

JS: Well, Frank, feel free to dive into the discussion at any time. Captain
Picard, you had something you wanted to say?

CPOTSSE: Ahhh, if you would please, my name is Patrick  -Mr. Stewart.

JS: Oh! Of course. I understand, "Mr. Stewart"!

JM: Eeeew! What is that?

CPOTSSE: My goodness, son, whats wrong with your face? Are you smiling?

JS: Yes. Why?

RRP: My God, man, yer givin us the stinkeye!

(At this point Mr. Piper threw his bottle at me, barely missing me. I would have
asked him to leave, but he immediately slumped down and passed out noisily.)

JS: If we could stay on the subject  -

DP: Did that Scottish guy have any gift certificates? Could I have his, if he
isnt going to use em?

JS: No! Now, please, does anyone have anything to say about love and the misery
it inflicts upon us?

JW: I do, my man. Love is DYN-O-MITE!

(At this point an eerie silence settled on the room. Ken West poked his head in
from the kitchen to make sure no one had been killed).

CPOTSSE:Son, please do not do that again.

JS: Thank you, Cap  -er, "Mr. Stewart".

CPOTSSE: Did you just wink at me?

JS: No. Moving on  -Ms. McCarthy, youre a current sex symbol in our culture.
Youve been in a committed relationship yet you must have had plenty of
opportunities to cheat. Any thoughts on why love never seems to bring us joy?

JM: Are you hitting on me?

JS: Ummm....why would you ask that?

JM: Youre staring at my breasts.

JS: They dominate my field of vision.

CPOTSSE:Young man, you had better start being polite.

JS: Uh  -I am sorry. Ill look over there. Mr. Sinatra! Someone has to be on my
side! What would you say about a broad like Jenny over here?

FS:  ----------

MS: Am I allowed to say something? Is that okay?

JS: Of course! Please, whats on your mind?

MS: Its really freaking me out when you talk to the dead guy.

JS: Youre dead too, smartass.

MS: But no one knows it. Youve got to have faith for that to work.

JS: Is that all you wanted to say?

MS: Yes.

JS: Duly noted. Bea? You seem suddenly excited over there. Do you have something
to say on this subject? If I remove the gag will you promise not to scream? Yes?
Was that a yes? Okay, here it comes. Remember your promise!

BA: Watch out! Hes going to puke!

JS: Who is a- OH MY GOD!

(On the tape here there is a lot of confusion as Mr. Piper contributed the
prodigious contents of his stomach to our discussion. I had to have Ken West
escort him from the apartment by force. During the scuffle, Captain Picard and
Jenny McCarthy somehow disappeared (beamed up, no doubt by the ever faithful
Number One) and Bea Arthur somehow escaped, taking with her one of my better
kitchen chairs. This left me with a dwindling star panel in my living room. In
order to make them stay was forced to give Mr. Walker and Ms. Plato each one of
the Olympias I had been saving for Ms. McCarthy.)

JS: Wow! That was exciting! Thank you for "sticking it out" Now, Frank, I know
you have a reputation to protect, but please no more outbursts! Okay, where were
we?

JW: Man, you are whacked.

(I silently marked Mr. Walker down for elimination via The Inner Swine Black Ops
Department, run by Ken West, naturally, because hes black.)

JS: My sanity is not the issue here. Ms. Plato, youve posed nude in magazines,
how do you think pornography impacts our ability to discern a "normal"
relationship from irrational media-fed fantasies?

DP: Uh....May I go to the bathroom?

JS: Well....technically thats Jenny McCarthys dressing room....all right. Just
be careful. Jimmy, would you like to field that last question?

JW: Naw, man. I think I gots to get going. OTB is closing soon.

JS: Youve got to have something to say about love in the modern world! Please!

JW: Love is DYN-O-MITE baby!

JS: .....Get out.


And so ended our attempt at bringing the healing powers of celebrity to bear on
the problem of why love makes so many of us so unhappy. Ms. Plato never
returned; I later discovered my microwave and all the money in my sugar jar on
the fridge missing. I cleaned up and went to sleep, and the next day I found
McLean Stevenson sleeping in the same kitchen chair; Id completely forgotten
about him. Frank had sprouted mushrooms.

I shook Mr. Stevenson gently and shooed him out; he seemed strangely eager to
stay.

"For Gods sake," he whimpered, "Ive been dead for two years and no ones
noticed...."

I Pushed him out of the apartment and pondered how once again the universe had
failed to live up to the high standards of The Inner Swine.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY *** 
No One Cares What You Think The Illusion of Empowerment in a Free Society
By Jeff Somers
========================================

Fall has fallen and here we are in the greatest country ever devised, enjoying
the fruits of foreign laborers doing our work for us, eating well, taking
advantage of our huge deposits of free time and excess wealth, and we the
american public remain the unhappiest motherfuckers on the planet. Tribes in
Africa who are eating dung beetles to survive are happier than us. Families in
China agonizing over which daughter to drown first are downright ecstatic,
compared to us. Were rich, comfortable, and happily overweight and yet were the
surliest and most argumentative assholes in the universe. Were crude,
aggressive, and mean-spirited. We return anger for kindness, and spend most of
our vaunted free time pissing and moaning about how shitty our lives are.

Why? Because were Americans. All this freedom is rotting our souls.

Fundamentally, if you are really so dull-witted as to buy into this whole "power
of the people" trip sold to us as American Democracy, youre going to be a little
cranky. Because deep down, in places we dont like to talk about at parties, we
all know its a load of horseshit. None of us really have any direct power. Few
of us are rich or powerful enough to truly have an effect on the whims and
policies of our government. Deep down we all know that we are given so much
freedom so well be distracted by movies and CDs and internet porn and wont bend
our slow-witted minds to the true case of power in this country: none of us have
any.

Yet, we all act as if we do. We yammer on about government policies, about
police actions, belching our opinions into the world. Our opinions allow us to
latch onto something brewing in the world or the government, like barnacles on
the bottom of a ship, and kid ourselves that were a part of it all, not just
overlooked spectators. Our opinions allow us to kid ourselves that we do have
some power in todays Nintendo-ized world. Its a con, its a scam, and its one we
all give in to happily, to hide our basic powerlessness.

Americans are all raised with certain fundamental beliefs burned into them
through the education system, the foremost of which is that every individual has
value, that everyones opinion counts for something. We take this belief into our
hearts and construct all sorts of hopeful visions with it. It makes us arrogant
and pushy, it makes us argumentative and judgemental. In reality, however, you
have very little direct control over anything thats going on. All you people who
voted for Dole in 1996, guess your personal power didnt amount to jack shit. All
you people who voted Bill Clinton into office, I wonder if he has yet addressed
any of your personal concerns. Lets face it, even when your vote is cast on the
winning side, you had about as much to do with the victory as you did with the
Moon Landing  -sure, you were watching it all closely on TV, but what, exactly,
did you do? Nothing.

Most of us dont like to think this way. Its hard to be arrogant and
self-centered yet at the same time cognizant of your own uselessness and lack of
effect. Wed rather convince ourselves that we are, despite the evidence,
immensely powerful. We do this through our insufferable opinions.

As I drift through my cynical and brown-at-the-edges existence, I find myself
constantly arguing with my fellow ugly-americans. I cant help it; Im as guilty
of arrogance as the rest of you idiots. We take one side or the other, or
perhaps the unseen third option, and we champion it as if we had some sort of
real influence over the events. When our point of view is justified, we are
allowed to feel that we somehow contributed to the victory, that we took part in
the whole process of democracy and through our endless efforts arguing over
beers added that final, tiny bit of influence that won the day.

For example: as mentioned elsewhere, back in January of 1998 Ken West took the
position that due to the mounting investigation and litigation against President
Clinton he would resign/be impeached before too long. I thought this was
ridiculous and told Ken that Bill Clinton was going to end his second term on
time and with nothing more than immense legal debts as scars. We wrangled about
this for a while, I argued my side, Ken smugly ignored me, I smugly ignored him,
and when the Paula Jones case was dismissed on April 1st I did a little dance
and taunted Ken with my superior understanding of the world. For a brief moment
I was allowed to feel as if my intense mental support of the President had
something to with the result, that I was a part of our democracy, instead of
just a witness. This is why everyone has a position, this is why you cant say
the sky is blue in todays sad world without three people disagreeing with you.
We want to feel like we have something to do with it all. The only way most of
us can is to pick a side and root for it.

Of course, I wouldnt want to change this.

Number one, I certainly feel safer with the maniacs and idiots of this country
safely out of the control room during major decision-making in this world. I
dont want the morons who cant summon the mental juice to understand the concept
of not talking during movies actually having a hand in that level of
decision-making. Theres agood reason were all kept as far away from real power
as possible: true democracy is Mob Rule, and Mob Rule is a quick ticket to
chaos, riots, and destruction. Until we can have a blackout in New York City
without its citizens burning the place down for free TVs, I like representative
democracy just the way it is: largely out of our hands.

Two, you certainly can get involved if you like. Tired of seeing the slimy
liberals get away with murder and gut our tradition-rich culture? Run for
something. Get elected. Gain some real power. It can be done. Maybe you wont
ever be President, but even a cyncial asshole like me acknowkledges that theres
no diabolical conspiracy keeping honest and earnest regular folks from gaining
some power and influence. Its just that true power and influence requires work
and dedication and education and skill. You cant just argue in bars and consider
yourself qualified to lead the rest of us into battle, jerkoff.

If youre not willing to do that kind of work, youre still entitled to your
opinion. Just realize and accept that your opinion is fundamentally meaningless,
that your endless arguing over high matters is simply a way of fooling yourself
into believing that arguing in bars does make a difference, that simply
summoning the minor mental energy to have an opinion gives meaning to your life.
Then, go home, go to sleep, and let the real world get on with the work.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
ROACH MOTEL A-GO-GO
Save the Roaches! 
By Jeff Somers
========================================

Got death? Oh, those charming ad campaigns for Raid pest control products,
gleefully inviting us to attempt genocide on our peaceful neighbors. The noble
if unattractive roach seeks nothing except a warm, damp place to breed and our
table scraps. We respond with chemical warfare and hatred, which is pretty much
how humanity has responded to anything unattractive throughout their history,
and probably how well respond to first contact with the Reticulans, assuming
that the Reticulans turn out to be weak, technologically inferior pacifists with
moderate-to-moronic IQs. If first contact happens with The Empire or The Cylons
or some such, well probably fall back on all that diplomacy and awe-of-creation
crap, groveling at the Grand Moffs feet. If the Reticulans turn out to have the
combined firepower of, say, New Guinea, well probably subcontract Raid to wipe
them out cleanly and quickly.

The human streak of barbarism and violence which manifests itself in our
pest-control techniques is disturbing, to say the least, and makes The Inner
Swine wonder at the breathtaking arrogance of a human race which assumes well
outlive the roaches at all. Consider the continuing work of evolution, kids:
when the common Roach reaches the next stage of evolution and begins smoking
cigars and drinking beer, do you think itll forget what weve done to them over
the years?

Top Ten Species Choices to Replace Humans after we Blow Ourselves away:

10.   Apes 9.   Roaches 8.   Proto-Bacteria 7.   Animated Characters 6.  
Bannana 2000 Computers 5.   Holographic Projections 4.   Mutant Dogs 3.  
Cyberdine Systems Model T-1000s 2.   Killer Tomatoes 1.   Whatever is currently
incubating in my bathroom, which resists all manner of chemical and conventional
warfare, thus far

After World War Three, friends, its pretty likely the human race, if it survives
at all, wont be any match against whatever radioactive mutated insect or animal
life which rises from the ashes to take over, so wed better start treating our
fellow inhabitants a little better in the interests of diplomacy. Because one
thing Ive learned at work over the years is that the human race is doomed.

THERES SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE KIDS TODAY

In the morning, I wait for the train along with a million other yahoos going to
work. All the sane people are still asleep, or still out drinking. When the
train comes, everyone around me moves forward and fights tooth and nail to get
on the train. This is so they can have seats. The competition for seats is
vicious. Women, children, the elderly  -all are pushed and shoved in the berserk
rush for the tight, uncomfortable, temporary seats. I can only assume that these
minor victories are all they have. I stand. I really think some of these people
would kill for a seat. Hell, I dont even sit when an empty seats available, just
in case.

Its an amazing but true observation that, lacking anything else, people will
latch onto their jobs as both the underlying structure of their lives and the
affirmation of their existence. Most people dont have anything else, aside from
television, and so your job is often an instructive microcosm of human
pettiness, insanity, and just plain evil.

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN RACE I LEARNED IN MY CUBICAL

1. Humans will eat anything as long as its free. Doubt me? Go to your office
tomorrow and put out some free food and watch it disappear quicker than ice in
August. It could be green, slimy, and moving, and the voracious idiots in any
common office will eat it....as long as its free. I question the long-term
survival of any race that would gobble up poison as long as it cost them
nothing.

2. Humans know nothing about camouflage. Mine eyes have seen the horror of
purple satin pantsuits.....red pumps and green sweatpants.....black tights and
loose sweatshirts with cartoon characters on them....floral patterns and 
rhinestones and slacks. We dont blend, and when the super-evolved roaches open
fire well be sitting ducks.

3. Humans shit where they eat. If you doubt this for a moment, I invite you to
take a tour of any of the shared facilities at my Manhattan office. The kitchen
and bathrooms look like a gang of horny Orangutans swept through after getting
hopped up on poppy oil. You couldnt get me to drink a cup of coffee brewed in
that kitchen if you innoculated me and loaned me a radiation suit first, bwana.

4. Humans obey any memorandum that hits their desk with the right letterhead.
You could print a bunch up that said no one wears pants to work any more,
signed, your President and youd get a good percentage bareassed the next day. I
think if the ultra-evolved roaches swiped enough letterheads and sent out memos
which said Obey your insectoid masters! theyd get at least 50% compliance, right
off the bat.

5. Humans will think of anyone or anything they work with as their best friends.
All the proto-roaches have to do really is start showing up at the morning
meetings and making small talk. The lonely and desperate office-crawlers will
gladly latch on and think of their new coworkers as their newest bestest pals.
Once weve been infiltrated and compromised by these insect fifth columners, our
society will topple like a house of cards.

Its obvious to The Inner Swine that were all fucked, and that Nature will find a
way to replace us once our cancerous existence has been removed, for all these
reasons and more. My suggestion is to start treating your friendly roaches as
nicely as possible in preparation for their eventual radioactive mutation and
dominance, at which point your only hope as you cower in the bathroom will be
that the seven-foot Proto-Roach rummaging through your icebox remembers your
decency towards it long before and grants you leniency.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
The Friends of Kenny Starr
By Sean Somers
========================================

Four years ago, my brother Sean was sent with the Oinking Sow corporate credit
card to Washington D.C. dig up some good dirt and write us some articles with a
modicum of factual data and intelligence, two things missing from most other
Swine articles. A few months later I received a postcard from him which read
"Sell the house, sell the car, take the kids, I AM NEVER COMING BACK!!" The
Inner Swine Inner Circle does not take defections lightly, however, and Ken West
was asked to don his black fatigues once more. A few weeks ago a drugged and
unconscious Sean was delivered to my apartment by Ken and his team of NWA
commandos. I went through his pockets and found this article, the sum total of
Seans production during his stay in our nations capital.

If the latest news out of Washington is to be believed, Ken Starr may finally
have gotten his harpoon into Bill Clinton, albeit rather tenuously. As of this
writing Monica Lewinsky has testified to the Whitewater Grand Jury that she did
indeed have sexual relationship with the President and that he did discuss
"scenarios" with her that would allow them to cover up their relationship. She
did not apparently go as far as to claim that the President told her outright to
lie under oath and the President himself has not given his testimony (nor has
his legal team shown us his game plan) which is why the harpoon is not yet stuck
into Big Willies vitals. But hang on. Starr is pushing hard on the shaft now
that its in. Congressional Democrats are already taking that conspicuous step
back from their supposed leader.

There really isnt any point in going into the lurid details. Anybody who cares
already knows, anybody who doesnt know probably thinks Godzilla is a hit movie.
That this investigation is getting a lot more attention than the concurrent and
potentially much more damaging probe of campaign fundraising simply reflects the
fact that Starr appears to have a breakthrough and the well known truism that
even a whiff of sex seems to make anything fascinating. But what is really
interesting (at least after a cold shower) is not what the President has done
but why he may be impeached for it.

Suborning perjury is a crime and if it can be proven that he committed it the
President could and probably should be removed from office as no man should be
above the law. On the other hand Clintons crime involves the cover up not of
high crimes against the nation, nor of a scheme to defy the constitution but of
a sordid affair that three years from now or seven years ago might have been
conducted in a Motel Six. This after years of investigation is the best (or
worst)  Kenneth Starr can come up with. It does not speak well of Clintons
character or good sense (but then hardly anything about him does) but is it
worth paralyzing the government for a year?

To some it is. Since taking office in 1993, Bill Clinton has been accused  of
everything from drugrunning and murder to conferring with the little grey space
aliens that kidnap people from their bedrooms at night. That the more extreme of
these charges are absurd is conceded by even the most dogged of Wild Bills
pursuers but calls for and intimations of President Clintons impeachment have
been coming from certain quarters on the right since inaugural day. However true
the charge of suborning perjury is the fact remains that it was uncovered as the
result of a seemingly endless fishing expedition on the part of the independent
council and others. They have tried almost everything and yet despite the
gravity of the charges and accusations both Paula Jones and Whitewater remain
trapped in a kind of legal limbo despite Clintons periodic threats to turn into
a blubbering cornpone version of Nixon. Starrs current accusations are a far cry
from what he started with. It is rather like using dynamite to clear out an
infestation of mice. Mice are a problem, but dynamite?

Every President has had enemies but Bill Clinton has haters: people who it seems
cannot rest so long as he is president. This hatred reflects a deep cultural
rift in this country. It also reflects a certain deadening in traditional
politics. Under Clinton the differences between the two main parties on matters
of actual policy, never wide to begin with, have become so narrow that outside
of the Beltway and certain patronage circles it is largely a matter of brand X
versus brand Y. Clinton has built his success partly on a kind of Republicans
Light program, less government but without all those nasty prescriptions that
made Newt Gingrich the least popular man in America among people who vote.
Conservatives fume with rage at the man able to steal their best ideas without
having to take them to their unpopular conclusions. And as nobody cares about
foreign policy, the Republicans are left with Monica and her soiled dress.

But Dan Burton asking the President to come clean on National Television is
simple opportunism. It is a sign of how completely partisan the situation
actually is that the Republicans all speak of high crimes while nary a Democrat
has less than the utmost regard for the Presidents sterling character but the
core of the Get Clinton Brigade is not in congress. Rather it is disparate group
of conservative business men, religious activists and old enemies from Arkansas.
It is not a conspiracy as Mrs. Clinton would have it for while some of these
people are rich and influential enough to arrange a sinecure for our man Starr
at Pepperdine University, they are too loosely knit and too irrational in some
quarters to be a proper conspiracy. They are simply the most influential of a
great many people from all walks of life who, quite simply, hate Bill Clinton.

A few of these people are simply frustrated Reaganites, men who came of age
knowing no other president who are now amazed and outraged that the Republican
Revolution supposedly so final in 1980, 84 and 88 has been ended. This is
especially true on Wall Street where Clintons vaporous crimes are simply a cover
for the real outrage: how can all those idiots out in the farms and factories of
America not see the benefits of a truly free and untrammeled world market?

But the real Clinton haters have concerns that have nothing to do with
Congressional subcommittees or the supposed benefits of globalization. It is in
many ways irrational for its focus is not on what the President has done but on
who he supposedly is.

They are mainly Religious Fundamentalists, the sort for whom the word Christian
covers a much more narrow definition than simply being baptized into a church.
Although most Americans see themselves as conservative and religious and are no
doubt partly influenced by this group, the Fundamentalists themselves are ever
increasingly dismayed over the increasing cosmopolitanism of American life. The
difference can be summed up this way: Most Americans disapprove of homosexuality
but few want to deal with it by making it a police matter. In much of the South
efforts to strike down sodomy laws by which even a man and a woman married to
each other might be turned in by a snooping neighbor have been vigorously
resisted by Fundamentalists with the light of Jesus shining in their eyes.

In practice, Clinton has been a conventional and even conservative politician.
When still governor of Arkansas, he refused to commute the death sentence of a
man suffering from mental retardation, hardly the act of a bleeding heart
liberal. But to his enemies he represents the triumph of a dismaying cultural
rift. He is not only the first president in a long time not to have served in
the armed forces he is the first to have actively avoided military service. He
is also the first President to have admitted using illegal drugs at any time in
his life. And he has shown homosexuals greater solicitude than any previous
president. To the Fundamentalists with their third hand notions of life north of
the Mason Dixon and east of the Missippi this indulgent easygoing style of life
apparently smacks of the counterculture. Clinton has become the Poster Boy for
1968 and its evil influences: the Swinging Sixties President.

To give the Devil-Hunters their due, there is something shifty, distasteful and
self indulgent about Bill Clinton symbolized by his sagging gut and expensive
haircuts, suggesting a man too vain not to fuss over his looks yet too
undisciplined to really keep himself in shape. In addition there is his
relentless tacking to wherever the majority in the opinion polls stands. And let
us not get into his foreign policy, so clueless that it is clearly the work of a
good ole boy from Arkansas. But mediocrity has never been grounds for
impeachment. And moral rectitude has never been a prerequisite of office and if
histories of the French and Russian revolutions are taken into account it may
make for an excellent disqualification.

This scandal is in fact a symptom of two disturbing trends. The first is that
political debate in this Republic has shifted from the sort of bread and butter
and public order issues that can actually be dealt with by laws and legislation
to broad cultural issues that defy such solutions and thus fester. The second is
that ever since Watergate political factions have used a kind of "Government by
Indictment" to tarnish and hopefully topple their opponents in office.
Monicagate and the seemingly endless efforts to catch Clinton at something are
merely the culmination of this trend.

But as there are actual issues of pressing importance at present these trends
are especially disturbing and dispiriting. The nation has survived more mediocre
and randy Cheif Executives than it would care to admit; can it survive the
tyranny of The Independent Prosecutor?

--------- 
Editors note: Damn right moral rectitude is probably best left to the
dull and shiftless amongst us, our leaders have to be free to sin a little, baby
(unless you dont consider decisions like dropping A-bombs to be sins of some
sort).For those amongst my audience who are running right now to look up the
word "rectitude", I will sum up by saying: Sean is resting comfortably and may
make a full recovery, if the fucking HMO comes through with some cash.

========================================
*** FICTION ***
Let The Summer Come Again
By Jeff Somers
========================================

It was like this: I would wake up in a daze, sweaty and thickheaded and unable
to do anything except feel awful and stare up at the ceiling until I felt I had
the strength to get up. Id get out of bed and put on yesterdays clothes (which
had been yesterdays clothes before and likely would be again) and make myself a
drink, smoke a cigarette. I had two hours to go before Id leave for work. Id sit
in the fading dark and contemplate for a while before taking a shower. Id stare
out the window, or just at the wall. Whatever.

Then Id lean against the cold tiles in the bathroom while the hot water poured
over me and Id close my eyes and just breathe steam and sweat the night before
out of me in wheezy, shaking bursts. After a shave and some brushed teeth I
would look almost human as long as the mirror was steamed up and I wasnt paying
too much attention.

By the time I was out the door, sunglasses on and the heavy, wet air of bad
spring settling on me like a film, I was on my sixth cigarette and things were
normal again, or getting there. With every hacking cough and each wave of misery
I felt more and more like my old self, so recently left behind but not
forgotten.

At work, they crowded around me as if they liked me, which I knew to be false.
My hand wrapped around a grim coffee mug Id trade horror stories with them until
Sheila turned up; wed ignore each other and then Id go to my desk and grin at
Betsy, who sat in my cubicle and who didnt much like me, far as I could tell.
She would scowl at me a little and on occasion threaten my life, and usually we
would end up making rude comments to each other while working.

She was a dream, Betsy was. She was of average height with slim hips and
perfectly balanced breasts. She wore her brown hair down, glorious curls around
her shoulders, and she favored sweaters and long skirts. When she was out from
work I missed her terribly, as much for her perfume as for her smart remarks.

At lunch we would sit in the lounge and not talk. She would read a newspaper as
severely as possible, holding it tightly, her arms stiff, her eyes careful. I
never had any appetite at lunch, I ate simply to be where she was. We never
spoke a word.

After work I allowed myself to be borne forth by some of the vultures; we would
get drunk and argue for a few hours, sweating and spitting our words out with
flushed sincerity. When it got late we would slap each other on the back and
smile, walking listingly home clutching briefcases and sometimes singing songs.
I always had a bottle at home, I always had a few nightcaps, watching the news
or just the ceiling, thinking of Betsy and ways to win her. There werent any,
and I knew that.

The weekends were the worst.

Hours and hours of time, endless moments of solitude to struggle through. If the
weather was nice I would sit on a lawn chair in the back, sip a drink and smoke.
If the weather was bad I would move it all onto the front porch and sit there,
letting the rain coat the air around me, letting it lull me into zombie mode by
the sheer force of its monotony.

At night I sometimes had things to do, bland plans which were just variations on
the sit and drink theme. I hated them; I sat too much, I grew bitter and
belligerent and said mean and careless things my friends largely regarded as
highly humorous. I sat so much I wondered if my legs were beginning to atrophy,
I sometimes felt paralyzed when hunched on a bar stool alone surrounded by
friends. I would convince myself that my legs had died, that they had filled up
with tumors and whiskey, that I would live at the bar and joke with the regulars
for the rest of my life.

Sunday nights no one wanted to go out, so I would sit around and mix drinks in
my living room, watching TV. Even the bad shows were funny, by around nine
oclock.

Sometimes I got sick of TV and Id lie on the sofa staring at the ceiling again
and wonder what Betsy was up to. It made me feel better to picture her alone at
home, in her pajamas (for Betsy was the type to wear pajamas), watching TV. And
if I were to call her she would be happy to hear my voice, happy to hear any
voice, and we might talk.

I fantasized, sometimes, of quitting my job and moving somewhere else. The
reaction I would get would make it worthwhile. Those bunch of trapped bastards
would envy me, maybe hate me, and I would rub it in, be a bastard just for fun.
I had nightmares, sometimes, of driving in New Mexico or Utah or Arizona or some
such place, the sun high and the air clear. All you can hear is the engine and
the wind and my screams, because my hands are tied behind my back and the car is
swerving around insanely, speeding.

I take that vision to mean Im trapped, and I take it that way cheerfully. Being
trapped is a freeing experience.

At work again, I would stare around at people and wonder what they knew about
me. Did misery show? Was I a softly glowing dark star, a beacon to the drained
and dark, easy to spot in the bright and gauzy world of morning coffee and
flourescent lights. I wondered if I looked like a man who had done nothing for
so long he no longer knew what it was like to do anything.

I sat at my desk smoking and watching the paperwork piling up resentfully. If
anyone chose to, Id pass cynical quips with them until our teeth hurt from
grins, and then Id watch them walk away, jealous that they could.

Betsy was mad at me, genuinely angry, and I regarded her back with a lovers eye,
noting how the bra strap showed through her tight sweater, how her shoulders
moved as she worked. I must have been staring.

"What are you looking at?"

I blinked. It was the first time shed spoken to me all day.

"Just you."

"Well dont look at me like that."

I shrugged and turned away, swiveling to face my desk, which was piled high and
leering at me with late nights and terror. I considered the relative wisdom of
telling her I always looked at her like that, we all did, but I reconsidered. No
sense getting into a conversation, after all.

I slouched into lunch, careless. Lunch was at Langans down the street, where I
picked at a roast beef sandwich and swallowed four whiskey in sodas without
considering the relative wisdom of that. From then on, however, the day took on
a brighter tone, and I delighted in making my co-workers laugh, cheerful fellows
that they were. Even Betsys ice didnt bother me; it was persistent and
dependable, something to rest against, even if it froze me to death.

In TV shows me and Betsy would be hiding a burning passion beneath our
bickering, a burning passion revealed touchingly in one sweeps-week episode.
Tonight in TV Guide: Betsy and Mike reveal their true feelings when a blackout
traps them in an elevator. Part One of Two.

Riding the bus home that night I found myself thinking about the summer between
my sophomore and junior years of college, three or four months which have
swelled and brightened into the best of my life. As the night dragged itself
around and I buried another bottle, I went through those old, yellowed days
again, carefully, so as not to rip the brittle edges.

I remembered being nineteen and we had rented a house, and essentially any hope
of academic excellence had gone out the window. I think I was drunk pretty much
every day, various states of consciousness and in the end it was just one big,
happy blur. I felt it swelling up to take on the rough edges of the present, my
present blurring into the fog bound expanse of the past. I was blind, and I fell
asleep.

The next day I called in sick. I was a little green that morning, but I could
have made it in. Mainly I didnt care to endure eight hours of bone-creaking
nothing, empty conversations and people I didnt much care for in the first
place. I didnt want to talk shop and do lunch, I didnt want to tap listlessly at
my computer and nod off erect with my hands on the keyboard so no one would ever
notice. Even the cleaning crews at night would just dust me, like furniture.

I didnt realize I had quit until the afternoon, sitting on the couch in the
living room with the shades drawn against the sun and the radio on. I was still
in my underwear, wearing a bathrobe over it, just feeling my beard grow, and I
thought I could feel it all draining out of me. I could sense myself emptying,
and I knew it would take longer than one day, I knew I couldnt go back. I
considered calling them back, and then I gave up.

Peace descended on me. For the rest of the day and the day after that, I felt
nothing aside from a mild thirst and a general apathy. I ignored the phone,
television passed before me endlessly, I just smoked and drank to mark the
passing hours somehow.

The knock on my door was a shock; the queerly apathetic friends I had would
never show up out of nowhere. I listened to the insistent pounding for a few
seconds, and then wandered out past the kitchen. I stood before the door in
silent uncertainty for a moment, scratching at my whiskers and wondering when Id
installed that fourth lock.

"Mike, I know youre in there, so open the fucking door, okay?"

I reached forward and opened it. She was dressed the way I always saw her, she
must have come straight from work. The late afternoon light made her seem
diffuse, unreal.

"Christ, you look like shit. What the hell happened to you?"

I grinned. Without warning the bitterness fell away like shingles, thick stiff
plates of wasted time. And though I knew it was meaningless, though I knew it
was useless, I shrugged. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

========================================
*** POETIC BULLSHIT ***
10 Haikus About The Inner Swine
========================================

1.
eat Ramen Noodles
surviving on slave wages
happily greet death

2.
sliding doors of doom
these stupid fucks fight for seats
how I despise them

3.
dolts send me letters
complain about bad grammar
how I despise them

4. 
useless blue paycheck
eroding my self-respect;
I need more money for booze

5.
hairy nude cretins
ten hours a day at work 
internet surfing

6.
waking up pantsless
invisible spike through head
never drink again!

7.
life is meaningless 
just an existential hell; 
turn me on dead man

8. 
See Baby Levon 
Our own symbolic child 
stupid balloon boy

9.
beg them to subscribe 
they spend on Dave Mathews shows 
you heartless bastards

10. 
quit your complaining 
everyone is an asshole 
especially us

======================================== 
*** COMMENTARY *** 
American Wedding Confidential #6: Touch Me Im Sick 
========================================

Editor's note: This is the sixth in a series of articles about that peculiar
western tradition, the wedding. All the names have been changed to avoid being
beaten up by girls.

Weddings are ridiculous affairs. Putting aside the obvious hilarity of two
people in this day and age claiming to not only know themselves well enough to
make a reasonable lifetime commitment but also to know a completely different
person well enough to bet the ranch on, theres also the issue of the sheer
gluttonous spectacle of it all. The Wedding business is huge, weddings are
incredibly expensive...and why? So you can invite a bunch of mean-spirited
relatives, greedy ravenous friends you havent spoken to in a few years, and all
of their anonymous and bottomless girlfriends, boyfriends, domestic partners,
wives, husbands, and who knows what else, and then stuff them senseless? I dont
mind getting filled to the brim with watered liquor, rubber chicken and stuffed
mushrooms three or four times a year, but ask me if its necessary.

And you cant blame us, the lowing stampeding herd of guests youve invited. The
human race isnt very complex: put a feed in front of us and most of us are like
Boggies, we eat until were swallowed by an unexpected cloud of unconsciousness
and rushed to the hospital. You resent the fact that you spend $20,000 just so I
can draw a face on my beer gut and dance shirtless on a table while eating clams
and chugging champagne (all the while being cheered on by everyone except my
sobbing, red-faced date)? Then stop inviting me.

Ahem.

Earlier this year I was once again asked to pull out the old forest green suit
and cut a rug at a wedding, this time being a rent-a-date for my friend Laura,
who lives in South Carolina now and whom I dont see nearly often enough, mostly
due to my failure to travel south. A childhood friend of hers was getting
hitched over in Staten Island and as is often the case with our lost generation,
she needed a date. After exhausting her other options, she settled for me.

Im well known in the wedding business now, and upon learning that I was to
attend the reception hall hired three extra security people and restocked the
bar. Such is my power.

Laura warned me that there was going to be no expense spared at this soiree, so
I broke down and invested in a haircut a week before the festivities, to show my
good faith in looking my best for my date. Of course, this was one of Italo the
Barbers (who has been cutting my hair since I was four with a maintenance of
style and skill youve got to respect) $9 specials, which is to say: invariably a
disaster. So I showed up at Lauras house shined up like a new penny, except for
my hair, which seemed to be prepared for a different experience altogether
(possibly a rectal exam, possibly a murder attempt  -who knows what my hair was
thinking?). 

Laura didnt notice, however, as she was recovering from a bout of stomach virus
so disastrous shed been on IV fluids just the day before, which is to say she
was still too busy vomiting to notice whether I looked good or not. I suggested
that perhaps she was too ill to attend, but as she delicately locked herself
into the bathroom she waved me off and insisted that everything was fine. I
shrugged and went outside to spread plastic drop cloths over my cars upholstery,
just in case.

The wedding revived Laura somewhat, what with the brisk fresh air and the
spirited drive over (I think my driving is spirited because so many people are
moved to pray whilst in the car with me) and she greeted old friends
enthusiastically, and finally took notice of my disastrous haircut. She politely
ignored it, and me, for the rest of the ceremony, which was pretty long and dull
as weddings go, and involved an odd spot wherein the bride and groom wandered
off somewhere else entirely and left us all standing there in silence, wondering
what the hell was going on. I imagine the couple got quite a hoot out of that,
the bastards.

The reception, however, was Lauras undoing, as you might expect: its hard to be
at a well catered reception and not eat until you pass out, and Laura continued
to help herself to treats despite the mounting evidence that she shouldnt. I was
driving, and so only had one drink, which actually does nothing to improve my
surly and combative nature.  Upon our arrival we discovered that a nefarious
couple had taken two seats at our table, meaning that we wouldnt be able to sit
with Lauras brother and sister and their respective dates, with whom we had
forged a strong bond over stiff drinks and appetizers during the cocktail hour.
We wanted the couple to go sit at their own table, but nobody wanted a scene. We
men stood around with our hands in our pockets, unsure of what to do, while
Laura stalked off and caused a scene anyway. The offending couple were sentenced
to a less prominent table and glared at me all night. They could tell I was an
instigator, and blamed me. In truth, we men sort of avoided looking at the other
couple and hoped to god a fight didnt break out  -I didnt need the memory of
Laura standing over me, defending my honor, while I bled and whined. I have
enough of those sorts of memories.

Im a lover, not a fighter.

The reception was pretty typical, and except for an hallucinogenic moment in the
middle when the band played hard-rock versions of "Play That Funky Music" and
"Devil Went Down to Georgia" back to back (twenty minutes of my life Id
certainly like to have back) the only thing which marked the evening was the
fact that Lauras Brothers girlfriend kept disappearing for long stretches of
time. She would just wander off and leave the poor guy sitting at the table
alone, staring into space. In-between daring her stomach virus to attack, Laura
and I noticed her talking to various men during the evening, and I wondered if
tragedy was rearing its ugly head. The thought brought joy to my heart, and I
prepared for drama and angst gladly. Little did I know the only drama and angst
I was going to get was courtesy Lauras wayward gastrointestinal system.

At one point, Laura and I snuck out to have a cadged cigarette or two, standing
by the bathrooms in the lobby and gossiping about her brother. It was nice; I
dont see Laura much, and it occurred to me that maybe the ultimate purpose of
Weddings in my life is simply to get together with people I dont normally see.
Standing in the lobby with Laura, this seemed likely, and I wondered, privately,
if I would ever figure out a way to make money off of my skills as a
rent-a-date. I didnt mention this to Laura, knowing how easily I am
misinterpreted these days.

By the time the Venetian room was opened up, I could smell disaster in the air
but Laura couldnt resist, and an hour later we were leaving, a slightly green
Laura bravely staying awake for the whole ride to make sure I didnt wander into
the wrong direction entirely, which I almost managed despite her efforts.
Driving for me, especially when Im wearing tight, uncomfortable shoes, is a very
Zen experience. I just sort of pick a car and follow it, and hope it knows where
its going. This works better than you might imagine. As I dropped Laura off at
home and sped away, I thought that if nothing else I learned that sometimes you
just have to lay off the seafood.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY *** 
YOU MAY ALREADY BE A MORON 
Stupidity and Internet Spam 
By Jeff Somers
========================================

Everyone thinks they are smart. Maybe not Stephen-Hawking smart, but everyone
thinks they know how the world secretly operates, that they make their points
more concisely and with more wit than the rest of the rubes, and that they have
solutions to most of the worlds problems. Secretly, we all believe that were
superior. We love our friends and relatives, but we love them with the mushy
pitying affection reserved for the dimwitted and the hapless: were doing them
all a favor by wasting our immense intellect on their pathetic offerings. We
tolerate.

Or maybe thats just us here at The Inner Swine.

I can say without rancor or hateful intent that most of you who think youre
smart are most probably wrong. Incredibly wrong in many cases. The chances that
you possess an intellect that is above average are pretty low, actually,
hovering just above the chances that you are the New Messiah Child (a Messiah
Child grown fat on cheeseburgers and South Park reruns). Most of us substitute
trivia for understanding, sound bites for explanation, and wilting cynicism for
true intellectual comprehension (under the theory that expecting the worst means
never being disappointed). Very few of us truly know anything; most of us have
heard or read it from some other source and accepted it as gospel, regurgitating
the factoids and summaries at cocktail parties at strategic moments. After all,
when youre having drinks with morons a few facts go a long way towards making
you the resident scholar, and this is what most of us do on a daily basis.

Most of us, after all, come from general education backgrounds, which is best
summed up by that old phrase "jack of all trades, master of none". This fine
American Educational System we have here specializes in preparing us for office
drone work and such, but very rarely do any of our fun-loving students learn any
one subject well enough to discuss it at length. Oh, Im sure many of you think
you do, but youre also the idiots who keep Cliffs Notes in business, year in and
year out. Knowing a bunch of quotes, dates, or numbers does not mean you
actually understand anything, you know. Those of us with High School or BA
degrees have a lot of skills and a pretty decent broad knowledge of the universe
(i.e. we know that fire needs oxygen to burn, have some vague concept of what
the Law of the Conservation of Energy describes, and might even recognize 1066
as an important date in history) but its pretty doubtful that any of us could
discuss any subject outside our jobs and Pop Culture without resorting to
partially recalled factoids, urban legends, and downright lies to support our
largely specious arguments.

---------------------------------------- 
Jobs and Pop Culture 101 Being an expert at your job does not make you smart
----------------------------------------

I dont doubt that most of you are disagreeing with me heartily right now. You
have a highly complex job which you do very well in, you read lots of books,
youve traveled the world  -who the fuck am I to say youre not brilliant, or at
least above average? Well, Im just like you: so convinced of my own intellect
that I find it difficult to believe I might not be very smart, compared to the
truly intelligent amongst us. I have a job too, and while I am severely under
motivated here (please direct all comments on this subject to the Keep Jeff
Employed Campaign, c/o Cassie Moore) my job does require a specific skill set
and the ability to comprehend fairly complicated concepts. I read lots of books
(big long ones with small print and no pictures). I know that 1066 was the
Battle of Hastings. Does any of this make me smart? No. A bright monkey could be
trained to do what I do, and thats the case in most of our careers (only the
tragedy of anti-simian prejudice keeps our hairy brethren down, kids) -expertise
in a field is usually simply having repeated the same actions so often that you
do them with a heightened level of skill, precision, and speed. Accumulated
experience is not necessarily a measure of intellect. And I have to admit that
while I know what happened in 1066, I doubt I could adequately explain the ins
and outs of that year and how they affected the rest of the world. I could bluff
my way through such a discussion, but thats exactly what it would be: a bluff.
Most of us are unwilling to consider how often we bluff our way through
supposedly intellectual activities.

Our jobs are one half of the bullshit that convinces us of our smarts; Pop
Culture is the other half. Pop Culture is easy to get to know intimately; its
always surrounding us, enveloping our consciousness. Its easy to access and you
have to get in bed with a little of it if youre going to have a meaningful
surface exchange with any other human being, like the classic cliched icebreaker
Hey, what about those Giants? If youre going to make small talk youve gotta
learn some Pop Culture, and if youre going to ever function in society youve got
to make small talk, right? So there are a lot of us walking around with
encyclopedic comprehension of, say, Ren and Stimpy cartoons, or who have read
all the #1 New York Times bestsellers of the past 15 years (most of which are
pretty terrible books, IMHO BTW). In conversation the subreferences fly fast and
furious, until we are speaking almost completely in quotes and visual images
stolen from television, movies, plays, well-known books, and comic strips, and
our easy knowledge and endless recall of this omnipresent sludge grants us the
illusion of brilliance, forgetting, conveniently, that most of Pop Culture is
simplistic, transient, and fundamentally dumbed-down. You dont think so? Well,
watch some fucking South Park or go see Godzilla, kid. The Suck is alive and
well, and we are all loving it.

Loving the Suck, again: So there it is. Between our pride in being so freaking
good at our jobs and our immense store of useless Pop Culture knowledge we have
the tools to appear smart even though we still understand very little (how many
of us have mental images of world politics shaped exclusively by television
programs and movies? how many of us watched Braveheart and think they understand
the historical implications of Scotlands quest for independence? the Editor
shudders to think). We embrace this illusion. We like it this way  -we dont want
a cure, we run from the cure.

We should keep in mind that the universe has existed for a mind-boggling and
unquantified period of time, and the human race, while insignificant on a cosmic
scale, has thousands of years of history to sort through, and an understanding
of the universe that doubles in size just about every week. In short, its
impossible to know everything. Being able to bluff your way through a variety of
subjects is not a bad thing; its better, in my opinion, to have a faulty opinion
than no opinion at all, as long as youre willing to append that opinion in the
harsh light of subsequent facts  -but dont kid yourself. Being quick on your
mental feet doesnt make you smart. Being able to bullshit through historical or
scientific discussions is probably better than smiling a dim smile and giggling
nervously whenever high concepts are bandied about  -but dont confuse agile
bullshitting as some perverse form of intellect.

Gaining legitimate, first-hand understanding of how the world (both societally
and scientifically) works takes time, effort, and a lot of really dull reading.
Few of us care to put that kind of effort into it, and The Inner Swine takes
that one step further: we maintain that life is too short. Some of us were born
to contemplate Bubble Theory, some of us were born to publish zines. Figure out
your bailiwick and BS the rest, we say. Just dont get too impressed with
yourself just because you can remember the names of the Wonder Twins from the
League of Justice  -it doesnt make you smart. Neither does this Zine, article,
or sentence. But Im glad to pretend it does.

You know what definitely doesnt make you smart? Electronic mail.

---------------------------------------- 
SPAM: Its Not Just a Mysteriously Tasty Luncheon Material Any More 
Why The Inner Swine Hates Morons with Email
----------------------------------------

Theres an old saying about needing a license to do just about anything
relatively simple but not needing one for the immensely complex job of
parenting: every angst-ridden kid whos ever wept because their family seemed
like a lifelong therapy curse knows the mantra. Its the sort of compact saying
the nice folks at Hallmark would love to put in their cards. I have a different
spin on it now that Ive outgrown dull childhood angst: you need a license or at
least some sort of professional experience to affect my life in many other ways,
but any moron with a computer can get an email address. Once in possession of
that simple bit of communication technology, any moron can then email me
anything they come across.

Email has become the bane of my life.

Used to be if you wanted to communicate with someone, there was a little effort
involved. There was a pro and a con to this, of course: pro, the communications
were usually high quality, with some thought and energy put into them, con, the
communications usually came much less frequently, due to the effort. Now, email
has a pro and con, too: pro, its really easy and inspires more frequent contact
between friends and family. Con: the fucking spam, man. The fucking spam.

Spam as The Inner Swine defines it is any piece of email that satisfies one or
all of these conditions: a) it tries to sell you something, b) it is a chain
letter of any sort, c) it repeats spurious bullshit presented as fact simply
because it was written down. Im getting so much spam these days my sodium levels
are topping the scales and I am often in danger of popping a blood vessel,
staring pop-eyed at the screen, purple-faced and raging. The fucking spam, my
friends, is evidence that people on this godforsaken planet are largely unaware
of their role in this musical called Thats Life! And should be muzzled and
exempted from the usual first-amendment rights as soon as possible. You cant
yell "Fire!!" in a crowded theater, kids, and you sure as hell ought not to be
able to mail me crap like The National Cancer Institute Will Donate One Cent for
Every Email You Send to This Address or Please Help Little Jimmy Get Into The
Guinness Book Of World Records For Receiving The Most Emails or, lord help me,
those fucking Value of a Friend poems.

The problem, of course, is the ease of email. Anything easy is usually abused,
misused, and generally fucked up by the general population, and email is no
exception. People get some sappy sad email about little Wanker dying of Leukemia
and its sooooo easy to click "forward" and mail it to an entire group of their
friends with about three clicks of the mouse, which is about the red line on
mental energy for most people. In the emotional moment of reading about the poor
dying Wanker, its hard to resist the impulse to save the Wanker! Whats the harm
of a few emails, after all? And those urban legends, those stories about women
almost getting killed by a helpful stranger changing their tires, those supposed
news clippings  -whats the harm? And those heartwarming poems about friend and
those chain letters which wish you all the best of luck and all you have to do
is mail it on to 600 fellow morons who will then mail it to thirty-six million
more morons until everyone in the fucking universe has received this fucking
asinine email three times over and has blown their brains out rather than face
reading it again, the entire population of the world lying face down in their
keyboards, smoking guns in one hand and their mouse in the other. Except for
those tribes in South America and Africa who have not yet moved into the modern
world, and who probably wouldnt notice that the entire modern world had
suicided, except every now and then when one of the tribesmen would ask how come
those faggy white men dont come around no more?

Whats the harm? Maybe none. I can certainly delete an email faster than I hang
up on telemarketers, these days. As a matter of fact, I see that Forwarded
notice in the address and I am like Harry Callahan with the delete button. What
I want to know, however, is why people think they are doing anything good by
forwarding these fecal emails. Would you conference call twenty-seven friends
across the world with the story of the little dying Wanker? Would you conference
call them with the Friends Poem? Would you write them each a letter explaining
how the National Cancer Institute needs their postcards? Of course not. Why?
Because it would take days, cost thousands. Email is so easy people are chucking
their common-sense boundaries and just clicking clicking clicking and as a
result the world is filling up with this invisible email crap: the fucking spam.

As a result, 95% of the email I get, at work or at home (no joke) is complete
and utter bullshit. Its either pornography come-ons, other sales pitches, or my
friends sending me chain letters and bullshit. 95%! Were living in the
Information Age? More like the Disinformation Age.



Another part of the problem is the fact that we have been trained to believe
anything which is written down in an official-looking way. Twenty years ago you
could usually read anything that someone took the time to print on a national
level and have reasonable confidence that at the very least it was a sincere
report. These days, everything on the net is on a national scale. Its all
standardized, it all looks the same, and the origins of the posting or email are
usually obscure and difficult for those of us without deep computer/Internet
knowledge to fathom. Add in anonymous servers, free email accounts which require
the equivalent of a hand over your heart for ID confirmation, and you see how
impossible it is to verify the source of any of the billion and one rumors
fermenting on the net on a daily basis.

Why then would anyone believe a single goddamn thing emailed to them? Possibly
because the bullshit usually gets emailed to them by a close friend or
colleague. Which in turn was passed on by a good friend of theirs, and so on,
backwards until its origin, lost in the mists of time and anonymous servers. By
the time your good friend mails it to you, no one knows where the hell it came
from, but you trust your friend, so you accept it as truth, which is a really,
really dumb thing to do. No one questions these bullshit emails, and as a direct
result, they end up in my mailbox.

Theres nothing I can do about the sales pitches generated by robot harvesters,
or (apparently) about America Online selling my email address to spammers. I
continue to hope that my friends and colleagues will realize that respected and
established charities do not solicit emails from the entire country, that no
organization is going to donate money based on emails received, that theres no
way to keep track of these things anyway, that there is no regulatory or
watchdog organization keeping tabs on the Internet, that the Internet is not a
news organization. At present, it is a loose confederation of corporate
interests, academic research, and loose cannon gossip-mongers who wouldnt know
the truth if it fell on them and crushed them into an unrecognizable jelly (I
hope Matt Drudge gets killed, I really do). The truth is not out there. Humor:
fine. Jokes: great. The recipe for Neiman Marcus cookies? They taste great. The
story is 100% bullshit.

So, do us all a favor and resist the urge to forward every piece of bull to
everyone you know. Consider the possible truth and relevance of so-called news
clippings, the crass and tasteless nature of the Little Wanker stories, the
juvenile annoyance factor of the chain letter. You can of course access a lot of
legitimate information on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Usually this
means you can also say you obtained it from some URL or other, where it can be
verified, which is Latin for filtering out the bull. I love emailing my friends
and getting emails back, and I love doing research (i.e. finding nude photos of
Bea Arthur) on the web. Nothing wrong with it.

Except the fucking spam.

========================================
*** MISSION STATEMENT *** 
How to Tell if Youre a Swine 
By Your Editor, Jeff Somers
========================================

In todays confusing world there comes a time in everyones life when they seek a
philosophy, a binding center of thought, a purpose and reason to the universe
they can swallow without gagging too much. Some people return to their abandoned
childhood religious roots, sheepishly showing up at church or temple and
standing in the back, hoping no one from the old neighborhood sees them. Some
join cults or pursue other incredible theories, telling their friends with a
straight face that we are just the fleshy avatars of ancient spacefaring aliens,
or somesuch. Others stay away from the spiritual altogether, and seek the truth
of their existence through disdain, violence, and scathing verbal abuse.

That last bunch would be us: The Inner Swine.

Every now and then people ask me what, exactly, constitutes a Swine, as in The
Inner Swine. Well, to be honest, I suppose no one is asking me that. Unless you
count the persistent and varied voices which speak to me, privately, throughout
my day. Which I dont, because then I would be crazy. But the question remains:
what the hell do we mean when we prattle on about swine and pigs et cetera. Were
more than just a cranky editor who likes to vent his eternal frustrations on
paper while referring to himself in the plural, baby  -believe it or not The
Inner Swine is a coherent concept, a philosophy of life, a nonaddictive pain
killer and great place to meet chicks.

Once thats established, however, one wonders who, exactly, qualifies as a Swine.
People wandering the streets, muttering, wondering: am I a Swine? Are you? I
dont know. But I can tell you how to figure it out. If you can read good english
and add small sums in your head, use the following guidelines and decide if
youre a Pig or not, bwana.

Being the Inner Swine means

1. Being Self-interested: when you hear about family deaths, is your first
concern inheritance monies, sexually available grieving widows, or your share of
the funeral costs? Do the triumphs and succeses of others make you worry about
having to contribute to a celebration fund? Do you get a warm and jolly feeling
when co-workers get canned? Then you may be a Pig. The Inner Swine is not only
fundamentally self-interested, it believes that all humans are thus. If you
disagree, The Inner Swine believes you are kidding yourself in order to make
yourself feel good about your pathetic existence, which is the ultimate
self-serving bullshit belief system.

2. Giving in to your baser desires: would you screw your best friends spouse if
he/she were drunk enough one swarthy evening? Do you buy innocent young women
drinks in bars hoping to take advantage of them? Do you conveniently forget
small debts to your friends and family members? Have you ever stolen appliances
you covet from your elderly mother? Your swinishness is almost certain. The
Inner Swine believes that our basic urges, the ones which tell us to do
everything which is against the law, "immoral", or generally frowned upon (i.e.
public urination) are really the natural drives of our existence and therefore
are perfectly natural to pursue. Trying to tow societys line and walk the
straight and narrow is unnatural, in our opinion, and is a lane tread only by
fools.

3. Ignoring sentimental, fearful faith: was the last time you were in a church
during the Reagan administration? Is the longest prayer youve uttered in the
past ten years the exclamation "Jesus Fucking Christ!"? Do people with true
belief in their eyes make you belligerent and humorless? Does the idea that we
are anything but a monumental and ultimately meaningless accident fill you with
contemptuous mirth? Then you might as well roll around the trough, Pigs, because
youre one of us. The Inner Swine recognizes religious belief for what it is: a
fearful and determined ignorance of the facts of our existence. If there is a
god, he can blow us. We couldnt care less.

4. Disliking just about everyone: do you make up false names at parties when
introduced to new people? Have you ever given out an incorrect phone number on
purpose? Do you fill your idle moments in mean-spirited discussions of the
faults and humorous lackings of those around you? Do you commonly refer to
people you are acquainted with as "freaks"? Then you have a curly little tail on
your ass, baby, cause youre a Swine. The Inner Swine regards the rest of the
human race with angry amusement: we hate you all. We hate ourselves, too. Our
motto: Everyones an Asshole, Especially Us.  It sounds miserable, but its
actually quite enjoyable.

Perhaps you now understand what were all about, but still cant decide if youre a
Swine or not. Or perhaps this Zine is now cheerfully burning in your waste
basket; I get enough hate mail to believe that, usually from the Holy Rollers
who like to inform me that my Bungalow on the Lake of Fire is made up and
waiting for me. If you require further guidance, take this simple quiz: three
out of five answers in the positive and you might as well be writing for this
rag.

1. If you were to witness a murder, would you report it immediately? As opposed
to broaching the subject of blackmail, or assuming that the victim deserved it
and staying out of it completely. The Inner Swine believes that our societys
"justice" is a fine mechanism for keeping the proles in line, but we avoid
having it apply to ourselves as much as possible.

2. When you find a twenty-dollar bill on the floor or if you receive change for
a twenty when you paid with a ten, do you quietly walk away and pretend nothing
has occured? The Inner Swine fervently believes there is no overall intellect,
order, or justice to the universe, and that we all go to the same place when we
die, regardless of our conduct while alive: worm stomachs. Without punishments,
might as well enjoy the minor fun the random cosmos spins out to us.

3. When insulted and treated harshly, do you find yourself warming up to the
attacker? The Inner Swine respects people who refuse to give in to simpering
politeness and who are willing to lash out with the unreasoning rage we were all
born with. This is why we love Karen Accavallo. We respect anger and enjoy being
insulted. The more you insult us, the more we want to spend time with you.
insult us enough and we start hitting on you.

4. When you witness an injustice or a ridiculous bureaucratic snafu, do you
ignore it and satisfy yourself with secret knowledge of your superiority? The
Inner Swine despises idiots who feel compelled to share their opinions on all
manner of subjects, who choose to waste their brief time on this earth in
pointless pursuits of "justice" and "change". Let these morons write their
letters, organize their protests, and let us get on with the busy work of
ignoring them, we say.

5. When people tell you that youre full of shit, do you smile and agree with
them, with absolutely no rancor? Good for you. Belly up to the trough, kiddo,
youre one of us.

Disclaimer: No one was hurt in the writing of this screed, except for the
occasional small animal we ate for sustenance whilst writing.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
SUCK, INC. 
Beer and Lifestyle Music Irritating The Editors Delicate Skin 
By Jeff Somers
========================================

1. The Final Cut and the frayed ends of sanity.

When I was eighteen my freshman year roommate at college once overdosed on
self-pity and Stoli, collapsing into his bed to mourn the fact that some chick
down the hall didnt love him, and I was subjected to six or seven hours of The
Final Cut by Pink Floyd. The song, not the album. On repeat play. For seven
hours.

I woke up at 3am and found the song still repeating, my roommate passed out in a
soft cocoon of darkness, molting into The Hapless Boy. The Final Cut is about
suicide, its a song about wanting to kill yourself and not having the guts to do
it, its a song about holding the razor to your wrist and hating yourself even
more than usual because youre too scared to push down and rip open your veins.
Its a song about intense self-loathing. I woke up and realized Id been sleeping
with that sort of depression all around me, filtering into my defenseless
subconscious. I pretty much blame every bad moment Ive had since on the damage
inflicted on me by that experience.

Still, every time I hear The Final Cut these days I immediately flash back to
1989 and re-live the experience. I can taste the stale-cigarette taste of our
dorm room, I can hear the muted tones of Roger Waters whining about how being a
huge rock star wasnt making him happy, I can hear the nasal breathing of my
roommate, a year or so removed from an emotional breakdown and depressed as all
hell. Thats the power of music, it connects to all our senses and weaves them
into an indelible mental tableau we can revisit any time we hear the song. This
power can be used for good: Ill always remember camping in the woods when I was
thirteen, having a blast just before puberty really ruined me, whenever I listen
to The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden. Or it can used for evil: the
aforementioned Final Cut fiasco.

These days, of course, that power is most often used for evil, and in
increasingly regular outbursts; we call them commercials.

2. Birds do it, Bees do it, even Too Much Joy sucks a little corporate dick now
and then.

"Shes so beautiful, I swear Id sleep with her brother." - Too Much Joy, "King of
Beers"

Im not the type to complain, idolize, or feel betrayed by the morons whose
tuneful hootings I find pleasing to the ear. In other words, I dont look towards
rock bands for salvation or education. If the people who enjoy, say, Sting or
Bonos brand of music think those idiots can teach them about seven-hour orgasms
or how the world should be, bully for them. Me, Im happy if my fellow house apes
manage to amuse me momentarily with a song.

Still, I was kind of surprised to discover last year that Too Much Joy, official
band of The Inner Swine and soundtrack to mine own interior monologue, had
recorded anonymous commercial jingles for beer companies. Not years ago, to feed
their starving children, but recently, just to make some fast bucks. Theyre not
big and popular enough to sign a huge endorsement deal, so I didnt hear WERE TOO
MUCH JOY SINGING OUR SONG "KING OF BEERS" FOR BUDWESIER, THE REAL KING OF BEERS!
They just got paid to record some punky tunes, the advertising agency believing
that a real rock band would sound more like, well, a real rock band than hiring
some studio hacks who write commercial music all day and probably daydream about
blowing up federal buildings while they do so. It was anonymous and
unembarrassing, but it happened, and it underscores the fact that music can be
used by the Darth Vaders of the world to capture our imagination and put it,
screaming, into a small windowless room wallpapered with advertisements.

The practice of using a popular piece of pop music is as old as the hills, but
recently its become sort of....creepy, if you ask me. Years ago I used to hear
"Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone and I would imagine all sorts of
things, depending on where my mind was that day. Now, all I can imagine are
Toyotas, speeding around closed roads, driven by professional drivers. I used to
be an Everyday Person. Now Im not  -wait! I own a Toyota! But its a 1987 and I
certainly wasnt humming Sly and the Family when I bought it from my mechanics
cousin, so it doesnt count.

The evil doesnt quit there, the tendrils keep worming through the cracks without
surcease of sorrow, kids; its not just that the bastards are replacing whatever
mental images we come up with when we hear music with images of cars, of
burgers, of life insurance  -whatever. Its also as if some evil sorcerer had
raised the freaking dead and assembled them in your town square, where they sing
old rock tunes and entice you to purchase Whoppers. This practice of using
well-loved songs in advertising doesnt just stick unwanted visuals in your head,
it also brings up your memories associated with that song, your feelings and
impressions, and associates them with the product. So there you are eating a
whopper, humming some old Motown tune, and you suddenly burst into tears,
thinking about all those old friends from the neighborhood. And then you lick
the grease-type product leaking out of that deathburger and think to yourself:
this is the single greatest hamburger Ive ever eaten.

Cha-ching!

3. Satans Mood Music

As with anything else in this universe, the more subtle something is the more
powerful it becomes  -a fact that the soul-deficient cretins who make up the
entertainment industry know full well, and use to their advantage as much as
possible. Commercials as such are pretty obvious and while I cant get Toyotas
out of my head whenever I hear "Everyday People" I at least know why this shit
is happening to me and can figure out who to blame: Toyota. What is really
ominous is the way product-placement and synergy in the entertainment industry
has become such an exact science. Years ago the movies didnt show brand names,
they created generics for things like beer, cigarettes, etc. Nowadays,
corporations pony up a lot of cash to have their products plugged quietly in
movies, so when you see Harrison Ford sucking on a Budweiser or Jennifer Aniston
fondling a Diet Coke can, theres a reason, pigs: cash, and lots of it. So if you
fall in love with some movie star in a great movie, theres a chance youll
transfer that love to whatever products they were using in the film  -sad, but
possible.

Consider then the powerful combination of a well-made movie, an emotion-stirring
pop song, and careful product placement. Someone deep in that murk you call a
brain, connections are being made: the emotional response you get from the story
connected to the mood brought on by the song connected to the brand of jeans the
star was wearing when his art touched you, if only briefly. Suddenly youre not
just remembering a movie, youre remembering what amounts to a subtle, hidden
commercial, every time you hear a certain song  -possibly a hit song from a hit
movie soundtrack, played approximately 7000 times a day by our friendly crap
whore stations in this country (Big Smile!). Imagine if the radio John Cusack
held up to play "In Your Eyes" in Say Anything had had a huge TOSHIBA label on
it, and you get the idea. Does this really work? I dont know. It pisses me off
to no end that it even exists, however. I want the music that I like to be my
personal soundtrack, not an endless parade of marketing strategies. The
bastards.

In their desperation to squeeze more money out of us, everything is becoming
fair game for advertising. Its everywhere, on buses, on sidewalks, in urinals.
Urinals! There I am, drunk as an Irish cop on payday, taking a piss in some dive
bar where nearby an older gentlemen has hunkered down for a quick, refreshing
snooze, and I stare down into the porcelain and the fucking plastic doohicky
that, I dont know, filters the piss before it infects the water supply  -and
printed on it is a beer advertisement. Jesus Christ, is this really what we
wanted? Every blank space in the universe covered in advertising? Are they gonna
start burning messages onto the moon, now? You go out and hold hands on a cool
spring night, sit on the lawn and stare up at the full moon....which has EAT AT
ARBYS printed on it in huge block letters.

If this keeps up, everything you utilize, experience, live in, ride in, or piss
on will have advertising connected to it, and everything will be one huge
subconscious mind-fuck. As far as I can tell, it all started with those Reeses
Pieces in ET: The Extraterrestrial. Spielberg, the fuck, I should have known.

Fuck it. Even The Inner Swine runs ads, we are no saints and we really cant
judge anybody for trying to make a buck. We can be sad for the direction our
society takes, and we can pause for a moment (usually while taking a piss in
some dive bar on payday) and ponder the cheapening of everything by advertising,
and the useless pricks who are puking it out into the world with breathless
arrogance and destructive force.

Fuck em. They might sell the morons a lot of beer and $200 sneakers, but I
refuse to give a shit. I buy a lot of beer, but my sneakers cost $30, so call it
a push.

The only thing we can do about this is be aware. The worst thing anyone can do
is let this life wash over them in some incomprehensible wave and never think
about it. You cant win, youll never triumph, life is just a meaningless
existential hell  -but maybe, just maybe if we pay enough attention we might
figure something out, a small piece of the whole, and while I strongly suspect
the whole would frighten and confuse us, I think figuring it out would be pretty
cool, for a moment.

========================================
*** COMMENTARY ***
A VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE INNER SWINE 
by Jeff Somers
========================================

Recently I have gotten over two letters requesting information on how The Inner
Swine is produced. Well, that of course isnt exactly true: one letter was
written in crayon and was really just a collection of profanities I interpreted
as a request for information of this sort, and the other was a fourteen-page
missive written on Holiday Inn stationary requesting naked photos of Misty
Quinn, Karen Accavallo, and Ken West. This I also interpreted as a request for
information. I have also provided the photos, naturally.

The common reader has no idea how much work and energy goes into a typical issue
of The Inner Swine. The lazy bastards just sit on their couches at home,
fingering the remote and watching Jerry Springer reruns until the mail brings an
issue magically to them. Then they read it during various visits to the toilet
and usually write me nasty emails ridiculing my grammar, interests, style, and
appearance. They think these issues grow on trees!

Nothing could be further from the truth. Theres a lot of blood, sweat and
illegal chemicals in every issue, contributed during a three month odyssey which
begins the day after I mail off the previous issue. This day is known
internationally as Jeffs Day of Binge Drinking as I celebrate the finale of yet
another issue with several dozen rounds of fermented Plum juice made at home in
my bathtub (that extra special ingredient is me!) followed by realistic
hallucinations and my traditional attempt to jam my head in my toilet. Once I
actually succeeded. The EMS guys were pretty amused. That is, until I vomited on
them.

After Jeffs Day of Binge Drinking the regular production process begins. In
order to explain the complex majesty of creating an issue of TIS, lets examine a
detailed timeline of how this very issue, 4(3) September 1998, came into your
hot little hands.

PRODUCTION TIMELINE FOR SEPTEMBER 1998 ISSUE (OR: Three Months to Glory!)

June 2, 1998: Nursing hangover June 3, 1998: Nursing hangover June 4, 1998:
Nursing hangover June 5, 1998: No memory of events

1. THE WRITING PROCESS

June 6, 1998: Purchase supplies for grueling creative hell to come: Twinkies
Family Pack, Six 2 liter bottles of Birch Beer, twelve cartons of cigarettes,
two fifths of Jack Daniels, one gallon of distilled water, one box of Depends
Adult Undergarments, six randomly selected girlie magazines, one live chicken,
and a dictionary of some sort.

June 7, 1998: Refer to previous issue of The Inner Swine to ascertain what
ridiculous subject I chose for the next theme and editorial, not that anyone
notices, or cares. Scratch head repeatedly wondering what the hell I was
thinking when I came up with that dull topic.

June 8, 1998: Sit down at computer to write editorial. Spend thirteen hours
playing Duke Nukem 3d instead.

June 9, 1998: Sit down at computer to write editorial. Get distracted by first
bottle of Jack Daniels.

June 11, 1998: Wake up in Rhode Island with someone elses pants on.

June 12-14, 1998: Nursing hangover.

June 15-30, 1998: Whereabouts unknown, memory unreliable. I have a matchbook
from The Huxton Motor Lodge in Akron. Put this under the heading of "research".

July 1-6, 1998: Celebrate the Fourth of July with therapeutic cocktails. Write a
few brilliant revelations on cocktail napkins, for the editorial. Later on
suffer from temporary blindness from drinking homemade liquor.

July 7, 1998: Swear off the booze. Spend day shivering.

July 8-12, 1998: Rats oozing out of walls, flies the size of seagulls invade,
have a long conversation with a sewer rat in a smoking jacket.

July 13, 1998: Take up drinking again out of self-defense. Locate cocktail
napkins with brilliant ideas. Only one that is even readable says "The cheese is
burning!". Decide to start fresh.

July 14, 1998: Sit down at computer to write editorial. Spend thirteen hours
playing Duke Nukem 3d instead.

July 15-16, 1998: Wake up at 5am inspired, sit down and write straight through
evening into next day. After 36 hours at keyboard, I have a few hundred pathetic
words which amounts to a weak, five page article as my cornerstone for the new
issue. I decide it is brilliant. (See editorial on page 5 of this issue)

July 17, 1998: After getting some honest criticism on the new editorial, I check
the Holdover File for old articles rejected from earlier issues. All I find are
more cocktail napkins. One has "Socks with eyes!" scrawled on it.

July 18, 1998: Karen Accavallo calls me and promises to supply at least 30 pages
of material for next issue, claiming that she has several brilliant articles
mapped out in her head. Seeing that half the issue is already full with this
contribution, I head off to happy hour.

July 21, 1998: Having slept in the Port Authority bus station the night before
covered in own sick, I arrive home to find my pockets stuffed with more cocktail
napkins. One reads "Vinegar jellybeans!" I soak in a tub of ice water for rest
of day, and almost drown myself.

July 22-31, 1998: I go off on spiritual journey into the New Jersey wild,
searching for my lost soul. I contract some virus from odd purple berries and
become a one man celebration of bodily fluids. As I am lost in the wild I assume
I am going to die, and decide to write a will and testament. I only have
cocktail napkins to write this on.

August 1, 1998: I am discovered by some teenagers, who inform me that I am only
a few hundred feet from the highway. Then they jeer me, and steal all my stuff,
except my cocktail napkins. As I walk to the highway, I find my last will and
testament makes no sense. Apparently I have left Karen Accavallo my collection
of Go-Go Boots, but I dont own any Go-Go Boots.

August 2-4, 1998: Shamed by my recent foibles, I force myself to write an
article for the new issue. What results is three pages about why I hate
everyone. I decide its been done, and thank god Karen is supplying me with all
that material.

August 5, 1998: My birthday.

August 28, 1998: I awaken in my bedroom with no memory of the previous three
weeks. My apartment is clean and orderly and all my bills have been paid, my
laundry done and my dishes clean and stacked. I am clean-shaven and feeling fit.
But have no conscious memory of my birthday or the days which followed. I
realize that I have three days to produce the magazine. I check my machine and
find a message from Karen, who complains bitterly that I did not give her enough
time to write and tells me that she will not write anything for me.

August 29-31, 1998: Fueled by coffee, nicotine, black beauties and pornography,
I write for 45 hours straight about anything which enters my mind. I even manage
500 words on pubic hair. By the end I am shaking and sweating, hunched painfully
over my keyboard. I estimate that I have just barely 55 pages of material.

August 31, 1998: I read my stuff again after a bath and a nap. Its terrible. I
call an elderly Hungarian man I know and purchase 20,000 words of his psychotic
rantings and decide to pass it off as my own. Its worked before. Its how I
graduated college.

2. THE COMPOSITION PROCESS

September 1-3, 1998: In a 72-hour Pagemaker marathon, I finish off the second
bottle of Jack Daniels and all my cigarettes, flowing WordPerfect text files. I
discover that the issue is only 43 pages long. Another five hours of playing
with the leading and kerning brings it up to 60 pages. I crawl into bed and then
realize with a start that Im at work and Ive just laid down on the floor of my
cubical. I cannot discern a heartbeat. Apparently I have been fired.

3. THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS

September 4-5, 1998: After a brief rest period, I break out the trained monkeys
and circus midgets.

4. THE DISTRIBUTION PROCESS

September 6, 1998: I sell a few pints of blood and semen for postage money, and
mail this fine issue right to your dismal hovel. The postal workers are mean to
me. One kicks me in the ass as I exit the post office.

September 7, 1998: Jeffs Day of Binge Drinking.

As you can see a lot of work goes into every issue, and aside from the medical
and postage costs those monkeys and circus midgets dont come free, which
explains why I am always begging people to subscribe to this zine. The physical
demands on your beloved editor are intense, as well, as you cant drink as much
as the pressure drives me to and live, usually, although I am setting the record
anew every day.

I hope this has answered all those nagging questions my many fans have had
concerning how this amazing creation comes to be every three months. If not, at
least it has used up four pages in this issue, which is certainly as important.
Until next time, keeping buying me drinks!

========================================
*** FICTION *** 
Jeffs Ongoing Fugue of Pain 
An Illustrated History of My Life 
By Jeff Somers
========================================

WELL, Pigs, its come to this, has it: scraping the bottom of the BS barrel, I am
now going to stop making up malicious and leeringly inappropriate tales about my
compadres and business associates and start making up such tales about myself.
Weve reached the end of the road, kids. I might as well crawl all the way into
the bottle and wait for the Armageddon, which, with the appearance of Culture
Club on the concert circuit once again, is almost assured to occur soon. Very
soon.

----------------------------------------
PART ONE:  in which I eat dogs and become acquainted with Jesuit cruelty. 
----------------------------------------

Where to start? I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey to an Irish-German family
of thirteen: six brothers, five sisters, two parents. Only four survived the
great bratwurst famine of 1974, two of them being my parents, who mourned the
deaths of my siblings by dumping the surviving kids in private school and taking
a cruise around the world. In private school my brother Yan and I learned to
sing songs from The Sound of Music and tap dance, skills which have saved my
life on more than one occasion. After the cruise, my parents went on an extended
tour of Europe, from which they have yet to return.

As a result, Yan and I returned from the 1981 semester at school to find the
house abandoned. A pack of wild, rabid dogs had broken through the screen door
on the back porch and made it their home, and my poor brother Yan was mauled
quite badly before I could Tap the dogs to death. I set about nursing Yan and
scavenging our ancestral home for foodstuffs and potable water. It was, after
all, a long summer. We survived it by eating carefully salted dog meat and
drinking rainwater which had so much lead in it I went temporarily color blind
in August. When Yan had regained enough of his strength, we set about repairing
our ancestral home and plundering my fathers abandoned stocks of pornography.
The summer passed quickly, then.

In the fall we matriculated into high school. Our parents maintained a long arm
and enrolled us in St. Peters There But For the Grace of God Academy, which was
a pseudo-religious-slash-military establishment stressing Latin and
self-mutililation. We awoke one fine September day to find the ancestral home
surrounded by Jesuit Commandos, who piled us into an armored truck along with
several other frightened boys. Yan and I cheered our fellow kidnap victims by
singing The Sound of Music (Yans voice indistinguishable from Julie Andrews) and
we plotted a brisk escape from the truck; but once the rear doors were thrown
open Yan and I were inexplicably ratted out by our fellows. My brother and I
entered St. Peters as prisoners, and spent our first weeks there being beaten on
a daily basis by a burly priest named Father Hump, until we could speak perfect
Latin, although we could no longer remember our own names.

St. Peters There But for The Grace of God Academy was designed to instill in its
charges a sense of discipline and a love of God. Towards the first goal, we were
enrolled in classes such as Sewing Leather Sneakers for Nike Inc. and Kathie Lee
Gifford Clothing Line 101. These classes taught us to be patient, to endure
hardship, and to manage complex and minute tasks with broken and bloodied
fingers. Towards the second goal, we were beaten unto insensibility, at which
point we often hallucinated that Jesus came down from heaven to deliver us from
our living hell, which certainly made us love him....until we awoke for Cooking
for the Jesuits 101 at 5am the next morning, an advanced class that often
resulted in failing grades and thrown food, at which point we started resenting
Jesus all over again.

Yan and I look back on our years at St. Peters There But for the Grace of God
Academy fondly, of course, or at least Yan would if he had not perished in the
Great Failed Escape of 1989 (or so I thought), in which thirty-one boys lost
there lives attempting to tunnel under the fences surrounding the campus. His
loss was doubly senseless, since we were set to graduate later that same year.
Perhaps the looming spectre of the final examinations (which are rumored to have
cost more than one senior his life) had driven Yan to this extreme, or perhaps
it was simply the girls academy situated across the way from St. Peters, where
nubile and uniformed young women often spent the hot afternoons washing cars in
cut off T-shirts.

At any rate, I did manage to graduate with only a few broken bones and permanent
scars in the spring of 1989, and as I said I look back fondly on my years at St.
Peters; so fondly that when I returned some years later to burn the place to the
ground in a blaze so hot it liquefied windows in surrounding building