I Declared War on Net Neutrality

"If we could understand the order of the universe well enough, we would find that it surpasses all the wishes of the wisest people, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is — not merely in respect of the whole in general, but also in respect of ourselves in particular." Nora Roberts, "Northern Lights"

I don’t remember exactly when or how it happened, but close only counts when it comes to horseshoes and hand grenades and this promises to be anything but. It just so happens to be the story of my life, which my press agent wants to bill as containing multitudes but which I know for a philosophical fact is really just a monad.

[John Ross “J.R.” Ewing’s smiling face, topped by his trademark “ten-gallon” hat, fills the frame. This is an advert for Prime Time Malt Liquor and it’s pretty darn effective, if you ask me. What I mean is, I’m hooked! Then again, that’s easy for me to say because I’m an alcoholic hellbent on destroying the lives of those closest to me. My eventual vehicular homicide-suicide will be one of those great tragedies you hear about on social media all the damn time, which is why I’ve hidden most of the assholes and braggarts in my various feeds. Look, we get it, Guitar Hero creator Les Paul is dead. He’s deader than dead. He’s got a hole in his head. Game over, man, game over. Are you gonna be sad forever? Forever, forever ever, forever ever?]

"Forever never seems that long until you’re grown," Camden told me as she kicked me out in one of those crushing scenes.

"What am I do? Where am I to go? I’m gonna be out on my fanny!" I shouted. Look, I didn’t mean to shout, but I don’t have much of an indoor voice, and "said" just wasn’t going to cut the cheese & mustard there. It’s a pain in the ass, though; must I always type "shouted" at the end of some declaration I’ve made? Is this to be my fate, so schwer, so leicht?

[Babe Ruth glowered at the towheaded rookie pitcher who had the misfortune of being the only person standing between “the Sultan of Swat” and a record-breaking fifth 60-homer season. He dug the hard soles of his Buster Browns into the dirt around home plate, passed his immense wad of Black Death tobacco from one chubby cheek to the other, and death-gripped his 56 oz. Louisville Slugger.

"Lay it on me, rook," he ordered his opponent. "Lay that hard heat right down the middle, belt-high if it’s an inch."

The rookie, who would later go on to great fame as the star of the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman before dying under suspicious circumstances, nervously worked a nail file against the baseball tucked in his glove, hoping to catch the Babe napping with a well-timed “scuff ball.”

"C’mon, rook, it’s getting late and I’ve got a hot date with a gallon of Prime Time Malt Liquor and a pair of showgirls," Ruth continued. He was a man of prodigious appetites, you see, so it stands to reason that this dialogue I’ve just written is especially true to life. Also, and I suppose this digression is taking us somewhat far afield here, I have it on good authority from noted sportswriter Fred Lieb (1880-1980 RIP) that Ruth once ate 15 pounds of ribeye steak in a single sitting, washed it down with 30 Bayer aspirins, and didn’t even need to get his stomach pumped. How ‘bout them Granny Smith apples, huh?

The rookie (we mustn’t forget about him, digression be darned!) took a deep breath. “It’s now or never,” he said to his imaginary tiger friend Banjo Kazooie, who was voiced by notorious ham actor Nathan Lane in the Disney adaptation of this climactic at-bat.]

Dearest Camden,

I wanted to explain in writing as well as pictures why I’m breaking up with you (the pictures, mostly of Brett Favre’s poorly-lit “junk” and vintage Crocs, are attached to this e-mail). First of all, you’re a nag and a scold. Second, I’m completely incapable of having a normal relationship with anyone because I’m an amoral narcissist who will stop at nothing to remain the cynosure of all eyes. Third, why would you want to date someone who corrects your pronunciation of “cynosure” (or, even worse, “hypostasis”…but that was only once, and yes I DID apologize)?

So in short, our break-up is a great move with little downside risk and plenty of upside potential. I recommend it without reservation.

Best wishes for a great summer,
Oscar

[The year was 1998, and I was out raising hell. That’s what me and the other neighborhood toughs did: we were in the hell-raising business, and business was good. I had probably egged every house in that neighborhood and went through more TP than “Family Feud” host Louie Anderson when he had that diverticulitis scare. Dude had to get a part of his intestine removed. Sucks to be him, right?

Anyway, I was out raising my usual quota of hell when Hurricane Fran hit. It hit hard and it hit fast. There was a reason they called it “The Storm of the Century,” and the was reason was because that’s what the local weathermen, who were starved for ratings and pageviews and Facebook likes, called any storm in which the winds exceeded 10 mph (i.e., 15 kph).

I dove into a drainage ditch but it was too late. Cars, livestock, and other debris hurtled across the landscape, and not a single building was left standing between Capital Blvd and Peace St. Some wags would later argue that it was the worst disaster that ever happened, but I’d like to remind those wags of a little event called “Ted Nugent quits the Amboy Dukes.” Don’t believe me? Go and listen to “Journey of the Center of the Mind” 10,000 times in a row and try telling me there wasn’t at least one more so-gr8-it’s-gr9-single in that group. I double-dog dare you!

Anyway, when the storm subsided and life more or less returned to normal, I realized that nothing would ever be the same again because a) I was an orphan and b) I had super powers. My powers consisted of having all the time in the world and not knowing what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks to do with it. Now that I was an orphan, my manservant took it upon himself to explain that with great power comes great responsibility. We went on a handful of adventures, which is where I met Camden Camden, aka “the girl of our dreams.”

I sure did love CC. She had everything you’d want in a girl: all of the girl parts plus a nice mouth and normal eyebrows. I can’t tell you how much I respected her for not wearing those nasty-ass fake eyebrows the kids are so crazy about nowadays. You can’t watch a YouTube video without seeing those things; like really! REALLY!]

"REALLY? REALLY?" asked incredulous former SNL "Weekend Update" host and resident cutie-pie Seth Meyers, and of course the guffawing crowd lapped it up like mother’s milk. They loved easy, soothing, and repetitive jokes like that, and who can blame them? I know I could sit back and watch Jason Biggs hump that warm apple pie 24 hours a day, eight days a week (a popular Beatles song, plus I’m getting the eight days figure from the fact that I’d be doing it "twice on Sunday" per the colloquial expression).

I sat in the audience with my beloved Camden Camden and it was clear our date wasn’t going well. She had rebuffed my advances, which was mind-blowing given that I’d written the book on pick-up artistry (hey, quick sidebar: this book, entitled “The Game,” once reached #3 on the Amazon.com bestseller list, so it was obviously pretty good; not that I’d know, because who has time to read books anymore? I know I don’t!). I kept hitting her with my best negs, telling her that her plain jane eyebrows reminded me of rancid dogshit twice warmed over, and all she did was recoil in horror like I was some sicko who had spent years 6-12 of his life pulling the wings off flies, bees, birds, and fallen angels. I had actually spent those years killing mice with an air hammer, which goes to show how little she knew about me. No wonder we broke up in one of those crushing scenes!

"Oscar, could you please stop blowing hot air in my ear?" she asked while Seth Meyers continued to perform the hackneyed schtick for which he was well known and well loved across the entirety of the English-speaking world.

"I’m kino-escalating!" I shouted, because as noted supra, I don’t have an inside voice.

"Yeah, whatever, just watch the goddamn show," she said. "I’m sorry I even agreed to this."

"I bet you are!" I continued to shout. "I’m a real piece of work!"

And I was, too. How many of you viewers at home can say you survived Hurricane Fran and emerged not only unscathed but with all the time in the world? Other than you, Scott. I read your email and I promise I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

[The last memory he had of summer was the burning Scwhann’s refrigerated truck he had passed while doing 115 kph down a two-lane highway somewhere in the badlands of North Dakota. He was going to find himself, which of course he never did, but it was a pleasant journey nonetheless.

This was the reverie he contented himself with as he lay dying in a hospice in Troy, NY (“the City that Works!”). Like most of the past, it probably hadn’t even happened, but it was enough to coax a single tear through those ugly false eyelashes and down a once-chubby but now raisin-wrinkled cheek.

And with that, in less than one hundredth of one half of one hintillionth of a split fucking second, “the Sultan of Swat” struck out swinging. Goodbye to all that, my Babe.]

—OLB & JRP