A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 
Authority figure


Ez has spent more time than anyone, possibly more than any other single individual in the whole of human history, pondering the eternal question...

What makes Ithaca suck?

Do you know anyone else who's spent $200 of his own beer money to register a domain name and develop a web site titled Ithacasucks,com, a site that has been visited by a total of 4 people in 12 months, two of whom took a wrong turn trying to reach a porn site crammed with naked teenage sluts performing fellatio on viagra engorged NASCar drivers.

Do you know anyone else who has experienced hair loss, waking up at 5 am every day for 6 months to write a daily blog named thacasucks.blogspot.com? No, you don't. So please give Ezra his due. He's an authority on what makes Ithaca suck. These are the days when folks lie about their credentials all the time, claiming to have been in the Alabama Air National Guard when they they were in fact campaigning for fat cat cotton barons or pork belly moguls running for Congress in Tuskegee.

You know where Ez has been. Connecting the dots. Doing the math. Experiencing the pain. Figuring out why Ithaca sucks. Like any self-respecting authority who's ever hung out his shingle or stuck a diploma on the wall, Ez has even developed a lingo of his own, to befuddle and bedazzle the customer. Here's a brief glossary of terms.

Suck-dom - the state of sucking or alternately the place where sucking occurs.

Suck-hood -the feeling of being in the state of suck-dom, looking from the inside out , sort of like being encased in jello.

Suck-iness - the quality of sucking.

Suck-ination - the total gestalt of sucking, the whole enchilada as it were, rhymes with alienation .

Suck-erama a place where you can go to immerse yourself three -dimensionally in suck-dom- like standing on the Commons.

Suck-meter - a tool developed by Ezra to measure suck-hood.

Suck theory - the critical and analytical assumptions underlying the study
of suck-hood.

So why does Ithaca suck?


There is no easy answer to the question, no single explanation - no one theory that can explain the existential experience of suck-dom, the depths of suck-iness, the inevitability of suck-hood, the torment of suck-ritude, the anguish of suck-rioasis that one experiences spending time in Ithaca.

Ez has even tried to deconstruct the question. What is Ithaca? Is it a small college town in upstate New York living off of 40,000 college students? Is Ithaca a state of mind, a mode of being, that state of being-without, or is it being within? The experience of being -within the state of being-without? Cavafy believes that ithaka is the journey, not the destination. The journey that shouldn't be rushed ; in the poem of that name, ithaka is a metaphor for life. But did he ever live in Ithaca, New York?

And, anyway, what do we mean by the word suck? We suck our mothers' milk, we suck milkshakes through a straw, we suck-up to our bosses to get a raise. How does this pleasurable experience translate into something totally opposite , the horrible experience of gagging, choking, gasping for air, the feeling of being stuck like a bottle fly on a flypaper runway?

These are all very deep questions. Like any self-respecting authority on anything that's worth knowing, Ez charges by the hour. Send your checks to ithacasucks.com.

He doesn't take credit cards.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:59 AM