In response to a plea for a lighter topic, I give you this. Do Xeney readers suck? If you were born in an even-numbered month, you argue that yes, Xeney readers are the lowest of the low, the dimmest of the dim, completely without redemption. Odd-numbered months: you think Xeney readers rock.

I had to do it that way because I was born in an odd-numbered month, and if I said you all sucked, well, you'd stop reading. And this would go nowhere.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2001

Answers

The whole time I was countin' what month August was, I was prayin' please let it be even and YES! It is. So without further ado...

Xeney readers do suck. Sometimes when I walk down the street I just start thinking about Xeney readers and how much they suck. The evidence is all around.

You know the bus stop shelters? The ones with scratched up plexiglass coverings that shield mass transit participants from the elements? Well, I walked by one just the other day and it looked like someone had snezed all over the inside of one of them. One huge crusted lime green streak right down the middle of the largest piece of glass. It was impossible not to see. My first thought, "Damb xeney readers. They suck."

And then, I was sitting at one of the little tables at Starbuck's. The little round kind that Frasier and Niles sit at while they drink non-fat decaf lattes. I was right in the middle of adjusting my boys when my hand inadvertently brushed the underside of the table. Well, as everybody knows, the only two things that live on the underside of tables, both equally unnerving and disgusting, are tiny little, long bearded perverted troll people and chewed up gum.

I jerked my hand back immediately. Once you've ever had your middle finger humped by a tiny little troll you never want it to happen again. But it was just instinct. I knew there were no trolls down there cuz they usually only hang out in gay bars (so I'm told), so I put my hand back under and started mushing the lumpy bump with my index finger and thumb. It took a little doing but I finally managed to pull the hardened rubber tree extract from the table. Once gum adhere's to press board it's a bugger to get off.

I put my other hand under the table and began rolling the piece between my palms. Soon enough my body heat transformed the little pink rock into its original malleable state. Quick as a flash I popped the previously chewed chicle into my mouth and knew I had struck gold. There was plenty of cinammon juice left in it. Damb xeney readers throwing away perfectly good gum. God they suck.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

How did I know that Rudie would be the first to respond to this?

Xeney readers rock more than the readers of any other journal. They rock more than Foghat. They rock more than Amadeus.

Xeney readers are all intelligent, attractive, and have the best dogs in the world. In fact, I would posit that Xeney readers could take out the DNRC and run the world.

What other readership would have the patience to put up with Rudeboy, or the sagacity to guide people through the travails of picking a grad school, learning to drive stick, or coping with crazy pets?

Plus, obviously we have the best taste in reading material in the world.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

Xeney readers obviously rock. Where else would you find people who use "sagacity" and "travails" in the same sentence? Case closed.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

Funny. I was just thinking how much they suck for the same thing. A guy like me is just damb lucky there's a dictionary on the web.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

What solipsism. Because you enjoy the Xeney-reading thing, and because you have a fairly healthy and robust self-esteem, you think that all Xeney readers are as fair and noble as your own selves?

You cannot base your opinions on the whole of a group through a small sample of that one group. Sampling - while sometimes the only was to garner a sketch of a thing as a whole - is utterly inaccurate and prone to high margins of error.

Now. Objectively, Xeney readers do suck, as a whole. While our shared taste in excellent reading material does point to some measure of intelligence and good taste, and the vocabulary in the forum does tend to get rather impressively baroque and smart-like, the fact that the majority of us spend our working time fiddling around with someone else's website, and posting obscure, narcissistic bits of trivia and opinion makes us thieves. Stealing from our bosses, and - more importantly - stealing from ourselves! We could be changing the world!

Instead, we hunch over the keyboard and try to say things to make Beth like us, or other forum people like us, or read Bad Hair Days entries and be admiring instead of creating our own art, and that sucks.

Also, a big chunk of Xeney readers like dogs, and dogs are gigantic scary face-eaters of death. I don't think I need to elaborate.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

"while sometimes the only was to garner a sketch of a thing as a whole..."

way. WAY. not "was"

And another thing! Xeney readers make stupid typos! They totally superdooper suck.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

It's pretty obvious that statistically, Xeney readers suck when you figure how many readers Xeney has (must be in the thousands) and how many actually post in the forum which is likely only dozens. (I'd count, but I am a Xeney reader and therefore suck far too much to bother) Therefore, the Xeney readers who write suck because of typos, silly subject matter and indiscriminate use of obscure words, and the rest of them suck because they can't even manage that much!

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

Oh...and we don't even want to discuss the large number of Xeney readers who are Hotmail-wielding trolls , now do we?

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

May.

Xeney readers obviously rock, because (1) I am one of them.

Even the ones who are having a momentarily hit of stupidity or those on whom the calendar frowns, who are currently arguing for suck, well, those people rock too, because (2) they argue so well. Wait a minute.

Well, anyway, Xeney readers clearly rock more than Amadeus (that cracked me up), and more than Bobby Brown, and it's my perogative to say so. Which I phrase that way because that song just came up in conversation, though not with a Xeney reader. (3) Since no Xeney reader has ever mentioned Bobby Brown before (I'm pretty sure), clearly, Xeney readers rock.

Also, Xeney readers rock because (5) Xeney reader rudeboy spells damn "damb," which amuses me. Of course, I'm the one who cracks up at a restaurant sign advertising a "hamb steak special." Because (6) I, the Xeney reader, find that amusing, clearly, all Xeney readers rock. Also, because (7) I now dub Xeney reader Pink Sparkly Jen "Spinkly," she (who agrees with me) and I both rock, thereby increasing the rocklihood of the Xeney readership at least tenfold. Finally, because (8) I'm not going to push myself past eight reasons, Xeney readers rock. QED.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

June.

Yeah... that's right... I'm a Gemini... and I suck. BIGTIME. I sit at my desk all day trying to think up smart and funny things to say on this forum... thumbing through my dictionary to keep up with the "regulars"... trying to think of how I can figure out where Beth lives so I can rent a portable high pressure, hot water sprayer, and an Under Water Welder's suit so I can (safely) go onto her back porch and FINALLY get rid of all those damp (really damn, but I idolize rudeboy and mimic him every chance I get) spiders!

Beth may be sleeping like a log but -I'm- still haunted by -that- image... which brings me to my point.... I suck! And if I suck, you guy's (readers) suck -WAY- worse, cause you're reading this dribble 'o mine.

You morons actually think there's a -real- person named "Beth" who actually works in Sacremento as a lawyer?!?! Doh! You idiots!! This site is actually a promotional ad from a guy in North Jersey, who thought he'd draw interest to his hair salon, "Do's for Dude's", until he went out of business, so he uses this site to attract unkempt, multiple monkey lovers that are uncircumcised, enjoy getting bruised (or rug burned) during love making, think we should kill the mentally retarded, are weather flowers, don't like chain restaurants, Timothy McVeigh, anything outside of California or Massachusets, and are getting their Ph.D.'s (or beginning their grad work) in obscure fields such as "Symbolic Systems and Fine Wines!"

How could there be the slightest doubt in anyone's mind as to whether we all suck?! Face it... this a reunion site for all those people -ever- in a high school ROTC, band, or shop class. And we smell funny, too.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

April. I couldn't possibly say anything brighter, nor more eloquent, than the "maharishe", so I just say Ditto. We suck.

(Do you like me now, Jen?)

Plus, I'm apparently a hotmail-wielding troll, which definitely sucks...but hopefully not the same troll that humped rudeboy's finger at Starbuck's.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

well fuck me in the ass morpheus -- I was in band! This is by far one of the most amusing threads I have seen come down the pike in recent webistory.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001

I agree. You guys rock.

(Hey, I'm an odd month.)

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2001

QED, Schmoo-ee-dee. You people can't even argue! More proof that y'all suck. I think I'm gonna go ahead and rest my fancy case.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2001

We do indeed suck (August, here). I, especially, give solipsism a bad name. The only thing I care about is me and the rest of you are just bit players on the stage of the eternal drama that is me, and that is why I, like all xeney readers, suck. With my poorly informed viewpoints and ill-timed retorts I provide a pastel mimicry of one of the lesser lights in the McLaughlin Group. My own wit is as crisp and pointed as week-old celery -- every funny thing I've ever typed in this forum I saw first in McSweeney's or an old Art Buchwald article. The only thing keeping me alive is my dysfunctional coping mechanisms and my narcissism. This is why I suck. And since I more than half-suspect that y'all are just projections of myself, the same is likely true of you, too.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2001

August. What day is yer birthday, Rudeboy? (Mine's the 27th)

We suck because we have no lives. We suck because we are actually taking direction from a woman who is telling us to argue by the MONTHS of our birthdays. I mean, c'mon.

We suck because we let her touch our lives instead of having our own.

Oh, and we run up giant bills for web space when we hit xeney.com over and over again looking for an update. Yes we do.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2001

No, that doesn't mean you suck, that just means you didn't join the notify list. Which actually does mean you suck, I guess. Whew. You convinced me!

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2001

I was born on the same day as the X-Clinton. Further proof that there's a true playa born every August 19th.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

I read "tuba playa." And I sat here for a full minute thinking "wait, didn't he play the sax?"

[More proof that xeny readers, they are not the bomb. Unless you're talking about the kind of bomb that, say, Pearl Harbor is.]

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

Ahhh but the joke is on you Miz Sexy Thang - I did play the tuba. Mad vulva caressing, labia massaging tongue skills don't develop all by themselves ya know.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001