Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

Many universities, like Yale, used the humanities as a cloak for their development of better weapons for future wars.

The humanities were inquiries into the nature of human beings and their ability to create culture and have emotions and thoughts.

The humanities were also unprofitable.

Some institutions of higher learning, like Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology, didn’t bother with the cloak of the humanities.

The teachers at these institutions pretty much ignored things like reading and critical thinking and focused their efforts on devising new ways to kill more humans.

Humans killing other humans was part of the human experience, but what Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology wanted was peak efficiency . This term meant the most dead humans in the least amount of seconds.

Peak efficiency was very profitable.

Skull and Bones was a secret society of elite students who attended Yale. Skull and Bones had a disproportionate influence on America society.

Prescott Bush’s son, George Bush I, was a Bonesman. His grandson, George Bush II, was a Bonesman. Both George Bushes ended up as Presidents of the United States.

In 2004, Bush II ran for reelection. His opponent was John Kerry. John Kerry was a Senator from Massachusetts. He was another eumelaninless Bonesman.

Prescott Bush dug up Geronimo’s skull and sent it back to Yale.

The skull remains in the clubhouse of Skull and Bones. Both his son and his grandson had regular interactions with a skull taken from a grave robbed by their paterfamilias.

If you were from California, and it was the year 2013, and you were talking about Prescott Bush robbing a grave, you’d say, “It’s, like, so ironic, because America is, like, totally a country ruled by both, like, laws and, you know, human decency and, like, the people who rob graves totally bring a stain upon, you know, themselves and, like, their families forever.”

You’d be right. It would be ironic .

You’d mean the opposite of what you were saying.

Because Prescott Bush ended up as a Senator in the United States Congress and a banker who worked with Nazis.

His son ended up as President of the United States.

His son’s son ended up as President of the United States.

His son’s other son ended up as Governor of Florida and a Presidential candidate in the 2016 Election.

Granted, his son’s other other son did catch herpes from East Asian sex-workers. But his son’s other other son was a black sheep.

And if you were the relative of the person whose body was robbed, you’d have a good chance of being mired in poverty. You’d have a good chance of starving and struggling with alcoholism on a reservation administered by the country that stole your land.

But don’t worry.

We live in the best of all possible worlds!

J. Karacehennem was turning from 22nd Street onto Valencia. He was thinking about his father Mehmet Karacehennem.

Mehmet Karacehennem was an alcoholic.

Unlike Adeline’s mother Suzanne, Mehmet had been sober for seven years.

This sobriety coincided with his departure from America. He moved back to İzmir, Turkey, the city in which he was born and raised. He gave up drinking.

Before he went back home, Mehmet had lived in America for over twenty-five years. He’d worked in the jewelry factories of Southeastern New England. His co-workers had taught him the intricacies and pleasures of swearing in both English and Spanish.

No one needed to teach him about cursing in Turkish.

Other than monitoring the exchange rate between the US Dollar and the Turkish Lira, Mehmet’s only real hobby was calling his son on the telephone and unleashing torrents of obscenities.

If J. Karacehennem did not answer when his father called, his father would unleash torrents of obscenity on J. Karacehennem’s voicemail.

“Kid,” he would say to the voicemail, “What the fuck is the problem? Are you a fucking hain gavur who doesn’t call his fucking father? Why doesn’t hain gavur call his fucking father? Are you trying to fucking antagonize me? You piece of fucking shit, I will murder you some day. Küçük bok . Don’t be fucking pislik . Call your fucking father. Pick up the fucking phone, you garbage. Don’t be maricón , kid. Allah’ın belâsı ! Call your daddy.”

When ZIAD was published, J. Karacehennem sent his father a copy of the book.

As ZIAD was about Islamic themed religious fanaticism, J. Karacehennem was curious about the old man’s thoughts.

Mehmet was quite simply the shittiest Muslim who’d ever lived.

This is not to say that Mehmet did not believe.

Belief in itself was not his problem. He believed in everything.

Mehmet believed in: (1) Ghostly Hauntings. (2) Time Travel. (3) Fairies. (4) Alien intervention in human destiny, by virtue of every major religious personage being an extraterrestrial in human form. (5) That the earth was a prison in which the worst souls of the universe were trapped until they had rehabilitated. (6) Witchcraft. (7) Satanism. (8) Demonology. (9) Telepathy. (10) Telekinesis. (11) ESP. (12) Alien abduction. (13) Bigfoot. (14) The Loch Ness Monster. (15) Indigo children. (16) Crystal healing. (17) Faked Moon Landing. (18) Biorhythms. (19) Reincarnation. (20) Metempsychosis. (21) Reiki. (22) The water words of Masaru Emoto.

And that list just scratches the surface.

That list doesn’t say a word about the leprechauns.

Before Mehmet read ZIAD, his phone calls had centered on the problem of his son not being married.

After ZIAD, the phone calls became long digressive monologues during which Mehmet offered profane and obscene advice about the books that his son should write.

“Kid,” said Mehmet, “Don’t be a fucking dummy with fucking bullshit terrorism. Write some fucking sex in this shit, man. When I was young, we read books called yakılacak kitaplar. Books to be burned. That’s what you call the book, kid, A Book to Burn, and make it all about sex. Don’t be fucking stupid, kid. Make sure you don’t say anything too explicit. You just say things like, ‘I shook my branch at her ripe melons,’ and ‘Her peaches tasted sweet.’”

“Maybe I will,” said J. Karacehennem.

“Everyone in America is fucking obsessed with sex, kid. They will love yakılacak kitaplar. Turkish people are obsessed with sex, too. Americans get married for love, but Turkish people get married so that they can get up to hanky-panky.”

One time, Mehmet saw a televised news report about the runaway sales of Fifty Shades of Grey, a book by E.L. James that was a total piece of shit.

Like Les 120 journées de Sodome, it was a graphic novel. Like Les 120 journées de Sodome, it failed at being a novel. Unlike Les 120 journées de Sodome, it also failed at being graphic.

“Kid,” he said, “Why the fuck don’t you do something like this Fifty Shades of Grey ?”

“Did they say what the book was about?” asked J. Karacehennem. “It’s sadomasochism and bondage and domination. In the novel, there’s a red room of pain where the guy practices all three on the woman.”

“Kid,” asked Mehmet, “Does it involve The Agony and The Ecstasy ?”

The Agony and the Ecstasy was Mehmet Karacehennem’s self-invented euphemism for anal sex.

Anal sex was a type of sex during which a male’s penis penetrated the rectum and the anus of another human being. This could be painful. It could also be pleasurable.