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March 3, 1999
New ones Monday through Friday

Reader mail:

Volume 29

Loco-grams

Dear simpleton,
I really liked loco-grams.
I would guess that Justine is in rehab and that's why she attends groups all day every day.
The last one by KOK was also very interesting, made even more so by your expert analysis.
As for netizens being full of shit, well just look at Jon Katz. I think I remember you defending him in the past but I've always found him to be full of inflated ideals and opinions about the net and netizens respectively.
peace, yr pal
H'
henry@novoironlight.com

Dear Henry,
While my admiration for Katz is well known, I must admit his column in the Freedom Forum has exhausted even my patience. However, I still find him encouraging in one respect. Since I constantly fret over word counts, it's heartening to be able to look at another writer's column every now and then and say "Holy Cow! And I thought I was long-winded!"
yr pal,
Tim

Dear simpleton,
Pity indeed, that you have lost most of your collection of trashed literature. After reading your insightful discernments about the collection's surviving members, I can tell that you have studied a great many such pieces over the years. Are you sure you have no intention of pursuing garbology? You may have missed your calling. Lamenting my relative inability, I would like to develop such illustrious interpretive skills so that my life, too, will overflow with insights into urbanity's humanity. Do you know of any survey courses in interpreting urban detritus (I U D)? I could easily become obsessive over this. Thanking you for an essay that was anything but rubbish, I am
Yours Sincerely,
Traz@webtv.net

Dear Traz,
I understand garbalogy is taught somewhere, and even more intriguing, there was an academic effort some years ago to catalogue restroom-stall graffiti. In my opinion this was a flawed course, however, because the graffiti was studied for anthropological value. Thus, some of the most brilliant poetry of our age is treated as a mere specimen. I challenge any purse-lipped poetaster to find a quatrain of greater epigrammatic beauty than the following:
He who writes on bathroom walls
Rolls up shit in little balls;
He who reads these words of wit
Eats those little balls of shit.
In my mind, this quatrain's linguistic precision and deftly modulated metaphor put it far above the more familiar work:
Here I sit,
broken hearted;
Tried to shit
but only farted.
yr pal,
Tim

Germans weigh in on Booze

Dear simpleton:
Your BOOZE feature and the followups brought back some childhood memories to my mind.
I grew up in Stuttgart, Germany after World War 2 - it sure was a rough time for a kid. I would not like to imagine what it would have been like without help from the US...
I still remember when an American soldier said to me "Hey, little man, want some booze?" and let me have a sip from a bottle of Kentucky Bourbon he was carrying with him - this has been one of the greatest moments of my life.
I included a picture that my dad took in the late 40's: it shows my mom picking up some CARE program booze... Seldom enough we were so lucky, but every time we did it felt just as if Santa Claus had stopped by.
Sincerely,
Hans Waldmann
nuclearsound@usa.net

Dear Hans,
Thanks for a heartwarming childhood memory! I just wish I could embellish it with one of those Page-Two zingers from Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story:
"....And that GI's name was?......Ted Williams?"
yr pal,
Tim

Dear simpleton:

at first my apologies for not contributing my share of thought on booze -and especially beer- as I understand that to be my duty. Let me explain: I am writing to you from Bavaria, Munich even. Get it? And this beautiful town is a wonderful example for Alan Kornheiser's proposal. I would like to lend this example to support his argument and also make a point about how true it still is nowadays.

As you might now, there are more breweries here than in any other urban habitat. And what a difference that makes! There is essentially no part of the inner city where you can live without smelling the beer-making process every week. There are dozens of green islands scattered about the city called beergardens, where all that fluid gold can be readily consumed and which are effectively where the city "happens" during the summer months.

In October the whole boozing world seems to gather at the Oktoberfest to consume an amount of beer, that is obviously enough to build intercultural bonds of a most unlikely, but also very temporary nature. Japanese and US-Americans for example, or French and English and some have even heard of Arabs and Isrealis , but that might have been a mistake. Well, you might wonder how all that happy boozing goes together with Kant's imperative? Well, firstly Kant was from Koenigsberg (very very far away) and hardly ever left the city-limits and, more important, he was almost protestant!

The trick how morale and beer goes together is, that the peers of the first are the makers of the second! While other (sorry) creeds are most defiant of alcohol in general, our catholic monks were the ones to make it! And this to no small extent. In fact Munich is called Munich, because of Monks, who, yes you've guessed it, were brewing very worthwhile beer on the banks of our little River here. On the city crest the monk is holding a large mug of beer, which hopefully does not overstress the point.

As one last example, I would like to bring to your knowledge a very bavarian contemporary political incident, called the "Biergarten-Revolution". (no kidding) The story goes that some northerners have set up their tents next to one of the oldest and most loved beergardens to the south of munich. It is 175 years old and if you haven't been there, you are not from here. Well, those aliens have complained because of the noise that such a happy watering hole is producing, which everyone greeted by sending them all sorts of gifts over their fences. Especially when they eventually decided to sue the beergarden owners. The problem is, they won before the federal supreme court, which is, you guessed it, somewhere up north in Prussia, where people have no deeper understanding of beer, but simply consume it with potato chips and suchlike. Well in the mean time Bavaria was on it's feet and virtually everyone was demonstrating up and down the city. Which led to a grand coalition and long forgotten fraternity between the bavarian government and the people.

The bavarian prime minister speedily proposed a law to the bavarian parliament, in which his party is holding the absolute majority for 30 years now, and (small wonder) easily passed it. The law says that beergardens are in fact not just ordinary restaurants, but a cultural good, each and every one of them in itself, that is! Yes, there is a constitution, and consequently the federal supreme court for constitutional law ruled that law to be unconstitutional. I will not comment on where that court is located. Two weeks ago the bavarian parliament made an ammendment to that law, so that it is now still in effect. The prime minister, Mr. Stoiber announced that, should any further reclamation be made about the law, the bavarian government would not tire of making further ammendments. The moral is: democracy and the rule of law are all fine and dandy, but they rest essentially on a societal consensus, which is fueled by beer. At least in Bavaria.

Prost,

d.pool

holder of beer clerkship, third class
dh_@gmx.net

Dear d.,
Thanks for filling us in on this controversy that the "mainstream media" have decided to ignore. As I understand it, Bavaria was historically a mostly Catholic province, which may shed some light on the antipathy between booze-friendly Bavarians and booze-shy Prussians. I'll bet if you gave a good hearty brew to one of those Prussian fussbudgets, he'd brighten up immediately and exclaim "I feel good enough to invade Poland!"
Sorry. Couldn't help myself.
yr pal,
Tim

Answer man

Dear simpleton:
As someone who read "Dear Abby" every weekday morning during my formative years, I appreciate the good form and legal grounding which you demonstrate by recommending counseling to husband of "Married To A Fibber."
As you surely know already, Federal, State, and in some cases local statutes require that any column purporting to dispense advice must include the phrase "seek counseling" somewhere in the body of said column.
Failure to observe such laws are punishable by up to 500 hours of Amway training sessions or 300 hours of transcribing motivational audiotapes for the business traveler, whichever the court deems more harrowing to the defendant. But again, I'm not surely telling you the news here.
Still, if you are going to keep publishing advice of any kind, you may want to acquaint yourself with additional legislation which applies to your new avocation (are you even licensed?), including but not limited to:
-- No less than 1 in 5 columns must contain an inspirational snippet of poetry or "doggerel" deemed suitable for affixing to bathroom mirrors, refrigerator doors, or office cubicles. Copies of sanctioned verses are kept on file with your County Clerk; for previously untested verses, you may want to consult with your attorney, who will want to research the body of case law for precedents to guarantee full compliance.
--After an unfortunate incident in Montana, in which a hypersenstive husband mistakenly assumed that a "Confidential To" message concerning a spouse's nosepicking had been submitted by his wife, causing him to torch a shrinkwrapped 24-pack of Kleenex boxes that the couple had just purchased at an area price club, igniting a four-alarm fire which razed their home -- 13 of 50 states, primarily in the Deep South or Rocky Mountain regions, have now outlawed "Confidential To" items altogether at the close of advice columns. Though your state has no such law as of this time, the fact that your column is published on the Internet may raise troubling issues of interstate law.
I'd hate to see Simpleton become some headline-grabbing, politically-ambitious prosecutor's test case, or just another casualty of our litigious society. An ounce of prevention...
--Sam P.
http://www.thefinger.com
"put the digit back in digital"

Dear Sam,
You'd be amazed at the number of laws advice columnists must follow. You didn't even mention the stricture that all advice columns must contain at least one letter per week that reads: "Please reprint the wonderful column on caring for elderly parents you ran a few years back."
I'm actually hoping to squeeze in some light, "Let's hear it for stepmothers"-style verse, and if anyone feels like submitting a few Joyce Kilmeresque lines, please do. I did get the poem below from GapGirl831 (my favorite of all the "831" poets). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
yr pal,
Tim

Dear simpleton,
thought you might enjoy
REVENANT
Jennifer Butler

She remembered waiting for the rain. Dark,
gloomy afternoons
when the world cussed at the wind, the storminess of the air
and all she wanted to do was curl up
on the couch and read to each other. Just the two of you.
And she would listen to the rhythm the raindrops made
on the tin roof. You thought she was swaying to the
meter in your voice, as you recited the Shakespeare
she made you repeat every day the sky brought rain. Yet,
no matter how you loathed reading
those lengthy sonnets, you continued because of her company.
It was something,
in her presence that enveloped you and erased
everything else. It was as if nothing else mattered
when she was with you. So as you read, you failed to notice
that she wasn't listening to you read, instead, she
rocked to the thumping of the shudders against the
side of the house. You didn't realize the glazed
look on her face as she stared off into space,
apparently not focusing on a word you said,
you read on. It was comforting to you, your voice. And
her. Just the brush of her arm up against yours, the
swinging of her auburn locks as her plump body leaned
side to side. She was homely. As the rain slowed, and
the clouds gave way to the sun once more, the glassy
look in her eyes did as well. And he left just the same.
She continued as before, waiting for the next rain.
Smelling the air, touching the earth, even listening
to the trees over her head, just waiting for rain. For
she knew with the rain came him.
GapGirl831@aol.com

Dear GapGirl831,
If you sprinkle
when you tinkle,
Be a sweetie,
and wipe the seatie.
yr pal,
Tim

Eliminate the ninnies and the twits

Dear simpleton:
whatever happened to psychotherapy? you, know the couch, etc. seems healthier than drugs or surgery.
Joe Hammerman
jhammerm@astro.ocis.temple.edu

Dear Joe,
As I understand it, psychotherapy hasn't proven as effective as drugs and surgery. Also far more time consuming, and as a result prohibitively expensive.
But thanks for reading a simpleton issue from all the way back in 1997.
yr pal,
Tim

King's Ransom

Dear simpleton:
I've been a King fan for over 25 years, I started my collection of his books when I was 15 and have everything he's written since then as King and Bachman both. He has kept the lights on in my bedroom many a night! I'm hoping one day to meet the man and his family(by the way his wife writes a pretty mean book herself!)
Have a nice day
Connie S Cannon
Connie.Cannon@atmosenergy.com

Dear Connie,
Another ancient simpleton resurrected! And a prescient one too - praising King before he became a New Yorker fixture and eminence grise of American letters. Thanks to "Wallace D. Fard" for a forward-looking simpleton contribution. And of course, long live the King...of Horror!
yr pal,
Tim

Random Letter

Dear simpleton:
I don't know if you're much of a Beatles fan, but I've been hoping for some kind of comment from you on Philips-Magnavox's apparently UNironic use of "Getting Better" on all those stupid commercials with twentysomethings watching dolphins swim on really big TVs. They are sorely in need of some meta-analysis.
Babak
bkhoshno@students.wisc.edu

Dear Babak,
I'm opposed to those commercials, but only because I don't like the gravelly-voiced earnestness of the guy who sings the "Getting Better" cover. Who is that guy anyway? He needs to lighten up a little.
yr pal,
Tim

Send word to simpleton

Previously in simpleton:

March 1, 1999: Prezzy beat
An Australian care package
February 25, 1999: Tough Questions
Your advice requested
February 24, 1999: Reader Mail
Volume 28: Booze, Rye and George Washington
February 23, 1999: Answer man
Our first-ever advice column
February 19-22, 1999: Absolut simpleton
Rolled in the cold
February 18, 1999: Loco-grams
Found messages from the marginally insane

A century of simpletons in the simpleton archive.
Find an almost-total listing of Tim's outside works in The Compleat Simpleton.

Wankers of Arabia

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Quotes squared

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