I Hate the Internet

by Jarett Kobek

  World War I was one of the biggest wars in human history. Wars were giant parties for the ruling elites, who sometimes thought it might be great fun to make the poor kill each other.

  The poor were well-paid for their deaths and blown-off limbs and their scarred faces. The poor were called heroes and allowed to propagate the myths of noble battle and fraternity, which were ideas used to convince new generations of poor people that it was okay to kill other poor people.

  Both of Tolkein’s books were about elves, wizards and magic. Both books were read by morons. Both books had been turned into a series of idiotic films featuring a lot of flatulence.

  Ayn Rand was a speed freak, a social welfare beneficiary and a sex cultist. She was quite possibly the most influential thinker of the last fifty years. There wasn’t much eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis.

  She wrote books about how social welfare beneficiaries were garbage who deserved to die in the gutter. All of her books were terrible. All of her books were popular. Several had been turned into unpopular movies.

  She was well regarded by very rich people unwilling to accept that their fortunes were a combination of random chance and an innate ability to humiliate others.

  Ayn Rand’s books told very rich people that they were good, that their pursuit of wealth was moral and just. Many of these people ended up as CEOs or in high levels of American government.

  Ayn Rand was the billionaire’s best friend.

  SOME OF AYN RAND’S better known followers included:

  Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States of America.

  Vince Vaughn, a dough-faced actor who had starred in such hilarious comedies as The Watch, Couples Retreat, Four Christmases, The Internship, and Delivery Man. The Internship was a film about two adults who receive internships at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley.

  Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, a billionaire weapons profiteer and incompetent hedge fund manager who wanted to build independent nation states on floating ocean platforms.

  Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, an unprofitable website dedicated to the destruction of the publishing industry.

  Ron Paul, a septuagenarian medical doctor and perennial Presidential protest candidate.

  Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1986 to 2006. In his relative youth, Greenspan sat at the knee of Ayn Rand whilst she explained that poor people were garbage who deserved to die in the gutter.

  None of these men had eumelanin in the basale strata of their epidermises.

  ANOTHER OF ERIK WILLEMS’S favorite writers was Adeline’s best friend, Baby.

  ADELINE MET BABY during September of 1986 in an Alphabet City squat. She had lived in New York from 1986 to 1996. It was eleven years with only two instances of life beyond the city.

  The first instance was in 1988, when she and Baby went to live with Suzanne in Pasadena. The second was in 1993, when Adeline went to live with Jeremy Winterbloss and his girlfriend Minerva, who shared an apartment in San Francisco’s Lower Haight.

  Back in 1986, Adeline was dating a punk rocker who lived in the Alphabet City squat. Baby had that very day arrived in New York on a bus from Wisconsin. He knew someone living in the squat.

  The day ended with Baby’s clothes being stolen by a junkie and Adeline’s boyfriend screwing the brains out of another girl. Baby, a former high school athlete, beat the shit out of Adeline’s boyfriend. Adeline invited Baby to crash at her dorm.

  With the exception of a two year period in the mid-1990s, they had been simpatico ever since.

  WHILE HE LIVED in New York, Baby had come into his own as a writer of Science Fiction. His first published story was entitled “Heroin of the Masses.”

  It was about a junkie alien who sang lead vocals in a post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post glam band at the Pyramid Club on Avenue A.

  Baby’s first novel was titled Trapped Between Jupiter and a Bottle. It was about a private eye in the future.

  His second novel was titled Saving Anne Frank. It was about a time traveler who saves Anne Frank from Auschwitz and the Planet of Ashes.

  Baby’s first two novels had experienced some critical success.

  There was something in his prose construction that was more literary than the average practitioner of Science Fiction, which lead to misinterpretations of his genre tropes as postmodern devices.

  IN 2001, Jonathan Franzen published The Corrections, his good novel about people from the American Middle West without much eumelanin in their epidermises. They suffer from serious problems and a complicated family.

  The Corrections arrived with great critical acclaim and massive commercial success. Baby took stock.

  He too was from the American Middle West and, like Jonathan Franzen, he too lacked much eumelanin in his epidermis.

  He was a young novelist of some critical reputation.

  He was interested in leaving Science Fiction behind.

  Baby decided that he too would write his own book about people who lived in the American Middle West. All of his characters would lack eumelanin in their epidermises.

  He too would chronicle important problems and complicated families.

  The resulting novel was the first instance of Baby writing fiction that wasn’t about robots or aliens or time travel. The resulting novel was about a family in Milwaukee.

  The patriarch worked in steel. The mother was on amphetamines. One son was attracted to danger. Another son was attracted to men. One daughter was attracted to men and to danger. Another daughter had an abortion.

  Baby titled the book Hot Mill Steam.

  It bombed.

  AFTER THE FAILURE of Hot Mill Steam, Baby knew that he’d be stuck in Science Fiction forever. So he wrote a new novel of Science Fiction.

  The average length of a novel is about 80,000 to 85,000 words. Trapped Between Jupiter and a Bottle and Saving Anne Frank were relatively short, both clocking in at roughly 70,000 words.

  Hot Mill Steam was 150,000 words.

  Baby had wanted to capture everything about having a lack of eumelanin in the American Middle West. All the suffering and joy that comes with being the color of a newborn piglet!

  The bad novel that you are reading is about 72,900 words long.

  WHEN BABY STARTED his new Science Fiction novel, he found that he could not shake the long-winded bullshit of Hot Mill Steam.

  Long-winded bullshit was now in his blood. Long-winded bullshit had become part of his style.

  The new novel was about 175,000 words.

  Baby titled it Annie Zero.

  The title was also the name of the book’s protagonist, a French Neo-Maoist in the far flung future. The name was a pun on the French phrase année zéro, which meant Year Zero, suggesting that once Annie Zero instituted her neo-Maoist cypherpunk revolution in the Megaverse, the calendar would be reset.

  AS PART OF HIS LONG-WINDED BULLSHIT, Baby fell into a genre trope that he had avoided in his first two novels.

  He started inventing new words.

  This was a common habit amongst Science Fiction writers. They couldn’t help themselves. They were always inventing new words.

  Perhaps the most famous example of a Science Fiction writer inventing a new word occurs in Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Part of Heinlein’s vision of horny decentralized alien sex involves the Martian word grok.

  To grok something is to comprehend that something with effortless and infinite intuition. When you grok something, that something becomes a part of you and you become a part of that something without any troublesome Earthling attempts at knowing.

  A good example of groking something is the way that members of the social construct of the White race had groked their own piglet pink.

  They’d groked their skin color so much that it became invisible. It had become part of them and they had become part of it. That w
as groking.

  People in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially those who worked in technology like Erik Willems, loved to talk about groking.

  With time, their overusage stripped away the original meaning and grok became synonymous with simple knowledge of a thing.

  In a weird way, people in the Bay Area who used the word grok did not grok the word grok.

  BABY HAD ALWAYS BEEN POPULAR with people on the Internet, which was a wonderful place to deny climate change, willfully misinterpret the Bible, and denounce Darwin’s theory of evolution.

  Now that Baby had coined nonsense neologisms, he had become more than popular. He had become quotable.

  Annie Zero was Baby’s best selling book. Annie Zero was why Erik Willems approached Adeline at a dinner party.

  He recognized her from a photo which accompanied an interview she’d done with the SF Weekly. The interviewer, a guy named Evan Karp who didn’t have much eumelanin in the basale layer of his epidermis, had asked Adeline about her friendship with Baby.

  Adeline spilled the beans.

  ONE OF THE REASONS why Adeline liked San Francisco was that it retained a high degree of sexual freedom. She often said it was the last place in America where a person needed only 48 hours’ notice to arrange a threesome with a baby crocodile and a pygmy dwarf.

  Like many things in San Francisco, this high degree of sexual freedom curdled when adopted by straight people of the upper middle class.

  Straight people of the upper middle class who’d adopted this high degree of sexual freedom had the bad habit of recommending books like The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities and Stranger in a Strange Land.

  ADELINE WAS AT THE DINNER PARTY in question because she’d been invited by her friend Christine. Christine had disappeared, saying that she was going to powder her nose.

  In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, going to the powder room is a euphemism for the exchange of money between the female sex-worker and her clients. Christine was not a sex-worker. She really was powdering her nose.

  She left Adeline sitting beside a middle-aged straight couple.

  Adeline herself was middle-aged but was always surprised by the middle-agedness of others.

  She still felt young, even if she’d been dyeing her hair for two years.

  When she was in high school and college, Adeline had gone through a range of hairstyles and colors roughly coincident with her participation in a wide span of subcultural identities.

  Her hair then had been every color other than grey, the color that she now hid beneath an unnatural black hue.

  The middle-aged straight couple told Adeline about their non-traditional sexual lifestyle, about how it had liberated them from the institutional shackles of monogamy and shown them a new kind of happiness derived from basic human biology. The woman in the couple insinuated that she was adept at the usage of strap-on dildos.

  Adeline listened, waiting for Christine, and wondered which of the following conversational turns was most likely: (1) A discussion of the differences, if any, between an open relationship and being polyamorous. (2) The recommendation that she read The Ethical Slut. (3) Someone using the word grok. (4) The suggestion of a threesome, with an offer to host if Adeline felt uncomfortable having the liaison at her place.

  “Excuse me,” said Erik Willems, leaning over the table, “but are you M. Abrahamovic Petrovitch?”

  “Why yes,” said Adeline, standing up, “I am.”

  THEY MOVED OVER by a window. Coit Tower was visible through the glass, rising above North Beach. Adeline found North Beach très déclassé, as it was chock-a-block with tourists and strip clubs and the kinds of tourists who went to strip clubs.

  Her friend J. Karacehennem, whose last name was Turkish for Black Hell, loved North Beach. He was always in Caffe Trieste at the corner of Vallejo and Grant.

  “I read Trill,” said Erik. “In the omnibus.”

  “And whatever was your opinion, young man?” asked Adeline.

  “I thought it was interesting.”

  “Only interesting?” asked Adeline.

  “It was a gootbluck,” said Erik.

  “Darling, a what?” asked Adeline.

  “A gootbluck.”

  There was a very awkward pause.

  “I’m sorry,” said Adeline, “but dost thou sprechen ze German? Je ne parle pas allemand!”

  “How can you not know what a gootbluck is?”

  “Should I?” asked Adeline.

  “A gootbluck is a work of art that you recognize has high merit but doesn’t appeal to you on the personal level. Some people don’t like James Joyce but everyone knows that Ulysses is a good book. For some people, Ulysses is a gootbluck.”

  “Darling,” said Adeline, “why ever would yours truly know the definition of gootbluck?”

  “It’s a word from Annie Zero,” said Erik.

  “Oh Jesus Christ,” said Adeline. “Fucking Baby and his fucking book.”

  ADELINE HADN’T READ ANNIE ZERO. Baby told her to skip it. He said it wasn’t very good. She took him at his word.

  Later that night, Adeline ended up sleeping with Erik Willems.

  Why not?

  chapter eight

  J. Karacehennem met Adeline during the run up to the feature film adaptation of Trill. They were both in Los Angeles.

  He was asked by the editor of an ephemeral magazine to conduct an interview with the artist responsible for the original graphic novel.

  They met in a house that was once owned by Walt Disney’s Uncle.

  WALT DISNEY was America’s most beloved Anti-Semite and racist. He hated labor strikes, unions, organized labor and Communists. He named the names of troublesome employees before the House Un-American Activities Committee, saying that they were probably Communists.

  In 1938, Disney granted a private audience to Adolf Hitler’s favorite director, Leni Riefenstahl. After World War Two, Disney hired Werhner von Braun.

  Werhner von Braun was a Nazi rocket scientist and a Major in the Schutzstaffel. He invented the V-2.

  The V-2 was a rocket that bombed the living fucking shit out of London during World War Two. Werhner von Braun used slave labor to build the V-2s.

  12,000 people died building the V-2. 9,000 people died being bombed to shit by the V-2.

  After the war, the CIA’s immediate precursor, the Office of Strategic Services, brought Werhner von Braun to the USA. They forgave the National Socialism because they wanted him to build rockets for the American military.

  The rockets would be used to threaten the Russian government. The members of the Russian government were all Communists.

  Like any member of any government, the Russians were a bunch of dumb assholes. The Russians were the reason that the CIA had funded literary fiction. It was thought that American writers and good novels could help destabilize Communism.

  In the 1950s, Disney hired Werhner von Braun. The Nazi rocket scientist appeared in a Disney television program called Man in Space.

  Forty-two million people watched the broadcast.

  THE CREATION OF MICKEY MOUSE was the greatest achievement of Disney’s studio, which was founded in the garage of the house where Adeline met J. Karacehennem.

  Mickey Mouse was a scampish anthropomorphic rodent who hung around a barnyard. His friends were barnyard animals. Their existential concerns were underscored by barnyard humor.

  Mickey’s pals included Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar and Dippy Dawg. They appeared together in black-and-white synched sound cartoons and a newspaper strip.

  A guy named Ub Iwerks invented the characters and drew the early animated shorts. A guy named Floyd Gottfredson drew the newspaper strip. Both men worked-for-hire.

  Disney took all the credit.

  THE COMPANY that Walt Disney founded in his uncle’s backyard became one of the world’s most metastatic entities, consuming every available piece of intellectual property.

  Walt Disney’s company ended up buying Marvel
Entertainment.

  This meant that Walt Disney’s company owned the most valuable intellectual output of Ub Iwerks, Floyd Gottfredson and Jack Kirby.

  DURING THE RUN-UP to Don Murphy’s Trill, Adeline was living, temporarily, in Los Angeles. She’d picked up a storyboarding job. It was interesting work and gave her a chance to visit her hometown.

  J. Karacehennem had moved to Los Angeles after the collapse of a seven year long relationship. He arrived with the unconscious idea that he’d join the swelling ranks of people who go to California to die.

  Much to his surprise, dying required more than a move to Los Angeles.

  THE INTERVIEW went well. J. Karacehennem hung around for hours.

  They shot the shit. Off the record. He and Adeline exchanged cellphone numbers. He went home.

  THEN J. KARACEHENNEM went through several interpersonal catastrophes and a month long trip to İzmir, Turkey. When he got back to America, he called Adeline. She was still in Los Angeles.

  She’d been spending time with her mother Suzanne. The less said the better.

  Adeline told J. Karacehennem to come on over.

  They ended up sleeping together. Only a few times. This did not last long. The less said the better.

  WHEN J. KARACEHENNEM moved to San Francisco in late 2010, he got in touch with Adeline. They hadn’t spoken in about a year. Soon they were hanging out all the time. There was a distinct absence of romantic or sexual tension.

  He’d moved to San Francisco because he was following a woman.

  This woman wasn’t Adeline. This woman was The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter.

  J. Karacehennem and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter had dated for a few years, long distance, with him going to San Francisco and her going to Los Angeles.