Underwood, Scotch, and Wry

by Brian D. Meeks

  “I’m not texting; I’m tweeting.”

  “Then please stop tweeting. You can do that on your own...”

  “When one is using a hashtag, is #StickUpAss spelled with two spaces or none?”

  She stood, resisted the urge to yell, and said with suppressed rage, “I’ll have you know that you are officially on probation and...”

  Arthur stood. “Oh, that is good news. I was afraid I might be on double secret probation. Well, if that is all, I’ve got dozens of tweets to get out...hashtag h...a...g.” He left.

  As he walked past the secretary, he said, “I think she is on the cusp of a massive stroke. If I were you I’d call someone...or take an early lunch. Bon appetit.”

  Arthur returned to his office where he found Kurt waiting and asked, “Good morning, Kurt, how are you?”

  “I’m well, thanks.”

  “How may I help you?”

  “I have a class at noon, and we were supposed to go through our students’ Twitter accounts to figure out how many points they each got.”

  Arthur shrugged, “Do it afterwards. If there’s an inquisition, I’ll say you had a moment of temporary insanity.”

  Kurt smiled and said, “Okay, thanks. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but I wanted to make sure.”

  “Have you looked at the numbers to see how they’re doing?”

  “Yes, it looks like most of the students have followed everyone who followed you, but I’m only to count the people who are in the class, right?”

  “How many people do I have following me?”

  “Just over 130.”

  “But there are only 104 in the class...is that right?” Arthur said, unsure.

  “Yes, but you also have us TAs and you’ve gotten some spammers and Keyboard Cat.”

  “I’m being followed by a musical cat?”

  “You don’t know Keyboard Cat?” Kurt asked, shocked. “He’s a YouTube sensation. Here, look.” Kurt handed his phone to Arthur. He started to bob his head to the music.

  “Is this the sort of thing you young people enjoy?”

  “It’s awesome. Don’t YOU like it?”

  “I laughed, I cried, I lost several IQ points...which is upsetting because I tend to prefer to spend those on drink.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I should probably spend some time surfing the worldwide web. Dean Wormer has it out for me.”

  “Who?”

  “Nobody. Don’t you know Animal House?”

  “Ah...no, sorry. Was it by George Orwell?”

  There was a long pause. “Steve, it warms my heart that you thought I was talking about a book, and, admittedly, that was a good guess. If you’d like, I’ll be happy to stop calling you Kurt. Literary references earn bonus points...for the record.”

  “All the TAs call me Kurt now. I’ve never had a nickname before, and it is sort of cool. I’ll stick with Kurt.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Kurt stood up and headed out. Arthur smiled to himself and opened a browser on his computer. It was time to embrace his reality.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Arthur sat at his computer. He had, after much fidgeting and procrastination, successfully logged into his Twitter account. There were more than a few comments directed to him, mostly from students who thought the first day of class was better than most.

  It seemed rude not to respond, so he typed, “Thanks, see you Friday morning,” or some variation to most of the students. Now, faced with a blank 140 character canvas, he wanted to send out a real tweet. What to write?

  It wasn’t just a question of tweeting; it was THE question that had been plaguing him for over a decade. Damn, why is this so hard? 140 characters does not a novel make! He decided to go with “What is the sexiest root vegetable? Enquiring minds want to know.”

  It took five minutes before he hit the send button.

  That done, he sat and waited. He didn’t know for what, but he expected something to happen. The silence spoke only of loneliness. A few tweets were added to the stream. One had a snarky political comment that made him chuckle. He didn’t respond.

  Another tweet had a hashtag that read #ScottishLust with a link. One didn’t need to be a social media guru to know it was probably a bad idea to click on the link.

  A few more tweets appeared in rapid succession. They were between two students talking about football. Arthur wanted to jump in, but it seemed like he would be intruding. He loved football. Though Arthur wasn’t enough of a sports junkie to hang with the most rabid fans, football was fun to discuss. He wrote down on his yellow pad, “Is it okay to jump into a conversation?”

  He would ask Wen or Kurt later.

  The next tweet had a link to an old blog post on a site called Spin Sucks. Arthur had to agree that spin did, as a matter of fact, suck. He clicked on the post and began to read. It had a quote in the beginning that Arthur liked: “The pen is mightier than the sword” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton from Richelieu. Arthur was hooked.

  He read on, “If this is true, and I believe it is, then the combination of the keyboard (21st century pen) when combined with tweeting, would kick Edward’s pen’s ass.

  Sure there will be skeptics. I get that. There is a sport, which is known by some, but perfected by few. I speak, of course, of #fakehashtaggery. It is usually played on a platform such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, though one could certainly use Twitter. Does anybody use Twitter for tweeting anymore? I digress.”

  Arthur didn’t understand the bit about anyone using Twitter for tweeting anymore. He wrote it down as another question and went back to the post. He finished reading and called Wen. He sensed a bit of excitement deep in his funny bone, and he had to share.

  “Hello, Dr. Byrne, how’s it going?”

  “I’m doing some research. I’m reading a blog post on Spin Sucks.”

  “You know Spin Sucks?”

  “Somebody tweeted a link.”

  “I love that site.”

  “Well, have you read the post on fake hashtaggery?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It is older, from...just a second...March 29, 2011.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “I’ve got it up, let me read this to you.”

  “The sport of #fakehashtaggery dates back thousands of years to 2009.

  “To those readers who have been using Twitter for a while, I don’t need to explain that the pound sign is also called a hashtag. To those who haven’t been using Twitter until recently, please stop reading, go sit in the corner, and think about what you have done. Oh, don’t try to play dumb. I know you mocked Twitter relentlessly until you started to see tweets on the CNN crawler. Then, all of a sudden, it was okay. Well, some of us have been here for years. We have been airing our grievances, 140 characters at a time, all to build a world where people can search for loved ones in a disaster or overthrow a dictator. You’re welcome.

  “This brings me back to the most exciting sport since Bulgarian Ratapult. #fakehashtaggery is played by one or thousands. It often starts when a twelve-year-old girl tweets something like ‘Justin Bieber is the greatest musician EVER.’

  “The first salvo would go something like this: ‘@Sally021999 No, he isn’t. He sounds like a cat producing a pile of sick. #BieberIsAMonkeyFacedBoy’

  “The little biebette might respond, but this only makes it worse. ‘@Sally021999 His lyrics are trite. Your parents don’t love you. #BieberHairSucks’

  “If she isn’t crying by now, then it is hard to say which way it will go. She will either log off Twitter or, and this is where #fakehashtaggery can become dangerous, she might rally several thousand screeching preteens to her cause. This can quickly turn into millions of people, all berating one’s middle aged baldness and lack of fashion sense. This is not a game for the faint of heart.

  “Few people know that Mubarak once tweeted that ‘David Hasselhoff was overrated and that Baywatch sucked.’ Within minutes, a gang of ruthless German tweeple was using h
ashtags to imply an improper relationship between the President and a farm animal in a bikini. Twenty minutes later, he stepped down and he hasn’t been seen tweeting since.

  “Now don’t get me wrong, hashtags are very useful. I like to set up a search using #reading or #writing to find kindred spirits. Hashtags, when used properly, are very handy for group discussions. They make Twitter fun, can help with promoting, and as I have said, even aid in emergencies. I don’t mock the hashtag itself. But there are days when I am feeling a little #snarky and a round or two of #fakehashtaggery really lifts my spirits.”

  Wen was laughing when Arthur got to the end. She chirped, “That’s funny. See, the internet isn’t so bad now, is it?”

  “It has gotten me thinking about all the crap I said during my first-day rant.”

  “You were great.”

  “I was making up stuff as I went along, but maybe some of it was a good idea?”

  “I thought all of it was...”

  “Okay, tamp down the unbridled enthusiasm for a moment and stay with me. Had we planned on doing anything with blogging?”

  “Yes, it’s in the syllabus. Haven’t you read it?”

  “You are allowed one stupid question per day, and that was it. I mean, in the few days we’ve known each other, what led you to believe I might actually read the syllabus?”

  “Momentary bout of optimism?”

  “Hopefully, I’ll be able to browbeat that sunny disposition out of you by mid-term. Now, how about we require everyone to start a blog? Are they expensive?”

  “No, there are free ones like Blogger.”

  Arthur wrote down Blogger. “Can anyone blog on Blogger?”

  “Sure.”

  “Excellent. Is it hard to set up?”

  “Well...”

  “Well what?”

  “It would take me about five minutes.”

  “How long would it take me?”

  “Maybe somewhere between six minutes and ‘I quit; this is stupid; let’s go to the bar.’”

  “Well done, Lou, you HAVE been paying attention. That had an edge to it. Give yourself a high five later.”

  “Okay,” she said with a light giggle.

  “I’m going to try to figure out how to set up a free blog. If it’s hard, I’m blaming you.”

  “Good luck, Dr. Byrne.”

  Arthur bravely typed “Blogger” into Google. It would take him ten minutes to set up. It was then that he realized the flaw in his plan: blogging is writing even if it is the most lowly form.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Is it warm in the lecture hall today?” Arthur asked.

  Wen asked, “Do you want me to check?”

  “No, that’s all right. If you could get those people playing the gongs to stop, that would be wonderful, Lou.”

  “Gongs?”

  “Never mind. I’m heading out into the fray.”

  The chatter quieted, and Arthur said, “It looks like we are closer to having a full class here today. I hope everyone is well?”

  It seemed they were. Arthur sensed he was the only one not enthused about being there. “So, by a show of hands, how many of you set up new Twitter accounts?”

  “That’s interesting, it seems that not only did our Wednesday attendees do their homework, but so did those who were otherwise engaged on the first day of class. Well done. Have you been using your accounts?”

  Most of the hands went up.

  Arthur spent some time talking about the value of getting into a habit. He rambled for a while about some things he had read on various blog posts and read the post about fake hashtags. It was well received. Thirty minutes of the fifty remained. He was out of material.

  A student asked a question, which thankfully, Wen jumped in and took. Arthur then asked, “How many of you read one or more blogs on a regular basis?”

  He was surprised by how few people actually read blogs. “Have you considered the power of citizen media?” he asked. It was rhetorical because he was sure they hadn’t. He was also confident he had not considered it, either.

  He tried a pensive look, with some pacing, but it only used five seconds. It was time to talk again. His brain was screaming something about the hair of the dog but suggesting they adjourn to the bar seemed to be crossing a line that even Arthur knew was a step too far.

  He had never had speaker’s block. “I’m surprised that so few of you read blogs. It seems to be all the rage, and I assumed this class was hip. I guess we will need to adapt. I’m nothing if not flexible. You, the young man with the questionable hair cut, what are you studying?”

  “I’m in the journalism department.”

  “Do you read blogs?”

  “Not regularly. Sometimes I read The Huffington Post, which is sort of a blog.”

  “You like to write about current events though?”

  “Yes, I love it, and I always read the paper.”

  “And how are newspapers doing in our fair country?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Not very well at all. I want you to find three blogs that write about news you’re interested in and leave comments. Then, copy and paste the articles in a word document, hit print, and bring the paper to class. Can you do that?”

  “Sure.”

  “You all have dreams, and it is partly my job to crush them like a grape...oh, wait...that doesn’t sound right. What was I saying? Oh, yes, there are blogs about everything under the sun. If you are studying graphic art, find a blog about that, if you love business, then...well, you see where I’m going with this. Now, don’t think you can find a post and write, “Nice post; loved it,” and expect it won’t be met with a healthy dose of red ink and a scornful look from your TAs. Lou, give them a scornful look.”

  Wen did her best, but scornful wasn’t her forte. It was more of an angry bear cub, and there were almost as many “aw’s” as chuckles.

  “Now, some of you said you read blogs,” he said walking to the blackboard. “Let’s hear them?”

  People started shouting out various sites, and Arthur wrote them down. The spellings were strange enough that his plan worked to perfection. It took nearly twenty minutes to fill up the board. Students furiously copied down the urls. It really seemed like he was teaching a class on social media.

  He wasn’t quite to fifty minutes, so he asked a couple of people what the blogs they read were about. Their answers, thankfully, were somewhat longwinded. Class ended. Arthur disappeared back stage and slumped into a chair.

  Lawrence found him and said, “Good class.”

  “Thanks. Did it seem like I was faking it?”

  “Well, maybe, but the blog reading was a good idea.”

  Kurt said, “I agree.”

  “That it was obvious I was faking it, or the blog reading was a good idea?”

  “Yes.”

  “I really do need to step up my game for next week.”

  Wen said, “I think you did fine.”

  “I think I’ll head to my office and spend some time tweeting.”

  Wen cocked her head and said, “Are you really?”

  “When I say tweeting, I may not be speaking in strictly literal terms.” Arthur got up and, without another word, left.

  His secretary took one look at him and handed over the bottle of aspirin. Eric walked in and said, “You look a little rough.”

  “I know, but it’s nothing a little couch time can’t fix. What’s up?”

  Eric followed Arthur back to his office and said, “We didn’t see you at the Pit last night.”

  “Did you use the personal pronoun ‘we’?”

  “Emily and I.”

  “Since when did you become a ‘we’?”

  “We’re not a ‘we’ yet, but I’m taking her to dinner tonight.”

  “Isn’t she a little old for you?”

  “I’m 38, but I don’t think she’s much older.”

  “Well, good for you. She’s nice looking and smart, if you’re into that sort of
thing.”

  “I am. Where do you think I should take her?”

  “I think you should get dating advice from someone who goes on dates.”

  “Do you think Italian would be too aggressive a choice?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “The Italian place is pretty nice. Does it say I’m hoping to get lucky?”

  “You are hoping to get lucky.”

  “Yes, but I don’t want it to be obvious.”

  “She’s smart and nice looking. I’m sure you’re not the first guy to ask her out.”

  “I know. Maybe Chinese food?”

  “How about dog food? You could go to the pet store. Chicks dig puppies.”

  “You’re not helpful.”

  “I’m many things. Helpful is not among them. Don’t you have a class to teach or a diary entry to fill with tiny hearts?”

  “She’s really amazing. After college, Emily spent two years studying in France then lived in Russia for a year. We talked about Rodin. Not just ‘The Thinker’ but the ‘Balzac’ piece and the ‘Burghers of Calais.’”

  “You are smitten.”

  “I really am. You need to hang out with us. I think you would like her.”

  “Maybe I can be the third wheel when you go to the prom?”

  “I do have a class. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Text me and let me know what she says when you give her your letter jacket.” Arthur flopped down on the couch and yelled, “I’m not here.” He went to sleep thinking about Rodin. Arthur liked ‘The Burghers of Calais,’ too.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Arthur looked at both ends of the couch, but sleep was nowhere to be found. He gave up.

  An hour of swimming about in the shallow waters of the internet on sites like CNN and Yahoo did nothing to change Arthur’s low opinion of the human race and society in general. A link caught his eye. It led to another. Before he knew it, there was an article about a new phone prototype.

  When he was done reading the article that talked about a transparent phone, he screamed, “Are you kidding me?”

  The door flew open, “What is it? Are you okay?”