Suck Rocks, Keep Going Can Suck It
There’s this wonderful and long account of the rise and fall of Suck.com over at KeepGoing.org. It will take a long time to read, but it’s worth it. Much better than anything at this site. Really.
At the end of this article is a little missive from the publisher, attempting to usurp your fair use rights under U.S. copyright laws. It says, to be exact, “No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.”
Now, I am allowed, by law, to copy small portions of any copyrighted work for the purpose of commenting on said work. I will do that now with the Suck.com article, not only to stick a finger in the eye of tyranny but to illustrate what I loved so much about Filler, using the words of its creators.
“He would get sick of me,” says Havrilesky, “because I would send him descriptions that would say, ‘An obese squirrel that looks slightly drunk and confused but regretful is sitting at a bar with an emaciated rabbit.’ He would always say, ‘You only get two emotions. It can be regretful and drunk, or regretful and excited, but it cannot be more than two things at once.’ Also, I would say, ‘This emaciated rabbit isn’t cute enough.’ He’d say, ‘You said emaciated. Emaciated is rarely cute.’”