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Junk E-Mail Almost Drives Ted Ted ApeshitMailbox clutter comes seriously close to unhinging reporter June 24, 2002 |
Ted Ted's inbox, also now known as "near ground zero".
The last of the e-mails came to Ted Ted with the subject header "Re: Our discussion on Diplomas" from a mailer unknown to Ted Ted using the name Charlene Plumb, most likely an alias. The e-mail, unread by Ted Ted, contained nothing in itself to inflame the reporter, but was indeed the third from the so-called Charlene Plumb with the exact same subject header in one day. On top of that, the e-mail from Plumb was a finale in a series of non-stop e-mails for months on end.
When the commune first received an Internet connection, in November of 2001, the entire office, Ted Ted...
omeone came frighteningly close to having their ass handed to them Friday when commune correspondent Ted Ted became enraged upon receiving another in a seemingly endless string of junk e-mails.
The last of the e-mails came to Ted Ted with the subject header "Re: Our discussion on Diplomas" from a mailer unknown to Ted Ted using the name Charlene Plumb, most likely an alias. The e-mail, unread by Ted Ted, contained nothing in itself to inflame the reporter, but was indeed the third from the so-called Charlene Plumb with the exact same subject header in one day. On top of that, the e-mail from Plumb was a finale in a series of non-stop e-mails for months on end.
When the commune first received an Internet connection, in November of 2001, the entire office, Ted Ted included, was excited about the prospect of traveling the Net and communicating with long-distance and long-dead relatives via e-mail. When the latter proved impossible, e-mail at least seemed like an improvement on the old-fashioned postal service delivery of letters. But like the regular mail, the Internet proved to have its share of unwanted mail.
Fortunately, Ted Ted managed to regain control of his anger thanks to a series of breathing exercises taught to him by a monk who rents office space above the commune, thus preventing him from going "nucking futs," as the monk's hilarious T-shirt stated. Ted Ted then return the monitor to the desk and closed the window, though by that time the keyboard was irretrievable.
Just so he will not further tax his anger management system, Ted Ted wished to inform all potential junk e-mailers that he has no need of their services. He has no need for a college diploma, everyone at the commune functions fine without one. He does not need a second mortgage, he has no first mortgage, indeed he has no home and lives in the cupboard at the commune. And, being new to the Internet, Ted Ted definitely does not need DSL, unless DSL is some kind of Internet speak for Drunken Spanish Ladies.
Ted Ted does not need a radar detector to avoid speeding tickets. He doesn't want to spy on his boss and/or employees. He has no need for the illegal CD they banned from eBay. There is no need at present time for a law degree or tax refund experts. There is no foolproof making money scheme Ted Ted wants to be part of right now. He does not want to lose weight naturally, supernaturally, or any way at all.
Ted Ted does not want to improve his sex life; having one is enough for him right now. He does not want to see all-nude celebs or real video of Brittney Spears caught giving blow jobs. He does not want to see the J-Lo nipple slip or up Jennifer Aniston's skirt; at least, if he does, he can surely find a better way to do it than paying money to some anonymous Internet hack. He does not want to stay hard for days at a time nor does he want a dick as big as a California Redwood. Above all else, he does not want bigger breasts naturally, at least not in the way you're describing.
Finally, Ted Ted has no need for a million e-mail addresses so he can waste his life wasting real working people's time with his assholic invasions of privacy. He leaves that to you all, at least until he can track you down and murder you while you sleep. the commune news looks like a pump, feels like a sneaker. Ted Ted is a correspondent for the commune and has written most of his stories for the commune without leaving the offices.
 | Vicious Murder Now Quickest Path to Instant CelebrityRight brutal act can make anyone a household name June 24, 2002 |
Network talent scouts are quick on the scene of the debut of next year's breakout star.
The popularity of murderers has grown significantly in recent years. Basic cable crime shows like The Discovery Channel's The New Detectives and The Justice Files have demonstrated the public's fascination with both alleged and convicted criminals, as well as our hunger for real crime stories. Now, new shows on NBC and ABC are bringing the murderers right into our home, allowing us a first-hand look-see at someone else's horrible p...
n the past, the best way to become a celebrity overnight was to do something remarkable in a relatively short period of time. The old joke was even that it takes 10 years for an actor, writer, comedian, entertainer in any field to become an overnight success. Now some overnight successes are becoming celebrities practically overnight.
The popularity of murderers has grown significantly in recent years. Basic cable crime shows like The Discovery Channel's The New Detectives and The Justice Files have demonstrated the public's fascination with both alleged and convicted criminals, as well as our hunger for real crime stories. Now, new shows on NBC and ABC are bringing the murderers right into our home, allowing us a first-hand look-see at someone else's horrible pain. On shows like NBC's Crime & Punishment and ABC's State V., viewers are taken from the legal beginning of an actual murder trial to its inevitable legal conclusion, all within the span of an hour. Now the messiness of following a long-lasting court case is made more convenient for fans of true crime death and mayhem.
"We take the majority of the trial, edit it down to the juicy bits, and pop it in after Just Shoot Me or something for some easy high ratings," said some person in the President of NBC's office. "And who knows? If everything works out, we'll be getting the first big glimpse at one of tomorrow's major media stars."
Even without major ratings success, the shows already have a significant improvement over fictional shows in their cheap production costs. Shows about true court cases require neither writers nor paid on-screen talent; and, in contrast to the news department, traveling is limited to the continental United States. The country's interest is only in domestic murderers, foreign murderers with subtitles have yet to capture America's imagination. Also, there's much fewer of them.
According to some industry analysts, the true crime court trial show could be bigger than the Survivor and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? fads, even a new dominating genre of shows.
"We've been heading toward this for years now," said Court-TV correspondent Mickey "Dutch" McMichaels. "First there were the ratings for the O.J. Simpson trial. After that, we've been covering various trials intently, the biggest ones or the most brutal or the strangest cases. And not just day-by-day trial updates. We're talking camera-in-the-courtroom or extensive court record accounts. Showing full or partial testimony, still pictures and drawings, even dramatizations. I think I saw David Schwimmer playing John Wayne Bobbitt somewhere, maybe before Friends was a big hit."
Celebrity court cases like those for O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, even lesser offenses like for Robert Downey, Jr. are already proven successes; but in addition, court cases are making new celebrities of their own. Like Andrea Yates, alleged Daniel Van Dam murderer David Westerfield, and Thomas Junta, the infamous "hockey dad" who murdered a fellow father at one of his son's games. It may have taken longer than expected, but the major networks are finally bringing the public what it wants: more murder stories and more murderers, right after or before their favorite "fake" murder shows, like C.S.I. and Law & Order.
"It's a complex story, with heroes and villains, with victims, a beginning, middle, and end, especially with these new shows that wrap it up in an hour," said McMichaels. "Plus, since it's real, you feel like you've watched real news without all the boring parts like world events and politics affecting our country."
As the style of popular shows change, say industry insiders, so will the kind of celebrities. The stars of tomorrow are planning their murders today.
McMichaels agreed. "If I were a washed-up actor in need of a big hit, like Burt Reynolds or Andrew McCarthy, I'd stop reading tired old scripts and start reading In Cold Blood," he said, referring to some book or something. the commune news is available with everything seen here, figures sold separately. Ramon Nootles is a commune correspondent and the rumor around the office is he'll be the first to go when we downsize. That's just what we heard.
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 June 24, 2002 I Have Been Dragged by a Car for Three Daysthe commune's Rok Finger is on the road again Just when things are going pretty good for you again, just when they start to look up again after you've been down and out for the count, at your lowest and just starting to get back on your feet again, it's the same ol' story: Hit by a car and dragged for three days solid.
If you want to argue technical details, sure, the car was not in motion every minute of every hour of those three days, and the complete time, I estimate, was closer to 70 hours than 72, but who's going to argue the details after you've been dragged for three days straight by an automobile? Me, that's who. Details are nature's prison guards.
It started out innocently enough, leaving work Thursday night and stepping out into moving traffic. Little could I guess, though I probably could have se...
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Just when things are going pretty good for you again, just when they start to look up again after you've been down and out for the count, at your lowest and just starting to get back on your feet again, it's the same ol' story: Hit by a car and dragged for three days solid.
If you want to argue technical details, sure, the car was not in motion every minute of every hour of those three days, and the complete time, I estimate, was closer to 70 hours than 72, but who's going to argue the details after you've been dragged for three days straight by an automobile? Me, that's who. Details are nature's prison guards.
It started out innocently enough, leaving work Thursday night and stepping out into moving traffic. Little could I guess, though I probably could have seen if I'd bothered to check the oncoming traffic first, there was some speeding car with a driver of drunken magnitude. I was struck, but only clipped, fortunately. Then I was dragged through the streets for three days.
Three days is not a lot of time for most things. If I performed surgery three days in a row, few would consider me a surgeon. Yet in the matter of being dragged by a car, I think three days is enough time to consider me an expert. Yes, if it's not so brazen, I now consider myself an expert on being dragged by a car. I could receive stipends to speak at universities on the topic of being dragged by a car. In fact, I may.
I'm pretty sure the drunk driver had no idea I was snagged on something, I presume the fender, of his car. At worst I would like to think maybe he caught lights flashing off the fender and assumed he was being pursued by cops, and if he hadn't been in fear of being arrested he would've stopped to see what was making all those sparks and screaming noises at the rear of his car.
As I said, he stopped for gas a few times, and I suppose he missed me, as I'm of small stature and frequently rolled up under his car. I would've tried to free myself but it was hard to stay conscious, given the extreme pain I was in as well as the lack of sleep. If I had to pick one, probably the pain was the biggest factor.
Soon I realized that it was either free myself or die. I could not endure more than another 300 hours, I'm guessing, without surrendering to the agony. Thinking quickly, mostly remembering old episodes of MacGyver, I managed to grab ahold of the carburetor and, with the help of a lighter, fashioned a crude blowtorch. It was at this point the fender naturally gave way and I rolled off the road into a ditch.
In that ditch I lay for hours. Bloodied, broken, and very pissed off. I was found by a deaf-mute woman who threw me on her back, me being a short and uncumbersome load, and carried me to a local hospital. I found myself in Tupelo, Mississippi, in the most miserable pain I've been in all my life, as well as quite surprised I had gone so little distance in the span of three days. Even not driving constantly the drunken driver should have gotten further than that. As best I can figure the drunken driver must have turned and circled back the other way quite a number of times, or failing that, he had been driving very slow most of the journey. I say it certainly didn't feel like he was driving very slow but it does seem the most logical answer, since I'm recovered enough to be conscious this Monday morning and I'm still alive.
Is there a lesson to be learned from all this? No. None at all. The best lesson you can hope to salvage is that a so-called "walk" sign is not really a guarantee you'll get to the other side of the street. I suggest the government work on improving that right away. Until then, I have demoral. º Last Column: I Have a Wicked Bassist in Leeº more columns | 
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Milestones1998: Omar Bricks pees off the world's largest man-made waterfall. Not really relevant to anything else, but still pretty cool.Now HiringYes Man. Agreeable sort needed to attend staff meetings and dilute the concentration of "Huh?" Men presently attending.Top New Year's Resolutions| 1. | Quit being such an asshole | | 2. | Exercise every day. Every Arbor Day. | | 3. | Kill them all | | 4. | Lose 20 pounds to limey con artist | | 5. | Quit smoking halibut | |
|   Clinton Administration Trashed White House BY roland mcshyster 6/24/2002 Well hey, America! Who'd have thought you'd be back for part two of our entertainmentalicious Summer Preview? I mean, what are the chances of that? I'm not a gambling man, but if I were I'd have to bet the odds were close to 100-7-245-9. Needless to say, I'm damned impressed. I looks like you've held up your end of the bargain, so I'm going to do my best to make this EP the policiest yet. This month we're taking a gander at the ass-half of the summer movie releases and asking the age-old question: where's the manager with those ticket refunds?
In Theaters
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Everybody knows Mike Meyers is a sharp guy, but does anyone really think he can make a spoof of Jerry S...
Well hey, America! Who'd have thought you'd be back for part two of our entertainmentalicious Summer Preview? I mean, what are the chances of that? I'm not a gambling man, but if I were I'd have to bet the odds were close to 100-7-245-9. Needless to say, I'm damned impressed. I looks like you've held up your end of the bargain, so I'm going to do my best to make this EP the policiest yet. This month we're taking a gander at the ass-half of the summer movie releases and asking the age-old question: where's the manager with those ticket refunds?
In Theaters
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Everybody knows Mike Meyers is a sharp guy, but does anyone really think he can make a spoof of Jerry Seinfeld's American Express commercials work for 90 minutes? Sure, there's a lot of Superman material to be mined there, but once you get past the "Invisible Man boinking Wonder Woman" joke I think it's going to get old fast.
The Crocodile Hunter: The Main Course
Now here's a concept we can all get behind: that inbred Aussie redneck finally gets his ass eaten by alligators. Or crocodiles, whatever. I don't think anyone's going to argue about snout shape when they're being thrashed around in the water with their nuts in a croc's vice-like grip. This is a film idea that was about as overdue as Britney Does the Bad News Bears. Not to mention it's got a great soundtrack that includes Men at Work's cover of Crocodile Rock and that hilarious parody song Who Let the Ducks Out? that you've been hearing about on the net.
K-19: The Widowmaker
I hate to be the bearer of shitty news, but it looks like James Belushi and that fuckin' dog are back again. This time the twist on the franchise is that the dog's got some kind of hyper space-rabies and has acquired a taste for blood, so Belushi's got to track him down (surely stepping in shit along the way) and cut the dog's heart out with a pen knife before burning it in a crematorium, blah blah blah. This trend-aping is supposed to scare us, but I'm about as scared as I was when I first saw the cover for M.C. Hammer's The Funky Headhunter album. Which is to say, pretty scared, but not for the right reasons.
Like Mike
Kidflick that probably sounded like a better deal before Tyson started head-butting people's fists and getting his ass handed to him on a regular basis. Regardless, bedwetting rap sensation Little Misogynist displays some charisma in his acting debut as a pint-size boxer who learns he can suddenly hang with the big boys when he discovers that all of his punches fall at crotch-level.
Men in Black Tubes
Hey, it worked as a Madonna video, so why not drag it out onto the silver screen and let the general non-MTV-watching public poke it with a stick, eh? That's what I'm imagining the producers thought to themselves as they sat around a martini breakfast at some swanky Hollywood gyp joint and tossed around ideas like midgets at an Arkansas bowling alley. Apparently this is one of the ideas that stuck, probably only because the rest of the producers were afraid to admit they'd never seen the video. Anyway, the final product turned out pretty arty, and no one can doubt that the Maternal Girl looks good in a wetsuit made out of plastic six-pack holder rings, but the plot lost me when they were whipping the little Chicano guy out in the rain.
Milo & Stitch
Lovers of all-animal films like Woofers the Cross-Country Dog and Barnyard Porno Volume 3 have been waiting thirteen long years for a sequel to the dark coming-of-age tale Milo & Otis, the undisputed king of the kitten-chucking genre of films. If any of them were betting that 2002 would be their year, then somebody owes them a handjob because Milo the cat is coming out of string-batting retirement for one more turn on the merry-go-round called Hollywood. Diehard fans will be happy to hear that wooden-acting little dog Otis isn't back for the sequel, thanks to his being eaten by a hippo on the set of a shampoo commercial back in the original film's heyday. He's been replaced by a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig named Stitch, who starts out the movie cute, in an ugly-little-pig kind of way, but by the end of the movie has eaten himself into some kind of belly-dragging nightmare destined to be left behind on a family camping trip. Surely the DeNiro of animal actors, Stitch goes all the way for this thinly-veiled Elvis bio-parable, with Milo lending a purring dignity as Stitch's backwoods huckster of a personal manager.
Minority Depot
Bad as it was, NBC's liberal-pleasing sitcom at least served a purpose when it was on TV. With a cast representing every racial group on the planet, plus one ignorant, backwoods, racist, sexist and certifiably ugly white dude, the show at least managed to clam up the social critics who argue that there aren't enough Korean weightlifting champion women on network sitcoms. But there is such a thing as throwing a dog too many bones, as will be evidenced when this turkey sucks its way over to the silver screen this summer. And a note to the Hollywood bigwigs in charge of this one: if you think you can pass off Tom Cruise as ugly, you've obviously never been to Pennsylvania.
The Powerpuff Girls
A trio of New Jersey High School broads discover that a whole new world opens up to them when they spend their Sweet 16 birthday loot on breast enlargement surgery. Teaches the powerful lesson to young girls everywhere that money can't buy you love, but it can buy you a nice rack and a lifetime of popularity and marriage proposals, not to mention a sweet gig as a trophy wife. I tell you, chicks have the life.
Rain of Fire
Jesus Christ, somebody want to tell me who pissed off Prince so bad? Last time I checked he was a soft-spoken boogie machine with a flair for offensive asswear, now I turn around and he's some kind of Hollywood angel of death? I thought I was going to get some hot, half-naked dancing mulattos, not Nine Inch Nails, The Movie. I don't want to start any rumors, but I think somebody must have keyed his little red corvette something awful.
Road to Perdition
There are about three people on the planet who think you can make a Road… picture without Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, and apparently Tom Hanks is one of them. And whoever thought the snore-inducing berg of Perdition, Florida was an exotic locale on par with Bali, Hong Kong and Zanzibar needs to have his dentures rinsed off. Hanks and Paul Newman do their best to keep the laughs coming as a couple of numb-nutted mafia hitmen, but this series was old back when Bob Hope still had that "new guy" smell.
Stuart Little 2
Talk about timing. Everybody's been waiting since they were five for that lying little duck to get what's coming to him, and it looks like the sky's about to fall on Stuart Little. We all love to see a little comeuppance dished out to some hothead who never learned the lesson of The Boy Who Cried Wolverine, but I'll personally be in line just to see how far the technology of duck-bashing has come since the Daffy-blasting days of my youth.
Whew, America, I think that's about that. I hope your summer is full of big-screen thrills and painless sprints to the restrooms during the dull scenes. Check back in a month and who knows what you'll find in this spot? I'm serious, I'm not even sure myself. But if I know Hollywood, they'll keep churning out the review fodder and we should get along fine. One more thing America: I don't know if Jennifer Connelly is going to get naked in The Hulk, so you can stop emailing me about it any time now. What am I supposed to be, her girlfriend slash confidant or something? Just because you roll with the commune doesn't always mean everybody takes your calls all the time, or even if you're a commune writer pretending to be from E! Online. See you next time!   |
