by Jarett Kobek
Anyway, Janey Smith and his friend Mike Kitchell, neither of who had any eumelanin in the basale strata of the epidermises, decided that it might be interesting to host reading events in 851 Haight. The space was unused, so why not?
Both Mike Kitchell and Janey Smith wanted the readings to happen at night.
The apartment had no electricity. In fact, the apartment had no wiring and most of its walls were ripped open and half demolished. There was a thick layer of sawdust on everything. There were piles of unused doors and a half demolished bathtub.
As a result of the cheap candles which Janey Smith scattered around the apartment, the reading series was not only illegal but also offered the chance of everyone burning to death.
The first event was in December 2011. Subsequent events followed. Each attracted a bigger crowd, until it got to the point where 80 to 100 people would cram into the front room of the apartment.
DURING THE ANNUS HORRIBILIS of 2013, Janey Smith wrote an Internet post titled “Fuck List” on a website called HTMLGiant. “Fuck List” was a list of writers that Janey Smith wanted to fuck.
Another writer named peterBD asked Janey Smith if peterBD could make a book out of “Fuck List.” The idea was that peterBD would take Janey Smith’s original post and write short vignettes about Janey Smith having sex with the listed writers. Janey Smith said yes. peterBD would call this book We’re Fucked.
This was a terrible idea.
By the Summer of 2014, We’re Fucked was published. Janey Smith contributed the introduction.
The book’s appearance coincided with much discussion on the Internet about several men in the Bay Area poetry scene. Basically, these discussions said: sexual predators are amongst us. Sexual assaults have occurred.
Five names were listed. Janey Smith was among them, although unlike several of the others, there were no clear accusations against Janey Smith.
Because the reading series at 851 Haight had some notoriety, Janey Smith was the highest profile of the named.
It did not escape notice that a person denounced on the Internet as a sexual predator was involved with a book containing a series of fictional vignettes about the denounced person having sex with a long list of writers. An equivalence was made between the accusations of being a sexual predator and the content of We’re Fucked.
One of the people in both “Fuck List” and We’re Fucked was a writer named Dianna Dragonetti. Diana Dragonetti wrote an interesting post for HTMLGiant about Janey Smith, We’re Fucked, the negation of consent, rape culture, the Patriarchy, and the fracas consuming the Bay Area poetry scene.
Like every other website on the Internet, HTMLGiant was about making money through adverts strategically placed around the content donated by its contributors.
When Dragonetti’s essay appeared, its final paragraphs were followed by these advertisements:
AS J. KARACEHENNEM walked up Steiner to Haight, he did not know that he was passing by Jeremy and Minerva’s old apartment.
He was thinking about the iPhone.
J. KARACEHENNEM was thinking about both the iPhone and the iPad because he had been thinking about the New York Times, and its September 30, 1909 article asking whether or not J. Karacehennem was a White man.
Somewhere between its final piss-poor article about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and its first excellent article about Tartine, the New York Times had become the house organ of tech evangelism.
The New York Times published an awful lot of articles about Apple products. Many were about the impact of both the iPhone and the iPad.
The consensus, at the New York Times and elsewhere, was that the iPhone and iPad had changed everything.
AS J. KARACEHENNEM approached 851 Haight, he could see Adeline and Christine and a third person standing in front of the building. They were up the hill and a few blocks away.
The third person was Christine’s boyfriend Bertrand.
J. Karacehennem was thinking about apps that he might develop. He’d heard there was a lot of money in apps.
The first app would be called Jesty.
This app would make people’s iPhones unusable. Jesty would turn iPhones into bricks. Jesty would read the text of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest until the iPhone owner committed suicide from the sheer weight of pretension and boredom.
The second app didn’t have a name.
It was based on a very popular app called Grindr.
Because the iPhone had changed everything, Grindr which was an app that alerted gay men to the presence of other gay men in the immediate area. Many Grindr meetings ended in furious sexual rutting. Which was a beautiful thing.
J. Karacehennem thought that since the iPhone had changed everything, surely the model of Grindr could be adapted to other situations.
He settled on the idea of an app catering to the emerging market of cross-Abrahamic relations in the Middle East.
He thought that he could build an app for Palestinians and Israelis looking to engage in consequence free violence. The app would tell a Palestinian about all the Israelis in the immediate area. The app would tell an Israeli about all the Palestinians in the immediate area.
Then Israelis and Palestinians could choose whom they wanted to meet without any messy introductions. They could choose upon whom they wanted to inflict massive, wounding violence.
The possibilities were endless. The iPhone had changed everything.
chapter twenty-two
Adeline and J. Karacehennem and Christine sat in a restaurant on Church Street called Sparky’s.
Sparky’s was one of the few restaurants open in San Francisco after 10PM. They hadn’t gotten out of 851 Haight until 11pm.
“One of the very first things that Minerva told me about Sparky’s is that it was instant diarrhea,” said Adeline. “But I’m simply banned from Orphan Andy’s, aren’t I? There’s nowhere else that we might go, is there?”
So they ended up in Sparky’s.
J. KARACEHENNEM wasn’t sure how his reading went. He’d read a poem that he’d written about North Beach.
It was titled, “Rexroth Futurus!”
The very best part of the poem was its end:
AND IF YOU’RE IN SAN FRANCISCO
COME AND FIND ME IN THE AFTERNOON
I’LL BE AT CAFFE TRIESTE
I’M THE ONE WITHOUT ANY HAIR
SITTING NEXT TO THE GIRL
WITH NO EYEBROWS
A FEW MONTHS EARLIER, J. Karacehennem had found an old hard drive which contained all the juvenilia he’d scribbled in his teenaged years.
He opened the files and discovered that the content of this juvenilia, mostly comprised of short stories, was universally disturbing.
They were hyperviolent and betrayed the sexual anxiety of the massively unfucked. They were some of the worst fiction in the history of the English language, the products of a mind deranged by puberty.
J. KARACEHENNEM’S TEENAGED SELF had done more than write these stories. His teenaged self had submitted them to a wide range of publications.
The old hard drive contained cover letters that he’d attached to these stories when he’d sent them to editors. They were funnier than the stories.
J. Karacehennem read the cover letters at 851 Haight.
Like the following:
February 24th, 1995
To Whom It May Concern:
Enclosed is my short story, entitled “FAT BOY”, for your consideration. It is a tale of madness, plain and not-very-simple. I realize that there are parts of the text that do not seem to make sense, but again, this is a tale of madness, and there is a connecting plot.
The story itself is 3,043 words in length.
I was pleased to hear of your magazine over the Internet. I am a new writer, who is having a hard time convincing the major fiction (and secondary) markets that my fiction is of some value. Unfortunately, most of the places I have been submitting to are more concerned with big names than writing.
For your c
onvenience, I have enclosed a SASE. You need not return the enclosed manuscript. I look forward to hearing your reply.
Like the following:
February 9th, 1995
Dear Mister Schweitzer,
Enclosed is my short story, “Poker was the ideal game”. It is the somewhat convoluted tale of man and his love and what he does to win her back. It is a piece of good writing. I am not great and make no claims of being so. The story itself is 3,629 words in length.
I am submitting it to you, in hopes of publishing, and/or comments you might want to make. For your convenience, I have also enclosed a Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope. The manuscript itself is not of any concern to me, and you may discard it if you deem it prudent.
A note added for you. This story has been rejected by many more mainstream fiction markets simply on the basis that it does NOT fit in with their themes. In submitting to you, I am hoping to avoid this initial prejudice.
Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.
ADELINE AND CHRISTINE and J. Karacehennem were sitting in a booth by the back wall of Sparky’s.
“Darlings,” said Adeline, “Do you know that my tweeting has been rather successful? I’m up to 15,000 followers. All of these comic book fans and all the lovely young things are fascinated by the opinions of yours truly.”
“What opinions can you even express in tweets?” asked J. Karacehennem. “Isn’t the hard limit 140 characters?”
“You’d be stunned, sweet child,” said Adeline. “For my larger exegeses, I’ve been going simply wild with the Facebook account that Jeremy set up. I’ve got about 2500 friends.”
“You were a Luddite two months ago,” said Christine.
“They put yours truly through the wringer,” said Adeline. “I decided that if other people were using me to earn their filthy lucre, then I should at the very least try and sell some books.”
“Have you affected sales?” asked Christine.
“It’s rather shocking, darling. We’ve pushed the first volume of Trill into another printing and we’ve almost sold out of the omnibus. Do you know that even Done Because We Are Too Menny is getting a second printing?”
DONE BECAUSE WE ARE TOO MENNY was a solo project that Adeline published after the first inauguration of Barack Obama. She had published it with Image Comics.
The book reflected her deepening concern about global warming and climate change and the effects of overpopulation on the environment.
Overpopulation was a way of saying that the reproductive urges of the human species had spun out of control and that people could not stop creating babies.
The effect of overpopulation was to create a scarcity of resources and an economy in which selling low quality goods at high volumes was an acceptable business strategy rather than a source of shame.
Global warming and climate change were the methods by which the human species, plagued by guilt and unacknowledged depression, committed suicide.
The mechanisms of this suicide were eating too much beef, operating too many electronics and driving too many cars.
THE TITLE of Done Because We Are Too Menny was taken from Jude the Obscure, a Nineteenth Century novel by Thomas Hardy.
Jude the Obscure is about the misery which falls upon working class people if they ever make the mistake of hoping that they can achieve.
Jude the Obscure was written before the iPhone had changed everything. In the Twenty-First Century, after the iPad changed everything, the message of Jude the Obscure no longer resonated because all working class people listened to the music of Beyoncé on their Apple products.
They could achieve anything as long as they worked hard enough and believed in their dreams and followed their passions.
Anyway, in Jude the Obscure, one of Jude’s children murders Jude’s other children and then hangs himself. He leaves a suicide note that reads: “Done Because We Are Too Menny.”
Adeline saw this as a perfect metaphor for climate change and overpopulation. So she created a plotless 64-page long comic book.
Done Because We Are Too Menny received nice reviews on the Internet, particularly from middle-aged men like Jeff Lester and Graeme McMillan.
It sold poorly.
GRAEME MCMILLAN AND JEFF LESTER were partners in an Internet podcast called Wait, What? Neither man had any eumelanin in the basale strata of their epidermises.
Jeff Lester’s WaNks Index Score was 73.24857142857143.
Graeme McMillan’s WaNks Index Score was 9.583211678832117.
The word podcast was a shitty neologism with the generalized meaning of an audio program distributed over the Internet. In the case of Wait, What? the program was two guys talking about comic books for two hour chunks of time.
This concept would appear to be terrible. Who wants to hear comic book guys talk to each other about comic books?
Yet in its execution, Wait, What? was fascinating.
Jeff Lester was a master in the art of rambling, a conversational shambler from the stars. Graeme McMillan was concise and insightful and tormented by having dedicated so much of his life to comic books.
The interplay was compelling.
Jeff Lester lived in San Francisco.
At the exact moment that Adeline, Christine and J. Karacehennem were talking in Sparky’s, Jeff Lester was wandering around the city, doing something weird and incomprehensible. Possibly annoying his wife.
Anyway, it was Jeff Lester who came up with one of this bad novel’s central ideas. It was Jeff Lester who realized that the American comic book industry is the key to the Twenty-First Century.
Here is Jeff Lester on the very topic:
“It’s really hard to tell if the comic industry has changed for better or worse, in no small part because the comic industry more or less conquered the world. And I’m not just talking about the proliferation of superhero movies or whatever: I mean that the practices of the industry—dubious labor practices obscured by an endless supply of willing freelancers, the emphasis of brands over individuals (unless it’s to celebrate how well an individual is serving a brand), the constant need for content—are now how so many other industries operate. All the talk we hear about the creative class, even as they’ve been turned into people on an assembly line, tasked with turning out so many listicles or reality TV shows in order to survive? Comics did that first and best.”
“ADELINE SAYS you’re a maniac about Google,” said J. Karacehennem to Christine. “She says you got all kinds of crazy ideas.”
“Don’t make me regret introducing you, hombre. I never the once said her ideas are mad, did I? All I said is that Christine had gone into the realm of the très outré. Which any person would admit.”
“It’s okay,” said Christine. “It is kind of crazy. It’s worked so far. I’m still not evicted. My landlord hasn’t converted the building.”
“What’s worked so far?” asked J. Karacehennem.
“I’ve started praying to Google,” said Christine. “I offer obeisance to our masters.”
“I’ve been in San Francisco too long,” said J. Karacehennem.
CHRISTINE’S IDEA was simple. She had examined Ancient World mythologies and interpreted the divinities as symbolic and archetypal representations of universal human struggles.
The most applicable pantheon was that of the Ancient Greeks. The Greek Pantheon was the one where the gods were the most childish and thus the most like the brain trust of the Bay Area. Also, Christine respected the influence of the Greek Pantheon on present day Western thought.
Once Christine isolated the various archetypes, she began looking for analogues in the various personages associated with Google.
“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING to understand about Google,” said Christine, “is that it’s a company of liars. Their entire business model is lying. Advertising is the art of lying in such a way that everyone knows you’re lying but no one will call you out on it, because you’ve disguised your lies behind money.
; “If you want to know why the Bay Area is so messed up, it’s simple. Other than Apple, the primary revenue stream of every other company is advertising. There is no way to make money off the Internet itself other than advertising. We are living in the biggest advertising economy that the world has ever seen, and no one will admit it.”
“I have a theory,” said J. Karacehennem, “That all money and technology is embedded with the ideology of its origin. You should Google ‘packet switching.’ It will explain everything. Advertising itself explains why everyone in the Bay Area is so full of shit and no one can tell the truth.”
“Because they are advertisers,” said Christine. “They can’t say that they work in advertising. So they lie about what they do. Google wants us to believe that they’re changing the world and offering a million services for free and that we’re all part of the same team, but they’re lying. All Google does is serve advertisements. Nothing else makes money.
“They are liars and I pray to liars.”
CHRISTINE SAW ALL THE FOUNDERS and key players in Silicon Valley as new gods, like the New Gods created by Jack Kirby while he worked-for-hire at DC Comics, and Christine arranged them accordingly.
Larry Page, the CEO and co-founder of Google, was like Hephaestus because Hephaestus was the physically debilitated God of artisans and creators. Hephaestus was the out-classed God, like Larry Page was the outclassed CEO who wrested back control of the company in 2011 and forced it to start a social networking platform which everyone thought was terrible. Then Larry page bought Motorola, a maker of cellphones that was losing money and continued to bleed money. Christine didn’t know it, but by 2014, Google would sell Motorola at a $12,000,000,000 loss. Just like Hephaestus had a sham marriage to Aphrodite that required keeping up appearances, Larry Page was considered a good CEO because Google’s core business of advertising made so much money that no one noticed that Larry Page was bad at his job and operated off the principle that unexamined growth was a successful strategy for the future.
