October 10: Fart & Mumbles

cute title amc

Effusive praise aside, the sharp people at Feed did give the best of simpleton a generous plug in a recent issue. It's a small stroke in the internet circlejerk - Feed broadcasts to the tens, and puffs simpleton, causing a temporary spike in our hit count - from three hits to four. But we love the free publicity, and encourage all our readers to visit Feed on a daily basis and enjoy Feed's many fine articles and click through to all of Feed's sponsors.

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October 7: All New Crown of Thorns

Dear simpleton, It was perfection, truly. I love this shit. See, this should be the simpleton angle: news-type rants with just enough Suckisms to keep it interesting. I like stuff like this and the Road to Damascus story because they are grounded in real world news stuff. This is your niche, this is your future, this is how you will make a fortune on the net and prove all of you detractors wrong... Yeah, I know it is good advice, but you'll ignore it anyways. yr pal, Cameron Geiser cameron@slip.net

Dear Cameron, Actually, I've already taken this advice. Should simpleton continue to publish, the Tuesday spot will be reserved for humorless pontification of this sort. There are always newsy angles to pursue, and we encourage any and all readers to send in their own submissions. Odds of publication = highly likely. sincerely, tim

Dear simpleton, Nice illustration; St Sebastian, patron saint of good looking naked teen-age boys. Has anybody ever written a book about this particular iconography or is just something everyone in the art world knows and nobody else cares about? Oh well. The love that dares not speak its name is well represented in the world's great museums; there's a little David by Donatello in Florence that would make even John Paul think twice about certain sins of the flesh. But I digress. There's a distinction between the self-righteous belief that all other religions are inappropriate in one's society and the belief that the followers of other religions are evil heathens worthy only of extermination. The House of Saud, to take the most egregious example, certainly forbids the formal worship of anything except its own flavor of Islam, but it doesn't systematically persecute unbelievers; in general, "People of the Book" can pray as they will as long as they do it privately. Most "Christian persecution" consists of requiring Christians to keep a low presence and stay out of the way. Long accustomed to being the religion that tells others to sit down and shut up, this doesn't sit well with many, and certainly it conflicts nastily with the Christian belief in the value of spreading the world, but it's hard to get really worked up about it. Some of us, whose names are concealed for the sake of privacy, find it amusing and even a nice turnabout. The current law recently passed in Russia, allowing only Islam, Russian Orthodoxy, Buddhism, and Judaism to be "official" religions is probably best thought of as the equivalent of Quebec's french-language laws more than persecution. There really is religious persecution going on in the world. What's being done to the B'hai in Iran is horrifying. But Christian persecution? Not really, not in the overall scheme of things, unless of course it's your ox that gets gored. Nice article. Alan Kornheiser

Dear Alan, Always happy to treat my readers to a little Renaissance beefcake. All are invited to read the original story for full-body shots of Saint Sebastian getting gored. I'm a little hesitant to say that this persecution of Christians business is not happening at all, mostly out of concern that we may all someday be confronted with incontrovertible evidence that a new Holocaust was going on while we slept. But as you say, evidence so far is pretty thin, and raw treatment of religious minorities is not the purview of Muslims or Commies only. Even more rarely is it the action of governments alone. On Monday, nine cops and two Copts were killed in a shootout in southern Egypt. The police were killed while defending the Copts. In other words, the representatives of that undemocratic government Spector and Wolf would like to outlaw were the only people protecting the Christian minority. Oppression is not some perversion of the human spirit invented by governments. It's the natural state of humanity, and is usually suppressed only when governments are willing to show some Little Rock school district-style force. sincerely, tim

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Blue Angels, Go Home!

Speaking of suppression by force, San Francisco recently endured "Fleet Week," complete with a rambunctious visit from the celebrated Blue Angels precision flying team. Long convinced that I was America's only Blue Angels-hater, I was delighted to receive the following snippet from a friend whose communist proclivities had previously escaped me:

Dear simpleton, What are you doing for the big Blue Angels weekend? I will be the first to go on record as an un-American and say that I hate the Blue Angels with a passion. I hate the noise, and I hate the tourists that go with it; I hate this weekend the most out of any in the year. Sincerely, Erica Marcroft erica@www22.allapartments.com

Dear Erica, It's hard to decide what is most offensive about the Blue Angels. It could be the bone-rattling noise. It could be the gaping-mouthed crowds. It could the vast expenditure of our tax dollars on a performance whose sole purpose is to make us like the fact that we spend even more of our tax dollars (indeed, nearly half of our tax dollars) on the largest jobs program in the history of the world, whose only known purpose is to defend our country against an invasion from Canada. But most disturbing of all is how easily I understand your urge to define yourself as "un-American" because you don't like a Stalinist, obtrusive military show. It's troubling that your loyalties get called into question when you fail to go gaga over this idiotic display of Raw Jet Power. Indeed, it was in part to protect the rights of the citizens from intrusions by the military that a bunch of colonial bumpkins got together and fought the Revolutionary War. I'll know I'm living in the United States of America when a 93-year-old lady can call the Mayor's office and complain "Those aeroplanes are making entirely too much noise!" and the whole multimillion-dollar display of simian brute force will by law have to shut down in order to protect her right to privacy. Until that day comes, I'll content myself with the wish that the Blue Angels' next stunt will be an Air Force Thunderbirds-style mass suicide. Sincerely, tim