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As you might expect, we get all sorts of mail here at HLF HQ. Sometimes it's good mail, people praising us for our good works for rodents. Sometimes, though, it's bad mail, from evil, wicked gerbilers and rodent-haters. These pages will list some of the better(?) messages we've received since December 1998, along with our responses. Enjoy. Visit Fan Mail Page 1-2-3-4-5-6 From interimexec and/or Clarke Tomben (12/98): Hello O wise yet faithful one! Tell me this... What is the life expectancy of a dead hamster which is bald and can juggle ping-pong balls on his head and is called Marmite...hmmmmmm? Answer me that, hey? Ha ha ha haaaaaaaa...fool. P.S. Mind the bomb in your back room, you little chipmunk!!! Our team in your area has been briefed as to the content of your message. You may expect your computer and stereo to be "liberated" shortly for our cause. Thank you for drawing attention to yourself. From Jodymaryk (6/99): Just
spent an hour at your site, I am now more in tune with our fuzzy
friends than ever. will sell my worldly goods for arms(or tails)
to continue this noble cause. From Animals1 (6/99): It has come to our attention here, that older rodents such as senior gerbils and hamsters ready to retire from a full life of labor on the corporate treadmill have been treated unfairly by the oppressive corporate wealthy racist classist elitists. We have heard stories from insiders about downsizing pensions and even verbal abuses. One of the popular slogans is; "you're ready for the glue factory". and, "Get the cheese out...you old rodent". We feel that these gifted, intelligent, high I.Q. self starting, imaginative mature rodential citizens should be comforted during their "golden years". P.S. Anyone accused of gerbiling should be brought to trial by an all critter jury of their own peers and if found guilty, they should be brought into the public square and hanged by the neck until they are dead. -Thank you Dear Comrade: Thank you for your alert. We, too, are concerned about such matters, although it may be for different reasons. You see, we expect nothing less than for The Man to say such cruel comments, for they have put our rodent friends on corporate treadmills (in order to power their wide-bottom jacuzzis and overprices karaoke machines) for far too many years. Indeed, our investigations have found that rodents are being abused at the age of "retirement" (read that as the age in which the rodents' poor little legs can no longer turn the treadmill to power the bigwigs' air conditioners) even more than in regular life. Those pensions you mention are actually never delivered and, in fact, most of the abused and oppressed rodents are sent not to the glue factory but to the tannery in order to strip them of their skins and clothe The Man's wife and/or whore. You're right--these SLAVES should be freed and given free reign to live the rest of their lives in peace and comfort, which is why we support the Rodent Underground Railway. Unfortunately, we only have so many resources and the job is so large. . . which is why we are glad you have continually come to the aid of our furry friends. Thank you for your vigilance! P.S.: And if your dream of justice never comes to fruition, you can rest assured that we will take our own vengeance on gerbilers and other despoilers of rodentkind! Viva la revolution! Brian Clancey and/or Kevin Clancey wrote in an application to join the HLF (7/99): i boiled a gerbil alive and then grinded its bones and fed it to my hampster Dear Brian and/or Kevin: Thank you for your attempt to join the Hamster Liberation Front. Unfortunately, we are unable to process your application because: A. You failed to capitalize and
punctuate your response to question #1. Thank you for your interest. Dave B wrote (7/99): I know you know the answer, you were just asking to be entertaining, but the common sense answer is that people hate life. They hate their own lives and they hate people who they think have better lives than them. So, this is their means of getting some control over someone they hate, and making the powerless feel a little powerful for a moment in time. I have a bumper sticker that says "Seattle, where you encounter more assholes in 10 minutes of driving, than 10 years in prison." and its totally true. Many many many people hate their lives for all kinds of reasons, and harassing people with their cars is the one thing in life that you can do to get revenge on society and not go to jail. They can't chop peoples heads off, or kill their boss or spouse, so they annoy the fuck out of as many people as possible on the road. The other thing is that there is a subliminal message (as 99% of communication is anyway) when someone passes you that says "I am more important than you, therefore, I have to go faster, and I am entitled to go faster." These subliminal messages sent to all who they pass add up day after day, driver after driver, and for the person who is being passed, and who hates their life has to respond by racing anyone who tries to pass them because they are trying to say "Listen you stupid fuck, your not more important than me." Again, most people hate life and driving rude is an all time favorite for annoying people. Hope this helped. (I didn't know what to respond to this; I have NO idea what he's talking about!) We wrote to Joe Cartoon in response to his pages located here and here (7/99): The Hamster Liberation Front has taken note of your activities; specifically, we have seen your two "films" detailing cruelty to small rodents (both the Microwave Gerbil & the "gift"). You may expect a squad of our best "educators" to appear in your bedroom late one night and start your process of "re-socialization." Be afraid. THE JIHAD IS ON!! WE SHALL OVERCOME!! Love, And Joe Cartoon responded with the following message: >The Hamster Liberation Front
has taken note of your activities; it was wrong..i know...i feel just terrible......... >You may expect a squad i shall pretend to be afraid as
long as your female hamster liberators are >THE JIHAD IS ON!! WE
SHALL OVERCOME!! is a chihuahua protected by you
guys... liberation for a chihuahua i
beieve is best attained by >We do a rodent good. (tm) isn't that a coincidence...cause "we just do rodents" (tm) peace I'm leaving this one in the original font; it came to us just like this from yhwoods (7/99): dear h.l.f. i need to know why you have not started an uprising in the u.k ? WE ARE SUFFERING TOO! please come and help us, they feed us big macs, make us run on wire wheels and we have to sleep on cotton wool! all we need is one word and we will strike out against these portrayers of doom. I AM A MARTYR FOR THE HLF yours faithfully, twitchy. David Taylor wrote (8/99): How come at your website where it says "photos of us" there are no photographs at all of any hamsters? Thank you. David, that's a very good question; what's more, there are several answers to it. Primarily, we do not usually photograph our rodent members because they do not consent to it for various reasons (such as those listed below). Of course, we will not force any household rodential friend to be photographed against their will.
I trust this answers your question. Should you have any further questions of this kind, please feel free to contact Dr. Hamster at DocHamster@apexmail.com . MOXIE 323 wrote (9/99): Dear Moxie: Thank you for your recent email informing us of your opinion. Please allow me to respond in kind: 1. The Hamster Liberation Front has been in existence since LONG before we knew the ALF existed. Whether or not you believe this is not important to me; trust me when I tell you that we had articles published & received much publicity in local papers and THEN the ALF started firebombing pet stores in our area. We would never accuse them of filching our good name; please do not accuse us of swiping theirs. In addition, the HLF was started approximately 9 years before the original website was created, so please don't assume this is merely done for entertainment on the web. 2. We do not mock the ALF, nor do we discredit what they do. Yes, animal rights are serious issues (the HLF was actually started in response to a foul sexaul practice called gerbiling). We are political satire, aimed at our society in general. We have no quarrel with the ALF, Greenpeace, Earth First!, or any other such group, nor do we intentionally mock any of these groups. The ALF et al. may believe violence, destruction, and "revolution" are effective tools; we neither support or denounce such activities--we just have different means to our goals. 3. You have no idea how long I have been alive; don't even bother to guess. Likewise, you have no idea of my political ideals, the groups to which I belong, or the job that I do to support myself. Would my site be more acceptable if I told you I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU? Would you accept us more if several of our members are involved in Earth First!? Would our humor be a little more humorous if our spiritual leader lives near Hidden Valley and spends his weekends and vacations chaining himself to the fronts of 'dozers and spiking old growth trees? Or if I told you I grew up on a nuclear missile base, would that make me even more evil and less funny? I am not saying that any of this is true. . . but it might be, eh? 4. I feel saddened that you think our site is "offensive." <cheapshot> Were I to respond in kind, I would have to say that your grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors are equally offensive (not to mention your eLiTe pSeUdOnYm); however, I'm much too polite to say something like that to someone I do not know personally. </cheapshot> 5. Let me again stress we have nothing to say for or against the ALF or any other organization like that; we have purposely not made derogatory, inflammatory, or even supportive statements on our site regarding those groups or their tactics. By the same token, we do not support or denounce the "People Eating Tasty Animals" website (or its long-standing battle to keep its URL) or other such "anti-animal rights" groups/sites. We keep our personal opinions to ourselves. 6. We are satire. If you
didn't appreciate it, then you and I probably wouldn't get along
very well in "real" life. Thus, if you ever get a
card from us inviting you for tea, you can probably assume it's a
mistake and can promptly "round file" it. In closing, I again would like to thank you for writing to us. I would also like to ask that you not return to our site; if it offends you so much, please remember that you have complete control over where you direct your browser. Have a nice day. Moxie & Krissy are friends, I believe, for Krissy's letter came in directly after Moxie's letter (9/99); here's a transcript of what I sent to Krissy: > I would like to make a comment about your website. Okay. > I personally feel Yes, there are. My site, however, was never intended to "undermine" any of these people. We do not mock the ALF, nor do we discredit what they do. Yes, animal rights are serious issues (the HLF was actually started in response to a foul sexaul practice called gerbiling). We are political satire, aimed at our society in general. We have no quarrel with the ALF, Greenpeace, Earth First!, or any other such group, nor do we intentionally mock any of these groups. The ALF et al. may believe violence, destruction, and "revolution" are effective tools; we neither support or denounce such activities--we just have different means to our goals. > God put us onto the earth to
govern and <cheapshot> Not to mention the fact that you don't want to lose your placement at CSW, eh? :) </cheapshot> (Explanation: Krissy's email address hails from "The Cambridge School of Weston--a college-preparatory, coeducational, boarding and day school for 250 students in grades 9 through 12 and post-graduate. CSW offers thoughtful college preparation for intellectually curious young people; an ethical school community based on deep mutual respect; a place where integrity and diversity are appreciated; and an approach which places as much emphasis on asking good questions as on finding correct answers." Whether she is a staff member or student is unclear, but I couldn't resist mentioning it.) > i still think that what these
people stand for is a worthy cause, a I am sorry, but you are mistaken; we do not ridicule any animal rights group, nor do we do any cause INjustice. If you read such things into our site, then that's your hangup, not ours. Let me again stress we have nothing to say for or against the ALF or any other organization like that; we have purposely not made derogatory, inflammatory, or even supportive statements on our site regarding those groups or their tactics. By the same token, we do not support or denounce the "People Eating Tasty Animals" website (or its long-standing battle to keep its URL) or other such "anti-animal rights" groups/sites. We keep our personal opinions to ourselves. > In addition, the fact that I
stumbled upon your website through a YAHOO! Please allow me to explain how a search engine like Yahoo works. When you type a phrase such as "animal liberation front" into the search box and click "search," the program goes through its database of URLs and related descriptions and pulls out ANYTHING that is even close to what you typed in. Thus, if you type "european kings," the first sites that pop up are from the Regional > U.S. States > New York > Counties and Regions > Kings County > Entertainment and Arts > Restaurants > European and Regional > U.S. States > Washington > Counties and Regions > Kings County > Entertainment and Arts > Restaurants > European categories. Is that what you wanted to see when you typed in "european kings"? Nope. Nevertheless, that's what the program thought you wanted to see first because "european" and "king" is in both categories and is probably repeated in the descriptions several times. Thus, when you type in "animal liberation front" and get a link to our site (far beneath the more "legitimate" URLs), that just means that several words in your search phrase (such as "liberation" and "front") are repeated within our title and/or description. Now, as far as Yahoo categories go, you may note we are listed under 2 different categories: Science > Biology > Zoology > Animals, Insects, and Pets > Mammals > Rodents > Hamsters > Organizations and Entertainment > Humor > By Topic > Animals . These entries on the Yahoo "animal liberation front" search page are right above each other, so there should be little confusion that we are actually a HUMOR organization. However, for those people who do not scroll their browser windows far enough, I can only respond that when you submit an URL to Yahoo for inclusion in their search engine, you get to suggest which category is most appropriate under which your site should be listed. As I recall, I suggested the "humor" category. Yahoo will then send one of its staff members to your site to decide: (1) if they should even list your site, and (2) where it should be listed. It appears as though the Yahoo staff member thought it should be placed in the "science" category as well as the "humor" category, so we got the double listing. (Evidently the Yahoo staff member understood our satire and laughingly put us into the science category. . . !) Thus, the Hamster Liberation Front has no control over where our sites are listed in search engines. I can assure you we NEVER put the phrase "animal liberation front" into our META tags (the descriptions that search engines use to list sites), nor do we request placement into the same categories that the ALF would request. You pulled up our URL when you searched for your phrase out of sheer luck due to the nature of search engines themselves, not to any evil, mean, or sadistic motives on our part. > i would strongly urge your
orginization to re-consider what As I said, we are satire. If you don't understand that satire, I really don't have the time or inclination to explain it to you. In addition, you have no idea of my political ideals, the groups to which I belong, or the job that I do to support myself. Would my site be more acceptable if I told you I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU? Would you accept us more if several of our members are involved in Earth First!? Would our humor be a little more humorous if our spiritual leader lives near Hidden Valley and spends his weekends and vacations chaining himself to the fronts of 'dozers and spiking old growth trees? Or if I told you I grew up on a nuclear missile base, would that make me even more evil and less funny? I am not saying that any of this is true. . . but it might be, eh? In closing, I would like to thank you for writing to us. We do read all of our emails and try to give thoughtful and meaningful responses to each. I would also like to ask that you not return to our site; if it offends you so much, please remember that you have complete control over where you direct your browser. Have a nice day. Grimple77 is, I suspect, another friend of Moxie and/or Krissy (9/99): > I am sure you think it is
funny to make fun of people like the ALF and animal <sigh> Thank you for an enlightening email. I'm glad to see AOL still hasn't raised its standards. (1) We do not make fun of the ALF. We are not against the ALF, but neither do we support it. We have nothing to do with the ALF. When we started the Hamster Liberation Front over 10 years ago, we didn't even know the ALF existed (in fact, the ALF wasn't active in our area until AFTER we had several articles and advertisements in local papers discussing the Hamster Liberation Front). Furthermore, I will not debate the ALF with you or your kind. (2) I find it amusing that someone who cannot put a coherent paragraph together thinks I am "stupid" and an "idiot." (3) Find something more constructive to do with your time than sending ridiculous emails. If you don't like our site, don't visit it. Perhaps you can chant the following mantra to help: "I have complete control over where I direct my browser." Repeat this several times each day and you'll soon feel better. (4) We do not make fun of animal liberationists. We support animal rights efforts everywhere. Next time, ask questions first and make judgments later. (5) You criticize OUR website when the world is subjected to your site*? (6) Have a pleasant day. * Please note: I have deliberately not published people's email addresses on these pages because I want to respect their privacy (well, except for Joe Cartoon, but that's different); thus, I have removed the URL to Grimple77's personal web page. Suffice it to say that his site, found on AOL, was filled with pictures of his garage band and bad lyrics to unknown songs (which may or may not be fine, but it certainly isn't as entertaining as our site). Visit Fan Mail Page 1-2-3-4-5-6
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