ANTI-PRESS EZINE #15 "We're Positive About The Negative" A July E-dition (C) Copyright 2000 Anti-Press All Rights Reserved Unless indicated otherwise, all articles by Anti-Press. Articles submitted by others do not necessarily express or reflect the opinions or beliefs of Anti-Press. See the footer below for info on email, subscriptions, submissions, etc. Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Reality Center. We're presently entrapped in the alleged city of Plattsburgh, northeastern New York State, USA. (We treat Plattsburgh the way it treats us: we kick right in its teeth.) ***THIS E-DITION: Various Items-- Dirty Bikes, Clean Garbage, Ford Is A Four-Letter Word, Don't Go With The "Flo", Discretionary Viewing & seanna's email, PLUS Guest Essayist Dino Londis and his proctological pondering. ============================================================= WELCOME TO THE "ITEMIZED" ISSUE Meaning this time around no long articles by us, just a lot of short blasts, quick jabs at an array of irksome items. IDIOT LANDLORDS PLAGUE PLATTSBURGH We know there are good landlords out there but we haven't had the luck to rent from one of them. It seems we're cursed to suffer from the narrow-minded ones. For example, let's share this letter from a landlord who is concerned about "damage" to his building: Dear Anti-Press: We have received complaints that you and/or your guests are bringing bicycles down the hall of the apartment complex. We clearly do not want this to continue in that it tracks mud and salt on the floor surfaces. Sincerely, The Landlord So what's the story behind this? Couldn't the bikes be just chained up by the street? Not really. You're taking a chance leaving a bike outside the building. A friend had his bike trashed by some jerk who in the middle of the night battered the fug out of it while it was locked to a tree. If they can't steal it, they'll trash it. As for the mud and salt bit, what would track in more dirt: big dirty boots or narrow bike tires? Is everyone going to be required to take off their shoes before walking on the precious hallway carpet? (By the way, it's a plain carpet, not a luxurious shag.) The person who put the anti-bike bug in the landlord's ear was the building manager who likes run this place like a prison camp. This manager is responsible for the maintenance of the building, including snow removal from the parking lots during the winter. If there's so much concern about mud and salt then how come THE BUILDING MANAGER AFTER A WINTER SNOWFALL TAKES A SHORTCUT THROUGH THE BUILDING WITH HIS SNOWBLOWER RUNNING FULL BLAST, ENGINE NOISE POUNDING THROUGHOUT THE HALLWAYS, BIG WHEELS SLUFFING GOBS OF SNOW AND MUD, ON HIS WAY TO THE BACK PARKING LOT? Gee, isn't a heavy snowblower worse for wear and tear on the precious hallway carpet? Also, unlike that snowblower, our bike doesn't cause noise pollution that rocks this crackerbox building. At worse it might squeak a little bit... IT'S ALL GARBAGE So besides being hassled about our bike, we're supposed to feel profoundly concerned about recycling our trash, putting the appropriate item in the appropriate bin: newspapers in the newspaper bin, plastic in the plastic bin, etc. Also, labels must be peeled off all tin cans and glass bottles must be washed out. Meanwhile, Amsterdam, New York is getting out of the recycling business. Why? Don't they care about their local environment and the rest of the planet? Sure, they do, but they got fed up with the rip-off, citizens meticulously rinsing and sorting "reusable goods"-- only to find out that all that such goods usually end up in the regular trash. Not only cities but entire counties are getting fed up with the recycling scam. In Franklin County people have been driving to the sanitary landfill with their clean and sorted trash, doing their part to save the environment. But after they arrive they learn that the landfill isn't accepting recyclables because the holding containers are full. So where can they place their reusable goods? The landfill tells the suckers just to drop the stuff into their regular garbage. Anyway, why should the average citizen be responsible for the environment when big corporations are still doing the majority of the polluting? Smokestacks in the midwest are still spewing out crap that is windstreamed to here in the Adirondacks where it becomes acid rain, destroying trees, killing off fish in ponds and lakes. Recycling can be a rip off. We've got better things to do than clean and sort garbage while corporations still pollute, while trash haulers don't recycle. We make sure to hide aluminum cans and glass bottles in our garbage; paper milk cartons and cereal boxes are handy concealers. Some of you enviro-freaks are probably shocked by this. Hey, go after those dirty midwest smokestacks and the phony "recycling" landfill owners-- they're doing greater harm than average citizens like us. We'll do our part when they do their share. Anyway, Planet Earth, Nature, the fugging Universe could care less about us. One world-killer meteor hits this mudball and it's all gone. So what are you going to do if a massive asteroid is hurtling towards you, on its way to reduce the landscape into molten rubble? Just before the doomsday impact are you going to pause and think to yourself: "I'm glad I recycled all those plastic bottles..." FORD? DUDE, THEY INVENTED THAT FOUR-SEATER OVEN CALLED THE PINTO! We thought this annoying TeeVee ad had been retired but it's back... Exterior shot: the facade of a hep coffeehouse. Two cool guys and two groovy chicks jump into a small car out front, a Ford Focus. They all look punk, at least what Central Casting envisions "punk" to be. Each one is holding a steaming hot cup of joe. The driver hands his cup-- which is filled right to the top-- to the black guy next to him so he can take off with his out-of-sight Ford Focus. Quick pick-up. The small car is racing towards a railroad crossing. The other three tell the driver to slow down with the word "Dude" uttered with various degrees of concern: "Dude..." "Dude...?" Dude...!" They don't want boiling coffee to splash them, especially the black guy in front who is trying to steady the driver's cup, coffee almost spilling over the rim. But the driver ignores them and speeds across the rails. The others tense up-- but no coffee is spilled, no genitals are scalded. A small car that lists for $13,000 has the suspension of a Cadillac. Sure... But what's really deceptive about this ad is the way the full cups of scorching coffee are shown between shots. Watch the black guy in front, the cup in his left hand, the driver's cup. It changes level between shots-- up to the rim, then down about half-an-inch. When the railroad tracks are crossed, notice the driver's cup is up to the rim again but there's not even a ripple-- because that ain't coffee, it's either coagulated industrial sludge or dark chocolate pudding laced with SuperGlue. Dude man, how dumb do you think "punks" are? A punk would have to have his brain pierced with a railroad spike to fall for that crap. Anyway, we have an alternative ending when they finally decide to retire this fugging ad. The Focus stalls on the tracks and a train plows through the car, not bothering to slow down, mincemeating the "punks". Cut to an interior shot of the train, the glassy-eyed hirsute engineer with a joint hanging from his mouth. Flaming wreckage flies past him, causing him to comment: "Wow, fireworks, dude..." CANADIAN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM DEMONIZED AGAIN Ever hear of astro-turf? No, we're not talking about artificial turf that was invented for football stadiums. We're talking about when a greedy corporation creates a phony "grass roots" organization to shill for them. Lately on TeeVee there's been an ad showing forlorn Canadians stuck on a bus, on their way to the United States for medical treatment because there's not enough doctors to go around under their nation's "Evil" socialistic health care system. The ad starts to talk about how Americans are going to Canada for lower prices on prescription drugs and then it sidesteps that issue by showing those depressed Canucks on that bus. Classic example of changing the subject quickly to confuse the issue. The purpose of this ad is to terrify gullible senior Americans into believing that lower prescription prices mean they will die because under socialized medicine there won't be enough doctors to treat them. Yes, prescription drugs will be affordable but they won't help you that much when chemotherapy is delayed and cancer kills you dead. How odd that the ad doesn't mention that those Canadians who come to American hospitals for treatment aren't paying for it out of their own pockets-- it is all paid by their "Evil" health care system. The ad mentions a website, www.busfromcanada.org. And that site is linked to the astro-turf organization called Citizens for Better Medicare. Yeah, we remember that group: it ran a series of ads with this paranoid desiccated crone called "Flo" who screeched into the camera: "I don't want big government in MY medicine cabinet!" Sure, Flo. You're shown in your upper middle class home, happily retired, a conservative Republican with a nest egg large enough to buy a Balkan country. You're not like those senior citizens scraping by day to day, trying to decide whether to buy medication or food. So, Flo, how many times did you end up eating a little tin of catfood to stretch your budget so you could afford your pain-relief pills? Face it, Flo, you're just a fugging actress, not a real person, shilling for the true backers of these alarmist ads and websites. And who are those backers? Why, just dig a little bit into each website and see who's footing the bill. Why it just happens to be obscenely-rich pharmaceutical companies and other greedy corporate entities ready to reap profits from the misfortune of others. Hey, Flo-- we don't want rapacious corporations in our medicine cabinet! WORLDVIEW IMPROVES WITH DISCRETION Lonely? Depressed? Are you thwarted by negativity in your life? You must view the world with better discretion, finding positive, life-reinforcing sources of inspiration. Go to www.disobey.com and click on Viewer Discretion, the Ezine of Hope. Editor Neil MacKay and other uplifting thinkers will revitalize your spirits, helping you to find inner happiness. Even self-help guru Tony Robbins seeks out Viewer Discretion, despite his envy of that great positivist Neil MacKay. * * * * * * * * * THIS E-DITION'S GUEST ESSAYIST: Dino Londis HOW TO BE AN *&$HOLE By Dino Londis In my short time on earth, I've come to realize that male/female attraction ultimately comes down to anatomy. I've found that most men are attracted to breasts and behinds while most women are attracted to assholes. My dictionary doesn't define "asshole". Personally, I would define it as a man who shows no emotion, thinks only of himself, appears to have things under control and is surrounded by women. You might define it differently, that is if you want to be an asshole about it. *Why Do Women Go for Assholes?* Men have asked themselves this since our ancestors watched a Neanderthal knock a Neanderthess unconscious and drag her back to his cave. When she came to, she would leave, right? Wrong. She made him breakfast. To a woman, an asshole is someone who is in need of her help. That is, women are looking for someone they can fix. Not an "asshole", in the sense that something is broken and needs fixing, but fixed much the way a dog is fixed. Really, why would a woman want a guy who doesn't need fixing? He was broken a long time ago. And I don't mean broken as in broken that needs fixing, I mean "broken" as the way a stallion is broken by a cowboy. The bigger the man's problem, the greater the challenge for the woman. So the bigger asshole you are, the greater chances of getting any woman you want. I spent my life being polite to women because that is what I believed they wanted. They don't. Yes, a handful do, but a handful is all you'll get if you are only nice. Sure, women need sensitive men, but only to tell them about the assholes they are dating. Now you can either be the asshole or the guy she is telling. Many women go for the more traditional Knight in Shining Armor. Can you think of a better metaphor for a man that won't show his emotions than a man wearing an iron suit? Many women wait for Prince Charming. As the story goes, she lies asleep awaiting the kiss of a prince to wake her. What the fairy tale forgets to mention is that she is sleeping on the wet spot next to a slob who didn't kiss her before, during, or after. Of course, some women like sensitive men. But only sensitive women. At first they're attractive, but then you have to read her poetry. And how long will that take? And how does she find so many words that rhyme with her ex-boyfriend's name? And face it dude, soon those nasty little poems will be about you. Very sensitive women often date very sensitive men. They spend a lot of time in coffeehouses where every sentence begins with and has my parents in it. It's enough to make you scream. You think you are, but it's only the cappuccino machine. You can be an asshole even when you set a date to go out. She says, "7:30 is a good time for me, what's a good time for you?" You say, "A good time for me is if I can feel your breasts." And on the date feel free to show her a good time. You don't have to have one, just show it to her...with a romantic movie or something. While showing her a good time, get her drunk enough for sex. After sex, get her sober enough to leave. Why do you want her gone? Because you are an asshole, my friend. *It's Evolution* Men seeking full-figured women and women seeking assholes is the outward appearance of a species attempting to ensure its survival. Darwin wrote about this topic specifically. In his diaries he wrote: "I think this chick on the island likes me. She keeps coming around and the more I blow her off, the nicer she gets. Tomorrow, I plan to insult her make-up. That should do it." Darwin published "Origin of the Species" in 1859. In 1860, a bishop of the church scheduled a debate against Darwin. In his place, Darwin sent a gorilla. Amazingly, the gorilla held his own until the rebuttal when he panicked and found himself agreeing with the bishop. Afterwards, they all went to a strip bar. And the gorilla- in all his rudeness- never once paid for his lap dances. Darwin did indeed get laid. And then he never called her. His excuse was that Graham Bell wouldn't invent the telephone for another 16 years. In short, the key to a man's heart is through his stomach. And the key to a woman's heart is though his...well, you know. * * * * * * * * * WE'VE GOT EMAIL Before signing off, let's take a look at the mailbag. seanna wrote: But Plattsburgh IS universal. There's a little bit of Plattsburgh in every community-- even yours. Anyway, we would like to travel and grok other misbegotten micropolitans, but there's anti-freeze leaking all over the floorboards of our car, that untrusty rusty two-slice Japanese toaster... Thanks for writing, seanna. Anyone else? Hey, c'mon, write! Don't try to hide-- we can hear you breathing out there in the darkness of cyberspace... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Submitted works must be ready for publication (edited and proofread). Word Limit: 1000 words. No sci-fi, poetry, sci-fi poetry, poetic sci-fi, etc. Do some research and read a couple of issues to find what we want. 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