So I was reading the billionth article on Glenn Beck’s dumbass claim that Obama hates white people and “white culture,” and I began to wonder what the fuck he actually meant by “white culture” anyway.  It can, after all, mean two very different things.  While trying to come up with a joke to that effect, I thought about how that joke would look as a line in a blog post.  Probably something like this:

Hopefully, Beck was talking about this and not this.

And here’s my real point: you probably didn’t click those links. You just moused over them, glanced at the bottom of the screen to see where they went, and immediately understood the joke after you saw the Wikipedia URL’s.

In other words, Wikipedia links have become a type of comedic shorthand.  Everyone knows how to read a Wikipedia URL, so they just mouse over the link, spot the reference, and get on with reading the rest of the post.  Indeed, if they did click both links, that would actually be bad for the original post — aside from screwing up the pacing, the reader would end up confused when they clicked over to the next tab and found an entry on Barry Manilow. “Why the hell am I looking at this?” the reader would ask. “What link was that? Ah well, guess I missed out on that joke.”

Weirder still, when I wrote that line, I wasn’t thinking about any of this. I didn’t say to myself, “Well, they’ll check where the links go, and then move on.” I put the links in because, shit, that’s just how I’ve always done it. Many, many other people on the internet do the same thing. And chances are, most of them are doing it without being fully aware of how their audience will read those links.

So congratulations, internet. We did something that could never work in print. We are officially a unique art form. Take that, successful novelists!

Well, it’s Easter. The day Jesus Christ rose from the dead and absolved us of all our sins, but not really. Technically, the absolving-of-sins happened when he died a couple days before Easter; the resurrection was more like the religious equivalent of a showboating touchdown dance. Issues of good sportsmanship aside, though, this day is all about forgiveness, assuming you follow a certain major religion.

That’s right! According to the Christians, Jesus sacrificed himself around 2000 years ago, washing away the sins of mankind in the process. Anyone born since that time can have their own sins washed away, simply by believing that this was indeed the reason behind Jesus’ death. Pretty sweet deal, right?

I’d like to pause here to relate a story.

A few years ago, I was waiting for a bus when a profoundly creepy gentleman approached me and introduced himself as “Shablinky”. Before I could say a word, he began ranting at me, telling me that Jimi Hendrix was a hack who had stolen all of his ideas, demanding I maintain eye contact with him, and just generally making me feel like I was about to get stabbed. After a few minutes of shouting, and several unsuccessful attempts to bum a cigarette, he stepped back, waved his hands arhythmically, and insisted I now owed him a dollar as payment for this “dance.” I didn’t want to get stabbed, but I didn’t want to give him a dollar either, so I stupidly tried to reason.

“How can I owe you a dollar?” I asked. “I didn’t ask you to dance. You just did that out of nowhere and started asking for money.”

He repeated: “You owe me a dollar.”

“I don’t think I do. That’d be like giving someone a gift, and then giving them the bill for it. I mean, it’s technically allowed, but it’s kinda sleazy.”

“You owe me a dollar, fucker.”

“Look, the dance wasn’t even that great,” I said, then trailed off, filled with a renewed fear of stabbing. Could I have been in the presence of a very creative but incompetent mugger? Was he really crazy enough to attack me in broad daylight, surrounded by witnesses? Should I just give him the goddamn dollar?

All my questions were rendered irrelevant just a few moments later. Shablinky spotted a man crossing the street and chased after him, hurling accusations of interracial sodomy at his presumably baffled new victim. When I related the story to my friends later that evening, many of them replied with stories of their own — they too had encountered this man, and been charged a dollar for his unsolicited (and very lame) dance moves.

The Easter season always makes me think of Shablinky. Except instead of getting stabbed, you go to Hell. Happy Fucking Easter, everybody!

Slogging through the Digg cycle this evening, an article from BBC News caught my eye, as it has to do with many things dear to my brain: English teachers, esoteric knowledge, and complaining about dumb kids. The article in question is titled, “Students do not know the Bible,” and features an interview with UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, who also occasionally teaches college-level English courses. Motion, it seems, feels that students need to know more about the (Judeo-Christian) Bible then they currently do, but here’s the kicker: Andrew Motion is an atheist.

And here’s where it gets cool, because Motion doesn’t appear to give a damn about the Bible in a religious context. No, his concern is entirely involved with the literary applications of Biblical texts (and other mythological texts), and how a strong background in such ancient texts aids comprehension of classic literature. In an interview with the BBC, Motion said,

“I’ve always been concerned about the levels of not-knowing since I started teaching, but quite recently I had a very bad experience of trying to teach some of my, in other respects, extremely good students about Paradise Lost. They knew so little about the context in which the poem was written and about the references that the poem itself makes that it was very difficult even to get beyond go in talking about it.”

Now, I’m all for keeping children away from religion, but Motion makes a good case. So much of our culture, both pop and canon, is saturated with references to earlier literary works that were once as commonly-known as Simpsons references are today. For example, while watching the new Neil Gaiman film Coraline, I was impressed that one scene featured acrobats reciting the “What a piece of work is man” speech from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I thought it was pretty cool, but my girlfriend quickly pointed out that it probably went over the heads of 90% of the screaming brats sitting in the auditorium, and that this, therefore, meant that those who enjoyed the reference were a severe minority. If they taught the Bard in kindergarten, we wouldn’t have this problem.

Motion is quick to point out that a Biblical/mythological education doesn’t have to mean a religious education:

“If people say this is about ramming religion down people’s throats, they aren’t thinking about it hard enough. It is more about the power of these words to connect with deep, recurring human truths, and also the story of the influence of that language and those stories.”

And beyond that, I’ve always been of the opinion that most people who claim to sincerely believe in the teachings of the Bible haven’t actually read the damn thing. If anything, a thorough reading of the Bible might serve the twin purposes of increasing contextual literary insight and encouraging atheism. Because, dude? The Bible is fucking crazy.

I probably don’t have much English Major cred left at this point in my life, mostly because I actually enjoy comedy, and spend an inordinate amount of time dreaming up clever T-shirt slogans. Still, I’ve always been proud of the fact that I never went through a Stephen King phase. I have never read any of his novels. I take a perverse pride in that confession — it suggests (falsely) that I have never sullied myself with popular fiction.

I’ve seen movies based on Stephen King’s work, of course; everyone’s seen Carrie and The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption, and probably some others that I’m forgetting. More recently, I’d been following Marvel’s comic book adaptation of The Stand with some interest. I figured it was worth a shot, what with my fondness for comics that aren’t about superheroes. And that’s where my troubles began.

In January, they published the fifth issue of the planned 30-issue series. The story was finally starting to get good and weird. I, like generations of comics fans before me, wanted my next fix as soon as possible. When I checked Marvel’s website, I discovered the next issue wouldn’t be out until the middle of fucking March. If I wanted to see what happened next, I had three choices:

A. Wait until March like a fucking caveman.
B. Track down the crappy early-90’s TV miniseries based on the book, which seemed cool when I was 13 but which I can’t even remember now.
C. just read the goddamn book.

I kicked my principles to the curb and chose “C”, dreaming up rationalizations the whole time. “I’m not really reading this book,” I told myself, “I just want spoilers for the comics! The fact that I’m willing to slog through this 1200-page doorstop just shows how committed I am to comics as a medium!”

Turns out, the book isn’t half-bad. The story isn’t bad, at least; I frequently take issue with King’s choice of words, and his fondness for old cars and Americana in general. I’m not here to talk about any of that. It’s an old book, and my feelings about it are neutral for now. Anyone who wants to read it has read it, and I’m still not sure if I like (or hate) it enough to make a case for (or against) it.

Instead, I want to talk about what King doesn’t do. Specifically, he doesn’t just dump exposition on us at the first opportunity. He waits until it’s appropriate (or at least he did at this phase of his career). The more I considered it, the more fully I realized that most of my complaints about “genre fiction” — horror, mystery, science fiction, “thrillers”, etc. — trace back to authors’ inability to pick their moments.

For example, how many books begin this way:

Max Douchington was having a bad day. At 41 years old, he wasn’t quite as fast as he used to be, but his 6′2″ frame carried his 190 pounds well, and he still had his hair, even if his temples now showed more salt than pepper. He was handsome enough — that’s what Cindy had always said, back when she was still willing to talk to him: “handsome enough” — but he had always preferred to spend his time alone. Anyway, he was having a bad day, so let’s try to swing back around to that subject again.

Why the fuck are we learning this? Are sitting there, watching it happen, or are we reading a story about it (written in the past tense, no less)? This is no way to tell a story! If Mr. Douchington is running around by himself, apparently under duress, he’s not going to fill out a mental eHarmony profile just in case there are readers spying on his thoughts. If I was pitching a movie, yes, all this information would be helpful: male, 41, 6′2″, 190 pounds, going gray, kind of a loner, used to know someone named Cindy. Got it? Great! Now let’s put some lifts in Tom Cruise’s shoes and make this movie! But in a book? It sort of blows.

If Max Douchington is going to be the subject of a longer story, there will be plenty of chances to tell the readers what he looks like. Maybe he’ll meet another character, who will take note of his appearance. Maybe his bad day involves getting arrested, and all that information will appear on the paperwork at the police station. Maybe he’ll get into a car accident and lose a leg, and spend the next five years spiraling ever-deeper into an inescapable depression, just sitting around the house eating terrible food and getting fat and never washing his hair, until one day when he’s hobbling his one-legged ass to the store to buy another fucking box of Ho-Hos, he catches his reflection in the window of a parked car and thinks back on how much better-looking he was five years ago.

See? Those are all better than “man having a bad day pauses for no reason and talks about how sexy he is.”

So to all you English Majors, all you aspiring novelists and memoirists and bloggers and Star Trek fanfic writers, I say this: Stephen King knows better than to write about Max Douchington. Stephen King, the guy who writes books about haunted cars and sells them to angsty teenagers and their doughy, suburban parents, knows more about how to construct his stories than you do. And more than I do, to be fair.

And that, my friends, is a humbling thought for anyone who wants to write respectable books someday. Learn your lesson, and leave Max Douchington out of it.

A little over a month ago, I turned 28. This was not a big deal at the time, as 28 is not a milestone birthday — I wasn’t starting a new decade or getting any new privileges, and I couldn’t think of any dead celebrities I’d be outliving over the course of the next year. Then, a few days ago, it hit me: if I was one of the kids from Seven Up!, I’d be giving another round of interviews this year.

An aside, for the uninitiated:
Seven Up! was a documentary which aired on British television in 1964, consisting of interviews with a group of seven-year-old children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Seven years later, a sequel was made, featuring the same children at age 14. New installments have followed every seven years since, with most of the original subjects giving interviews at 21, 28, 35, 42, and 49. The original film was intended as a statement on the lack of class mobility in Britain, but the rest of the series focuses more on the ups and downs of the participants’ lives, which I think is a far more interesting use of film.

Moving on!

The point is, had I been selected for such a project at age 7, I’d be getting another call from the director pretty soon. I’d have to talk about what’s going on with my life*, and answer embarrassing questions about the interview I gave when I was 7. Worst of all, though, I’d have to comment on all the shit I’d said in the previous film, at age 21.

It is no stretch to say I was a fucking idiot at 21. Let’s take a look at some of the actual opinions I held in 2002 — things I would have considered important enough to tell an interviewer. For example:

“I’ve never been all that spiritual, but I feel like, if I keep working at it, I’m bound to have some sort of breakthrough. People have believed in this stuff for thousands of years, so there’s no way it’s all bullshit, right?”

“I don’t really like the fact that we’re at war, but at least we can get out of Afghanistan once they catch Bin Laden. It’s not like he’ll be able to just hide forever. Then we can all get on with our lives.”

“I may not be able to get published right away, and maybe not ever, but there’s a place for you in the job market as long as you’ve got a college degree . I’m not too worried.”

“We’re definitely going to see major copyright reform in the next five years.”

“I suppose I should do more with my website, but I don’t want to just be another no-name blogger posting crap about the news everyday.”

“From what I’ve heard so far, Attack of the Clones is going to be a big improvement.”

And so on. I want to build a time machine so I can go back to 2002 and smack myself.

I was initially reluctant to post this. I ran the idea past a few people, and many of them told me they were quite happy with their lives seven years ago, especially compared to the shit they have to deal with now. Several told me the idea was flat-out depressing, because it casts either the past or the present in an unfavorable light, depending on your perspective.

But I went ahead and posted it anyway, because I find my youthful idiocy strangely encouraging. It turns out that, whenever I’m tempted to say that I feel stuck, or that my adult life has yielded no important lessons, it’s quite helpful to look back at myself at age 21 and feel superior to the asshole I was. Of course, by all accounts I am still an asshole, but at least I have a sense of humor about it now. I think. Ask me again when I’m 35.

*Luckily, I’m currently in the middle of something huge and impressive, which would give me something to talk about.

For the last several months, I’ve been struggling to come up with interesting things to say about the increased activity of Somali pirates in the Gulf of Arden. On the surface, this seems like an easy topic. Pirates are exciting, hostage situations are exciting, and high-seas combat with warships from half the world’s nations is exciting. How could writing for the pirate beat be a boring endeavour? And then, a few weeks ago, it hit me: the reason that modern pirates are inexplicably boring is that there are no compelling characters.

Think about it: classic pirate stories are loaded with well-defined, relatable people. Some are fictional like Captain Hook, Long John Silver and Jack Sparrow, while others are based in fact like Captain Blackbeard and Calico Jack. They had larger-than-life personalities, notorious exploits, and colorful subordinates. Now, compare those classic pirates to news reports you’ve seen of our modern African pirates, and it becomes clear that the new batch are virtually faceless. Their captains’ names are never mentioned, their factions’ names are never mentioned, their ships’ names are never mentioned, and reports are typically kept generic with lines like, “pirates on a seized Saudi-owned oil supertanker.”

The conclusion to this puzzle was clear: if we’re going to keep pirate news exciting, we’re going to need to know more about the individual pirates. So I began combing the articles, looking for proper names. My search led me to a pirate named Libaan Jaama, who, it turns out, is kind of a total douchebag.

Our story starts with a Saudi oil tanker called the Sirius Star, which was seized by Somali pirates on November 15. Among the crew was one apparently very talkative pirate by the name of Libaan Jaama. For the tanker, they demanded a ransom of $25 million, and were eventually talked down to $3.5 million. The money was eventually delivered, but reporters noticed some commotion in the midst of the hostage release. So CNN’s David McKenzie took it upon himself to find the right people to bribe to score a telephone interview with notorious swashbuckler Jaama. I’m already starting to realize that the more I talk about this guy, the harder it’s going to be to come up with new ways to try to make him exciting.

It seems that once the pirates received the ransom money, some other pirates showed up and wanted a cut. In classic pirate fashion, the second group of pirates attacked the first, and in a panic, the first group of pirates attempted to retreat. Their boat capsized, and all five drowned. Which would be sad, if they weren’t murdering thieving bastards. The nice thing about pirate stories is that you don’t have to feel bad for enjoying the carnage, because all the characters are bad guys.

Jaama told McKenzie that he was sad to lose his comrades, but soon cheered up as he related the joys of pillaging for fun and profit:

“We have the best way of life. We drive in white SUVs, we enjoy driving them and there is absolutely no difficulty in our life.”

You know those rap videos, where artists grandstand about how supposedly neat-o it is to shoot their neighbors and sell crack and disrespect women, all while driving around in Impalas? I get the feeling that Jaama’s version of piracy is a lot like those rap videos. Granted, rap artists are musicians who spend most of their time writing satire and commentary: in other words, they’re big nerds. Which is cool. The fact that some people don’t get the satire element and assume the artists are actually advocating such a meaningless existence is, lamentably, just one of those things that the Avant-garde must contend with. Jaama and his colleagues, however, appear to be the real dickish deal.

Now, we don’t have any photos or recordings of Jaama’s interview, so there’s no convenient image to help you connect with our unpleasant protagonist. He could be a ruthless authority figure in an anarchist hierarchy, or he could simply be the Somali pirate equivalent of Scott McClellan. Actually, that’s the image I’m going go with, for the sake of spicing up this article. Think of Libaan Jaama as a frumpy, doughy, much-trod-upon subordinate pirate with a lumpy nose and vague discomfort at the knowledge that his mother would probably disapprove of the poor life choices he’s made. He boasts and brags, and pretends like he’s having a great old time terrorizing innocent sailors and shooting hostages. But deep down inside he can’t help but think, “I should have been a farmer.”

See? See how much more exciting pirate news is with three-dimensional characters? And now you “better know” a pirate.