Chapter One: Internet Addiction

It all started with Usenet. I wandered, young and hapless, into a den of Conservative Geeks. We argued about television shows. I was unwanted there, but too stupid to realise it. It did open a door, though, into what an utter fool I can be when cornered. Debating = Jousting w/ people who watch Glenn Beck. Time you can never get back.

Typing lessons.

My wife, wise as ever, thought it was a bad idea to meet any of said geeks.

Later, I started blogging on Livejournal. That led to a dalliance with Metafilter.

Still, she got a bad vibe. It seemed like an eternal argument instead of an easy context-free forum. So, in reality, all of that was a warm-up for Twitter, which has UNLEASHED us upon an unsuspecting world.

Don't get me wrong; we're thankful. That Chrysalis was getting crowded.

Floods are common in the 'hollers'. Always have been. It's the nature of water to come and go. Life clings to rivers and oceans, so it's part of the deal.

In the post-war years, West Virginia was still all about one thing: COAL. During one unfortunate holiday to her aunt's house near Charleston, my Middle-Class mother lived through a flood. This youthful trauma was never forgotten, nor were the dead eels and snakes she saw afterwards. Her Ophidiophobia was evident even when we were very young. My elder brother has never been the type to hold back when given an advantage.

I clearly remember finding a blacksnake. A slightly bad copy of an old memory, perhaps, but a real event seen through the eyes of a toddler. It was cute, and so black that it stole the light from my baby palm. I called out, and my brother soon had it in his awful power. Time has eased some details, but we certainly PLANNED a surprise for our poor mother.

I don't know who ended up taking the hapless reptile next door to our neighbour Chester's house, but I remember the five even sections he cut it into with a hoe.

To this day, my very liberal-minded, intelligent mother cannot bear a snake in a film or TV show.

"Where are you going?" she asked. "Out" my brother said. "Why are you wearing your winter coats?"

"No reason."

We were wearing three layers of clothes underneath the coats, and two pairs of jeans. I wore two pairs of y-fronts under all that as well.

Outside, we found our goggles and guns in the shed. We got on our BMXs and tore ass down the poky country road. We sought the forest below the new house (the one with the unleashed Dobermans that often bit anyone who came walking by their place), known locally as THE BIG WOODS which led to the Mud River (actual name) behind our friend Wayne's house.

There, we met our opponents. Cheap Sears & Roebuck air rifles of various description adorned each arm. One pump was the rule. One pump is a bee-sting. A kiss. Aim for the coat so you can hear it hit. We all hide... theoretically, and then we shoot at one another until one is left, but in practice an argument usually precluded an actual winner. One pump quickly became five pumps. Five pumps from a BB gun will enter soft flesh on a bad day at close range. Ten pumps, surely granted a little sunlight into your epidermis.

I'll give my brother credit; he was a brave motherfucker. We never left until kids started on ten pumps.

When we got on our bikes and rode back, my brother didn't call me a pussy.

I have learned, painfully, that people love The X Factor.

• They love it more than they love their grandmother's apple pie


• They love it more than they love their iPhones


• They love it more than they love JEEBUS


• If people were able to give The X Factor a blowjob, they would let The X Factor cum in their mouth


• People would let The X Factor anally penetrate them for the first time


• With no lube


• Then they would lie and say they enjoyed it

Don't rant about it on Twitter, because people react as if you had just called their mother a cheap old slag who fucks donkeys for money in Tijuana. Seriously. They get their little pants in a massive wad about it. You mustn't complain about this 'musical' phenomenon, lest you be thought of as some sort of serial killer.

INSTEAD,

• Avoid Twitter like the plague when it's on TV


• GET DESTROY TWITTER https://destroytwitter.com/download


• Under PREFERENCES check EXCLUDE THESE USERS


• Under AND THESE KEYWORDS enter #xfactor #x-factor (etc)


• If problems continue, mute anyone who won't use these agreed hashtags


• If necessary, unfollow until the season is over.

This method also works for Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing, Football or any other thing that people prattle on about endlessly. Feel free to RT.

Imagine, if you will, a fun fair. An 'amusement park'. It plods along for years, growing steadily in both size and reputation. One thing they'd always struggled with was their petting zoo, which led them to employ a zookeeper. He did a good job with the regular petting zoo animals: goats, rabbits, alpaca, donkeys, etc.

After a while, a bigger chain of parks buys the little fun fair, and the new boss calls the zookeeper in for a chat.

"I think we need a giraffe," said the boss.

"OK," replied the zookeeper, who knew full well that his new boss had never seen a giraffe, or any African animals at all, "but we'll need a special paddock, high fencing, and medicines... but mostly we'll need a giraffe house."

"How much will that cost?"

"A lot. Giraffes are very, very tall."

"Don't get technical on me, zookeeper. It's like a horse, right?"

"No, much, much taller. Five metres high, and it weighs 1200 kilograms. It'll need a huge house."

"Impossible. It can just stay in the horse barn with the other horses."

"Sir, that won't work. It'll be a disaster. Let me show you a photograph of a giraffe. It's really impor.."

"Don't start with your jargon and your fancy-pants arguments. Just get the horse barn ready."

(cut to six months later)

"Zookeeper! This is a disaster! That giraffe is MASSIVE. It won't fit in the horse barn, and it's sick! We're getting hundreds of complaints. What the Hell do you plan to do about this?"

"With all due respect, I did warn you about this. We need to start building a giraffe house right away!"

"How much will that cost? Why can't we just alter the horse barn?"

...AND SCENE.

ep 1 http://tr.im/sfyo
ep 2 http://tr.im/sfyr
ep 3 http://tr.im/sfyD
ep 4 http://tr.im/sfyL
ep 5 http://tr.im/sfC0
ep 6 http://tr.im/sfCe
ep 7 http://tr.im/sfCy
ep 8 http://tr.im/sfDS
ep 9 http://tr.im/sfD0
ep 10 http://tr.im/sfEf
ep 11 http://tr.im/sfEv
ep 12 http://tr.im/sfEE
ep 13 http://tr.im/sfEO

TWITTER: in case you haven't figured how to make the jump, these are the right people to start with.

I was never a fan of Mr Jackson. As a child, The Jackson Five just weren't my cup of tea. Later, when he released his best album - Off The Wall - I thought it was a very nicely made disco/pop album but certainly didn't buy it or listen to it. I was a rock 'n' roller, through and through. As a kid I was listening to crap like KISS ALIVE II. By the time Thriller went to #1, I just kind of wanted him to go away (not even EVH's solo on Beat It could move me to like it). I thought his singing was (frankly) kind of humorous and whilst I realised that he was a good dancer, it just didn't do much for me (in much the same way that ballet doesn't turn my crank). I preferred, as I said at the time, to watch and listen to that other eccentric American icon - James Brown. I *still do*.

Things went downhill quickly when my mother, ever the type who 'doesn't get it' (her favourite artist to this very day is Neil Diamond), mysteriously bought me a ridiculous red leather jacket with shit all over the shoulders. She was kind of crushed when I didn't like it (it must have cost a fortune). I could never really bring myself to wear it, and eventually gave it away to my flamboyant neighbour in college, who dyed it and dragged it behind a car in an attempt to make it cool somehow. He eventually cut it into little pieces or made an art project out of it (can't remember). Said neighbour has now passed into the darkness as well.

Then, he started to behave very, very strangely indeed (child abuse and self-hatred do bad things to a man) and quickly morphed into an international punch-line.

The music went downhill just as quickly as his face. It became a parody of itself, a way of telling the world how wonderful he still was. Just look at the album titles. By the time Bad came out, I actively hated and avoided his stuff the way people used to try and avoid the Black Death. The worst bit, to me, was the way he began to represent the excesses of America itself. Self-obsessed, endlessly tinkering with appearance, and increasingly dead, artistically. He was the poster child for a nation that had started to look pretty bizarre indeed, like a kid on a bad LSD trip, staring into the mirror for so long that a Tinkerbell nose started to seem like the right idea. His money problems also provide a sad parallel. A personal zoo is an expensive enterprise. He'd have been better off with his own space shuttle.

It is sad when anyone dies at 50, for whatever reason, leaving children without a parent. But, I don't relish the next few days/weeks/months of media hype and grieving pop widows, blogging and tweeting their grief over a man they never met and could never have understood properly (he couldn't even pull that off, himself). He was a sad person, made all the sadder by unprecedented success. Thrust into the uncomfortable world of mega stardom at an age when most people are sheltered in the happy routine of school, friends, bicycles and sunshine... instead he had tour buses, TV appearances, rehearsals, hotel rooms, limited educational opportunities and a bizarre family life that probably included some real abuse from his father Joseph: "I whipped him with a switch and a belt. I never beat him. You beat someone with a stick."

People always lose the plot when a celebrity dies, especially one as famous (and infamous) as Michael Jackson. It's the way our culture works now, and the media has homed in on this weakness in our collective armour: we will lap up every detail, and they happily supply more than we need. Celebrities are the new Roman Gods. It's a bit like Pan has passed away.

I plan to keep talking about the real tragedy of June 2009, the events in Iran, in the hopes that this 'wake' will pass quickly.