The innovative new web series H+, a project helmed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men), is set to roll out its first episode on YouTube August 8.  The multi-perspective, piecemeal narrative revolves around a deadly virus unleashed on a futuristic population implanted with an HPlus chip, designed to enable instant and continuous internet access.  But it’s not only the series’ online venue and big-name backers that make H+ particularly ambitious.  It’s the potential for audience interactivity with the order in which the story elements are presented.  As series creator John Cabrera recently explained to Wired:

This is why Louis C.K.’s Live At The Beacon Theater is important:  he listened to the market and responded accordingly.

C.K. is a comedian. His popular, culty stand-up is known for pushing boundaries while also being incredibly approachable. His cameos in TV comedies bring the giggles. He directed Pootie Tang.

His latest stand-up special was self-produced and self-financed. He released the video online, but did so in a fashion antithetical to the status quo. In his own words:

Readers of The Nervous Breakdown did a tremendous job these last two weeks distilling the impressive harvest of what was a vintage year of TNB to five stand-out drafts; the final quintet, I submit, is, as they phrase it at the better MFA programs, pretty fucking good.

For the next little while — and “little while” may turn out to be “a few weeks” or “year,” depending — we’re testing out a new feature in this space, called, oh-so-cleverly, Who Am I.

It’s not really a feature; feature makes it sound like a Michael Bay movie, and this is more modest than that, and does not involve Ben Affleck or explosions.  At least, not yet.

Really what Who Am I is is a game.

Check that: it’s actually two games, or, rather, one game in two parts: “Words” and “Images.”

The “Words” section is, we will post a random excerpt of a great piece from the TNB archive, and you have to guess who wrote it.  The cool thing is, you’ll know right away if you’re right, because you can click on the link at the bottom of the excerpt to read the entire post.  With that part, we’re sort of going with the honor system.

The “Images” part is harder.  Each and every week, we will post a photograph of a well-known writer.  You have to guess, in the comment section, the identity of said writer.  For example, if the picture was this:

 

you would write “Shya Scanlon” in the comment section.

Just kidding, folks.  You’d actually write “William Shakespeare.”

Whoever gets the right answer first wins the week.  The savvy lady or gentleman who identifies the most pictures first, and correctly, in the time frame — the end of the year, let’s say — wins!

Like the Times crossword, correct answers will be printed the following week; unlike the Times crossword, there is no 800 number to call for a clue.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that this game is a variation on one designed by the great Kimberly M. “Don’t Call Me Kim” Wetherell at the inaugural TNB-LE.  K-Dub is a veritable fountainhead of good ideas, although, as we also discovered at that very same event, she can’t run a game of Bingo to save her life.

Will there be a Grand Prize involved?  Yes, there will.  We’re still working out the details on that.  The Grand Prize may be the sort of thing that only this fine site can deliver: Brad might interview the winner, for example, like he did for our 1000th Twitter follower…or Jessica Blau might do the same, but in the guise of the Six Question Sex Interview.  Maybe Becky will concede an argument with you, maybe Rich Ferguson will incorporate your name into one of his spoken word pieces, maybe Simon Smithson will crash on your couch.  Maybe we’ll tell you our one big secret: that The Dust is really Joyce Carol Oates.

Or the prize could involve something more tangible, like free books, or gift certificates, or a TNB t-shirt (produced by List-tees, natch).  We haven’t ruled anything out, not even sexual favors; so far, the only person who’s volunteered to provide them is Fabian, but we’re hoping Lenore will cave (as of this writing, all she’s agreed to do is the TNB Kissing Booth at AWP, but that’s just to promote her book, My Dead Pets Are Interesting).  Either way, we’ll come up with something cool and/or sloppy.

I think that about covers it.  Enjoy the game!

A co-worker recently introduced me to an Internet meme that combines the wonkish humor endemic to programmers and their ilk with the high-culture aspirations of literary types such as myself. It’s a supposed lost Nintendo game circa 1990 based on Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. According to the website “it’s an unreleased localization of a Japanese cart called ‘Doki Doki Toshokan: Gatsby no Monogatari.” Of course, those claims are completely bogus. Nintendo never released a Gatsby game here or abroad. But it’s easy to imagine Doki Dok Toshokan as a forgotten treasure recovered from Nintendo’s vault. The graphics are of the two-tone, blocky 8-bit variety, and stylistically everything about it feels like an old-school Nintendo game. The music is so synthetically melodic and completely lacking in tonal subtly that you can almost hear the binary code ticking away behind the scenes. It’s magical in the way that only NES games can be, and once you get accustomed to the awkward interface used to emulate the original Nintendo controller on a keyboard (space bar to jump, the letter Z to shoot), it’s an easy game to master and beat (I completed all four levels in about half an hour during lunch).

 

The most exciting part of Doki Doki Toshokan, though, doesn’t lie in it’s fealty to the technological limitations of a bygone era; rather, it rises from the way that this absurd concept effortlessly succeeds in reigniting a nostalgic enthusiasm for video games in general. As a child of the 80′s, I spent what must have amounted to an inordinate amount of time gaming. We all did. It was a youth culture centered around and validated by hand-eye coordination – who had it; who didn’t; and how to improve one’s skill. It was understood that hand-eye coordination was akin to some kind of rudimentary intelligence, a necessary building block for so much of what it means to be human. It was a fairly transparent justification for why we spent so much time in front of the television playing games instead of doing homework or chores, but our parents were happy enough to go along, maybe because they, too, had fallen under the seductive spell of the dawn of video games. It was an exciting time.

 

Those were the halcyon days of a nascent gaming culture that has since matured into a pervasive entertainment industry. One a friend and I were recently discussing over beers (we’ve grown up too). He’d been giving a lot of thought to the topic of games as of late and what they mean in terms of narrative evolution. Narratives. Storylines. That human need to string together scenes and create some kind of linear logic even in something as basic as a test of motor skills has always been present in games: Mario and Bowser repeatedly lock horns over Princess Peach and the fate of the Mushroom Kingdom; Link has his epic quest for the Triforce and the divine rule of sovereignty it imbues on the possessor; even Donkey Kong, the tie-wearing great ape with a penchant for ladders and lattice ironwork, had his inverted Sisyphean gauntlet. But the narratives of gaming’s genesis are as far removed from today’s fully developed stories as an oral tradition is from, say, Gravity’s Rainbow. “At any given point in modern games,” my friend said. “You’re confronted with so many potential interactions that they must be writing novel-length narrative trees just to keep it all straight.” I wouldn’t doubt it.

 

Video game publishers have always looked to established genres as fertile territory for adaptations. Games like The Goonies II and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come to mind. Yet, for all their successful adaptations, neither Nintendo, nor it’s stable of official licensees, ever tackled the Modernists – there’s no Ernest Hemingway’s Wild Gunmen of the Spanish Civil War or Virginia Wolf: Dragonslayer. In fact, with a few notable exceptions, the industry has shied away from books, in general. That literary near-exclusivity is precisely what makes Doki Doki Toshokan such a brilliant quantum of culture. The Great Gatsby as a video game succeeds because it’s simultaneously a parody of attempts by Nintendo to articulate fully matured source material using only a limited technological vernacular and because it excites the promise of that technology’s ability to manifest our awakening desire to inhabit those fictional narratives. Who doesn’t want to attend one of Gatsby’s lavish parties, or gaze in awe at Daisy’s monied beauty? More so than literature, perhaps, games provide an easy escape from real life. And we want desperately to escape. Games are proving it every day. Role-playing games like Final Fantasy and Prince of Persia are best sellers as much for their stunning graphics as for the all-consuming fictional worlds they conjure then invite us to enter.

“Think of all the time we now spend on the Internet,” my friend said, “either on our phones or whatever. That’s time we used to spend playing games.” (And, before that, no doubt, reading books.)

It’s a valid point, and I wonder how much of our nostalgia for game systems like the NES is specific to our generation, those of us who knew a world before the Internet, and saw computers as a distraction, a game. Our digital technology is no longer largely a play space. It’s become a partner in our adult lives, something sophisticated enough to support high literature and high art, something that can beat us at chess and that understands the idiosyncrasy of Jeopardy! clues. When we maneuver an 8-bit Nick Carraway around rudimentary scenes inspired by Fitzgerald’s paean to Jazz age opulence, we’re doing more than fending off nefarious waiters and obnoxious flappers with a boomeranging bowler hat, we’re actually fooling around with a childhood friend who taught us about hand-eye coordination before leaving us behind to become a successful surgeon or a concert pianist. You’ll always love the guy, but you’ll also always harbor a measure of envy that keeps you from ever letting him forget about the time he peed his pants in front of the whole school. It was the one time you were unquestionably better than him.

When Alexandra Wallace posted a YouTube video of herself complaining about the “hordes” of Asian students at UCLA and how their existence on campus interfered with her student performance (in the video Wallace mocks the way Asian students speak on their cell phones in the library. “Ching Chong, Ting Tong, Ling Long” she sneers, holding an imaginary phone up to her ear) the response was venomous. Tons of insulted students of all races, creeds and genders logged online to insult her back, oftentimes relying on racist and sexist stereotypes designed to insult and intimidate. Most of these insults drew attention to her cleavage and the fact that she was a “stupid, slutty little white girl”, rather than a bigot. Though the rage that Wallace provoked was certainly merited, as noted on blogs like Racialicious and Colorlines, the use of equally appalling slurs to shame her begs the question of what kind of dialogue we aim to promote in our current culture. Though there has been considerable backlash about what is politically correct and incorrect to say in our culture, the constant influx of these type of insult matches demonstrates how often discussions about racism, sexism, or any other “ism” end with piled on insults and relying on hurtful stereotypes in order to shame the other. This is the current landscape of 2011, a far cry from the days where politically correct labels were slapped on to anything in order to minimize conflict. These days, people want their conflicts right out there in the open. The question is, are these types of conversations actually working to minimize hate?

I am not surprised that people harbor racist or sexist opinions, or that people often use insults as a way to get attention. What is more interesting to me is that this type of technique is now commonly used as a way to “fight” racism or sexism. Several months ago a young woman fed up with increasingly sexist discussions and insults that were being leveraged against her online created the “Privilege Denying Dude” meme, with featured a smug looking young white man wearing a blazer, set against a background of pink and black stripes. You could fill in your own privilege denying slogans or phrases on this meme such as, “Your ideas sound so much better when I rephrase them.” Though the meme was promoted as being an amusing way to deal with trolls attempting to derail actual discussions on feminist message boards, the backlash was palpable, and, in my mind, understandable, for a few reasons. First, the fact is, with a meme like this, you are going to end up insulting a number of members of the opposite sex who may well have had your sympathies before. Second, the meme began flaring up anywhere someone posted a question or situation which was not dominant party-line, creating a new kind of privileged response system. Lastly, the trolls themselves actually seemed to welcome this kind of response. Many delighted in creating parodies of the privilege denying dude, such as their version of a “Feminist” meme with a picture of actress Ashley Judd wearing a “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” shirt, and making blanket statements that mock Feminist discourse, such as “A woman disagrees with you? She must have been brainwashed by the patriarchy.”

Clearly, this is not facilitating discussion, helping to maintain a safe space or minimizing sexist, patronizing comments. People often argue that in today’s world there is no place for debate, discussion and analysis, everyone huddled around their individual devices, rather than sitting at the table and having a conversation about ideas. But the problem in my eyes is less about whether or not people are having ideas and sharing them with other people, than the fact that the type of technological venues we often use for sharing our ideas effectively shut down discussions, rather than open them up. Read through the comments to an article on any reputable news site, Conservative or Liberal, and you will see a slew of comments that aim to derail the actual conversation. This is true for independent blogs as well, where trolls are consistently attempting to provoke and intimidate serious readers. This kind of bullying is especially dangerous for minority voices on the web. Hostile comments posted on any major news website are often racist and sexist in nature. The phenomenon is so commonplace that most Internet readers have simply become inured to it. As a twenty something who grew up reading this type of commentary I know I certainly am. When my mother calls up to express dismay that so many comments on her news sites are racist or Anti Semitic in nature, I shrug my shoulders and tell her she just needs to ignore the trolls. “They just want to get your goat,” I tell her. “The best policy is to ignore the ignorant in the hopes that they will go away.”

There seem to be two basic responses to hostility- fighting fire with fire and turning the other way. As a person who profoundly hates confrontation, I have generally put myself in the latter category. This is true for most highly politicized situations I see. When The Westboro Baptist Church came to both schools I teach at, my immediate response was, “Better not to pay attention to these guys. They are a fringe, extremist group asking for attention.” Ever since coming to live in DC, I’ve found myself wary of highly publicized, political movements. I fear groupthink even if it is a cause I feel committed to and I worry that the movements themselves often make the causes trendy, superficial blips within our culture, rather than meaty calls for change. I prefer balanced discussions to vitriolic slogans and was thus, very surprised at my own reaction at seeing students at American University come out in every color of the rainbow, in solidarity against the hateful Westboro Church. I was downright moved by the solidarity I saw and was proud that I taught at a University where students would stand up to unjust ideas with love, rather than hate. My response was heightened I think because I’ve come to accept the fact that political movements have a tendency to evolve into cliques and, in our world today, bratty behavior generally wins you more friends and converts than listening to other voices and increasing discussion.

My frustration at the Privilege Denying Dude meme, and the fact that so many of my fellow liberal, feminist bloggers jumped on the bandwagon stems from the fact that it seemed like a petty, immature response that would serve to further isolate the community and make it the target of more attacks. You can’t fight stereotypes by endorsing others, even if you are angry, and by adopting a white man as a negative symbol, you end up playing in to the very stereotype you were resisting in the first place- that feminists are man-hating, that white men are responsible for anti-women sentiments and that the patriarchy is symbolized by an affluent white man . These trends meet the psychological need of insulating us from attacks (which come too often) but also serve to alienate potential allies and thus end up hurting the movements themselves. They also mark our actions as hypocritical- if I’m unable to accept that there may be white men who have more in line with my beliefs than white women (and that people of other race and ethnic backgrounds don’t even come up on the radar often, except when we speak specifically about what it means to be a diverse community) than I am being just as self involved and disinterested in listening to other voices, as my belligerent adversaries.

Some may argue that these types of tactics are necessary in a brutal world. But that seems to me to be a band-aid solution to explosive, violent, thoughtless discourse. People can blame the anonymity of technology all they want, but the truth is we constantly reward bad behavior in our culture- the more inflammatory a statement, the more likely it is to get published, the more reasoned and metered the voice, the more likely it is to disappear from view. Is it possible for writers and readers to question ideas, without endorsing the same tactics of our opponents? To be honest, I’m not sure. Cultural change takes time and I am consistently surprised that people who are educated don’t seem to think there is a problem with resorting to tactics that serve to further polarize ideas and shut down discussion. This is because the internet is not actually a wild west of ideas (as many have claimed), where nothing is monitored or regulated. Instead, popular websites feed into polarization by forming a bunch of highly regulated cliques. This paradoxically increases a kind of marginalization, by portraying a seemingly right and undisputed way of looking at any topic.

I think this is the real reason why people are so afraid of “political correctness”. On the tense battleground of ideas, party lines mean protection- from scorn, from shame, from being outed as someone whose ideas diverge from the mainstream. No wonder anonymous posters use their anonymity to say the most distressingly bigoted and offensive comments and no wonder people take a strange sense of pleasure from saying things that are not PC. Our culture is becoming more and more invested in shaming individuals whose ideas differ from their own and these reputational scarlet letters really can force people into hiding. It also makes people less likely to “stray from the herd” for fear of not having the herd’s protection.

At a time when we need new ideas, this type of culture is particularly hurtful, since it shuts down discourse and encourages a kind of cynicism and distrust of any and all ideas. I’m not saying we should go back to a time when news was seemingly unbiased, as opposed to presenting a host of different perspectives. I’m saying the perspectives we are getting aren’t all that different from one another because we are still, as a culture, highly suspicious of ideas and highly invested in regulating public opinion and discourse. This type of regulation (through shaming those with different views) isn’t controlled by any one force in particular, but is born of a kind of fear of the other, a fear that is complicated primarily because it is not displaced. We live in a world where we are right to be afraid of being shamed in a public view. It isn’t all that uncommon and it sure as hell is a lot easier to hide behind a particular brand of ideas than come out and say, “I endorse this particular idea, but am not really in line with this other one.”

As a writer and teacher, I feel a great deal of responsibility in shifting this culture. Writers and intellectuals often lament the fact that people today are just not all that intelligent; that that is why reality TV shows are so popular, and people just aren’t interested in thinking outside of the box. But I don’t think it’s true. Every day I am impressed by my students and peers, by my teachers and colleagues and friends for having really interesting insights on a host of issues in the world today. That’s not what is getting noticed and that is not what is taking center stage, because only the most inflammatory comments and perspectives end up taking hold and becoming well known ideas and memes. I know I’m as responsible for this culture, as many other people who click on a well-known inflammatory piece, just to balk at how ridiculous, outmoded and offensive the ideas the author presents are. I’m not saying we should shut out these ideas, but we should question the extent to which extremism is allowed to dominate discourse and the sense that in an increasingly unregulated journalistic world, its not always the cream which is rising to the top.

 

 

 

the whole ecosystem

more semantically aware

most things aren’t social
most things don’t use your real identity
connections aren’t just happening

we’re going to go ahead

one social experience

objectively so much more awesome

metatags which you can use

Pandora is mapping
Yelp is mapping

like buttons power

a taste of the future

my identity is not just defined

The stream is ephemeral
The stream is ephemeral
The stream is ephemeral

it mostly floats away

__

Each line is a direct quote from the speech, made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Director of Platform Product Bret Taylor, to announce the ‘like’ buttons and new privacy controls at the Facebook F8 conference on April 21, 2010 in San Francisco.

The quotes do not appear in the order that they were spoken. I took liberty with that.

The biggest problem I’ve always had with Western philosophy, especially in the wake of the neo-Platonic Humanism that fueled the Renaissance, is contempt for crowds. Pericles’ famous comment about “hoi polloi,” hailing the masses as the fount of Athenian greatness, has somehow been transmogrified into a symbol of contempt for crowds and crowd behavior by Western intellects. I’ll none of that¹. Crowds, like individuals, are capable of intelligence, and of stupidity.  Yet bigotry against crowds seems a common affliction of modern intellectuals, especially progressive ones.

This philosophical lead-in is to explain why my reaction is so visceral to the discussion stemming from “How I Accidentally Got 700,000 Fans on Facebook.” The article stems from Gregory Levey’s surprise when legions of Facebook users clicked the “like” button for his book’s page, not because they liked or were even aware of his book, but because they wanted to share a laugh with their friends about the phrase that happens to be the book’s title (and thus the title of the page).  The article itself contains only muted disparagement of the 700K, but as I expected, it has become a magnet for more flagrant abuse of these people.  In comments and in sites linking to the article you can find plenty of casual epithets of “stupid Facebook users” and a sentiment that the 700K deserve contempt for having clicked the “like” button without first investigating the author’s intentions for the page.

Let me please reiterate that I am not unsympathetic to Gregory Levey, whose main interest from the article seemed to lie in seeking advice in handling the situation.  I’m glad he duly received a variety of useful advice (and some inevitable cheek), which I hope helps him take advantage of his unexpected good fortune.  My interest is in the social and technological implications of the surrounding attitude toward those 700K, to Facebook users as a whole, and sometimes even (yes, hubris likes to stretch the embrace of its arms) to entire generations.

This area happens to be my technical specialty.  In my day job as computer engineer and entrepreneur, I specialize in how to manage the context of information on the Web.  We are all aware of the search engine context problem.  If I search for “apple”, do I mean the fruit or the computer/entertainment company?  When a search engine is examining a page that contains the word “apple” it faces the same problem with context.  Search engines use a lot of specialized, brute-force techniques to deal with such problems, and have become remarkably good at it (the problem is far more immensely difficult than a layman might generally suppose).  Search engines are not always good enough.  First of all, there are many uses for even more specialized contextualization, gaining a sense not only from overall pages, but even from concepts represented within pages.  This area of study is often called “Semantic Web,” where the “S” word is in respect to how to better annotate Web pages with context.

One of the core principles behind the success of the Web is flexibility of interpretation of semantics.  For any Web resource (which might be a page overall, or might be things referenced within a page), there are numerous interpretations.  There is the interpretation of the author, that of each of the eventual readers, and those of tools and software that also deal with the page (e.g. feed readers and search engines).  From the perspective of the Web these are completely independent, and that is why the Web has been so successful.  Flexibility of interpretation means that the author’s page, once deployed, can be used in all sorts of interesting ways that the author themselves never anticipated.  When the Web was born, no one anticipated search engines, portals, “deep linking,” news feeds, social media or any of the myriad application of Web resources.  But the barrier to innovation on such fronts is drastically reduced by flexibility of interpretation.

That is how the Web has worked for almost two decades now, but unfortunately many are too slow to appreciate this.  There have been innumerable PR gaffes, scandals, technological blunders, lawsuits, feuds, and plain old arguments emerging from the failure of one side to credit flexibility of interpretation by another.  Many people who have learned these hard lessons have the resources, whether legal, financial or social, to survive their naïeveté.  Authors of literary works are rarely placed to squander such resources,and in fact, one of the most important aspects of The Nervous Breakdown, in my opinion, is to help such authors maximize the benefits to be gained from the Web and social media.  That’s why it particularly pains me to find in this space the sort of missteps that more well-heeled clients pay me to avoid, in my position as a consultant.

The crux of this article is to point out that: flexibility of interpretation means that once you have established a Web resource, you should not expect to control, nor even fully understand how it is used by others.  If you find yourself in a situation where many people have adapted a divergent interpretation, your best course is to respect and acknowledge that divergence, and to use the attention to further your ultimate aims.

It’s only natural to be frustrated with a divergent interpretation that seems to hijack original authorial intent, but it is naïve to disparage those who have followed the trend for no further reason.  If the book were a UFOlogy volume titled “Aliens among us,” and a divergent interpretation emerged of wing-nuts using the page to spread anti-immigration messages, my own sympathies would lie with disparaging that group for xenophobia, but not for the basic phenomenon of their divergent interpretation.  Gregory’s article does not suggest any such substantive enormity on the part of the 700K.

In this situation is Gregory thinks he has established a resource for his book, “Shut Up, I’m Talking“(after all this, the book deserves some straight-up link love).  That’s all well and good. The 700K, on the other hand, in using that resource, are interpreting it as a resource for the phrase “Shut Up, I’m Talking.”  That is also all well and good. Gregory’s interpretation is not really privileged. As long as the 700K are getting the utility they want from their own interpretation, all is well. Now of course in practice the author does have some privilege. For example, Gregory could delete the page. In this particular case, however, the 700K have already extracted all the utility they want from the resource (all they were interested in was sharing a phrase with their friends in the link-able manner Facebook supports), so though such an action would stop the viral spread of the page, it wouldn’t curtail the utility of the resource by the 700K, which has already been consummated.

And that’s also where the pragmatic privilege of the author ends. If Gregory were to delete the page, he would not destroy much utility for the 700K, but he would destroy utility for the original 400 actual book fans (and for himself). This is why social media works, and this is why it’s valuable. Social media tends to work through the action of individuals to draw resources into the commons.   It’s easy to call off-hand actions by individuals “stupid”, and forget that by such standards we’re all profoundly stupid.  We all use phatic communication, including the most literary of intellectual writers.  By their own harsh standards, they also have to wear that “S” on their chest.

Reality is that social media is the first human phenomenon that can so rapidly draw resources into the commons, a consequence of the aggregation of off-hand, casual interactions by a large number of actors.  In this case, the name of the book, and to some extent a resource established for that book, has in effect been drawn into the commons.  That is some prodigious power in the hands of hoi polloi.  Importantly, a clever agency can share a significant amount of that power by accepting a trade-off between loss of control and expansion of platform.  Smart PR firms have learned how to harness this power.  Entertainment firms have learned how to harness this power.  Activists have been extraordinarily effective in harnessing this power.  Governments are slowly working out how to harness this power.  Even old media—you know, like the New York Times and company whom we’re only too happy to write off as dinosaurs?  They are slowly but surely figuring out how to harness this power.  Do we really think it’s a good idea to sit back in our Lazy-Boyz lobbing casual insults at these emerging social forces?  I think not.  I think our focus should be on joining the ranks of the savvy who know how to harness the power of social media.

The first step to conquest is understanding.  Gregory admitted how long it took him to figure out what was going on.  Maybe I have the advantage of being a Web expert, or maybe I just happen to be a Facebook user who pays attention (I think it’s probably the latter), but it seems to me that if we as writers decide: “hey let me use that Facebook thingy to promote my work” it is incumbent upon us to actually understand the implications of doing so.  After all, surely we’re not promoting ourselves on Facebook just because everyone else is doing it, right?  Only hoi polloi do that, right?  Facebook’s “like” feature has been well followed, well examined, well criticized, and overall well discussed ever since it made its debut last year.

Facebook’s intention was always to make it very easy for users to share Web resources without regard to context, reasoning that people have lives; they have jobs; they have hobbies.  Worrying about context is the author’s problem, because that is where the interest lies.  As it happens, Facebooks’ feature has been very successful, with all that implies, including cutesy Like-hacking, such as the “you” page, which leads to circulation on users’ Facebook wall messages such as:  “Jane Doe likes you.”  As with every feature on the Web, it has also led to malicious use, in this case “clickjacking” where criminals use the feature to lead unwitting users to malware.  I personally deplore the feature because of my professional interest in increasing the prevalence of context on the Web, and also because I think clickjacking is a real problem.  But I blame Facebook for this, not users of the feature.  And since there’s not much I can do about about problems introduced by Facebook, it is even more important for me to understand the feature, so that I can avoid the negatives while taking advantage of whatever positives might present themselves.

And it seems churlish and even fatuous not to see 700,000 new eyeballs as a fat wad of positives.  Even if many of them are unlikely to become readers of the book in question, a potential audience of 700,000 seems a much better divisor than 400.  If the author starts broadcasting say, weekly messages and tidbits about the book, some of the 700K will start to click “un-like”, but there is no reason to think there will not be some who turn out to be genuinely interested.  And certainly 700,000 eyeballs is an extraordinary incentive for anyone tasked with helping promote the book.

If the first step is understanding, the second is circumspection.  A prerequisite for such benefits is to treat the 700K with respect.  Even if they may have come along by following in the footsteps of a crowd, there is nothing to be lost and much to be gained by the generosity of affording them the dignity of individuals.

❧❧❧

¹”I’ll none of that” and “I’ll none of it” is standard Elizabethan (e.g. Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” and “Twelfth Night”, and Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta.”  Well attested as late as Dryden.  For my part, there’s no more emphatic way to put that sentiment

Last week at TNB, Joel Fishman called out the New York Times Book Review. Its methodology of selecting which books to bless (or damn) with a review, he suggested, has become whimsical to the point of irrelevance.

Fishman’s piece, “TNB 112, NYT 27,” went viral. It was direct-linked all over the place. In terms of page hits, it is the most popular post in the annals of The Nervous Breakdown. (Riding the wave of wider interest, Joel cannily posted the latest installment of his serialized novel, Cadaver Blues, a day or two later).

I wanted to comment on the piece as soon as I read it. First, because I like to comment on pieces that I read—it’s the culture here at the Breakdown—and second, because it’s the sort of dispatch that invites rigorous debate. I could feel Becky licking her chops all the way in Minnesota.

I would have written something like this:

The Los Angeles Times covers the lit world better. The New Yorker does a better job at recognizing emerging writers (as our own Ben Loory can attest). But the former doesn’t have the cachet, and the latter doesn’t have the reach, of the Times.

“My view is very much Eastern, very much Old School, where a book review from the Times was the only sure sign that an author had arrived,” Fishman says. “But maybe it’s time to rethink that, and this rethinking has been long overdue.”

The Times may be a hoary king, hidebound and dotardly, but it’s still the king. If anything, the tumult in the wider industry—papers failing, magazines shutting down, investigative journalism atrophying, book reviews going extinct—has only consolidated its power as a tastemaker. For better or worse, the Times Square throne will not be vacated any time soon.

But I didn’t leave that comment. The über-secretive Scorpio in me advised against it. You don’t want your name there, my inner Dick Cheney advised. You don’t want to arouse the anger of the Gray Lady.

There was no reason for the cloak and dagger stuff. The NYT did not review my novel. My greatest hope for making the pages of that august newspaper, probably, is to get a movie deal, and have A.O. Scott write a sentence or two about Totally Killer in the review of the film (“Based on the smart, gripping thriller by Greg Olear…”).

However the editors there go about deciding which books to review—taste, whim, payola, dart toss—three innocuous paragraphs I write on a comment board, one would imagine, wield little influence. Do Michiko Kakutani and Motoko Rich troll the Internet for trash talk?

And yet I chose not to leave Joel a comment. I didn’t want to get involved. For purely political reasons, I didn’t want to show my true colors—even though, in this case, those colors run the gamut from beige to ecru. Elena Kagan’s got nothing on me.

* * *

You never know who will wind up reading what you write.

To wit: some time ago, a certain writer on this site referenced, in a comment thread, a certain former Playboy centerfold. The writer called her a sociopathic slut, or words to that effect. The next day, said former Playboy centerfold, who obviously knows her way around Google Alert, sent this writer a belligerent e-mail demanding an apology, which the writer hastily and sheepishly provided. And that was on a comment board!

I am careful about whom I disparage in my posts. Seldom is heard a disparaging word. And when I do talk smack, my opinions are not to be confused with courageous.

In my piece about Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins, for example, I take the extremely controversial position that Dan Brown is a lousy novelist (Way to make a stand, Greg!). In another post, I advance the notion that Roland Emmerich’s films suck (Balls of steel, Greg!). And in “Soldier On,” my essay about two Holocaust-related books—a piece that, for reasons beyond my understanding, was not as widely read as the one about how Angelina Jolie should hang out with my wife, or the one in which I summarize the various personalities at TNB—I politely disagree with both Kakutani of the Times and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, but not before bending over backwards extolling their virtues.

Heck, I don’t even make fun of the Kardashians anymore, for fear of pissing off Phat B. (Although I did take Heidi Pratt to task for the F-cups—and if Us Weekly is to be believed, Spencer’s scruffy ass will be on my porch before Simon and Zara get here. We’ll see how much juice TNB has, or how obsessively Speidi Googles. That’s right, Spencer Pratt, I’m talking to you: free heidi! And when you’re done with that, call your sister; she misses you. Oh, and: shave!).

 

Most of the time, I take to heart the old saw: If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.

Not that I adopt this motherly advice because I am, or even wish to be, nice all the time.

Writing something negative about someone is like challenging him or her to a duel. And I just don’t have the stomach for pistols at dawn.

* * *

Most of us at the Breakdown are like that. We’re cordial. We’re supportive. We pat each other on the back (Tarantino might phrase this a bit more colorfully, using a different body part in his metaphor). We gush—sometimes to a fault.

Here are some snippets from the last few comments on the board:

You’ve got a fantastic way with words.

This was great.

I think both of your titles are perfect!

Great idea!

The nature of the TNBeast is good. Part of the charm.

You don’t ever hear This piece is a bit sloppy, or You really need to brush up on your grammar, or For the love of God, Greg, stop writing about lesser celebrities.

And our good nature is sturdy, as it turns out. We don’t take kindly to strangers throwing our contributors under the bus—as Steve Almond found out a few weeks ago, if he bothered to read his comments (and wow did he miscalculate his audience!).

After all, it’s easy to knock someone down. It requires no special talent to be mean. Howard Stern and his bullying ilk—a group that in my view also contains the odious Michael Moore, who I’m convinced is a Republican double agent—have no truck with me.

Why not gush? Why go negative reflexively?

Snark and a surfeit of cleverness are the calling cards of too many web addresses as it is.

Although this “perfunctory kindness and soft praise,” as our resident curmudgeon Justin Benton put it, can be excessive at times, I like it. And as the Almond/Daly dust-up showed, that is the general consensus. It was refreshing, wasn’t it, to see Slade Ham and Matt Baldwin and Nathaniel Missildine and Sean Beaudoin and Zara and the others ride to Gentleman Joe Daly’s defense.

If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.

Words to live by.

Unless you’re talking about Spencer Pratt, that Svengali motherfucker.

This past summer one of the richest and most famous people on the planet committed Facebook suicide.

“It was just way too much trouble, so I gave it up,” said Bill Gates at an event in New Delhi. Gates deactivated his account upon being inundated with more than 10,000 friend requests. He then expressed his aversion to certain aspects of new media, stating that “some tools can waste our time if we’re not careful.”

Most Facebook suicides—otherwise know as deactivation—are not the consequence of being too popular. On average, Facebook users (350 million and rising) have 130 friends, send 8 friend requests per month, and spend nearly an hour per day using the website. Statistics on deactivations have not been made public by Facebook, Inc.

In “Facebook Suicide: The End of a Virtual Life”, Times Online reporter Emma Justice documented the Facebook deactivation of a woman named Stephanie Painter. Painter decided to commit Facebook hara-kiri when the presence of ex-lovers on her profile caused tensions between her and her boyfriend.

“In the end, Facebook was causing so many arguments between us that I decided the best thing would be to log off,” Painter said. “As soon as my Facebook profile died, our relationship improved.”

On February 11, 2007, at 9:10 p.m., Stephanie Painter “poked” each of her 121 friends and deactivated her Facebook account. She was 27 years old.

With the rise of new media has come the redefinition of privacy. No longer is privacy simply the condition of withdrawal from public view or company; it now suggests the active ability to control what the public sees of you, as well as your availability to said company. This shift in interpersonal communications may explain why we find it funny (and somewhat annoying) when a friend cannot be reached by phone—but text him and he texts you back within seconds.

In light of the social network revolution, the significance of popularity is also being reconsidered.

“The vast majority of those who collect large numbers of Friends are adults—musicians, politicians, corporations, and wannabe celebrities,” writes danah boyd, a social networks scholar who works as a Social Media Researcher for Microsoft. For teenagers—who are generally more discreet about choosing “friends”—having a presence on a social network is vital to maintaining a normal social life. If you are not where your friends are then you are no one.

Unlike teenagers, many adults are still trying to work out a comfortable balance between a real social life and a healthy social network life.

A good friend of mine works as a software designer. He’s 28 years old, lives in Southern California, and spends a lot of time on his computer, working. But, oddly enough, he has zero Internet presence. He does not use Facebook, MySpace, or Bebo. As far as Internet communication goes, we’ve only got Gmail—and even that doesn’t satisfy his need for real human interaction.

His decision to steer clear of social networking websites like Facebook does not make him a bad person, of course. But it does make him seem like no one.

As the two big social networks, MySpace and Facebook, have become ubiquitous in daily life, a fascinating socio-economic class rift has formed. Historically, Facebook has catered to a college-educated (and college-bound) populace. Whereas, Myspace has been viewed as an edgier medium, generally the stomping ground for the disaffected. To put it another way: Facebook is a latte, and MySpace, a can of Mountain Dew.

Like a million others I grew out of MySpace and moved over to Facebook, giving little thought to what might come next.

The only thing I’ve learned from my brief Facebook experience is that it’s fun to snoop. Updates, notes, and wall-to-wall interactions are all mildly interesting, but the photographs of “friends” keep us logging in day after day. I’m aware that this snooping is now an accepted behavior, that “friends” have granted me permission to snoop, but I never feel right doing it.

I’ve made 209 “friends” on Facebook. A good many of these “friends” are people I’ve never actually met. Many are not and never will be my friends. And a whole bunch were added only to increase my exposure as a writer. And then, of course, there’s my mom, who just recently became my “friend”.

The banner on the homepage reads: “Facebook helps you connect and share with people in your life.”

Facebook is clearly being humble here. The website has become a vital aspect of social interaction, and is quickly becoming a component of the status quo.

Unless you are rich or famous or both, like Bill Gates, without Facebook you kind of are no one.

In 1936, F. Scott Fitzgerald published a series of articles in Esquire about fame and failure now packaged as “The Crack-Up”. Fitzgerald’s brutal self-analysis is strange and unsettling, a portrait of an artist approaching (if not already at) rock bottom. Fitzgerald believes that “the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness” and states that “one should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

I couldn’t agree with Fitzgerald more.

Some days I feel like an ice cube; other days I feel like an iceberg. Facebook may not seem like a big deal. After all, it’s only a website, and voluntary at that. No one points a gun at you and makes you create a Facebook profile. Although, arguably, that would be a cogent way to expand their user-base.

But I think Facebook is a big deal, and a massively expanding one at that. Internet communication cannot be lumped together with broadcast medias like radio and television—technologies that operate in what author Clay Shirky calls a “one-to-many” pattern. New media provides us with a “many-to-many” pattern. Facebook is one channel, always on, and only everybody’s on it.

Young people no doubt take their social tools for granted. In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Shirky notes that older generations have the advantage of more real-world experience, but also the burden of having to unlearn obsolete things.

“Young people are taking better advantage of social tools,” Shirky writes, “extending their capabilities in ways that violate old models not because they know more useful things than we do but because they know fewer useless things than we do.”

The process of unlearning can be a valuable quality. I wonder what would happen if I undid my Facebook doppelganger.

If I’m not where my friends are—if I disappeared completely—would I then be no one?

Okay. I’ve always disagreed with Kurt Cobain. I don’t think it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Neil Young would likely have my back on this. I see Cobain’s point, and I respect his choice, but he should’ve taken a tip from Wendy O. Williams’ suicide note: “I don’t believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time.”

I’ve given it some deep and thoughtful reflection, and I’ve decided it’s time to deactivate.

So I log in. Click on Settings. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

I click deactivate.

A new page appears. At the top—the following message in bold print:

Are you sure you want to deactivate your account? Your 209 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.

Guilt. I know that all too well. Below that, a strip of photographs of my friends and me. Above each photograph, more guilt—

Andy will miss you. Keith will miss you. Lesley will miss you.

Maura will miss you.

Sorry, Ma.

Facebook doesn’t necessarily want me to stick around, but it thinks other people will miss my presence. I doubt it. But I don’t blame Facebook for trying.

Before I can fade to black I’m required to justify my decision. Facebook gives me an ACT-like list of potential reasons, such as “I don’t feel safe on Facebook” and “This is temporary. I’ll be back”. I click “Other” and type my final words in the empty space below:

I have a terrible headache.

On December 11, at 8:34 a.m., I deactivated. I was 28 years old.

The other day I was walking down Market Street, enjoying a rare day of calm winds and clear, sunny skies, when a stranger approached me. His hair was brown and coarse, like horsehair, which he clearly hadn’t washed in weeks. Maybe months. He was short and swarthy and wore a thick, bushy moustache and a black trench coat that was too big for him. I tried to walk around him, delete him from my life, but he swerved to intercept me. This is what always happens. You can’t get away from these guys.

The man ripped open his trench coat to reveal an array of silver and gold-colored watches. A few on fake leather straps, even. Above them was a hastily scribbled sign that said:

“56% off Replica Rolex – Cheap Prices”

“My name is Gino Cuevas,” the man said. “I sell you watch.”

I pointed to my left wrist, where a Swiss watch clearly occupied the space reserved for timepieces.

“I already have a watch. See?”

“I see,” the swarthy man replied. “One watch is good, but a couple of them are better.”

“I’m not interested,” I said, and pushed past him, not turning to look at him again. Deleting him.

But not ten steps later, another, similar fellow approached me, this one a bit taller and heavier. Inside his trench coat was a sign that read:

“76% off Replica Rolex – Cheap Prices”

And I wondered, does the fellow down the street know the prices of his fake Rolexes are being undercut not twenty yards away? Or are they working together? Probably the latter.

Eventually I made a right on Van Ness and headed north. It was a beautiful day for walking. Or so I thought. I didn’t make it ten steps before another dude, this one tall and lanky, with a greasy face and a blonde mop for hair, reached out and grabbed my arm.

“Hey, dude,” I said. “Get your fucking hands off me.”

He let go and I kept walking, but this guy wasn’t done. He walked beside me step for step, muttering under his breath:

“I have solutions for hot humping.”

“Get lost.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “The magic blue pills is yours. Free. You only pay shipping.”

“Shipping?” I asked, incredulous.

“Quit paying your doctor to write a prescription,” he added. “Order anything you need from us instead.”

“Who is ‘us?’”

Rather than answer my question, he asked his own.

“You need more blood to make your penis bigger? Your tiny dimensions make you feel an incomplete man?”

This is when I stopped walking. The lanky fellow stopped as well, and when he did, I sent him to the ground with a solid punch to his left cheek. I’d never hit someone so hard before, and pain flared like fire in my wrist. But the dude scurried off, deleting himself from my life, and at last I was free.

Or so I thought.

Because as I looked ahead of me, I saw the sidewalk was dense with these men in dark trench coats. As far as I could see they were standing there, loitering, staring at nothing. But I knew, as I approached, that every one of them would be ready with another sales pitch. And they were.

“Your male friend will look great even in loose jeans.”

“Make it happen in the bedroom.”

“Once you see our watches you will dispose your old ones.”

“Want Cialis for free?”

“Degree in any field.”

“Brad Listi also commented on his status.”

Even though all these men spoke individually, sequentially, their voices somehow seemed to drown out the more pleasing sounds of birds chirping and cars motoring by and even the wail of police sirens. But though I tried many different ways of avoiding these men, by taking different streets, by running, by hiding in an alley, they found me anyway.

And I thought, what on Earth ever gave anyone the idea that my dimensions are small? I’m tall. I have big feet and hands…surely I must at the very least be average. And anyway if I’m so small, why would I have trouble getting it up?

Who says I need another watch? Another degree?

Finally, I reached the water and turned right again, headed toward the Wharf. I thought I might be able to hide among the tourist crowds. I found Pier 39 and listened to the sea lions bark, the sun warm on my skin. The smell of saltwater mixed with the aromas of fried food and fudge and I thought maybe the day would turn out well after all.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy painted gold, standing as still as a statue. I didn’t remember him being there when I walked by before. There was a basket in front of him, into which onlookers were encouraged to toss coins and dollar bills. So far the basket was empty. I reached into my pocket, feeling for any money I might have, and the statue guy saw me searching. He smiled.

They aren’t supposed to smile.

I looked at him closely and he looked back. I waited for him to blink first.

But instead of blinking, he simply said,

“The longer your love instrument is, the longer the pleasure lasts.”

So I ran.

But I will never get away.

A little over three years ago a friend of mine in South Florida sent me a Craigslist post from a gentleman in the Los Angeles area seeking writers for a new website. The writers had to fit two criteria. They should be situated on any part of the planet, the weirder and more varied the location the better, and they must be able to write good creative non-fiction. When I received the email I was holed up in a mansion bordering a golf course on the outskirts of Cascais, Portugal with an injured leg and a bored and shitty attitude. I fit the first part of the bill, for I was definitely living in a weird and remote location, but I was no writer, oh no, never would be. Not me.

My friend in Miami pestered, cajoled, threatened and persevered and, one night, tipsy on Beaujolais, I relented and sent off an awkward, self-conscious and self-deprecating letter to the guy who’d posted the ad.

Two days later I got a reply from a dude called Brad Listi. He was a Real Writer with a Real Book, and A Blog, and Ambition, and Motivation, and Credibility, and he said something that changed my life forever.

He liked my work.

It’s amazing what a little approval can do.

For years I had been writing stories, letters, poems and weirdness, but sharing them only with friends and family. When my friends and family complimented my words, praised me or urged me to write more I filed their encouragement away as biased love and white lies. I simply didn’t believe anyone. Not a single damn soul. I never showed my work to anyone but my closest circle. I couldn’t. I didn’t dare. And now, thanks to a push from a friend on the other side of the world and three glasses of French red grape-juice, here I was on the receiving end of some surprising encouragement from a total stranger.

The weirdest thing?

I believed him immediately.

I suddenly felt capable. Wow. Perhaps I can do this. Perhaps I really can do the one thing I’ve always wanted to do but never had the courage to. Holy shit?!

My entire life changed in an instant.

Mr Listi urged me to join Myspace to practice my writing and garner an audience that I could then sway to the website when it finally opened. Reluctantly I did. My life changed again. My blog became popular, my readers grew, and grew hungry. I wrote and wrote and wrote and shared EVERYTHING with anybody who’d read it. I got the idea for a movie about it. I wrote it, I filmed it, and I even put Brad Listi in it. But that’s another story.

I met a bunch of people from Myspace who read my blog and became friends with many of them. But that’s another story too.

Finally, through a series of strange and beautiful adventures and encounters, I met a man on Venice Beach who I’d only ever spoken to through emails and one brief phone call. He was the close friend of an amazing and luminous woman I met in the comment section of Brad’s blog. Her name is Solar and she is a great light in my life. This man and I went for a walk on the beach where I picked up a bee and he hugged me and then, a couple of months later, we fell in love and moved to San Francisco where, after a series of malfunctions, we ended up sharing a house and a vegetable garden and a lot of beautiful dreams. But that, again, is another longer, prettier tale.

So happy birthday, thenervousbreakdown.com. Thank you for all the doors you’ve opened and the magic you’ve made happen. I love you very much and I think you’re wonderful.

-ZB

Let’s start with the Twitter advice for you, since the majority of you fit into that category. If you’re Johnny Depp or Mary Lynn Rajskub, you can skip to the relevant section.

Scenario: You are you. You’re on Twitter. You’re not totally lost, but you still aren’t sure why you’re there.

Well don’t worry. Because Twitter is a site where people type what they’re doing into the Internet and then nobody reads it because nobody cares.

People have been wanting a place where they can go to read the Twitter novel “Small Places” without clicking through the reverse order on its Twitter page site. Right away, this post is for “Small Places” readers and new fans, and people who want to discuss literary innovation, because here, they will get 14 chapters (of the 25 posted), and a whopping 358 tweets of the nearly 600 posted.

But first, what is a Twitter novel?

A Twitter novel is sent out in verses. Twitter is a social networking micro-blogging site tied to cell phone technology (140 characters or less per entry). That means people can receive updates on their cell phones, thus making ”Small Places” a mobile phone book.

Every leading media outlet uses Twitter, as do many presses, large and small. Why, even Brad Listi, the founder of TheNervousBreakdown.com, has a Twitter account.

While “Small Places” is a corporate mockery and love story set in Central California, it follows one man’s mundane day-to-day life, and his attempt to create philosophical meaning out of it. But the story isn’t just about a corporation. “Small Places” is highly imaginative, fantastical and filled with themes such as nature, relationships, compartmentalization, a search for understanding, and even tiny themes such as bugs, as the story explores our teeny weeny relationships with the cosmos.

Are Twitter novels just a gimmick? You’ll have to decide for yourself. But don’t be too quick to judge. Check this out: I began transmitting “Small Places” at 9:38 p.m. on April 25, 2008. Since then, people have been following the micro-form novel from all over the world. And it keeps getting talked about.

“Small Places” made the entire front cover of the North Bay Bohemian’s April 8-14, 2009 edition in Hannah Smith’s article, “Welcome to the Twitterverse: Where the Ego Generation and Novel Writing Meet, 140 Characters at a Time.” (Also featured in Silicon Vallley follow-up article in Metroactive). The novel has also been featured in the innovation section in a 2008 Christian Science Monitor article by Matthew Shaer, “The Novel by Tweet”. It was mentioned on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” on March 11, 2009, written about in 2.0 blogs, lit blogs a popular LA podcast and mentioned on Bakersfield’s ABC23 and KGET. It’s also featured as funky margin art in issue No. 11 of Antioch University’s “Knock Magazine.” That’s with no marketing or press releases. The phenomenon has simply garnered interest on its own accord via word of mouth because it’s the first original literary Twitter novel and the first original literary cell phone novel (mobile phone book) in North America and possibly all English-speaking countries. As you may know, there’s a huge sensation in Japan with cell phone novels (keitai shousetus).

With that said, there has even been interest lately in making ”Small Places” available in print. I just sent off a letter after a publisher asked for information on the book. It could be rejected. You never know.

The literary world may be filled with its share of non-traditional methods. In my opinion, if a few more people start reading literature because of “Small Places,” then something good has been done for the literary community. Besides, cell phones aren’t going away anytime soon.

“Small Places” – By Nick Belardes

One.

Twitter 1: I’ve grown to like small places. I like bugs, bug homes, walking stick bugs, blades of grass, ladybug Ferris wheels made out of dandelions.

Twitter 2: I like puddles, segments of reflections in dew and the parable of the bagworms I once made up. I’ll tell you later.

Twitter 3: On the other side of my apartment window is a dirty grey compartment of Central California sky.

Twitter 4: It’s right there; just on the other side of a wall, through a piece of glass, through an unopened doorway, even beneath cracks in the floor.

Twitter 5: Endless grey corporate sky. Above valley cities, cubicles of dirty air. I can see the grey, can practically taste a chunk of cottony smog.

Twitter 6: I tie my shoes. No great mystery about this cul de sac. Southern valley catcher’s mitt of mountains harbors the worst air in the nation.

Twitter 7: Just read the headlines in other cities. You won’t necessarily read it here in this all-American city, though everyone around here knows it.

Twitter 8: What else can I do but shut the door behind me and start walking? I don’t have a goddam car. And yes, it’s because I’m not well paid.

Twitter 9: The grey skyline doesn’t tower too far above wide, empty streets. From several blocks away I can see Buildicon Enterprises.

Twitter 10: Buildicon uses a four-story bank as its home base for product development, marketing, tech support and shipping.

Twitter 11: I see a line of ants on the sidewalk. They seem to be walking to Buidicon. I imagine them taking my place, in cubicles, hardly working.

Twitter 12: Boxy, the structure looms above the dirty horizon. Lines of ants spill into gutters and cracks. A leaf is carried with them like a stretcher.

Twitter 13: I imagine myself falling down exhausted, shrinking, lying on the leaf and carried into the darkness of small places.

Twitter 14: I’m not thinking about Mulani, not right now anyway. I pass a school auditorium, looks like a Lego. It’s haunted complex is ripe with ghosts.

Twitter 15: When I get near Buildicon I stare up. The windows are dirty, dusty. I walk through the parking garage to the foyer. Bankers, lawyers pass.

Twitter 16: Then I see faithful Buildicon workers–all people like me who infest this building. I silently curse the elevator. The doors open. I step in.

Twitter 17: I beg for this to not be the time I get stuck as it chugs toward the third floor. “Please, not me today. I didn’t eat a hearty breakfast…”

Twitter 18: Elevator sickness… Are there rooms ants hate, that grubs detest? A type of wood chamber for a termite–a moment when a cocoon is a prison?

Twitter 19: “I don’t care if I get stuck in the elevator. As long as you do my work.” That’s what Mulani, a true time-managed Buildicon employee, says.

Twitter 20: Such kernels of truth are nothing a Rolex after five years of faithful employment can fix. The doors swing open. I walk toward marketing.

Two.

Twitter 21: Perfectly compartmentalized sits endless cubicles with computers in each, all cozily networked, each with a chair fit for lumbar support.

Twitter 22: On each desk rests pictures of Buildicon’s idyllic families, all non-management: husbands hugging wives, children with perfect white teeth.

Twitter 23: Cork boards are filled with exotic faraway images of Modesto, Fresno, Van Nuys and California City–the desert town that never grows.

Twitter 24:  Desk cities: Kleenex boxes, staplers, tape holders; endless stacks of paper dotted in red ink. Burger King toys that can light up and spin.

Twitter 25:  At my desk now thinking about Frederick Taylor. He’s the bastard from yesteryear who was so efficient with his hard-on for time management.

Twitter 26: How much time did he waste picking up shovels? The average Joe will always find a way to dig a hole and dog work at the same time.

Twitter 27: It’s what all of us clock watchers do. We are humans and not automatons. I sigh. It’s another day at the office.

Twitter 28: So I just wrote an email to Mulani. I realize she hasn’t been efficient in relationship with her asshole husband. Note: look up fungible.

Twitter 29: He’s a semi-pro soccer player who just spent more than a year overseas screwing God knows how many South American prostitutes and bimbos.

Twitter 30: You’d think missing the birth of his kid would’ve pissed off Mulani. Or his lack of phone calls…

Twitter 31: Or his once-in-a-blue moon insincere jests of marital love (just after brothel moments). A clear indication of an inefficient marriage.

Twitter 32: There’s so much more. But my point? You’re right. There’s no efficiency anywhere. So I spilled my guts in an erroneous work-related email:

Twitter 33: “I guess there’s always some idiot Jodie Foster around who develops feelings for the monster, knowing full well the man ate brains.”

Twitter 34: Pondering: If sex were efficient it would take two seconds. We would all be monkeys, humping, then eating leaves and worms and lazing about.

Twitter 35: So Mulani took it from me for hours in our three, count them, three non-work related escapades. Efficient? No. Time consuming. Yes.

Twitter 36: Taking a break that’s supposed to only last an hour and coming back sweaty, smelling like your sexy workmate, that’s an efficiency problem.

Twitter 37: I compromised my integrity. I hoped she’d say, “I’m leaving him. I love you,” then hold my hand and see the great waterfalls of the world.

Twitter 38: That’s the web of adultery: inefficient babbling of one gorilla to another while pumping on an ass, eating leaves. I’d make a great monkey.

Twitter 39: When people are at work, do they think about work, or are they thinking about sex, blowjobs, touching, caressing, lunch-time shenanigans?

Twitter 40: Lollipops are the oral dose of sexcapade medicine that’s legal in the workplace. I’ll take a red one.

Twitter 41: Why does the company secretary keep a copious supply of lollipops on her desk? Company prez says, “I need a form.” She licks her lips. They’re doing it.

Twitter 42: And so the candy, the lollipops, they keep workers working along with their abstract naughty thoughts. Enough. I have to go to a meeting.

Three.

Twitter 43: Of the eight people in the meeting room who appear to be in a state of cryogenics, three of us seem worse off than the rest.

Twitter 44: Vishnu rolls his eyes as if slowly awakening from a month of freezing-tube paralysis. There’s no hope for him.

Twitter 45: His karmic voyage to a land of the sleep gives him a strangely peaceful look as if he’s an all-wise-half-listening webmaster from New Delhi.

Twitter 46: I glance at my watch. He’s at least thirty minutes from point of consciousness.

Twitter 47: Mulani is half-Chinese, a valley girl all the way with her pigtails and bubblegum chewing. She’s lost to the marketing manager’s monologue.

Twitter 48: In her wide-eyed state she concocts a plan to make it with Michael Jordan. She’s knows kissing me put her at only 2.5 degrees of separation.

Twitter 49: How do you break into ‘no’ degrees of separation? I wonder with her. At least we’re brainstorming. “He’s old,” I said at lunch yesterday.

Twitter 50: She set me straight, said Joan, our project coordinator, is in lust with Sean Connery. “And he’s at least three times Michael Jordan’s age.”

Twitter 51: Is my heart rate in the low 30s? As our marketing manager “Blahs” I think about the Giant Root Borer, the largest beetle north of Mexico.

Twitter 52: Our marketing manager’s name is Milt Butterlink. He’s the proud corporate embodiment of a big dumb B-movie monster bug.

Twitter 53: Never before has such a re-animated corporate dialogue risen from such a cramped meeting room insectoid. He is what Buildicon emulates.

Twitter 54: Milt Butterlink: As I fall asleep, this is the man who has prepared pages of notes simply to unravel the mystery of the color orange.

Twitter 55: “Team, we’ll get a new color though I know you’re attached to your tangerine polos. Orange is an out-of-fashion corporate-color faux paus.”

Twitter 56: Milt Butterlink begins to look more wooden, like a stick bug. Like five stick bugs all wrapped into one, with large pinecone hands.

Twitter 57: He’s got big grey eyes and large lips; his cheeks puff out above a weedy sidewalk of chest hair that springs up through his v-neck.

Twitter 58: His hands don’t look like flesh at all but dry and wood-like, as if unfinished, stuck onto his body: lost boy bug monster.

Twitter 59: God only knows what he does with those hands in the Greenhorn Mountains, where he commutes from everyday and lives with his wife and two small children.

Twitter 60: He’s probably digging a tunnel to nowhere with those bare wooden hands like shovels. Very time efficient. Very Frederick Taylor.

Twitter 61: Today Milt passes out another document. In case you didn’t know, he’s the one who puts us in our cryogenic state every Tuesday.

Twitter 62: There are always two boxes of donuts that we inject straight into our bloodstream so we can crash at just the right moment of diatribe.

Twitter 63: I imagine myself in the middle of the conference room table–the donut my life preserver. A current of normalcy pulls me out of the room.

Twitter 64: I wash ashore where marketing is of the cowboy and jeans ‘no bullshit’ variety. Mulani senses my imagination and showers me with smiles.

Twitter 65: Back to semi-reality, Milt pushes papers in front of us. Always scheduled at 11 a.m., our weekly meetings never start until lunchtime. Why?

Twitter 66: Reason No. 1: Milt sends an email to the entire marketing department at 11:19 a.m. stating, “I want you all to be freakin’ superstars.”

Twitter 67: Reason No. 2: Meeting has been delayed because he needs to discuss, er, micro-manage magazine ad designs with me, Joan and Mike Neversmith.

Twitter 68: Why is it important to tell you? Because this happens every day, five days a week, blah blah weeks per year. Every single grey cubicle day.

Twitter 69: Milt Butterlink is always second-guessing himself, his intentions, his copywriting, his morning coffee flavor, but not always in that order.

Twitter 70: I imagine a small place in a bug colony. Milt, with no feelers would try to lead us to the productivity room. We’d end up eaten by birds.

Twitter 71: Milt only uses ideas he steals for his own. He passes those straight on to the company president. That would be the enterprise level.

Twitter 72: Milt’s Document: “Caterpillar Marketing Plan: Budget and Style for Buildicon’s Gadgetary Future.” He has an excitable look on his face.

Twitter 73: It’s an energy no one in the room draws from. His eyes twinkle with nonsense as he leans in to let us know he is working on a major project.

Twitter 74: “This is the most important document to come out of Buildicon. Any leak, our competitors could destroy what is noble and true about us.”

Twitter 75: I look at the document. It’s gobbledy-gook can’t be interpreted. I suddenly imagine caterpillars crawling out of Milt’s ears.

Twitter 76: I sketch an image I know he thinks are notes. If I can stay awake long enough to finish I might put it in a frame and hang it above my desk.

Twitter 77: “Is this a marketing plan that crawls all over you?” whispers Joan. It could be a real insecticon buildicon modicon. I keep drawing.

Twitter 78: “Ha! You guys are all geniuses and yet you’re not getting the picture. I don’t mean caterpillar in the insect sense of the word,” says Milt.

Twitter 79: He thinks we’re all idiots because we didn’t attend NYU or have lunch at the World Trade Center before it blew up.

Twitter 80: “They’re not cultured,” he says to the prez behind our backs. “They’re small timey, loosey goosey and flashy pants non-extraordinaire.”

Twitter 81: He just wants us to be freakin’ superstars like him. This man who supposedly once made chocolate macaroons with the likes of Bo Derek…

Twitter 82: This man who claims to have single-handedly invented all Adobe products, and who once walked on the moon in a G-string Soviet flag.

Twitter 83: Milt: “What I want to tell you is we are like tractors. We’re not bugs. Everyone here plays a vital role in unearthing our marketing core.”

Twitter 84: All I can gather is I’m some kind of marketing backhoe operator and I need a hard hat to withstand Milt’s dense communication methods.

Twitter 85: I’m starting to lose consciousness again. Vishnu looks fish-like. His eyes roll and bulge. The gills I imagine on his neck twitch and gasp.

Twitter 86: Milt: “Let’s get to advertising.” Micromanaging his creative team means we don’t create a piss in the toilet. He doesn’t realize this…

Twitter 87: So he begins to criticize his own advertising tag lines, “I want you all to know that too many catch phrases can make you sound like a real trinkydink kind of a company.”

Twitter 88: I write furiously in my notepad. I’ve been putting together a book of senseless micromanager quotes and Milt has just laid a doozy on me.

Twitter 89: It’s right up there in the cloudy angelic fields of marketing nomenclature: “A trinkydink kind of a company.” I’m almost jealous.

Four.

Twitter 90: Guy: hair stands on end, metal glasses on a long pale nose, faded Hawaiian shirt and book, “Massage Mataphysics” tucked under scrawny arm.

Twitter 91: He follows me. I get a hot dog and he’s reading that book. I’m in a cafe looking for a muffin with more than two blueberries. He’s there.

Twitter 92: The next day I see him just as the Winona Ryder look-a-like girl behind the coffee counter says: “My boyfriend has a catheter.”

Twitter 93: She continues: “It’s a skateboard injury. The skateboard stood straight up on him in the half-pipe and he injured his dick. Want the usual?”

Twitter 94: I grimace and notice Kramer reading the same book and finally realize he works less than I do. He must be an extraordinarily agile downtown business escape artist. How can I get away with more?

Twitter 95: I want to become efficient as such an expert corporate Houdini. Alakazam! Alavamooshka!

Twitter 96: I can’t get away from time: 8-hour day, 1-hour lunch, two 10-minute breaks, boss comes in at eight, I come in at seven. I’m a bug. Stomp me.

Twitter 97: Second day in a row: “…catch phrases make for a real trinkydink kind…,”  Milt’s glazed eyes stare wide-eyed at a sleepy marketing group.

Twitter 98: His dark brown hair is a mess. He’s wearing yesterday’s Benetton sweater with multi-oranges, greens, blues, purples. A dull Japanese beetle.

Twitter 99: His lips are swollen, while his cheeks puff out, boyish, chipmunky. They’re reddened because he slept outside his mountain cabin.

Twitter 100: Milt attempts to write copy. The ad design shows a metallic gizmo with Ethernet cables like tentacles: “Your Autolink Connection Solution.”

Twitter 101: He’s re-written the ad copy five times. Each revision is as though he hasn’t written the previous copy. Does he think we wrote it?? Nuts.

Twitter 102: Maybe he imagines we’re mutinous trinkydink catchphrase sailors. I can see the grimace on Mike’s face as Milt sits behind him and banters.

Twitter 103: “OK Mike, let’s look at this really super cool design. I mean, you’re really a genius. This is what we need! It’s what I was thinking!”

Twitter 104: Two seconds later: “Let me show you what I would do. I mean, this is a little too goo gah. You should have caught this bad vibe idea.”

Twitter 105: “Well yeah, we could use a little less of the trinky and the dinky,” Mike grimaces, realizing he doesn’t understand his own words.

Twitter 106: Milt nods in agreement as if Mike finally understands the manager’s enlightened marketing lingo. “Exactly. So make the changes,” Milt says.

Twitter 107: I’m bored with the nonsense of micromanagement and wander to the bathroom to wash my face. I wonder: Is this everyone’s mad corporate dream?

Twitter 108: Just as I demand to the mirror that I wake up, the bathroom door opens. It’s Glen from Tech Support. “Fancy meeting you here,” he says.

Twitter 109: “You know, it’s funny how you can only take so much of work before you have to get up from your desk and attempt to piss it away,” he adds.

Five.

Twitter 110: Mike stares into an outdated MAC G3. He downloads a Prince tune because we think a boyish secretary looks like she starred in “Purple Rain.”

Twitter 111: Our desks share the opposite walls of a low-wall cubicle. We can see each other working. This is the part of the ant colony where the mandibles are made out of NERF.

Twitter 112: Mike’s got a contract the rest of us don’t have, making him immune from the daily grind. Truth? He never has to attend marketing meetings.

Twitter 113: Jealousy: Mike’s strange anti-meeting immunity idol that he wears around his neck. It’s a secret “Survivor” clause he can’t talk about.

Twitter 114: That doesn’t stop me from harassing him each day. And it doesn’t keep him from showing off his imaginary idol and thumbing his nose at me.

Twitter 115: He pretends to take it off and wave it at me. I think hateful thoughts. He grins. Would he eat rat poop on “Survivor”? Of course he would.

Six.

Twitter 116: I’ve been here six months. I do nothing. It comes down to setting the mood. Ask yourself: “What can I do my first three weeks on the job?”

Twitter 117: I brought four axioms for a better work environment and for better all-around ‘inefficiency’ when I first arrived at Buildicon.

Twitter 118: Write these down, but not necessarily in this order. No sticky notes please.

Twitter 119: 1) How to increase sexual tension in the workplace. 2) How to woo the corporate crowd with a tasty salsa. 3) How to have fun at work and not feel guilty about it. 4) The ‘three week’ rule.

Twitter 120: Number four: Fake incredible work ethic. Act busy even if paying bills online. Company prez should see you stay five minutes extra each day.

Twitter 121: Number three: Laugh. It makes people think twice about your state of mind. Believe me, work laughter is impossible to achieve for most.

Twitter 122: I’ll get back to number two. Number one occurs with relative ease and is contrary to every corporate code ever written in the post “me” age.

Twitter 123: The idea is nothing is serious. So statements become flirty, bombastic, sexy, overly offensive, sexually humorous, odd-gestured signals.

Twitter 124: Mulani pretends to be a victim, though really she is just as strange as Mike and I when it comes to increasing sexual tension at work.

Twitter 125: Example: Mulani walks up to Mike’s desk: “Can I see the report?” Mike: “Not sure I wanna share unless you’re blindfolded.” Mulani: “OK.”

Twitter 126: And then she rolls her eyes right after licking her lipsticky red lips and walks back to her office. It’s an hourly routine. So we cope.

Twitter 127: Example: Mike: “Got the plotter to work. Says it needed less suckage.” I reply: “Who would have thought anything would need less suckage?”

Twitter 128: Mulani and Joan both roll their eyes and tell us we’re sick. Truth? They would be bored if it weren’t for our sexual tension statements.

Twitter 129: Same phrase by Doug in shipping? Forget it. Mulani prefers jokes from non-creepy guys. Besides, these are matter-of-fact axioms to live by.

Twitter 130: Back to number two. Early on at Buildicon, Mike said: “You’ve only worked a week and you’re already stinking up the office with that salsa!”

Twitter 131: It’s such moments where I’m most calm. I stood next to a big bowl of my salsa. I calmly handed Mike a tortilla chip. He raised an eyebrow.

Twitter 132: Mulani then stepped from her office. Two eyebrows went up as Mike dipped. He took a bite. He chewed. He double-dipped and that was that.

Twitter 133: Mulani smiled as she tasted the salsa. Soon afterward I couldn’t keep middle management fingers from greedily grabbing food from my desk.

Twitter 134: Everyone stopped by but the corporate prez. He’s kind of like one of those weird beasts in Star Wars than can’t be swayed by the Force.

Twitter 135: This Force was a salsa I swore, “I will never share such a guarded secret with others.” Ten days later I posted the recipe on willieboy.com.

Twitter 136: By the way, in regards to the fourth workplace axiom, after three weeks of exceptional behavior, slack to your heart’s content.

Twitter 137: I buy an ant farm and name all the ants inside after me. I call them my collective consciousness. They’re all named Willie. I talk to them.

Twitter 138: I take the ant farm to a coffeehouse. I get a mocha, smile at the ants, read the paper and feel like God spinning planets on his fingertips.

Twitter 139: What else can I do but bring the ant farm to work? Workers come, stare into the little cubicles of sand. They wander off. I feel giantish.

Twitter 140: Soon I come to work and the ant farm is filled with water. The ants float hopelessly, lifeless. Milt walks by, winks. I stop bringing salsa.

Twitter 141: Milt is in his Benetton sweater attire, probably bought at the Cusack Movie Collection auction from High Fidelity. He oozes seedy Hollywood.

Twitter 142: He declares himself a big fan of Japanese samurai movies. He currently reads, “Samurai Stories and Other Decapitation Romances.” I hate him.

Seven.

Twitter 143: Most jobs are about nothing. The corporate world is no savior from that. I mean, what are we but a slowly drowning ant farm, anyway?

Twitter 144: I have a college degree, a marketing background that you can’t laugh too hard at. But I make a mere 34K per year. I don’t even have a car.

Twitter 145: I don’t make as much as my cab-driving father did back in the 1970s. He didn’t have a degree. So where’s the money? At Buildicon?

Twitter 146:  Not in this job where ant killer Milt Butterlink gets 110,000 clamshells per year. Now I think I need to explain my take on advertising…

Twitter 147:  Advertising. It’s what fills sports stadiums, magazines, computer games, TV shows about nothing. It’s a numbing new take on dish soap.

Twitter 148:  Can you feel orgasmic about advertising? Sure you can. It gets ladies and gents to wash in adorable new ways and makes you coo and googoo.

Twitter 149: It’s about interactive thinking. We need subliminal Buildicon messages that spin heads like soap bubble carousels in mindless playability.

Twitter 150: Ad creation takes enlightenment about the corporate world. A true mystery, yes.

Twitter 151: I work in a corporate world where everyone thinks I’m weird. No mystery there. Though I don’t think my dead ants thought I was weird.

Twitter 152: Milt wants me to think up an ad concept for Buildicon’s wireless recordable transmitter devices. It’s for industrial data, like evil robots.

Twitter 153: I’ll think up copy for an ad, sure. This industry is so C3PO. We help protocols speak to each other. He was a protocol droid. We translate.

Twitter 154: We can buildicon that gizmo. We can help protocols speak to one another. Only, like C3PO, I can’t help but feel impending doom when I think.

Eight.

Twitter 155: The day I saw boxes filled with pink sponge packaging I stared in wonder at the little rectangles. Here was my temporary answer to fun.

Twitter 156: Most corporate folk consider ‘fun’ a ludicrous non-serious detrimental work behavior. Creative marketing people are freaks who live for fun.

Twitter 157: Fun: more than just ball-game beer. Sorry to offend you simpletons. Fun is a complex process often meaning hyperfocusing on the mundane.

Twitter 158: There is something inherently appealing in a block of pink sponge. In and of itself it has no real value other than as a packaging product.

Twitter 159: You stuff them into empty spaces in boxes. They fill voids. Yet I see living shapes. I decide the sponge rectangles will make nice puppets.

Twitter 160: I suddenly want to create diorama of pink packaging corporate puppets, not merely for my entertainment, but for all bored Buildicon workers.

Twitter 161: What do you think if you see pink packaging sponges with faces: felt-pen grins of asinine pondering and surreal cartoonland pontifications?

Twitter 162: Mike and I design a character in this pink sponge puppet named Blockhead Joe. Much of his story is simple. He marries Airhead Pam.

Twitter 163: Blockhead Joe and Airhead Pam have a grand wedding. They appear on a sitcom. He cheats on her. She cheats on him. They have baby larvae.

Twitter 164: We put up a ‘Free Larvae’ sign. They’re made out of packaging popcorn. We draw faces on them so each one is unique.

Twitter 165: Glen quits his job in Tech Support and takes his larvae to Mississippi. I soon get an email: “We’re here!” I never hear from him again.

Twitter 166: Airhead Pam gets murdered. Some of the larvae turn into spawnlings that are Styrofoam, half sponge. Blockhead Joe gets framed.

Twitter 167: Blockhead Joe gets kidnapped. The ransom is twenty bucks. Body parts begin to arrive. How do I get away with this you might ask?

Twitter 168: I have no idea how I get away with this sponge show other than the four workplace axioms I defined earlier. I’ll do some real work tomorrow.

Nine.

Twitter 169: 2 am: I dream about my dead ant farm. I am inside it, lost. There are no ants to show me the way, only plastic walls and hulks of dead ants.

Twitter 170: I split open a dead dried ant and make a sort of shaman costume that I wear while I explore. I commune with their dead consciousness.

Twitter 171: I find a room with ant eggs stuck to the walls and ceiling. One is cracked open. Black lifeless eyes stare out at me. I am them.

Twitter 172: In my shaman ant dream I grow thirsty. I use two broken antenna as divining rods. I dig and water springs out. I wake up having wet the bed.

Twitter 173: Milt’s eyeballs are nearly touching the new ant farm I bring to work. “Where are the ants?” he asks. “I just mail-ordered them,” I say.

Twitter 174: He seems more impatient than me about the ants arrival: “When will they come?” Me: “Any second now.” Milt stares for minutes on end.

Twitter 175: I finally get the ants and dump them into the ant farm. They spread throughout like they’d just been on vacation and start digging tunnels.

Twitter 176: I watch the ants watch me. I think they can see me. They gather at the plastic walls. No wait. It’s the dead fly I put in there. Never mind.

Twitter 177: After lunch I see the ant farm is a complete wreck. All the sand walls have collapsed. There’s no movement. A Post-It reads: “Earthquake.”

Twitter 178: Milt walks by. He doesn’t look at me but snickers to himself. I follow him to the bathroom where I can hear him laughing insanely.

Ten.

Twitter 179: Today is like yesterday only worse. I walk up to Buildicon where a bum pisses on a tire in the parking garage. Thank God I don’t have a car.

Twitter 180: I say: “Don’t you have a goddam outhouse? Or a newspaper? Or a friend to piss on? Cause you’re pissing me off!” He laughs in my direction.

Twitter 181: I snap out of it as Buildicon’s self-imposed beauty queen, Kira de Frito passes by. She builds spreadsheets that Mulani has to fix.

Twitter 182: She talks to Brazilian product buyers, perhaps about lingerie. She’s the Wicked Witch of the West Indies, kind of dark, with a hook nose.

Twitter 183: Kira de Frito slinks by in a jaguar of an outfit, very catlike, with tight black pants and cleavage you could put a pineapple platter on.

Twitter 184: By the copier Mulani tells me about Kira de Frito’s crisis: “I will not suffer this one alone. She has to dance for her husband.” Me: “No!”

Twitter 185: Me: “He can’t?” Mulani: “Nope.” Me: “So she dances a jig each night before they salsa?” Mulani: “Every night.” Me: “Horrible!”

Twitter 186: I mean, don’t get me wrong. Shake it don’t break it. “But that’s not all of it,” Mulani says. I run the copier again to buy more time.

Twitter 187: Mulani: “She’s only clothed from the waist up, a corset.” Me: “Right now?” I look. “No, you idiot. When they, you know,” Mulani says.

Twitter 188: As I sit down at my desk I suddenly realize that if Buildicon is the social heart of Americana I’d rather be in Brazil with Kira de Frito.

Twitter 189: I want to be carrying around platters of pineapples, wear an oversized cabana shirt, and see Kira scream “Carnival!” in her coconut bikini.

Twitter 190: I’d rather it be Mulani than Kira de Frito. Let’s eat, let’s dance, let’s get away from the color grey in a seaside town filled with color.

Twitter 191: Except there will be copacabana boys by the hundreds. I can’t bear the thought of losing Mulani to a pineapple plate distributor.

Twitter 192: “Ay!” I yell. “Is there no justice?” Mike looks at me. I don’t think he cares that I yelled. He’s busy designing a robotic ad for Buildicon.

Twitter 193: Me: “Do we have to sing a musical?” Mike: “Yes. Can we make one up?” Me: “Of course. I don’t know any actual words or tunes. Do you?”

Twitter 194: Mike realizes he doesn’t know any musicals either, but we sing. He leads. Next door is the president’s office. He doesn’t say a word.

Twitter 195: He knows we’re crazy. He’s also happy because I know Margo in Orders just intercepted a fax that he paid $300,000 for a turbo prop.

Twitter 196: And that’s OK, except now he’s wearing goggles to work. He’s happy we’re bringing life to the land of grey. But now I call him captain.

Twitter 197: Up walks Kira de Frito. Dear me, did I forget to mention that she has a birthmark on her forehead? She’s got that look in her eye again.

Twitter 198: “You do not like me,” Kira says. I say in reference to her birthmark: “You’re so retro Gorbachev.” She doesn’t get it.

Twitter 199: We battle with questions: “What did I ever do?” “You didn’t like the song?” “Why are you so angry?” “Are you not a fan of musicals, Kira?”

Twitter 200: Kira de Frito once starred in a Brazilian novella. I never acknowledge her stardom. So she’s overly sensitive. She bolts into Milt’s office.

Twitter 201: “What’s up with the colorful new ads?” I say to Mike. “It’s like robots in dance gear.” Mike: “It’s our new look and feel.” Me: “Rainbows?”

Twitter 202: Mike imitates Milt Butterlink: “Make Buildicon recognizable with color.” He adds, “Milt can’t choose one color so he goes with them all.”

Twitter 203: Milt’s door opens and out pops Kira de Frito. She bolts for her cubicle. “What’s up her pineapple?” Mike says.

Eleven.

Twitter 204: I ask: “Does anybody know Vishnu’s real name?” Mike: “I think it’s Sam Vishnukuku.” “Oh come on,” I say.

Twitter 205: “Seriously. Check him out. He seems to go into hibernation at his desk. You think he’s sleeping but he’s not. Not at all. It’s perplexing.”

Twitter 206: Vishnu sits in near slumber. His screen changes. Updates are made, download buttons are created, links form. His lids are half-closed.

Twitter 207: I can hear the mouse click, but Vishnu doesn’t change position. His hand never seems to move. I swear his body is about to levitate.

Twitter 208: Vishnu is from New Delhi, a city not filled with elephant tusks or nectar water torture. It’s as advanced as the rest of the Free World.

Twitter 209: He sits at his Web post like a guardian to a realm of many-armed gods and says, “You think I am sleeping but I am not. What’s your problem?”

Twitter 210: “I have no problem, Vish.” “Yes, you are staring.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “You are staring at me because I’m Indian.”

Twitter 211: “I would never. I just know you’re the new guy and wanted to say hi, Vish,” I say. Vishnu: “I’ve been here four months.”

Twitter 212: He sits like the same preying mantis near my kitchen window. I can’t ever tell that it moves, that it eats. I can’t even see it blink.

Twitter 213: Every once in a while I notice in the small places of my house where there used to be spiders are now broken webs picked clean.

Twitter 214: “I just kind of wondered,” I say. “Wondered what??” Vishnu sits up. His eyes are now wide. “Are you wondering the mysteries of the Web?”

Twitter 215: Vish: “Afraid customers aren’t going to partake of the Buildicon web portal?” “Nothing of the sort!” I say. “Do you hate New Delhi?” he adds.

Twitter 216: “Let me tell you the streets are like gold. There are no huts, no barbarians, no Mother Theresa action figures, no cow trolleys…

Twitter 217: “We have temples for old and new religions. We have Sikh temples that sparkle with white lights and Hindu temples like mountains in the sky!

Twitter 218: “We have an ancient red fort and much newer lotus temple that glows like a candlelit blossom on a serene body of water…

Twitter 219: “That is New Delhi. It is a place of ancient wonder. We even have McDonalds,” Vishnu says. I am in awe of his city. He is in awe of the Web.

Twitter 220: He humbly accepts his Web pages as his creations, his work in the corporate sphere. I can see that. I extend an olive branch.

Twitter 221: “Hey Vish, some of us are going to a bar tonight to shoot some pool. I thought you’d want to go.” “Really?” he says. “You’d fit in,” I say.

Twitter 222: There are now two preying mantis. They’re statues, pale green, eyes like opals, with arms tucked in quiet worship of walls and windows.

Twitter 223: I’m fascinated with their bug world. They seem to silently socialize as if my entire living room were a lawn filled with infinite dreams.

Twitter 224: It’s not that I always take time to think about little things. But adults no longer fascinated about small places in life tend to bore me.

Twitter 225: I imagine the smallest boxing match in the world. The darker mantis knocks the block off its pale friend. They both wear tiny boxing gloves.

Twitter 226: At the bar Vishnu sinks the 8-ball before any of us get a chance to shoot. Mulani pouts, sticks out her bottom lip: “I didn’t get a turn.”

Twitter 227: “You’re a baby. It’s beginner’s luck,” I say. I turn to Vishnu. “You hung out in what place in New Delhi?” “The Punjab Potato,” he says.

Twitter 228: “It’s a drink,” Vishnu says. I grimace. “The world is full of many things. One experience is but a doorway to another,” he says.

Twitter 229: Mike: “I hate to be a ball breaker, but we do have a game to play. Break!” he yells and starts a new game. I have another agenda on my mind.

Twitter 230: “Joan’s off the deep end,” I say. “No!” Mike feigns surprise. “She’s near meltdown,” I add. Mike waves his hands, pretends to care: “Oooo.”

Twitter 231: Mulani nods: “It’s Milt.” Me: “If he didn’t steal ideas, berate everyone and generally not let us do our jobs, maybe he would be likeable.”

Twitter 232: Mike: “Managers like Milt aren’t supposed to be likeable.” Mulani: “Well Joan says she’s calling in fifth-column action to see he gets his.”

Twitter 233: Mulani continues: “Well that’s what she said when she was cursing like a sailor in the parking garage.” OK, I’m curious: “What did she say?”

Twitter 234: Mulani: “She said, ‘That SOB is messing with the wrong bitch if he thinks I’m taking the fall again for his boyish grasp on the department!”

Twitter 235: Several tables stop playing pool to stare at Mulani yelling. She smiles back innocently: “Well that’s what she said!” She loves to curse.

Twitter 236: “She’s right. The guy is like some kind of psycho babe who’s constantly making false promises about gooey relationships,” Mike says.

Twitter 237: Mulani frowns as I say, “He then forgets all about his kind gestures and goes Devil on our asses and treats ads like bad dates.”

Twitter 238: Mulani growls: “Leave us women out! Milt is just showing poor traits common to many men. He has an unhealthy management-sized dose.”

Twitter 239: Vishnu rolls his eyes. Mulani grins in response. He sizes up the 6-ball, but finally misses a shot. “Ha! Did you see that?” Mike laughs.

Twitter 240: Mike’s had a few too many beers. It shows. “Vish is breakable after all! You shark! You potato drinking pool shark!”

Twitter 241: “Leave sharks out of this game,” Vishnu says. “I am not fond of them or their many teeth.” A shark’s stomach isn’t a small place, I think.

Twelve.

Twitter 242: Joan has glazed-over eyes. They are shiny and bloodshot as she sits in my cubicle and speaks in a whisper. Her hair is a burnt frizz.

Twitter 243: Milt says: “I feel like a freakin’ superstar. But too many tigers in those hoops while you’re jumping can lead to unspeakable things.”

Twitter 244: I write down his axiom. It’s another bad saying for the book of Milt sayings. Joan continues to whisper. I don’t listen. She thinks I am.

Twitter 245: Joan rants: “That &%$#! should be shot! He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with! I will lay down my resignation! He doesn’t know shinola!”

Twitter 246: I can’t understand how someone can purse their lips so much and still be able to form clear sentences. My mind wanders.

Twitter 247: I’m thinking about Mulani. She’s dressed cute. It’s formfitting. She’s formfitting. Her hair is in pigtails. What happened between us?

Twitter 248: Joan paces. Milt’s in his office speaking French to a French marketing contact who looks exactly like Ichabod Crane in a turtleneck squeeze.

Twitter 249: He has a large nose as big as his head, narrow set eyes, and an Adam’s apple that moves like the large glowing ball on Times Square.

Twitter 250: I’m sure Milt and Ichabod are having a lovely discussion about an ad campaign. I laugh because Milt is oblivious to Joan’s ranting.

Twitter 251: Joan disappears down to the parking garage. She smokes two cigarettes, then screams so loud a lady walking to the bank trips over her heels.

Twitter 252: If there’s one thing I learned how about to approach people from my previous jobs: never cross a bulldog. Joan, my friends, is a bulldog.

Twitter 253: How to treat Joan the bulldog: do what she says, pat her and scratch her fur every chance you get. Stay away from her pissing tree.

Twitter 254: Joan is from a working class cowpoke town. She’s the kind of person you just leave alone. That’s what you do with all cowboys actually.

Twitter 255: Apparently, Milt yelled at Joan for missing an ad deadline. Everyone in marketing knows it was MIlt’s fault. Well, except for him.

Twitter 256: A micro-manager like Milt has to see every ad before any can leave the office. Otherwise that’s trouble: my natural state of existence.

Twitter 257: Milt changes all the copy. It goes full circle with graphics too. He’s ignorant that Buildicon ads cost $8,000 to $10,000 each.

Twitter 258: You can see that if we miss a deadline it’s bad even if it is Milt’s fault. I call it displaced blame. Others simply call it “Milt sucks.”

Twitter 259: When I’m at home and the lights are out I stare up at the ceiling imagining pinpricks of light, the small places that represent infinity.

Twitter 260: Get ad copy right, or Joan says it won’t mean shit from shinola. Joan: “You will piss off the entire sales force.” Like I’m scared of them.

Twitter 261: Joan is sort of like a manager. She’s also a trade industry writer, idea woman, trade show aficionado and daughter of a Korean War veteran.

Twitter 262: As the story goes, her father killed off his own captain for sending his platoon on a dead-end run up a Chinese-infested hamburger hill.

Twitter 263: Joan says the story isn’t proven. But one can tell there’s something in her blood that runs wild like her father up that bullet-ridden path.

Twitter 264: I give up on copy for a Buildicon newsletter. I put it down to work on a pop-up pencil holder wireless device mock-up for a possible ad.

Twitter 265: It’s for a big wireless promotion: a life-size pencil holder punch-out. Just color with crayons, fold together, add sand for a stable base.

Twitter 266: Kira passes. I clearly don’t know what I’m doing because I have paper cutouts all over my desk. She flings her hair in my direction.

Twitter 267: I want to say: “It must be easy to know where you’re going when there’s a map on your forehead.” I bite tongue, consult net for paper dolls.

Twitter 268: Fold ‘C’ into slot ‘C’, ‘A’ into slot ‘A’. How can I go wrong? Hell, I designed the slots. It will cost $18,000 to run the ad. No problem.

Twitter 269: And then it falls apart. Every slot rips at once. I’m not a goddam paper house architect. I know this.

Twitter 270: Mulani hangs over me. “Nice,” she mocks. “And you colored in the lines.” Mike shakes his head. “I need a third grader to do it,” I admit.

Twitter 271: I need one sentence approved to finalize this month’s e-newsletter. It’s taken five days to write the stupid sentence. Am I inefficient?

Twitter 272: The problem is, each time I show the sentence to Milt he says the same thing: “It needs some shiny pizzazz. Make it freakin’ Hollywood.”

Twitter 273: This is technical data. I interviewed two product developers and a tech support engineer. It’s not enough. This job is a battle.

Twitter 274: How can Milt expect me to know technical data when I can’t even build a paper version with slots in it? And no, I can’t color in the lines!

Twitter 275: The tech support office is a nerdy war zone with everyone on a headset solving a wireless protocol automation crisis somewhere in the world.

Twitter 276: I feel like Dan Rather trying to get a story. I say: “How does a Radioblast work over Ethernet when running twelve robo-flippers?”

Twitter 277: I’m ignored by the tech nerds. So I determine the only answer I can from the land of high waters: I’ll write the newsletter next month.

Thirteen.

Twitter 278: Today I’m at work surfing the Internet. What more can I do to take up boredom than to stream mindless media straight onto my desktop?

Twitter 279: The Drudgereport is scamming there’s been another shark attack. For some reason I think it might be my ex. Worse things have happened.

Twitter 280: I can imagine my ex on Oprah, sobbing, wearing a fake arm that’s Gumby-like and bent to look like she’s the victim of the shark kingdom.

Twitter 281: Ex: “I was paddling, stuck in a half circle, trying to get away. I could see my fingers wiggle as he swallowed.” And then Oprah would cry.

Twitter 282: I’m feeling dysfunctional. It’s a cubicle thing. Confined, I don’t feel like I’m helping the collective. I bring my pet tarantula to work.

Twitter 283: The spider’s name is Ms. Barbarella Big Fangs. She’s hairy. She eats crickets. Milt Butterlink sees her and instantly stops at my desk.

Twitter 284: Milt: “You can’t bring a spider to work.” Me: “It’s not real.” Milt: “It’s real.” Me. “It’s not real.” Milt: “I know it’s real.” Me: “Nope.”

Twitter 285: Milt stares at the spider. It never moves. He waits 10 minutes for it to move. I wait 10 minutes for him to move. It’s a move off. I twitch.

Twitter 286: Milt comes back to my desk eight times. I hand him a completed newsletter that’s a month late. “I’ll look at it next week,” he says.

Twitter 287: “Why is there a live cricket in your spider tank?” Milt asks. Me: “For effect. It helps make the spider look real.”

Twitter 288: The next day the spider tank is on its side. The lid is off. I find Barbarella crawling on Kira de Frito’s chair. I think about leaving it.

Twitter 289: Milt passes my desk. He has welts all over his face and neck like he has just wrestled a snake or giant spider. I take Barbarella home.

Twitter 290: Shark attack on a nearby beach. Some surfer was nearly chewed off his board. I click on the video link and see a chomped on surfboard.

Twitter 291: “Yeah broh, I was hangin’ it goofy foot by the pier. Shark thought I was seal bait. But I looked into his eyes, and like, whoah, you know?”

Twitter 292: The closest beach is two hours away from this smoggy valley. The water is cold, the jellyfish are as big as people and the ocean is murky.

Twitter 293: I need a road trip with my office pals. I imagine Vishnu has an inflatable tube, Mulani in a bikini and Mike with a splatter of nose lotion.

Twitter 294: I begin to imagine Mulani blowing me kisses, sharing a beach towel, when I notice Kira de Frito standing in my personal cubicle space.

Twitter 295: Kira: “I need a projecta requesta.” Her Brazilian accent is extremely horrible today, more so than usual. Her breath is no rain forest.

Twitter 296: Me: “You have a project?” Kira: “I believe so, jes.” Me: “You believe so? OK.” And then she just stands there. Is she hypnotized? By what?

Twitter 297: I pray to God I don’t have something hanging from my nose like Milt Buttlerlink always does. Me: “Kira?” “Jes?” she says.

Twitter 298: Me: “Kira? I can’t read your mind.” Although I am beginning to think I can see the shape of it outlined by the birthmark on her forehead.

Twitter 299: “I need…” Kira de Frito says. I form words as if speaking for her. I do the eternal slow nod as if to pull words from her lips.

Twitter 300: Kira: “a…” I speak slow as if to help: “A… what?” But that does no good. She suddenly bolts to Milt’s office and slams the door.

Twitter 301: Mike: “What do you think they talk about every time she runs in there?” Me: “Maybe she can’t form complete sentences in there either.”

Twitter 302: Vishnu walks up and looks at Milt’s closed door. “Who’s in there?” he says. Mike and I: “Kira de Frito.” Vishnu: “Why?” Me: “We don’t know.”

Twitter 303: And so this is the corporate world: incomplete sentences, mass miscommunication, closed-door meaningless meetings. I need a road trip.

Twitter 304: Vishnu: “Ahh. I need a graphic for our new website that never launches.” I feel put out. Can’t he see I’m surfing the Web and chatting?

Twitter 305: Along with Buildicon’s old website, Vishnu works on a new company website that was supposed to be launched a year ago.

Twitter 306: It’s like the space shuttle. Every time they think they find a loose tile, the launch date is scrubbed for six months in order to procrastinate.

Twitter 307: By the time we launch the new site, Buildicon will be ready for a new design on top of the old design and the new design. Vishnu stares.

Twitter 308: In the meantime, Vishnu does double work maintaining both the old website and the new website that is never launched. His eyes slowly cross.

Twitter 309: Me: “Say, Vish. What do you think about a beach trip?” He gets nervous: “Did you not hear? Shark attack.” Go figure. He’s a web news junky.

Twitter 310: “They’re not going to jump on the beach and bite you.” Vishnu: “Oh no? I cannot place myself in the path of certain death.” Me: “Come on!”

Twitter 311: Vishnu: “I have seen Luke Skywalker and his war of stars. The dark side can rear its head any time to bite off the hand of the unsuspecting.”

Twitter 312: “Did someone say beach trip?” Mulani says. She must already have bags packed somewhere. “Yeah you can bring your husband.” I cross the line.

Twitter 313: Mulani is quicker than me: “Oh who needs that bimbo. He’s in South America. Besides. I need some fun in the sun with my favorite boys.”

Twitter 314: Just then we realize that Kira de Frito has been standing in the cubicle. We don’t know how long. Her birthmark looks like seagull splatter.

Twitter 315: I give Kira a slow nod as if I’m communicating with an extraterrestrial. She looks like she’s about to cry and bolts into a sea of cubicles.

Twitter 316:  Mulani: “Maybe we should invite her.” Me: “I thought shark attacks were terrifying.” Just then Milt passes. He trips on the carpet. Karma.

Fourteen.

Twitter 317: The blue-green ocean off the California coast plays like a magical song, beckoning Vishnu. It reflects deep azure in his eyes.

Twitter 318: There is a boyish glow that builds until he suddenly screams joyously from the back of the car: “Ocean! Ocean! Ocean! Ocean!”

Twitter319: If there is a time that Webmaster meets spirituality in nature, this is the mystical moment. Sadly, there is no mouse for Vishnu to click.

Twitter 320: Near the pier there’s a shop that makes the best cinnamon rolls I’ve ever tasted. The aroma fills the street as we park.

Twitter 321: The aroma inside is perfectly overwhelming. “Four please,” I say. Four rolls are placed on plates. Icing is then smeared across the tops.

Twitter 322: “Let the angels dip their heavenly wings in sugar and fat,” Mike says. Vishnu: “What are cinnamon rolls?” I set one in front of him.

Twitter 323: “Ah, a pastry treat,” Vishnu says. He smiles big as he takes his first bite. Suddenly he looks like he’s about to tell a wondrous story.

Twitter 324: Vishnu: “We have such delicacies in India. Picture a soft midnight sky. You’re under the most majestic festival lights wrapped in goodness.

Twitter 325: “People from your city, your family, your neighborhood and outlying villages celebrate this festival for 5,000 years.

Twitter 326: “Customs are as ancient as the streets and air. All around you are lights and smiles. There are great temples and wide festival streets.

Twitter 327: “You stop for a pastry delicacy smothered in cheese. The ancients walked the same road, ate the same food, prepared in exactly the same way.

Twitter 328: “You see, a roll is not just a roll. It is a cultural artifact constantly remade in the likeness of its former self.

Twitter 329: “Every day they are reborn and you can have another. Time overlaps. This is the enlightenment of the roll,” Vishnu says. Mike doesn’t get it.

Twitter 330: On the pier I have a moment alone with Mulani. Far below we can see Vishnu and Mike tossing a Frisbee across the sand.

Twitter 331: Each dives over sea kelp and jellyfish carcasses to catch passes. Occasionally Mulani waves down to them while we walk.

Twitter 332: She leans over the pier railing. Her skin is dark. There is a shine to it in the hot sun and I suddenly want to hold her.

Twitter 333: I want to touch her shoulder, wrap myself around her waist and feel her lips. She turns and looks into my eyes. She gazes and starts smiling.

Twitter 334: Mulani turns and looks over the sand and sea. “China is so far away,” she says. “Are you the kind of person who would take me there?”

Twitter 335: I don’t have to think about this: “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?” Mulani: “There are things I need to do and see but I’m afraid.” Me: “I know.”

Twitter 336: Down below, a few large waves roll across the surf. I sneak closer. I want to put my arms around her waist. She can sense it too.

Twitter 337: “Tell me what you’re feeling,” she says. It’s as if she knows what I’m feeling–that I can’t shake her, or this, or anything about her.

Twitter 338: I’m about to answer when my eyes move from Mulani down below to Vishnu who just dropped the Frisbee. He points to the ocean.

Twitter 339: If I had watched Mulani I would have seen something in her eyes just then I had never seen: the same adoration I feel for her perhaps?

Twitter 340: She wrinkles her brow in confusion. My hands never quite reach her waist as I suddenly turn and run down the pier.

Twitter 341: Two porpoise leap and make their way along the coastline. I know what Vishnu is thinking. The dolt thinks he sees sharks.

Twitter 342: Vishnu’s hands are up by his face in disbelief. He screams and runs, falls, gets up, screams and runs then repeats the process once more.

Twitter 343: Mike simply throws his arms in the air. He walks around clumsily on the sand for a few moments, then picks up some seaweed.

Twitter 344: Suddenly Mike starts screaming as if he’s seen some kind of sea creature more frightening than the sharks in Vishnu’s imagination.

Twitter 345: Mocking Vishnu, Mike covers his chest with his hands and falls to the ground pretending to die. He convulses. He kicks his legs out.

Twitter 346: A couple of kids walk up and kick sand on him then take his Frisbee and run.

Twitter 347: Mulani passes me. She’s a faster runner, more athletic than I ever knew. I get winded in the sand and have to stop. I’m a failure at rescue.

Twitter 348: I never should have watched Baywatch. They were out of my league all along. I gasp while Mulani comforts Vishnu with kisses and hugs.

Twitter 349: I put my hands on my knees as Mike comes stumbling, pretending he’s mental with the whole episode. For some reason he’s a natural.

Twitter 350: Mike: “I murder little kids for Frisbee. Now I go to car and we go back to institution.” Like an insane man he stumbles across the sand.

Twitter 351: Lying on the sand in the dark I feel like Buildicon’s cubicles have been lifted from around me. I imagine them shooting into the heavens.

Twitter 352: I look up, play dot to dot, connect unseen lines into Mulani’s shape. She’s about to wad the moon like paper from Buildicon’s faulty printer.

Twitter 353: Not too far away there’s a fire in the sand. Mike is building it. Sparks fly. Vishnu is drinking heavily. Mulani is humming quietly.

Twitter 354: I suddenly feel small again. I’m the ant shaman in the tiny farm. Even a fleck of dust shines brighter than me. A star shoots across the sky.

Twitter 355: I see Mulani’s shape in sparks. I see her shape in the sand, in imaginary bioluminescence. I hear laughter, crackling flames, ocean roars.

Twitter 356: Buoys bounce in the dark sea. Waves crest and crash. The sand is cool next to me. A sand crab wanders close, moving like a sideways glance.

Twitter 357: I drift off to sleep feeling so infinitesimal that I can understand the small places between grains of sand. There’s electricity in them.

Twitter 358: I can leap from each. A billion stepping stones to an uncertain future. The spaces become wider, the leaps longer. I try to grow wings.

Read more of the story at www.twitter.com/smallplaces

Hello.

My name is Zoe Brock and I am a MySpace addict.

Wow. That’s embarrassing.

If you’d like to run me over with a train right now I’d be more than happy to lay down and oblige.

Like most addictions my MySpace dependency took time for me to notice, acknowledge or declare.

It was not an addiction I anticipated.

Most addictions are so anticipated that they’re downright boring by the time they kick in.

Weed?
Yawn.

Various psychedelics, uppers, downers and sidewinders?
*whistles innocently and looks towards the heavens*

Cigarettes?
Fuckity fuck fuck.

Booze?
Hello? I’m Australian.

Sex, drugs and rock n roll?
Hello? I’m human.

Strip clubs with performing dwarfs?
Hello? I’m twisted.

Expensive shoes, raunchy lingerie and designer jeans?
Hello? I’m a big titted female with a shoe fetish and an ass made for Marc Jacobs.

Social networking on the Internet????
Ummmmmm……

NO.

It all began last year when a complete stranger, some author by the name of Listi, preyed upon me when I was bored, incapacitated, and unable to walk for three months, and encouraged me to
join MySpace in order to read his blog. Listi lured me with promises that I might potentially write for him on his new writers website “thenervousbreakdowndotcom”. At this stage I was ignorant, I didn’t know what a blog was and nor did I care. But, like an absolute twat, I reluctantly followed instructions… and now look at me. This Listi character must pay for his evil ways! He is nothing short of an enabler! HE MUST BE STOPPED!!!!!!!

The symptoms of my dependency kicked in shortly after my first attempt at a blog. The immediate responses and instant gratification fueled me to write more, to spend more time on the site, soaking up the praise and, while the knee injury I suffered from kept me inert, my fingers tapping on the keys were my only form of physical activity. Hours spent blogging and commenting quickly grew and began to usurp aspects of my life. At first I was able to brush off this inordinate amount of time as “research for my impending documentary on Internet social-networking”, an idea I conceived of shortly after joining, or “a sociological experiment”. I tried to file my addiction under “work”. But the sad truth is that I was hooked on attention and positive feedback after a life lived with little confidence and a desperate need for creative validation.

The more I wrote the more people loved it, and the more they told me they loved it, and the more I wrote.

Easy.

Not so much.

The more people read me the more they wrote to me, and the more involved we became in each others lives. There was no symbiotic distance between reader and writer, but an uneasy truce between pseudo-friends and not-quite-strangers. I became enmeshed in relationships that weren’t tangible, were elusive and undefinable, and no matter how hard I tried to justify them as friendships they weren’t REAL to me a lot of the time.

A dangerous path.

It’s hard for me to understand how I could grow to care about so many people I’d never met, because I did care. I still do.

It’s hard for me to understand how my life became public knowledge, at my own behest. Does honesty have it’s limits? At what point will I learn to draw the line?

It’s hard for me to pick up this computer and not check my MySpace account to see how everyone is doing.

It’s hard for me to cancel my account.

It’s especially hard for me to cancel my account because I don’t know the password anymore. In a fit of enlightened pique, I forced my dear friend Sara to change it for me so that I couldn’t log on when I felt compelled to. And I am COMPELLED, kids, I’m jonesing like a common crack whore.

I’m sitting here in the midday sun with a snarl on my face and a twitch in my eye. Furious. Annoyed. Wanting on. Refusing to succumb. Conscious of the seductive power of feeling connected. Missing the people I’ve grown used to communicating with every day. Wondering how they are, if they miss me, what they’re doing, writing, saying, feeling.

But the truth is… life goes on.

Without wanting to diminish my time on there, or negate the several remarkable relationships I have forged, the ones I HOPE will be lasting, the question remains… if I left MySpace tomorrow would I even be missed? I’m unconvinced. Perhaps I’d be noticeably absent for a few weeks, but then I’d slither into the back of people’s consciousness, a gradual subside, before fading to black. Poof. See ya.

Very few people would care. Very few people would be even remotely affected. Why should they be?

Knowing how intermediate most of these connections are could make saying goodbye very easy.

I would never be so bold as to presume that I’ve made an impact on anyone’s life. There will always be fresh slants on humor and culture and news and random idiocy to rise up and entertain, better writers, prettier faces, funnier girls. There is definitely a market for it, a need. People are hungry, bored, unsatisfied, lonely. They are crying out for stimulus and love. They should be, it’s a cruel and crazy world out there, I’ve seen it. Human beings, further disconnected from each other by long roads and longer hours or work and stress, are crying out for companionship.

But so are my friends here in close proximity. And they also need physical contact, hand-holding, attention and love.

They need the thing I was in danger of losing touch with – touch itself.

In the last six weeks I’ve traveled America, eight-thousand grueling, exhausting, uplifting miles of it, meeting a lot of the people from MySpace that I needed to meet in order to begin solidifying those relationships and understand them.

I’ve experienced a journey far above my expectations, and also far below. America is sprawling, spreading, filled with sameness. In the midst of that sameness are a few hundred million individual, all different, all trying to find each other and connect in new, exciting ways. Ways that aren’t physical, ways that are safe and sheltered, ways that are semi-anonymous and easily controlled. I know, I’ve been out there… I’ve talked to hundreds of people on beaches, streets and sidewalks, in cafes, hotels, motels, bars and homes.

I’ve made my intangible friendships real ones. I’ve pulled and dragged and danced my unreal people into my world. They’re real. And they’re wonderful.

And now I can take the friendships that mean something and nurture them without a computer – a truly glorious feeling.

The journey is over and it was a trip.

I’ve come back to my life to find it in substantial disarray. Friends seem distant, I feel disconnected, relationships have taken strange turns. And yet, outside the sun is bright. Hummingbirds do their hummy thing. The beach beckons, friends call, and the world awaits.

And so I’ve taken a small break from all things MySpace. I ponder the likelihood of canceling my account, but am reluctant to commit. I tell myself it’s a great marketing tool for my movie and my writing. I tell myself it’s a great place to practice being a writer, to build an audience, to grow as an artist.

I also tell myself that to stay on MySpace now would be a distraction to life, an excuse to not further my dreams, a time waster.

I’m very confused.

MySpace has given me a great gift, and for that I should thank that Listi sumbitch. I can write happily these days. My readers and their criticisms and praise have given me that ability. I have no excuses, no lack of confidence, no insecurities to hold me back, no dedication to procrastination. I know I can do it. Look. You’re reading this now.

And so I sit here at my laptop. I smile at the screen. I click the application FINAL DRAFT and begin a fresh file. And I type.

SCENE ONE – EXT. NEW YORK APARTMENT BUILDING. A TOO-BRIGHT SPRING AFTERNOON.

And I’m writing a movie, not a blog, and I can see it’s characters move and swell and trip and fall and get back up again. And I laugh as I write my ‘comedy canon’, hoping it will blow people out of their seats.

I’m home. I’m homeless. I’m broker than a smashed plate. I’m jobless and carless but certainly not aimless. I have twenty weeks of post-production ahead of me and a deadline called Sundance. I have no idea what is going to happen, no idea what the future holds.

Life is bittersweet but it’s all I’ve got.

My name is Zoe Brock, and I am a recovering MySpace addict.

Are you?