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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 The Loch Ness Midgetthe commune's Griswald Dreck has dipped his last skinny In the Highlands of northern Scotland, between the towns of Acch and Edenocker there lies Loch Ness, a body of water with a name that's Scottish for "Nasty Lake." This name dates back to the time of the Picts, a clan of tattooed assholes native to Scotland who ruled the land for thousands of years before modern-day Scots came over from Ireland and started throwing telephone poles around and head-butting small children and deer and whatnot.
Loch Ness was know to the Picts for being incredibly foul, thanks to the thousands of ducks who disobeyed the numerous "We don swim in yer terlet, so don you a crap in ar lach" signs posted around the lake. In order to keep slow children from swimming in the filthy loch, the Picts invented a story about a hideous creature named Nessie who li...
º Last Column: What's With All This Shit on Our Money?
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In the Highlands of northern Scotland, between the towns of Acch and Edenocker there lies Loch Ness, a body of water with a name that's Scottish for "Nasty Lake." This name dates back to the time of the Picts, a clan of tattooed assholes native to Scotland who ruled the land for thousands of years before modern-day Scots came over from Ireland and started throwing telephone poles around and head-butting small children and deer and whatnot.
Loch Ness was know to the Picts for being incredibly foul, thanks to the thousands of ducks who disobeyed the numerous "We don swim in yer terlet, so don you a crap in ar lach" signs posted around the lake. In order to keep slow children from swimming in the filthy loch, the Picts invented a story about a hideous creature named Nessie who lived within, a beast described as "a big smelly piano with flippers" that swallowed young children whole and wiped its ass on trees. Even more vivid details were summoned for particularly stubborn youths, tales of the beast using children's livers to play rugby and routinely cheating at checkers to boot.
As time went by the Picts were gradually head-butted out of Scotland, but their stories of Nessie lived on in the imaginations and heartburn-inducing nightmares of the modern Scots. Most were doubtful of the existence of the beast, unless they were standing on the shores of the loch and being double dog dared to go skinny-dipping within, in which case Nessie's existence was a forgone conclusion.
It wasn't until a spring day in 1804 that the public consensus began to turn. That morning, a pair of Scottish fisherman, pissed out of their minds and navigating with a map of continental Africa, set out onto the loch in search of brown herring. Their search for fish hampered by a lack of bait, nets or poles, they soon consoled themselves with a drinking game. The game was going smashingly until the fisherman happened to glance down into the water and saw the pale white face of a child staring up from beneath the murk of the loch. Upon seeing this frightful visage ruminating up from the deep, the fishermen cried out "Ayyybe! Vagoda!" which is Scottish for "Shit! Midget!" and made like the Harvard rowing team on Naïve Freshman Co-Ed Night getting back to shore.
Word spread quickly around Scotland like a game of "telephone" and by the time it got back to Loch Ness, the word was that the legendary Nessie was, in fact, some kind of terrifying midget nightmare who played bocce ball at the bottom of the loch. That was enough to inspire the populace to stay the hell away from the lake for another hundred years, but Londoners were not so smart.
In 1933 the London Daily Mail hired a big-game hunter named Marmaduke Wetherell to get coked up to the gills and either capture the Loch Ness Midget or make a newsworthy ass of himself in the process. Few doubted that he was the right man for the job.
Within days, Wetherell reported that he had spotted the wee little beast near the loch, and had made a plaster casting of one of its footprints. This he promptly sent to the Natural History Museum in London for analysis. While the world waited with baited breath for the zoologists to make their determinations, Wetherell slept with every available woman in Scotland and bought lots of things on credit. By the time word came back from the Museum that the tracks were merely the marks left from someone dropping a donut in the mud, Wetherell was nowhere to be found.
The Wetherell hoax set back the cause of Nessie research for the better part of a year, and it did not recover until the Daily Mail published a shocking photo by a London Physicist named R. Kenneth Wilson in 1934. The picture, a snapshot from Wilson's vacation to Scotland that year, featured Wilson standing in front of Loch Ness and showcasing with his smile the most horrendous set of odd-sized, discolored and poorly-maintained teeth the world had ever seen. Even the English people were appalled, and dentists the world over sent him hate mail.
It wasn't until a year later, when some of the shock had worn off, that someone was able to look at the photo closely enough to realize that, over Wilson's shoulder, the Loch Ness Midget was plainly visible signaling for a fair catch on the shores of the loch. A re-cropped version of the photo swept the globe and Nessie-mania was born again.
Although the photo was determined to be a hoax in 1980, when researchers discovered that the "midget" in the photo was merely a Raggedy Andy doll that Wilson's daughter had left on the beach, it had helped to keep the search for Nessie alive for over fifty years. Several sonar sweeps of the loch between the 1970's and 1990's revealed numerous unexplainable midget-sized objects moving in the loch, and thousands of eyewitnesses have come forth with tales of seeing the creepy little bugger frolicking in the waves. Scientists have discounted their claims, suggesting that people are merely mistaking floating logs, otters, schools of fish or bathing leprechauns for the fabled midget, but eyewitnesses remain unconvinced.
While experts are forever skeptical, the prudent are reminded of the numerous legendary creatures of yore that turned out to be improbable, yet quite real. There was a time when narwhals, gorillas, the Smothers Brothers and okapis were all thought to be merely the products of overheated imaginations, and yet today they exist squarely in the realm of scientific fact. Is the Loch Ness Midget to be the next? Or will it be beaten to the punch by the Abdominal Snowman or the Sascrotch? Only time can tell. º Last Column: What's With All This Shit on Our Money?º more columns | 
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Quote of the Day“Give a man a fish, he eats today. Hide a fish in his jacket pocket and watch him go batshit trying to find where the smell's coming from.”
-John J. Jesusheimer SchmidtFortune 500 CookieTurns out your suspicions are correct and that Maurice Sendak book has been about you all this time. Peer-to-peer file-sharing claims its first victim when Metallica shows up at your house to beat the shit out of you. Remember to practice what you preach, because your preaching has been really amateur lately. Lucky numbers are all in Spanish this week.
Try again later.5 Ways to Spend Your $208 Million Lottery Jackpot| 1. | Finance own album of you singing Broadway standards; pay people to buy it | | 2. | Invest heavily in million-dollar ducks | | 3. | Buy a car for everyone you know, something they could all fit in at once | | 4. | Spend 208 nights with Demi Moore | | 5. | Fund grassroots pro-President Bush campaigns | |
|   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!   |
