From the mailbag...

Spleen Venting

Dear Guide:
      I was looking for some information regarding the rampant rumor here in Dallas, that Marilyn Manson is in fact Kevin's best friend from The Wonder Years – Josh Saviano? If anyone knows, please tell me – it will depress me, but it's starting to drive me nuts. Thanks!

Dear Reader:
      First, let me clarify the question a bit. Marilyn Manson is the ghoulish lead singer in the rock band of the same name. Josh Saviano is the young actor who played a character named Paul Pfeiffer on the TV series The Wonder Years. The reader's question pertains to a very popular urban legend to the effect that Manson and Saviano are the same person.
      It's false.
      Mr. Manson, whose real name is Brian Hugh Warner, joined the band in 1989. (Traditionally, members of the band create a stage name by pairing a famous woman's first name with a male serial killer's last name.) Josh Saviano was born in 1976, which means that if he is also Marilyn Manson, he joined the band when he was only 13 years old. Sound plausible?
      This is an updated version of a very old form of legend that takes on new specifics for each generation. People used to say that Alice Cooper played Eddie Haskell in Leave It to Beaver. And that Frank Zappa was the son of Mr. Green Jeans of Captain Kangaroo fame.

Dear Guide:
      Re: The Fatal Fake Tan.  Well, goddamnit, even if not true, some urban legends depict something that we'd like to see happen, sometime! Did'ja ever think about that? Consider some urb legs in the light of spleen venting, and see what happens.... There is, and has always been, plenty of anger in human beings. Most contemporary cultures flaccidly sidestep the issue of anger and its potential uses. It seems to me that the composition of an urb leg is a marvelous use of anger and irritation. And really redly spreading it about must thoroughly satisfy some folks. Better than hitting your spouse or paper-cutting your banker, I believe.

Dear Reader:
      You've made some cogent points, but I have to disagree with your conclusion. Nothing could be more satisfying than paper-cutting your banker.

Dear Guide:
      The story of spiders/rats in hairdos might come from the old stories about head-dress in france in the 1700s. Back then, many fashionable women wore huge, expensive, complex wigs. The head-gear could weigh many pounds and usually stayed on for weeks. Wigs were smeared with lard to keep the fake hair in place, and women slept on special pillows to keep the wig intact. Mice were sometimes a problem due to the lard, but I never heard of fatalities.

Dear Reader:
      Except possibly from the stench of rancid lard?

Dear Guide:
      You may find this a little strange, but three weeks ago I had an apparition about Bill Gates taking over the world through his computer programs. I thought about what was stopping him, and realized there isn't much... If there are hidden programs like the Hall of Tortured Souls, then Bill can write some program that will override our computer terminals giving him control of the computers with Microsoft applications running. If this happens, we will inevitably be screwed.
      Well anyways, I thought about this and told my friends. Then today I found your web site because I was going to do a history of Bill and how his past actions lead up to this overthrow of the worlds computers. I really tripped out that other people had found these nice little "coincidences" and have the same worries as myself. It is good to know I am not alone in my fear of Bill Gates.

Dear Reader:
      Nor, I might add, need Bill Gates feel alone in his fear of you.

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