sic@buffalobeast.com

HOW MUCH METER

Dear Beast,
Why having thousands of people fighting ? Why having innocent people killed? Why not leader vs. leader? How many people have Hussein killed? Can we accuse for future crimes? Can we punish for future crimes? How much money has been spent preparing for war? How much money will be spent? How many people did Osama killed? How much money has been spent trying to kill Osama? How many people have died because of drugs? How many people will die this year because of drugs? How much money has been spent trying to capture drug dealers since Sept. 11 attack? How much effective is the war against drugs?

Hector Melendez

Dear Hector,
Dude, you need to find a hobby.

LIT CRIT

Dear Beast,
Whats going on? I love your newspapaer but the quality of your insults has gone down hill recently. I mean, i hate to say it, but that redneck in sic had a good point about America being the whinny kid pissed off that the rest of the world is growing up. but come on, you've never even met his mother.

And im sure you guys would have payed for her if she truly was a fat whore, so why are you complaining? Come on, Keep the paper interesting, enough with this "your momma" bullshit.

Other then that, keep up the good work. Im liking the celebrity math things, but bring back the horoscopes. They kicked ass.

sincerely,
Chris

Dear Chris,
Let us guess. You're Marc Peters, author of our horoscopes. There's just something in your bad grammar that doesn't ring true. Marc, seriously, we want to run your scopes. We think they're groovy. You really don't have to resort to shit like this. Just resend them and they're in. We swear.

BAH-DIES

Dear Matt,
It has been a long time since I have been moved to respond to a newspaper article but your's regarding the shuttle "disaster" demands that I do so. Not since reading George Orwell while in high school in the mid-sixties have I encountered such remarkable insight into the miasma which constitutes western culture.

Throughout this past week I wasn't exactly sure what I was feeling whenever I tuned in the news. Here we are standing at the brink of another war, in which perhaps many thousands of lives will be lost, and we are mindlessly grieving the loss of seven people who knowingly strapped themselves into a terribly expensive bomb and allowed themselves to be hurled into space. Sure it's too bad that folks died but it was their choice to go. I, on the other hand, have been given no choice as to whether or not I want to fund such folly or be exposed to falling debris and body parts.

Thank you!

In Peace,
Bruce Beyer

Dear Bruce,
We're all for holding the government accountable and all, but it seems like kind of a tall order—and extremely strange—to ask the state to secure the public's permission to expose it to falling body parts. Besides... shit, we'd never stop laughing if an arm or a cock or something just crashed through our window one afternoon. Who wouldn't give permission for something like that? What, are you some kind of sick maniac?

MY SICK PUSSY

Excellent rant on the news media as a vector for the all-American grieve-in. Is group-grieving the new US pastime, replacing baseball? The advent of CNN and the 24-hour news culture has only fed the fires of the non-stop "national healing process."

By the way, anyone reading this: one of my zebra finches has a tumor - do you feel bad enough to send me $10 in the mail?

Yrs,
Keith Welch
Bloomington, IN

Dear Keith,
You'd have to do better than a goddamned sick zebra finch to get us to send you ten bucks. And that's even if you let us eat it after it croaks.

WONG LINDED

Dear [sic],
The letter from Bob Weir astounded me. It is an excellent example of the intellectual elite (ha)brainwashing that Chomsky noted as a vital requirement for the control of a "free" population, this fellow's letter. In complete sentences, and with moderately-sized words, he tries to make the case that the people that are protesting the war are doing so because they are angry that they can't really have it their way at Burger King anymore, that they want MORE brands of toothpaste, desperately need 2 Walmarts in town instead of one.

The people who are driving across the country and organizing some of the first PRE-EMPTIVE WAR protests in the history of the United States, want only to SAY that they WANT NO WAR. They are not spoiled children, they are trying to point out the fact that our government representatives are acting as such. Yes, they are using their power and voices as free citizens to make these statements, exactly as the government is using these same ideologies to continually rationalize the United States interest, need, responsibility (what?!) to attack and kill people in other countries who aren't doing what we tell them to.

Hell-fucking-yes, the US government is testing it's boundaries of freedom - freedom to spend our tax dollars to build and use the same weapons that they insist we need to kill others for having, for slowly chipping away at our civil rights (how ungrateful of me), for controlling information to us about their true activities. And as long as they are going to use those freedoms, I'm sure as hell gonna use mine.

I wonder when this letter-writer will decide he needs to be a more demanding child, when he finds his mail opened? Microphones in his toilet? When he is sitting on the battlefield being told to shoot a child..... or perhaps waiting to get shot by one.

Oh yeah, and Bush ain't my leader, baby.

Susan Gaydos

Dear Susan,
Maybe you didn't see the sign. No citing Noam Chomsky in here. We're beginning to have a change of heart about this Iraq thing.

FOR FUCK'S SAKE

Dear BEAST,
For fuck's sake. How do you guys expect anyone to take you at all seriously if you don't even have GET YOUR WAR ON featured prominently in every single goddamned issue? I am referring of course to the comic strip by David Rees which you can find at http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war18.html Don't waste your precious wit (take that however you want) writing back. Just fucking get the goddamned thing in your next issue. For fuck's sake.

Don't you worry about who I am ...

Dear Don't You Worry,
We can't fucking afford David Rees, and we'd hate to make him a lowball offer. He puts so much time into those graphics. Overhead, overhead, overhead...

I'M LOSING IT

Yo BEAST,
I was reading your 50 worst people list, and I love it, but it is lacking just one person (how many emails like this do you get?): Ani DiFranco. If I don't see her on a worst-of-something list soon, I'm going to lose it.

Jason Leto —

Dear Jason,
Who the fuck is Ani DiFranco?

ENGULFED

Mass Media tells me the US is at war with Terrorism, and is posturing for a war with Saddam Hussein. I have been trying to find an explanation as to why war with anyone would solve anything. I have found that war doesn't solve anything, because if war solved anything we would be living in a post-world-war-solution garden, and this is not the case. As nations continue the history or warfare, everyone's life becomes more difficult, if not destroyed outright. Everyone except the Barons.

War brings money to the Oil Barons, who supply the oil for the war machine. War brings money to the Drug Barons, who supply the drugs for the citizens to smoke and drink and grow cancer in the shadow of the Drug War. War brings money to the Pharmaceutical Barons, who supply the prescription Drugs to fight the effects of chemical weapons created by the Chemical Barons and the Drug Barons. Aerospace, Beer,

Colas... Big Business wins wars lots!

And Big Business is the only winner! Welcome to America — Don't touch my property rights.

SDR3
Buffalo, NY

Dear SDR3,
You need to get some air. Sounds to us like you've been spending too much time eating Susan's pussy.

J-LEW FROM THE BLOCK

On one hand I'm glad Bob Weir took the time to right an articulate letter, on the other I don't and he is a dumb fuck. He is missing the entire point. He doesn't understand that you do not just achieve freedom like they teach us in first grade. It is a constant struggle to achieve the least amount of bullshit. It is not a status you achieve and brag about. It is the act of constantly wanting more, and apparently being a brat is part of that. It's about not being tricked into thinking that you are doing your part by going and killing who ever the fuck the bourgeoisie decides will benefit those most. If for some reason he believes that we have ache ivied the pinnacle of freedom then, I beg of him to go find the nearest black man with a foot long cock and ask him to shove it up his ass. I hope this clarifies everything.

J-Lew

Dear J-Lew,
You must have missed the other sign. No "bourgoisie" in these pages. Sorry.