Slashdot Mirror
Satirewire Calls It Quits
stuyman writes "After almost three years, Andrew Marlatt, SatireWire's best (and only) employee is leaving the company. Says Marlatt "I all agreed it's time for me to move on...while the decision was certainly difficult, the meeting was actually quite harmonious. I brought doughnuts." He's going to start doing other things, and it has nothing to do with money. Read about it here. Satirewire has landed, please remain seated until we are fully stopped in the terminal area..." I owe Andrew some heavy laughter, and wish him good luck.
He could at least get the rest of us some doughnuts too.. I want a doughnut. Good luck man!
suing the onion for patent infringement.
Someone you trust is one of us.
But I'll show him. I'll read the book at Barnes and Noble so he won't get a dime.
I've done a bit of writing at SegFault. (The majority of it right before it went belly up.) It'd be nice if SatireWire would accept submissions now that their main contributor is going onto other things. (Well, main contributor, editor, publisher, errand boy...)
Is there *decent* website we can go to in order to publish our own faux tech news?
How do we now this is not just another part of the joke.
:)
m l
m l
A slashdottting seems like a great way to shut down the site
Satire is a really powerful way to get a message across. This weeks story telling boring people not to encrypt stuff will help me to convince people why they do need cryptography.
http://satirewire.com/news/aug02/encryption.sht
My personal favorite story has to be this one about Microsoft Outlook, i inlcude it anytime some sends me a virus warning.
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.sht
classic just classic
Foot-and-Mouth First Virus Unable To Spread Through Microsoft Outlook
Satire is a powerful weapon.
Satirewire will be dearly missed.
This is too bad, but i'm glad to see he isn't going to keep forcing himself to write even though his heart's gone out of it. Sometimes, with continuous art/literature pieces like Satirewire, the most important thing of all is knowing when to stop.
:) This is better for the readers. It means they can still hear from him from time to time, and his output will be much better because he isn't having to spend all his energy on this hungry website beast.
And at least he's going to keep writing, so unlike, say, Bill Watterson, we're still going to hear from him
Was it "No!" or was Jupiter a "Ho!" ?
That site has been a festering pile of dog snot for the last 9 months or so. Nothing new to say. He didn't just beat a dead horse, he bought a stronger whip, changed riders, proclaimed "this is the way we have always ridden this horse," appointed a committee to study the horse, arranging to visit other satire sites to see how they ride dead horses, increased the standards to ride dead horses, declared that the horse is better, faster and cheaper dead, and finally, harnessed several dead horses together for increased speed.
that is a very bad gag
No more satirewire, i guess i will have to add the book to my wishlist.
Just in case it gets slashdotted:
SATIREWIRE HAS LANDED
DEC. 1999 -- AUG. 2002
Please Check Your Seats for Any Personal Items
New Haven, Conn. (SatireWire.com) -- Citing creative differences, SatireWire's founder and sole employee, Andrew Marlatt, announced that as of today, the site will no longer be updated.
Moi
Unlike everything else on the site, this is not a joke. Not even the "creative differences" part.
"I've been producing SatireWire by myself for 159 Internet years (2.67 Earth years), and in a staff meeting yesterday, I all agreed it's time for me to move on," said Marlatt. "While the decision was certainly difficult, the meeting was actually quite harmonious. I brought doughnuts."
The site will still exist, but as an archive of (mostly) intelligent humor pieces that, in their own small way, reflected the times in which they were wrought.
But let's skip to the questions...
WHAT THE HELL?
No, I was not indicted for insider trading. I have not been exposed by the TIPS program. I did not at any time meet with Dick Cheney to discuss anything.
OK, SO YOU'RE CLEAN. THEN WHAT'S UP?
I started the site (originally called The FNwire) back in December of 1999, at the height of the Internet boom. It was a great creative outlet, and it was a marvelous way for me to get a wider audience for my writing. That first month, for those first few stories, I think I had about 400 visitors. Last month, in July of 2002, the site had about 1 million visitors. So, oddly enough...
It's not about the money. The site actually makes money -- through advertising, through the book "Economy of Errors," and (primarily) through selling pieces from the site to publications like, say, the Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the National Post in Canada. Nice little setup, actually. I've been very lucky. But the bottom line is, it has ceased to be fun. My heart is not in it. My head is not in it. (And please, no emails saying, "Yeah, lately we could kinda tell." Like I need to hear that.)
The thing is, SatireWire, successful as it has been, is also suffocating. I work best tangentially, meaning I work best when I let ideas just come at me, flitting about my head like confetti as I marvel at all the pretty colors, the way they turned in the wind. I would pick out the ones I liked, put them together, make a story. But the confetti no longer falls. It's all on the ground now. The parade is over. I'm just sweeping up ideas off the pavement. And that's not good enough.
SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?
Challenge myself. Explore. Focus on just writing (gleefully abandoning the business side of SatireWire, which was exhausting). I'll probably continue to write humor pieces for some of the print publications I have worked with, and perhaps some others. Perhaps even something regular. Haven't really thought about it. Odds are I'll also have pieces (though what "style" is a blessed mystery to me) appear on the Internet now and again. I might also get into longer fiction. I might produce a book entirely of SatireWiry charts. I might get invited to a backstage party for Moby. Who knows?
IS THIS MOVE WISE?
Oh God no. SatireWire is one of the most popular humor sites on the Net. And with a book just out in June, ("Economy of Errors"), it's completely counter-intuitive to stop now when the site so successfully supports the book, and is making good money. But I run an Internet site for a living. What do I know from intuitive?
YOU'RE JUST GOING TO LET IT SIT AND ROT?
As some of you know from reading The Magic School Bus books, rot is important to the life cycle. But yes, most likely, it's going to simply be an archive of SW stories, with updated information only on "Economy of Errors," which as you know is available at bookstores everywhere and makes a perfect Christmas gift.
WHY NOT SELL THE SITE?
Friends and colleagues asked me if it were for sale about 15 seconds after I told them the news. So would I consider it? Doubtful. It would have to be to the right people, people who were talented and funny and could keep it updated regularly. Proven track record and all that. Marketing people would say it's a waste to let all that traffic just disappear. I am not a marketing person.
Buy SatireWire's new book!
IF THERE ARE ANY UPDATES ON YOU OR YOUR WORK, CAN WE CHECK SATIREWIRE.COM?
Good idea. I'll try to incorporate something like that on the home page. In the meantime, you can always buy the book.
SO THAT'S IT THEN, IS IT?
No, there are also the thanks. Many thanks for many people, not least of whom are the thousands upon thousands of subscribers from all over the world, the hundreds of thousands of regular visitors, and those who've emailed support, and, yes, even opprobrium. And there are individuals. Susan and Brian and Linda and David and Doug and two other Davids and Angel and Tom and Regina and Jeff and Mike and Michael and Daniel and Becky and Laura and this is stupid you know who you are.
OK, SOME OF US HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED, ARE YOU BRITISH?
No.
CANADIAN?
No.
YOU MUST BE AUSTRALIAN, RIGHT?
Nope.
SO WHO ARE YOU?
Geographically, I am a Connecticut (US) resident, raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Educationally, I was schooled at the University of Georgia. Professionally, I was a journalist for a good while after school, writing for newspapers and, later, as a magazine freelancer. Psychologically, I am a goof, (although lately, unfortunately, a serious goof). And personally, I have a wonderful wife and two terrific young boys, with whom I intend to spend much more time. They are the most brightly colored confetti of all.
One good /.-ing for the road...thanks for all the laughs
Thats it, I'm quitting the internet. It now holds no joy for me.
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
How about collating SatireWire's articles and publishing a book, a la Dispatches from the 9th CIrcle?
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
It takes a lot of guts to turn your back on a money-making venture just because you're no longer interested. Too many creative people -- writers, musicians, whatever -- keep going too long, for the money, and damage their careers and their reputations as a result. He's going out at the top, because he's noticed (as have most regular readers) that he's not as funny as he used to be. He'd stalled, but he has enough sense to bail out before he starts descending.
At least he didn't cite creative differences...
I wish Microsoft would call it quits.
I appreciate the effort, and couldn't have done any better, but Satirewire just wasn't funny. It was formulaic. Little surprise or imagination. Hopefully he'll be much better at what he does in the future. And it's great that he's not going out like a punk, either, by, say, demanding that the onion change its name to Satirewire/The Onion, or whining about corporations....
What will I read while I'm at work? The onion is already blocked!
Oh, ... wait a minute.
I'll buy it!!!! I have like $50 bucks...
and a cookie.
But seriously... I'm saddened. Those articles were some of the funniest things I've read... I'll miss the few and far between articles.
Let's see, there's BBSpot.com; The Onion (out of respect for it's past, if nothing else); the usual collection of blogs... man, this is sad! Any other humor sites worth a regular visit?
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
One of a few times that Fark linked before Slashdot. Imagine that. Anyway, yeah, occasionally he came out with some good stuff, but it just really wasn't that funny. I can appreciate what he did for those that were into that kind of humor, but many times they just seemed boring or, rather, uninteresting.
Danish != nationality
What better end to Satirewire's long and storied career than having its servers slashdotted into oblivion.
"That's not retirement... I'll SHOW you retirement!"
Karma: Chameleon (mostly affected when you come and go, you come and go)
Seriously, I know he says it is not about money, but he's *really* funny, and he shouldn't be barely scraping by, making humor that's genuine and doesn't answer to anybody, b/c that's clearly what he loves.
After all, we may enjoy satirewire a great deal, but this funny man should be exposed to a wider, less geekocentric audience. Instead of doing a webpage, he should trade his notoriety for a job writing for a sitcom, and make good money while his humor is watered down beyond recognition and his imagination is crushed into dust.
Don't be sad because satirewire is gone! Don't be sad, DESPAIR, because the REST of our culture is a soul-destroying wasteland trampling and undermining the human spirit.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
In case you can't tell, I'm throwing a virtual tantrum. I've just finished stomping my feet on the floor and now I'm banging my head against my monitor ... ... now I'm holding my breath ... ... really loud now (so I'm holding my hands over my ears) NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo. No, N0, NO!
...
I don't wanna for it to stop.
I want my SatireWire
(can you tell I'm the dad of a 2.5 year old)
No. Okay, Now I'm swatting at the monitor
I'll continue to cycle through these steps until I get what I want, catharsis kicks in, or my wife gets home - whichever occurs first.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Check out Gagpipe. It's a daily updated list of a bunch of humour sites on the web. Great stuff.
Actually, my favorite satirewire article in recent memory was ANGERED BY SNUBBING, LIBYA, CHINA SYRIA FORM AXIS OF JUST AS EVIL which sort of highlighted the silliness of identifying three countries as some sort of menace to humanity as a whole. Especially given the fact that Iran and Iraq are bitter enemies the idea that they are some sort of "axis" is crazy.
GMD
watch this
My favorite was the one about Australia going on a bender, whining about not getting any respect, and waking up in the mid-Atlantic with a hangover.
My second favorite was the one about "all that foreign shit on the internet."
Thaks for the laughs.
You damn quitter.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Oh, and I can continue to ignore BetaMax and listen to my Ogg Muzac and Divx pr0n. (see earlier news)
Like Forest Gump said while sittin on the bench talking, "And I though, that's good! One less thing to worry about."
Brunching Shuttlecocks
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I remember back when the site was called FNwire. I have been reading their(his) stories for a long time now and can say that I will definately miss his humor. (Expecially since TheOnion is blocked at my place of employment). Thanks for all the stories.
--Note to self. Add witty sig here, someday...
The best laughs I've had from SatireWire:
Are you tangential?
Imagine there's no countries
Should Marty Xerox Egypt?
Least-used chat e-bbreviations
Ask the startled
Men do talk about relationships
Canada has a waship? like for war?
God names next chosen people; it's Jews again
New "Segway Human Transporter" not tested for acronyms
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
What a way to go out...slashdotted into oblivion :)
I'm not disappointed in the slightest. I hope Mart goes on to do even greater and better things than the stuff that he's been doing that I don't really know anything about. Besides, there's always slashdot on April 1st (although, isn't the point of an April fool's joke that you actually FOOL someone?).
WWJD? JWRTFA!
New Haven, Conn. (OSDNews) -- Federal investigators descended on the front door of SatireWire's Andrew Marlatt armed with search warrants and cease and desist notices.
Marlatt, who just recently announced his retirement from the web site, is now the focus of an investigation focusing on financial dealings with himself. In a memo obtained by OSDNews, we have learned that Mr. Marlatt awarded himself quite a hefty sum of money as a settlement for firing himself. When questioned about it, Mr. Marlatt replied "I had that in my contract. I had told myself that if I ever wanted to quit, I was not going to walk away with nothing. And just because I am taking 100% out of the company should not mean I am trying to steal all it's funds!"
President Bush, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed concerned regarding such shady dealings and was quoted as saying "this is exactly the type of deals we need to stop. How can it be that someone can work hard to build something, then shut it down and take all the profits? I might need to have the IRS investigate this character!".
Meanwhile, the Slashdot community was both saddened by the news, and upset at the fact Mr. Marlatt had not bought doughnuts for them.
We contacted CowboyNeal via telephone, but were unable to make out what he said over the incredible sobbing noises he was making.
---
Thank you Andrew! You made us all laugh!
did you even read the article?!?
"New Haven, Conn. -- Citing creative differences, SatireWire's founder and sole employee, Andrew Marlatt, announced that as of today, the site will no longer be updated."
[emphasis added]
- mark
But you did not.
My favorite bit:
As is likely to be the case with Bush, most such incidents have little impact on world events, but Doris Greyley, author of "Dishonorable Discharge: The Rise and Fall of Dictators," said many leaders in crisis have found themselves grabbing the veins of power at unpropitious times, often with disastrous results.
You mean roy rogers. :)
YVW.
even tho half of them are dead? Or better yet, the rolling stones (where all of them are un-dead)?
Time and again creative people will leave the game when they are at the top. I forget who said it, but a nice answer that one creative person said to the question of why they chose to stop while at the zenith of their success:
I would rather leave and have them ask "Why did you leave?", instead of waiting years after my heart was no longer in it, and then have them ask "Why didn't you leave?"
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Nobody told me! I never heard of SatireWire and now it's gone?!?
Damn you! Damn you all to hell!!!
*cough*
Oh well. Is there any other tech humour sites I don't know about?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Try http://www.lowendmac.com/lite/ It uses the word "hegemon" in a sentence, if you can find it. It picks on Apple and M$ without regard to common sense, accuracy, partisanship, or, more importantly, humor.
The best that can be said of it is that of all the countless Onion knock-offs, it was the least offensive.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
...besides "what good are laurels if
you can't rest on them" that he quit satire
when henry kissinger won the nobel peace prize,
"[because you just can't beat that for
real satire]" (or something to that effect).
naturally, lehrer understands ('cuz he's not dead!)
that satire is an entirely different
animal than parody. i think our good man
passes this test.
everytime he called in sick, he knew it was a lie.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Heck, we've had ascii art of cows on the front page.
Best Slashdot Co
Try this site .
And I just recently discovered satirewire, too :(.
Is definitely worth a visit.
If you're going through your act, and you're in the last 5 minutes, and you hit a bit in your routine that has the audience rolling, then you say "Thank you, good night!" and get off the stage. Nothing is worse than finishing on a bit that doesn't get a laugh. Always leave them laughing, even if it means leaving the last bit of your routine undone.
Unfortunately, recent political figures seem to have adapted this strategy.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Anything NOT blocked by smart filter?
humorix.org
This guy is seriously funny...a lot of the time, at least.
One of my favorites:
http://humorix.org/apr01.shtml#Polymorph
http://monkeysvsrobots.com is what you're looking for =) take a look!
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away