December boasted a lot of mail, and January was much the same.  It doesn't seem like a lot as it's coming in, once I get to writing these mailbags and updating other pages with reader input, they add up quickly.  I'll take a realistic look at the mail around Feb 14th, and if there are over half a dozen worth quoting on a mailbag page, I'll do a February part 1 and part 2, since this one, like December's, is too long, and takes me too long to do all at once.

Mails are presented chronologically.

Date: January 2, 2002
From: Jerome
Subject: The Word, "Challenge"

Hey Flux,

I'm currently in the middle of a job search. And my support group as well as other resources is teaching us to never use the word "problem". Instead we should always replace it with "challenge". In our resumes, our interviews, etc. So I was thinking maybe that might make "challenge" rather cliché or a platitude. And we are suppose to avoid such platitudes. So anyway this seems like a good opportunity to get a little feedback.

How do you feel about the word "challenge"? Are you in agreement with your quotes that it's a "weasel" word a platitude? That maybe something people should avoid if trying to impress someone?

This was prompted by a new item I quoted in the January 2nd update, where "challenge" was officially added to the banned words list, with part of the explanation being that it was a "weasel word".  I hadn't really given it any thought, and my comments about the whole banned word list thing were largely critical.  I don't much like "challenge", it's a bit too office-speak for my taste, sort of like "paradigm" and "transitioning" and other words you hear a lot of in Dilbert, but never in real life.

I don't think I'd go out of my way to stick it in my résumé, but given my work history, I'm hardly one to take résumé advice from anyway.  And besides, résumés require a language and form that no real writing ever takes, where you are almost expected to use strange code/buzz words, like a sort of printed secret handshake. I'm sure HR directors sigh and say, "Oh great, another 'recent graduate' seeking 'intriguing opportunities' and 'rewarding challenges'." and then throw out any résumés written in anything approaching a conversational human dialect.

_________________

Date: January 4, 2003
From: res
Subject: None

What is tea bagging? My wife has been asking for days.

Thank You

This one made me laugh for a solid minute.  I'm not sure it's a serious email, I mean could the guy not know what "tea-bagging" means?  Or more to the point the guy's wife not know, and be asking him?  But if it is a legit mail, it's one of the more perfect unintentionally funny things I've ever read.

"Tea-bagging", if you aren't aware should be added to the Disgusting Sex Acts page, where it would be one of the less-offensive entries.  And I assume the guy looked at that page and didn't see it mentioned there, hence his asking me.  But why would his wife be wondering?  I mean did she hear the term somewhere and think the husband would know?

Just in case anyone reading this doesn't know, it's the act of placing the scrotum/balls on just about anything, but most often the face of your partner.  Most specifically, dipping them into her open mouth, like a tea cup.  But it's generally used as slang/humor for any time one guy ends up with his crotch on another person, especially near their face.

Of course the punchline to this email pretty much writes itself.

Husband: Honey! I found out what tea bagging is!

Wife: That's great, Hon.  What?

Husband: Well, I kind of have to show you.  Sit down, lean your head back, and close your eyes

*sound effect of a zipper being lowered*

*sound effect of a woman's surprised grunt*

*sound effect of a man rolling around on the ground, clutching his throbbing balls*

_________________

Date: January 6, 2002
From: Talon
Subject: Question

OK, I'm just proposing this and I'm not even sure that you've already attempted to or have written on it, but I was wondering if you would consider any guest articles. I was wondering if you would allow me to write an article on a topic that you might have heard of the past few months since it's gotten news on Sportscenter as well as Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. It's the story of a mentally impaired boy playing high school football even though if he was ever hit it could kill him. It turns out that the one play his coach wanted him to run, the other team agreed to let him run for a touchdown. There was much controversy over this due to some people thinking that it made the boy think that he was good enough to play at the next level and multiple other ideas. I was wondering as above, if I could write an article, with your permission, and that you might read over it and if you thought that it was OK, you might post it on your site as a guest article or something. Please get back to me on this idea, and it's perfectly fine if you don't want to, I understand, I'm just looking for a place to get some writing started and this seemed like a good place to try. Thank you for your time in reading this.

This is the third time someone has mailed in to ask about writing a guest article, though Talon here is the first to have a a detailed outline in advance.  I told him what I told the other two: I'm not looking to run any guest articles, being as this is um, my site, for my writing. However I am open to posting interesting emails on the site, and I wouldn't rule out posting a full update worth of material written by someone else.  It would depend on the article though, and I can't say yes or no to anything sight unseen.

As with the two previous guest article mails, I never heard from this guy again.

_________________

Date: January 7, 2003
From: Sim
Subject: Serial Thinkers

Yes yes, aren't the people like that just the most fascinating? I suppose I can see your point of view on this topic, but I'm not all that sure that our reasons are the same...

I don't think that this fascination is for the sake of the sensation of raw power, or domination, or anything..primitive of the sort. Personally, I imagine "activities" such as mass murders and whatnot as a transcendentalistic experience where one would transcend (of course) the banal mundane filth that happens every day.

Seriously, think about it.. most people do not live a very flavorful live..and when you ask many people about how they feel about their life in "flavor terms" I have found that they most always respond that their life is good, they're getting where they want to (or at least see how to or why they failed).. everything in such an optimistic manner.

Perhaps this is why I enjoy your writing so much-you seem to focus on the darker parts of things (and as I have it, the sides that hold most truth) And not only do you pull that off wonderfully, there is plenty humor for everyone..I love this style and wish that I could write as magnificently as you, but find myself much too lengthy in contrast to yours. Everybody has their own style, and either way I'm getting off the topic.

I honestly lost all track of what I was writing about. I'm a bit too tired and was concentrating much too much on "perfecting" and making things sound right and listening to music and all, that I didn't just /write./

Looking forward to finishing reading all of your content (yes, quite exhausting but nevertheless enjoyable) and perhaps even exchanging a few words with you...yes it is good to be optimistic /sometimes,/ if not just for the sake of not restricting yourself to be something..we should all be what we are at any given moment..but if I don't finish this closing this message would get too long and boring for anybody (let alone you) to read..

hope this wasn't too much trouble and time.

This mail was apparently prompted by (and starts off discussing) the serial killer mentions in the December mailbag.  From there he goes on to dish out some amazing praise, far more than I can rationally accept.

The one thing I thought was funny was when he said that his writing went too long at times. *cough*  Being as I'm the fellow who routinely does 35-40k daily updates about basically nothing, I wondered if the emailer had mixed up his pronouns for a minute.

_________________

Date: January 8, 2003
From: Mike
Subject: The Ten Commandments

I have recently been driven by raw curiosity to see
what blackchampagne is all about. I, of course, like what I have seen so far. Your views on religion resemble my own. I have lived in Salt Lake City for most of my life, so don't get me started on the Mormons.

I have just read your page on the Ten Commandments, and I have a book recommendation for you: The Nine Commandments, by David Noel Freedman. This is a serious scholarly work on the Bible. It is a fascinating read. Bear in mind that this recommendation is coming from an atheist.

The thing that brought this book to mind when reading your page is the commandment about taking the Lord's name in vain. Apparently, this does not apply to the use of foul language. Rather, it applies to an oath taken in His name, as in courtroom proceedings. So this can also be considered illegal in our current system.

It is not my intent to undermine your thesis; indeed, your point that precious few of the commandments are illegal is still quite valid, as well as interesting.

He may be right about the technical definition of "taking the lord's name in vain".  I don't know for sure. But the common usage of the term is for any sort of "goddamnit" type interjection.  Check the crazy CAP Reports movie reviewer guy if you don't believe it.

_________________

Date: January 10, 2003
From: Adam
Subject: Cool stuff

I know you probably get heaps of these e-mail -but your stuff kicks ass. I started with your Diablo stuff but have rapidly come over to your main site and particularly love your stuff about religion vs science One thing you may be interested is the "spear of destiny" - supposedly the spear that pierced Christ's side and was supposedly wielded by pretty much every successful general after that time (and possibly before) including maybe Hitler who at least searched extensively for it - great bit of Religious BS, another way for Christianity to be seen as the centye of history. One link on the net i found was this one. Just thought you might be interested.

I had never heard of this Jesus spear before, but it's an interesting fable.  I have looked up a bit of info about it on the Internt, but haven't written anything on this site about it yet, though I will. But not today.

_________________

 

Date: January 12, 2002
From: Stephen
Subject: Follow up

After I emailed you, I read your fantasy reviews, and would like to tell you that my novel, which is called THE END, is set in a fantasy type of world. Maybe telling you this will make it easier for you to answer my questions.

A mysterious mail, since this is the first and thus far only email I've ever gotten from this person.  I mailed him asking the obvious question ("Follow up to what?") but have not heard from him since.

_________________

Date: January 14, 2003
From: John
Subject: hot or very not

I was interested what you had to say about hotornot.com - it _is_ shocking just how much hotter the girls on the german or danish are as an average...anyway, I came across this pic and I had no choice but to send you the link. How the flaming wazzocks does this...thing...get a 5.7??? Truly baffling. There are Taliban pimps I'd rather be stuck in a dark alley with.

The hot or not page remains a fan favorite, reminding me once again that I really should find another half dozen worth adding to it at some point.  As for the lovely lady (?) he sends along the link to... well 5.7 is perhaps a bit generous.

_________________

Date: January 16, 2003
From: Lilsista
Subject: lol

shrimping....im sure you can guess what that is...............you can call me Lilsista

Actually, I can't.  I was assuming some foul sex act, but the mail is to the slang@ address, while the sex acts page is sex@.  The decision to send a slang term to a site with slang terms without explaining what it's slang for, is an odd one. I'm sure I could search around and find what it's slang for, (Probably intercourse, but possibly fellatio or even gay sex?) but that would sort of defeat the purpose in having the slang page and an email submit link, eh?

_________________

Date: December 17, 2002
From: Bryan
Subject: Site stats

I'm sure thousands of your adoring fans have already written to explain the site stats you posted today, but if I operated only on things I'd thought noone had done before I'd never operate.

Network = .net
US Commercial = .com
US Educational = .edu
Canada = .ca

and so on and so forth down the line of countries. All ISPs operate under one of the top level umbrellas. AT&T customers, or SBC customers, who use DSL are all accessing you under the .net domain becuase that's what AT&T and SBC use (to the last of my knowledge anyway). Whereas any TimeWarner customers (including AOL, or those using the RoadRunner service) access under the .com domain. Any college kid stuck in the dorms uses .edu and soforth.

Or maybe I'm entirely wrong,b ut I'm damn near sure this is 99.9% accurate. Though as we know, if we only accepted 99.9% accuracy 100 flights would crash at O'Hare daily. :)

This is in relation to the site stats discussion on the page that day, wherein I wondered why I had US commercial and Network stats.  And I don't even have thousands of readers, much less fans, much less emailers.  Two or three mails a day are the average, not counting spam, and probably half of those are short word/term/phrase submissions to the slang page.  Most of which I've heard before and not added since they aren't funny. 

As for Bryan's explanation, it's plausible, but as far as I can tell the site stats run a sort of trace route/whois on the visitors, which is how their IP# and ISP/location are generated.  The problem with what Bryan says is that most people around the world are on some ISP with a .com, rather than some host that would immediately reflect their nationality.  Plus I know from seeing where some friends show up that it goes by location, not ISP.  A friend in the UK has DL'ed large files from here a few times, and despite her ISP being a dot com, the stats put her in the UK.

Now possibly the stats differentiate between "US Commercial" and "Network" just for US surfers, but since those two categories are almost always about even, and I think there are vastly more .com's than .net's, the logic doesn't hold there either.

In any event, my site stats haven't shown the original ranking at all since I last wrote about it, so it's irrelevant at this point.

_________________

Date: January 17, 2003
From: Jason
Subject: Excellent site

Hello.

I've been meaning to comment on your website for a long time, and finally found the time to do so (even if it only for twenty minutes). I've been reading Black Champagne since mid-October. I stumbled across it while reading on of your collumns on DII.net, and it had an abbreviation, YMMV. Since I did not know what this meant, and it was highlighted, I clicked it and was brought to the Internet Slang page of Black Champagne. After enjoying the article I browsed through the site and eventually read the whole thing. I must say, excellent short stories. Todays Daily Update (January 17) sparked me into finally dropping a line, as I am an avid snowboarder myself. At the sight of the list showing the number of hits you get daily. Interesting to note that my home country, Canada, was the top country for supplying hits. That, and your comment about women who "look like soccer moms" made me laugh very loudly, as WinAmp was playing a song entitled "Soccer Mom". Funny!

So, just wanted to drop a bit of praise for both your main site and the DII work you do. The Decahedron columns are simply hilarious, and I tend to agree 90% of the time.

I guess I may as well tell you about who the typer of this email is. I'm just a friendly 19 (weeks away from 20) y/o who goes to school at Trent University, studying to get a major in Physics and Computer Science, and will hopefully get my Masters when I am done. I also play D2 as well, if that's not evident from the previous comments I made.

Have a good day "Flux", and keep up the good work.

I have nothing to say here.  Have I posted enough praise mails yet this month?  Now if only I could believe them...

_________________

Date: January 18, 2003
From: Boz
Subject: Flux Sux

Since "discovering" your Xmas story, I've avidly read every post on Dii.net and have your homepage bookmarked. Some of your turns-of-phrase leave me in tearful helplessness-"sack of cats" and "fleas on a three-legged hound" come to mind. Chalk it up to euphemism ignorance, maybe. Anyway, while I think you are funny and clever, sometimes you seem just a tad harsh. I'm a pretty staunch Blizzard fan, so that might explain it. My point being, I personally think Dave Barry is funnier than Howard Stern, i.e. universal humor (incl self-deprecation) is better than directed, ah, cruelty?

K, nuff said, I think. Of course the title is a joke. Like I said, I think you are very funny, and I'm writing this in the full realization that I don't possess your talent (D2 or writing) but for what it's worth...

As the email makes clear, the subject of it was meant sarcastically.  Okay, that must be enough praise emails for a month, right?  I'm almost starting to believe them.

_________________

Date: January 20, 2003
From: Derek
Subject: Website suggestion

Nice pasta sauce recipe! You should add that to the sidebar.... "cooking with Flux" hahaha.

As an interesting side note, my friend emailed me this while I was reading your section on L337 haxors.

I will have a cooking section someday. So help me.

_________________

Date: January 23, 2003
From: Allen
Subject: None

In total darkness he lays wait, his nose slightly elevated prying through the cold night air hoping it will capture the scent of a small, unsuspecting creature. Alas, a rabbit hops to within a few yards of our hero. His ears perk, in almost a Pavlovian response his saliva increases. Suddenly with the proficiency of a trained assassin he attacks. Hunger subsides for now. He bites the snow for a drink. He knows that before morning he will need to urinate but thinks nothing of it. Why should we care where or when this should occur? Do not mock the Grey Wolf - lest ye be mocked.

The mysterious no-subject wolf mails continue.  See December's mailbag for two more examples.

_________________

Date: January 23, 2003
From: Jason
Subject: hot or not feature

I thought your site was excellent over all, but I particularly enjoyed the hot or not feature. I've gone to that website off and on for a couple years and I immediately noticed the same thing you pointed out. Women that should be 5's or 6's regularly get 9's or higher. It just blows my mind.

I rated on a bell-curve where most would be 4-6 because lets be honest, most women are average, thats what average is all about. I could only explain the high ratings based on the fact that these are really young guys and their only experience with ratings is their school grades. So the scale they may be using starts with 7(0) as being the very edge of failure. I actually made the mistake of rating my gf (she asked!) and saying she was a 7...maybe an 8. It took a year and a half to fix that mistake. But she looked at it from the whole grading scale perspective and that just made what was a stupid mistake on my part much worse.

Overall thought I'd like to say I really liked your website and your articles on diabloii.net. You have a very engaging style of writing thats filled with the best kind of humor. Keep up the good work.

The voting on hot or not is a mystery to everyone.  It will be funny if after a year of this sort of speculation it turns out that their voting script was just buggy and counting every vote as 3 higher than it was.

_________________

Date: January 24, 2003
From: Jordan
Subject: Friday Jan 24th rant

I was reading your blog about kiddy porn and it made me think a little bit, as do a lot of your blogs. I was watching the today show almost straight away after I read your rant (it's on at around 1-3 am in Australia) and they were mentioning, among other things, JonBenet Ramsey.

They showed a small clip of her in a talent show. These things are sorta like Miss USA pageant, but for very young children. Now, I've heard of people being angry at these thing because they think paedophiles are likely to hang out there, and I think they're probably right. But what really makes me wonder is, why is nothing done about it? They want to put Paul Reubens in jail for his stuff which was legal at the time, but no one seems to really care a lot about the talent shows that parents put their young children in.

"...Anyone under 18 displaying 'sexual coyness' or a 'lascivious' intent." How can this not include 5 year old walking around in swimwear. Their parents have more or less told them, and shown them, how to look sexy.

So if that's the law then how is it that these talent shows are still allowed to exist. I find it rather odd myself.

I just like his opening remarks, "I was reading your blog about kiddy porn..." Now that wouldn't get me into trouble, if taken out of context, would it?

One thing I've wondered lately; are any adult blogs?  My site is probably about the closest to an "adult" one I've seen, since I so often talk about weird sex or other such stuff, and in an unflinching style.  But what about a daily porn blog? With original erotica (to use the more flattering term), links to good nude pictures of the day, news about porn, etc?  There are millions of porn sites, of course, and I'm not really an expert on them, but I've never seen one that was not trash.  They'll have dozens of nudie pics, or ads for their pay section, and some have new content every day for free, but there's never any writing, and what writing there is is usually unreadable.  One site that's sort of an adult blog is The Keeper's Site.  It's updated daily and usually with a tiny bit of text and maybe a news photo, and always a Babe of the Day.  I look there about once a week to skim over the past 7 hot chick photos, but calling his paragraph or two about the weather or a car show a "blog" is a stretch. There are tons of sites with daily collections of porn links, of which The Hun is probably the biggest.  And they seem to have a joke of the day there, but nothing more.  If the guy running that site had anything to say, he could segue it into a blog quite easily.  However I suspect 95% of the readers would just scroll down past his remarks to get to the porno linkage. There are also porn news sites, with daily updates, but I don't think those really qualify as "blogs" either, since they're mostly about hirings and firings and AIDS test disasters in the industry.

So while I don't think there is a market for a "blog about kiddy porn" there is probably one for a blog about porn/erotica, with copious examples.  It's just a matter of someone who can actually write starting it up, and getting some publicity, and not being merely a glorified porn links site.

I'm not volunteering for any of this, mind you.

_________________

Date: January 25, 2003
From: Mike
Subject: BlackChampagne.com Layout

Hello. This may seem like an odd question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. I will be redesigning my website shortly, and have become quite fond of the layout you use on BlackChampagne.com. Since you would obviously be the inspiration for it, would you mind if I used a similar layout? It would not be identical, but would most likely be close enough to notice the derivation. Thanks for your time. 

This one gave me a laugh, since I'm not overly fond of my layout here, and it (the layout) isn't in any way technical or advanced.  It's a slightly prettified table, and I have ideas for far grander looks, but never the motivation to try and see them to completion.  I've been meaning to put in the code to turn the right side slider bar a more background-matching color for months, and also to add another bit of border color around these text boxes, and those are easy changes.  So if I can't get around to doing those, a whole new radical layout seems unlikely.

Some day, when/if I've got the money, I'll hire some web designers and get this whole site redone.  Mostly I want it databased, so every daily update would go into a script and have a score vote, and topic keywords.  So you could search/sort blogs by topic and reader rating.  Same goes for all of the other sections, such as articles, reviews, mailbags, etc.  And I'd have interns/slaves to turn my every daily update into an article, when appropriate.

Of course when that day comes, I'll likely be far too busy with paying work to do anything approaching a long daily update. But the ones I do do will be so much better organized!

Anyway, I told the guy to go ahead, as long as he gave me a credit link for "design inspiration" or something like that.

_________________

Date: January 28, 2003
From: Caaroid
Subject: Women and porn

Hullo

I was just browsing through your archives this day (trying to find the two blogs about "The Alienist", since I decided it'd probably be good to read them before I read about "Angel"), and I found your article about women and porn. In it, you somewhere mention that.

"And women don't want just orgasms. They want emotional connection. Which is why girl-porn comes largely in the form of romance novels, where it's some lonely woman being swept off her feet by a handsome, rugged manly type, and they fall madly in love. There is usually sex, but it's very softcore, and much more occupied with foreplay and deep eye gazing and mentions of "souls" and "fulfillment" and "dreams"."

Ok, I know exactly where, since I copied it, but I get beside the point. What I mean to say is, that two out of my three serious relationships WERE all in for orgasms. And Ok, not "just" orgasms, but when I was not there they did miss the sex (as well? I hope so). (Thank God my current gf. is not above touching herself, the other one found other substitutes, the bitch.) Anyway, aside from "my" girls, most my female-friends who are honest enough to talk about the issue admit to having seen and even enjoyed porn. Actually, all but one. And I don't think 24 year old virgins count :)

But I am not to argue your main topic. If I was, I'd have to say it's easier to get a woman while you're wearing a thong on the beach than, say, driving an expensive car and being all romantic (the blond-prince-on-white-horse effect today. The bitches. Do I say that too often?)

His quote is from the blog on January 4th, so he was obviously rooting about the archives a bit.  Not that there's anything wrong with that. My blog was generalizing, and certainly some women do enjoy porn and getting a rock off.  Probably not as much as the average man, but they don't always demand deep emotional involvement as a pre-requisite to naked sweaty writhing. Though it is their goal.  As that blog concludes:

So are women asexual creatures who need to involve unnecessary mental stimulation, lacking the ability to simply be sexually aroused without hours of work?  Or are men pathetic dick robots, pitifully unable and unwilling to control their basest impulses for more than about 12 hours at a time?

Yes.

I sometimes think that if each gender could be distilled to their most base nature, the entire human race would be gay men and nuns.  That might be for the best, really. All the gender mixing is the main source of discord, as both genders try to behave in a way so unlike their natural proclivities.

I've been told there is happiness and fulfillment and such to be found as well, with the right woman, but I've seen little evidence of that, and a lot of evidence of the amazing lengths of self-deception most people will go to in order to keep their "love" alive.

But perhaps I just haven't met the right girl yet...

If you would like to be included in a future mail bag, give it a try.

<-- December 2002 -- February 2003 -->
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