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October 22, 1997
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Reader mail: Volume 3

Complaints dept.

October 13: Light Rain in India: 3,000 Dead

Dear Mr. Simpleton,

I read your piece on India with great interest, and I feel I must call your attention to a few points:

1. Riot is Sport. Sport is Riot. Surely you could have come up with some factoid about how once again India has out-England-ed England in terms of sports-related rioting. For example, the India-Pakastan rugby matches are so riot-inspiring that the games are now being played in an impartial third country!

2. Aaugh! It's a Girl! As I recall, Indian children are regularly worked like slaves if not actually sold as slaves regardless of their sex. Of course, girls sold off into prostitution greatly outnumber the boys, but the number of boys sold is likely greater than zero. And what about parents who "help" their younger children get ahead in the criminally competitive begging marketplace by horribly disfiguring the kids at birth?

3. Being a Bay Area resident, you should be well aware that there is more to an earthquake than it's Richterness. The Kobe earthquake was not the largest one to hit Japan since Tokyo burned to the ground in the 1923 (or was that 1924?) quake. In fact, the major cause of death in Kobe was from burning as a result of the Japanese government's full-scale inability to put out the fires. The blunderings of the government would have been comical if the outcome had not been so tragic. Hmm. This might make a good piece for Suck, er, I mean Simpleton.

4. It's Maharashtra, not Maharashtara*

(*) see the Meta info!!

Sincerely,

Bruce Keilin
brucek@reef.com

Dear Bruce,
Thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately, our resources are limited, so in-depth looks at Indian soccer hooliganism don't appear to be in the cards. Let us not forget that our own word "thug" came from the local name for a band of thieves and ne'er-do-wells who terrorized Bombay until they were wiped out by the British. Given the Queen's recent awkward visit, it may be time for a rematch.
Note: Due to an editing error, a recent issue of simpleton mistransliterated the name of the Indian province Maharashtra. simpleton regrets the error and any discomfort this may have caused to Maharashtra residents.
Sincerely,
simpleton

______________________

October 14: internal bleeding

Dear Simpleton,
"Pull the tax system up by the roots so it can't grow back."
Yeah, and its the same freaks who want the flat-tax... Boy, I can't wait to quadruple the national deficit in one year.
and another thing...
What happened to that Peace Dividend thing? You'd think we would be saving a bunch of cash since the anti-land mine treaty went into effect... Oh, never mind.
Sincerely,
Cameron Geiser
cameron@slip.net

Dear Cameron,
Actually, this year we're supposed to run a budget surplus for the first time since 1969. Apparently those taxes we pay really work! The problem now is figuring out how to spend all the extra cash. Reducing the $5 trillion debt doesn't seem to be an option for some reason.
Didn't you get your peace dividend check? Must be in the mail.
Sincerely,
tim

______________________

October 17: simpleton unplugged

That's funny. That's VERY funny. And when you get so self-referential that you disappear up your omphalos, do let us know.

You know, you may have just defined your calling. Just the way being able to laugh, or groan, at EVERY cartoon in the New Yorker defines some level of urban hipness, maybe your site... Or not.

Alan
ASKornheiser@prodigy.net

Dear Alan,
Urban hipness? I'm all over it. Sock it to me! The devil made me do it! Here come the judge! You dig?
Sincerely,
tim

Clever, but we've done uglier pages than that.
Kevin Lyons
schwing@wired.com
"Look at India - they have 900 million people and a single 10 Mbps connection with all the world. That's a fraction of what Bill Gates has in his house." - Russell Daggatt

Dear Kevin,
How is it so many simpletonians are experts on the backwardness of India? If I'd known there was such an interest I'd have started in with the cheapshots earlier.
Sincerely,
tim

Dear simpleton.
Now of course you realize your spoof is hopelessly flawed, because we would never publish an international political article unless its sole subject was the way Lebanon's new ISDN line was making government obsolete anyway and creating a new class of cyber entrepreneurs who would completely take over from those first- and second-wave boneheads who can't appreciate the mind-liberating effects of network technology. Nice try, though.
Jeffrey Obser
Editorial Intern
HotWired
jobser@hotwired.com

Dear Jeffrey,
Actually, before my last trip to Lebanon I considered pitching Wired exactly that story. Then I realized all I had to do was copy and paste the China story and change all the place names. In a mere four keystrokes, Beijing becomes Beirut.
The Lebanon story was a back issue, and not part of the one-page-only simpleton unplugged issue. I had hoped one page would be more than enough to sate simpleton's now 6 or 7 readers' taste for quick-read comedy. But apparently not:

Dear simpleton.
Where is today's story.
I love the rip-off of hotwired but where is the weekdaily story full of titticism that gives simpleton enough monoxide polluted air to hack, cough, splutter, live.
There are too many lit undergrads out there "viewing source" already. If I knew that cut & paste could have got me the front page of an ezine then I would dusted off my Notepad) long ago and ctrl-cved my ass to Fame.
I'd be singing with Coco and beating brows with the stupid white bearded old guy.
Henry Lyne
henry@novomedia.com

Dear Henry,
I refuse to believe that anybody actually wanted more than one page of the Hard-2-Read Hotwired style.
After weeks of struggle, I finally managed to get simpleton a listing on Yahoo. And now that it's too late you give me the perfect meta-description: "a weekdaily story full of titticism."
Thanks heaps,
tim

Next page: An unpaid political announcement.