Facebook and the Rhetoric of the Handgun; or, What? You can’t socially network your way to democracy?

[Written fitfully (and, it turns out, rather inaccurately in all respects), one year ago:]

They told me back in grad school that reality is constructed, that community is paramount, and that technological capabilities are burgeoning forth unfound possibilities. Indeed, they (de)claimed, the internetworked generation has dispersed social clout along horizontal nodes in ways democracy could have only dreamed of, fundamentally altering the dynamics of political and social norms and power.

But I have been watching Libyan rebels and their cell phones, and I am not so sure that Zuckerberg is the new sixty billion dollar savior that they all thought he was. For those who are anti-Muammar, unlike in Egypt, Facebook wrought only impending doom, a Benghazi bloodbath, until Ms. Clinton nee Rodham pulled the about-face that launched two hundred Tomahawks and a barely-stifled Dukakis scream.

So now I am imagining a new brilliant screenplay for a movie, wherein a passel of puerile and privileged Harvard legacies concoct a dazzling scheme to copycat Napster, except that the product that you commodify is your friends instead of your music. Unfortunately, in a tragically Hobbesian and melodramatic move, one of the young bloods undercuts the others, patents the web algorithms, and escapes to California, where drooling Wall Street consorts slap down greenbacks in return for first dibs on shares in the now-hyper-inflated Company That Sells Nothing (Except Your Personal Information to Its Advertisers). The thwarted, wronged, victimized cohorts retire to sip margaritas in Cape Cod and plan their lawsuits and revenge. Eventually, in the climactic scene, a diminutive representative of the jilted parties confronts the Hobbesian antihero, holding up a laptop displaying a webpage on which the signatures of millions demand that justice be championed and liberty defended. Just as the curtain begins to drop on the villain, however, he pulls a Smith & Wesson from his pocket and puts sixteen rounds through the laptop’s Ethernet card. The final scenes show the villain driving from the hugely lucrative initial public offering to several of his private chateaus in France as the soundtrack from Slumdog Millionaire swells through a semi-psychedelic scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey (which was ten years ago) and the millions of signatures swirl through the atmosphere before forming into the shape of a Tomahawk missile …

Don't Hate. Love, Canada.

If you're a hater, and you're in that land
of drifting sagebrush and empty sand,
go ahead and get your hate on.
But not up here; not in this nation,
where the Mounties always get their man.

"Bring it, hate-boys," these toqued folks say.
"Talk your hate talk, and let come what may.
Good old Trudeau--he has made it
so that Mom's soap can stay where she laid it:
the CHRC will make you rue the day."

Oh, indeed, that fine Commission!
Parsing hate speech and omissions!
Didn't mean it? Still a hater!
Spoke the truth? Talk to us later.
Guess why we've got 100% convictions!

This Northern justice, it requires
only that you spoke; nothing higher.
If someone else might take offense,you are stripped of every defense,
even when the plaintiff is a liar.

I'd say some more of this except
that this is published on the Internet.
You know, of course, what this would mean:
it comes within Section 13!
So I'll stop. But I'm not finished yet.

Feeding Time

Ooh! He is chomping
It's like a dinosaur stomping
upon some smaller lizards--
because, until the great blizzards
that ended the tyrannosaur
and made way for more
temperate beings, they seemed
the greatest things ever weaned.

So now as he empties the syringe
that feeds him in his milky binge
he's working within peerless esteem
His parents, blind to fault, just gleam
when he performs the simple task
of swallowing. Because at last,
though often it goes so slow,
they get to sit and watch the future grow.

Crash-Tanked, Burning

Like the Exxon Valdez, the soil spreads--
over the roiling waters, it spreads!
Blackening bystanders and nature itself
with the ill-gotten ruins of mis-gotten wealth.

Ah, mortality! Meet thou American International Group!
(What an oxymoronic name, anyway).

Oh... and about Eternities...

Been thinking about time lately. Oops. Time to go to bed.

First Forever

If A swings an iron bar at B, who is asleep, but misses and hits a negligently-manufactured table leg instead, knocking the leg and table asunder and flinging the pieces across the room and out of the window where they bounce off a passing car and graze C's fingernail, is A liable to C for C's unforeseen allergic reaction to the anaesthetic used by the doctor to repair his fingernail?

All this, and more, can be solved in a mere single semester at a Law School of your choice! It's tedious; it's odd; it's expensive; it's slightly macabre! But it's not conducive to blog writing.

They look like flying lobsters

There's nothing wrong with cockroaches, except their existence. When they first came crawling down our ceilings with their antennae waving like outer-spacemen with laser guns, it seemed that the only feasible way of retaining the physical integrity of our bodies was to simply show them the quickest way to the sugary treasures of our pantry.

They've been around for a few days now, usually demanding access to the booty at about 10 pm. We typically acquiesce.

But just last night I decided to watch "Where Eagles Dare," in which a young and distressingly Keanu Reeves-ish Clint Eastwood single-handedly slays half of the Nazi SS corps with only a jackknife and a portable stereo. So when the roaches came back for another onslaught in the evening, my wife made several diversionary maneuvers involving a Tupperware container and the Saran wrap, and I headed for my Estwing.

Never before in my life had I seen a Saran-wrapped cockroach lying in a Tupperware after being repeatedly assaulted with all 18 ounces of a construction-grade hammer. Take that, weird antenna flailers! Don't make me bring out the portable radio!