A Picayunish Write-Off
Written: Feb 19 '01 (Updated Sep 19 '07)
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Pros: Xaviera Hollander, Queen Esther, Mary Magdalene, Evita
Cons: John Dillinger, John Gotti, Mike Tyson
The Bottom Line: These three web-newsie sites are the bees' knees. Write-offs are getting tiresome..
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| SLOW's Full Review: WWW Site Reviews |
Just when you think it's safe to go back to Epinions, some yahoo comes up with another write-off. I've had it up to here (which, of course, you can't see, 'cause this is a written, not visual, medium) with write-offs. But when Sordid-1 makes you an offer, you can't decline; I think it's a federal statute, legislated in 1989, part of the Gramm-Rudman Act, to wit: 'Turning down a request from Sordid-1 shall be punishable by having your head scoured with cheap dishwashing abrasives, and your wages garnisheed for ten (10) years, in accordance with Subparagraph 3(a); those without calculable income [i.e., all Epinionators] will instead be sold to Argentine goatherders as day laborers for an equitable duration.'
So I joined a bunch of mediocre hacks to crank out this, my review of favorite on-line news sites. Suffice it to say that there are a whole bunch of rules associated with this task- if it seems as if I am straying from the topic, it's probably because I'm adhering to some such boneheaded parameter. You have acongojada, Hard_To_Please, Leah, mptang, and, of course, our porcine host to thank for this nonsense.
My first-bestest site, from which all noteworthy news spews forth, is the undeniable granddaddy champion of all news sites: The Onion. Located at www.theonion.com, this gem has received its duly-earned notoriety in the mainstream media after years of travail and hardship in the print medium (bringing to mind the oft-pondered query: ‘Which is best? Paper or plastic?’). Once a laughable humor rag at the University of Madison-Wisconsin (arguably one of the finer states in the Union), The Onion is now a majestic force of funniness worldwide. Subtitled ‘America’s Finest News Source,’ The Onion stabs right to the heart of even the most jiggly topics, with articles such as the venerable, ‘Area Bassist Fellated,’ the obscure-referenced, ‘Bill Gates Grants Self 18 Dexterity, 20 Charisma,’ and the just hysterical, ‘Fun Toy Banned Because of Three Stupid Dead Kids.’
Granted, what is probably just a group of stoned UW-M students and alums might be thought to have better things to do than poke fun at an eclectic range of subjects, but with two books having topped the New York Times best-sellers list, The Onion is a sarcastic national treasure. The articles themselves are hysterical, but the weekly added features are oftimes even better: the STATShot (‘A look at the numbers that shape your world’); the headlines of nonexistent articles on the left side of the page (‘Quality Controlled’); and What Do You Think?, the staff’s chance to speak out on current issues in a faux-Man-On-The-Street format, are all priceless. Even some of their real reporting (such as band interviews and Dan Savage’s column) are insightful and hilarious.
I go there every Wednesday for my fix. It’s a guilty pleasure, not unlike that time I was verbally chastised by my Sunday school teacher and sent home with a note to my parents after throwing a handful of thistles into the three-foot tresses of one of my female classmates. Sure, it was a blast at the time, but did I want to be caught? I couldn’t face my folks for a week, and snuck into the kitchen at odd hours just to eat. As mptang says, ‘Might as well throw in a dental dam and some surgical gloves just to be on the extra safe side.’
Which, oddly enough, reminds me of the instance of my greatest sexual shortcoming. I was with a Korean hooker in her Seoul apartment, trying my darndest to just get done with the transaction I had paid a ridiculous fee to contract. This was no negligible chore, what with the waterbed and ‘Joe Versus the Volcano’ playing on her stereo-television right behind us, and she was quite evidently and obviously weary of the attempt.
‘‘Short time’ means short time,’ she commented.
‘Hence the name?’ I replied. She looked at me quizzically as I paused in my task, and I just broke out laughing manically. ‘Oh, honey, it’s humor wasted at the moment. But someday it’ll make a great story.’
And I think it does. I think acongojada was referring to a startlingly-similar incident when she said, ‘There is some good stuff in here tonight!’
My second-favorite news site is Modern Humorist (www.modernhumorist.com), that bastion of all things witty. [Note: for those of you who have observed a trend toward the inane in my selection of journalistic sources, I say, ‘Bully for you.’] MH is a daily dose of giggles, offset with a bunch of multimedia goodies. I highly recommend the video, ‘VH-1’s Behind the Behind the Scenes,’ which is just pure and righteous facetiousness at the expense of that malodorous program. MH has even been featured on NPR’s ‘All Things Considered,’ for their commentary on street-fakir David Blaine’s self-encapsulation in ice. Good, good stuff.
Which brings me to mention my most bizarre dream, which is not unlike the way NPR uses Malaysian sitars as a segue between segments regarding the price of pork belly futures and the newest David Cronenberg film. It’s a recurring nightmare of the amorphous type, where the sinister feel is not derived from actual imagery but from some enigmatic atmosphere, like going to Denny’s for a skillet breakfast at four in the morning. It’s the one dream I can remember from my childhood, as I have it every few years or so. There are no visuals- no pictures, so to speak, which is weird enough; it’s a dream about breadth, depth, and mass of matter, like some proto-Stephen-Hawking-meets-Stephen-King kinda thing (see? told you it was bizarre). There is an unnamable dread as this dream transpires, while I feel, more than see, all of reality become distorted, first far apart and feather-light, then drawing to a singular point and heavy as all get out, like some molecular waveform on an oscilloscope; a mental-onomatopoeia gestalt of perceptions devoid of sensation, vis-à-vis a tintinnabulation of psychic bells. I don’t know why this troubles me, but it does, much in the way Leah’s refusal to honor some of my more prurient e-mail requests (‘Oh, I REALLY hate to do this!’) does, although she inevitably acquiesces. Much like junk mail that follows you after you’ve moved, or like a golden retriever ditched at a picnic site upstate in a bad Disney movie, this dream comes back to me months or even years later. I could compare it to the world’s woes, or issues that I carry upon my shoulders, escaping through my subconscious, but it’s not that kind of thing- more like herpes outbreak that you can’t predict, and that doesn’t cause much damage, but only annoys. Like rules in an Epinions write-off, a mental trauma succubus, spiny like an artichoke, yet dry and unchewable like a falafel pita sandwich.
Finally, there is Suck.com. Guess what that URL is? Three times a week, this Lycos-owned site offers up biting commentary on current events and personages, cutting to the bone. The recent cartoonish piece on that quasi-hermaphroditic bastard, the aptly-named Dick Cheney, is an excellent example of the cutting, brutal humor demonstrated by the Suck.com writers. And I don’t just like them ‘cause one time they printed a letter I sent in (about which Sordid-1 mentioned, ‘The whole package just makes this guy a thoroughly entertaining view,’ although I think he just spent too much time ogling my Profile page); I liked them before that.
Okay, that's it- I've had it with write-offs. The sickening, duckbuttery feel of the whole unseemly mess has made me queasy. This better earn me enough dough to buy some sort of analgesic; I'm going to go read the news, now, and try to put this nasty debacle behind me.
If you dug this Epinion, you might want to check out my book, available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/1001-Things-Do-You-Dare/dp/1598691201/ref=sr_11_1/002-3020328-5072004
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
SLOW
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Member: Ben Malisow
Location: Vegas
Reviews written: 118
Trusted by: 124 members
About Me:
You wish you were me.
Now buy my books.
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