Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

“I can’t get over that you know Kevin Killian,” said Baby.

“What’s peculiar about that?” asked Adeline. “Every one in this demimonde of ours has made the acquaintance of Kevin Killian. Not only is he a great writer, he’s also a social butterfly.”

“I’ve known Kevin for years. He’s very supportive. He’s such a nice person and such a good writer.”

“Why do you think I talked to his bothersome students?” asked Adeline. “It isn’t for everyone that yours truly wanders around spouting objectionable opinions. I only go viral for Kevin Killian.”

“I’ve got a new book coming out,” said Baby. “It doesn’t have a title. What if I called it The Cupcake and the Pastry ?”

“What’s the book?” asked Adeline.

“It’s an official sequel to Annie Zero. It takes place fifty years after the Neo-Maoist revolution has failed. Annie Zero’s daughter Annie Terminay is a fugitive from justice. Her best friend is a sentient computer virus with a drinking problem.”

“A sequel,” said Adeline. “Can you recollect those olden days when you cared about your scribblings? Remember how sick it made you to try and read Infinite Jest? ”

“I remember, but I live in Barack Obama’s America. We got a huge advance and sold it into foreign territories. I need the money.”

Barack Obama was the President of the United States. He’d been elected in 2008 and then re-elected in 2012. The basale stratum of his epidermis was full of eumelanin.

George Bush II, the predecessor of Barack Obama in the office of the Presidency, was a truly horrible President.

George Bush II had driven America insane. Things were bad enough that a majority of the country temporarily put aside their racism and elected an African-American into the highest office of the land.

Eight years earlier, this was thought impossible. Most people believed that they would be dead before America elected a Black man to the Presidency.

So that was something like a functioning model of American progress: change is only achieved once half the country is crazy enough to forget that they participate in a system of institutionalized racism.

America had been driven crazy by: (1) A possibly stolen election. (2) A twice crashed economy. (3) An episode of being terrofucked. (4) An Army scientist mailing Anthrax. (5) Two foreign wars in the Middle East. (6) A guy trying to blow up an airplane with his shoes. (7) Revelations of torture. (8) A hurricane that destroyed much of New Orleans and in particular its African-American communities. (9) The failure of two foreign wars in the Middle East. (10) Tens of thousands of American causalities during two failed foreign wars in the Middle East.

It was a terrible time to be alive. It was like being kicked to the ground and then being kicked while you were on the ground. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

The kicking never stopped and because the kicks were a simile, you could never lose consciousness. You could never be kicked to death. You had to live and watch and be kicked.

If you didn’t live through the kicks, you can never know how awful it was.

Here are the two most insane things that happened:

(1) The United State of America, a warrior culture filled with good people, became a nation that embraced torture and unprovoked war. 4,487 American soldiers were killed in Iraq. 32,223 were wounded.

(2) After France’s President, Jacques Chirac, refused to help the US invade Iraq, there was a movement to rename French Fries, which were apolitical strips of deep-friend potatoes.

The new name for French Fries was Freedom Fries. This actually happened in the commissaries of the United States Congress.

Jacques Chirac refused to go to war in Iraq for a very good reason. He believed that George Bush II’s main motivating factor was a crackpot interpretation of the Bible.

George Bush II had telephoned Chirac and said, “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East… The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled… This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Chirac got off the phone with Bush II. He asked his staff if they knew anything about Gog and Magog.

As French people are hedonists who write actual graphic novels about people fucking on beds of their own shit, no one in Chirac’s office remembered that Gog and Magog were proper nouns which appear in the Bible.

Chirac’s staff contacted a Professor at the University of Lausanne named Thomas Römer.

Thomas Römer was an expert in Old Testament studies. They asked him for a report on Gog and Magog.

“Are you going to explore the metaphor?” asked Adeline, “Or will you bury it beneath a bunch of new words that no human tongue has ever spoke?”

“I’m trying to get away from that,” said Baby. “I hate my audience.”

“Are you sure calling it The Cupcake and the Pastry is a good idea? You’ll send Erik over the moon. He is your audience, darling. Did you know that he’s pressured Bromato into renaming one of their services after a word he found in Annie Zero ?”

“Which one?” asked Baby.

“Oh, darling,” said Adeline, “my attention is too dreadful. Anyhow, all you need do is wait for when someone uses the service to kill a queer or bully a teenager into suicide. The news reports will draw the connection. And then, my sweetness, you’ll be ever so proud. You’re the guru of San Francisco, Baby, you’re the yogi with the mostest. Erik’s education was so poor. The child seeks profundity in your very big words. So are you sure about that cupcake and that pastry? Dost thou really want the influence to go both ways?”

“I’ve got to call it something, don’t I? You can’t have a nameless book.”

“But I didn’t call to talk about your book!” said Adeline. “I wanted your opinion.”

“My opinion on what?”

“On what I should do! Beyoncé’s fans hate me!”

The furor died on a Friday. Like Jesus Christ, it was reborn on a Sunday.

Jesus Christ was a social radical from the Roman province of Galilee. Jesus Christ was executed in the Roman province of Judæa. He preached the radical ideas of total love and total forgiveness.

J. Karacehennem was fixated on the idea that Jesus Christ was a White Magus initiated into a system of sexual magick by Apollonius of Tyana.

Apollonius of Tyana was another mystic. Like J. Karacehennem’s family, Apollonius of Tyana was from the land mass now known as Turkey. No one really knows much about Apollonius of Tyana.

The major theme in this imaginary system of sexual magick was the use of seminal fluid as a remedy for death. The idea was nonsense but Karacehennem had snuck it into almost all of his writing.

On Sunday, someone found an interview with Adeline that appeared in the July 1997 issue of Wizard magazine.

Wizard was a news publication which covered the comic book industry. It told its readers about Marvel’s latest plans to exploit the intellectual properties created by Jack Kirby.

Wizard folded in 2011.

The interview occurred when the true nature of Adeline’s pseudonym was not yet known. It was conducted over email not long after Adeline bought her first computer.

Believing that Adeline was a Russian man living in Moscow, the interviewer asked some very stupid questions, like: Are the girls in Russia really as sexy as them seem?

Adeline answered with even stupider answers, like: Russia girls are sexier than Americans! Here in Russia we have word блядь! It is nice word use on street with girl! American girls are very willing for sex! I come America for their sexy and see how they serve men!