October

• Hello!:

  As my friends and I were listening to the new disk I noticed a sound at the end of Axilla that sounded very familiar. My friends think it is a triangle, but I know it is a pair of Chinese Healthy Balls - those round steel balls that make a chiming sound as you rotate them around your hand. Could you write me back and tell me who has the better ear?

  Sincerely, Valerie Delusky
  Dear Valerie,:

  It is Chinese Balls (good ear).
  
  - Mike
• Dear Trey:

  A fellow hair-dancer needs a bit of advice from you - how do you keep your glasses on your face? Do tell sometime in Doniac Schvice.

  Renee Nightingale Greenwood Lake, NY
  Dear Renee,:

  The answer is Super-Glue. Start with one drop under the tongue twice a day at meal times. After a week or so you can start increasing your dosage. Soon you'll be taking a bottle a day. By that point, your glasses shouldn't be a problem anymore.
  
  Stickily yours,
  
  Trey
• Dear Mike:

  Are you yelling "hold the phone" on Riker's Mailbox?

  Later, Billy-Wah
  Dear Billy-Wah,:

  In Riker's Mailbox we yell "Olaffub", which is Buffalo backwards. Originally, the song was "Buffalo Bill", but we flipped it and scrunched it.
  
  - Mike
• Dear Phish:

  My friends and I have been having a controversy over the Phish emblem for some time now. Is the circle in front of the P the eye or nose of the Phish? If you could let us know, it would save years of argument.
  Thanx.

  Anon
  Anon:

  In the words of the immortal Scotty, "Eye, Captain."
  
  -- Trey (the person who designed the Phish logo)
• Dear Phish:

  I've never heard your music.
  
  We just moved into a new apartment 1 1/2 months ago, and your newsletter has come twice, addressed to the previous tenants. I know that it is wrong, illegal even, to tamper with the U.S. Mail, but I have opened and perused both newsletters.
  
  I knew that Phish was a band prior to opening the first newsletter, and here's how I knew that:
  
  One night last Spring I was driving by Tipitina's, and there were college-type kids crawling all over the place. Sitting on the neutral ground, roosting across the street, but mostly packed up around the building. "Hmm," I said, "The Nevilles must be playing tonight. Or the Meters. Or Cowboy Mouth."
  
  Then I recalled that a band called Phish was playing at Tip's that night, according to the newspaper and radio. "Such a crowd," I said, "for a band I've never heard of. Must be one of them grunge groups from up North."
  
  Phish was forgotten until your newsletter arrived.
  
  It was delightful. I read it aloud to my significant other, Michelle. I reread it several times that week. I dreamed about it.
  
  The cartoon in the first newsletter confirmed my suspicion that this was not a grunge band.
  
  But I'll never know.
  
  You see, once upon a time, whilst I was a boy in college, there was this girl I was sweet on. She was everywhere. She went to see the same bands I did, hung out in the same bars I did, walked the same streets and alleys as I. And though it turned out that she went to high school with the woman I was living with at the time, and though she was an old family friend of a close friend of mine, I conspired never to meet her, never to talk to her. For I knew from experience with such things that she could never fulfill my expectations, never live up to the person I had created in my head, and I wanted to retain that person, perfect and pure.
  
  So it is with Phish. And so it shall be.
  
  Letter-writers in your newsletter seemed disappointed in the prospect of possible fame and fortune for Phish. But they cannot know the purity of loving Phish having never heard Phish.

  James Vautravers, New Orleans, LA
  :
• Dear Doniac Schvice:

  The other day I was watching TV and I happened to catch part of an MTV documentary entitled "Sex in the 90's" and they played part of Down With Disease in the background. Should I be worried?

  Love, Bill Todd A.K.A. Johnny Bravo
  Bravo:

  Yes. You should be very worried. If I found myself trying to learn about sex from MTV, I'd be terrified.
  
  Trey
• Dear Phish:

  OK, so here's the deal. On Rift, all of the songs are represented on the cover, all but one, "Horse," I can't find it anywhere on it. Does it not exist?
  Alas, Hoist comes out and what do I see on the cover? Tell me, is there a connection or am I reaching.

  Thanks, Chris Bucci
  Dear Chris,:

  You are right. The horse is finally here.
  
  --Mike
• Dear Phish:

  Any plans in the future with Tower of Power?

  Happy Dave
  Dear Happy Dave:

  You wouldn't be so happy if your name was Pathetic Todd.
  
  --Fish
• Phish and fellow guppies,:

  I'd like to address an issue mentioned in your latest issue of Doniac Schvice by Ellen Meyi. If, by some perverse and truly amazing technological advancement, one was capable of "digging to China" or wherever without having the earth collapse, or the diggin tools (or yourself for that matter) became molten, what would happen... I'd like to propose the following possibilities: Due to gravity, a force pulling to the center of the earth, you would fall one way, then another, then the other, etc. until you eventually stopped falling and hovered in the middle. Another possibility is as follows:
  The equation for gravity is:
  
  G(m1m2)/
  --------------
  (r)^2
  
  Now G = a constant. M1/M2 = the mass of you / earth. r = the distance between the centers of two objects. Now, if we were in the center of earth, the "r" would = 0! As you know you can't divide by zero, so the world would either blow up or there would simply be unidentified gravity -- since it is unidentified, we couldn't identify it, and not being able to find it would leave things relatively unchanged. A final proposition is that, due to gravity, things would be sucked into the hole from outside it -- perhaps during the middle of a show in which case people entering the doors wouldn't be a problem -- and as everything was sucked into the earth, there would be nothing left, for the outside of the earth would get sucked to the center. We'd be left with an inside out earth of very small size (~ the head of apin - with 1,293 angles dancing on it). Such a small object with such large mass is virtually a black hole from wich nothing can escape, time is infinite and we'd all be crushed.

  Thank You, Tom Livelli
  Dear Tom:

  Gravity is a myth.
  
  --Mike Gordon