Microserfs

relief when your friends date cool people.

FRIDAY

Abe:

Today I called 1-800 numbers and ragged on companies about therir products. I complsined to the Matell hotline (1 -800-524-TOYS) that the new Hotwhheels aren’t as cool the ones I had when I wazs growing up. The only decent one they have is a Lexzus SC400. I’ve bought 3 of them (the toys), but be this as it may, Mattel is NOT exonerated. Where are the Bubble cars, may I ask? So this is my life, Dan. C’est la Vie.

Mattel karma! Susan came storming into the office late in the afternoon, having just visited a Toys-R-Us store in pursuit of a present for her niece. Susan was furious about Mattel products, too — in particular about Barbie dolls. As I was the only person in the office, I received the entirety of her postfeminist critique.

“The aisle — it was pink — I mean, the entire aisle was this shocking, moist, Las Vegas labia pink color, and it was a big aisle, Dan. Tens of thousands of Barbies gazing vapidly at me — this wall of mall hair — the aisle haunted with the ghostly sound of purged vomit yet to come — of unsustainable desire. Their necks thicker than their waists; sparkles; an incitement to eating disorders—”

Susan was just going on and on, so I used that tactic you use on little kids who won’t stop crying — I simply changed the subject. I told her how weird it is to think that simply by walking down the wrong aisle at Toys-R-Us at the wrong moment in your child’s development, you can forever screw up their future: “They have a whole aisle devoted to McDonald’s restaurant products — french-fry making machines, burger makers, shake makers … Say you overlook the computer aisle and walk down the McDonald’s aisle instead — one tiny error and your kid’s got a drive-thru headset surgically embedded in his cranium for the next seven decades.

“Toy stores are like Brave New World. Mom! Pop! Choose your aisle correctly. That’s all I can say.”

I later e-mailed this Huxleyan thought to Abe who replied:

*1959*

100th McDonald’s: Fon du Lac, Wisconsin *1960*

200th McDonald’s: Knoxville, Tennessee *1964*

Filet-o-Fish born *1966*

First indoor-seating McDonald’s: Huntsville, Rlabama

*1970*

First McDonald’s breakfast: Waikiki, Hawaii *1973*

Quarter Pounder born *1975*

Egg McMuffin born *1975*

Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonions-onasesameseedbun

*1983*

McNuggets born

At the office we’ve decided that instead of Friday being jeans day, we’d have Boxer Shorts Day instead. It’s way comfier, way sexier, and it’s funny watching Michael admonish the male staff members, “Er … gentlemen: no units displayed if at all possible.”

Dad came in to the office from job hunting around sundown. We made him a Cup O’Noodles and played some crank phone call tapes to cheer him up. Dusty tried to get him to wear a pair of striped boxers but Dad politely refused. Later on I went up to the house and helped him remove an old basketball hoop above the garage that’s been there since the dawn of bellbottoms. I fell and cut myself on some of Mom’s rosebushes, and I know it’s corny, but I got to thinking, it’s no surprise roses are the Official Flower of Love.

My hard drive accidentally trashed today’s file, so I include a snippet of the trash here as a curiosity piece. Language!

All 11I 11 It the office we' live decided that instead of Friday Fll11113636111136being jeans day, we' 11111111113636373733d have Boxoi Shorts Day instead. It' 11113838393940404141424243434444s way comfici, way sexier, lllland it'lllls funny watching Michael admonish the male stall members, ''1111451111114545464647474811114848Please guys, no units displayed if at all possible.''! 111494950505l&f&v&w&x&z&A&e&i&a&A&n&O' '4'O'S'['_'o 'Q'U**'*t*l*}+ + + L + h + v, ,?,'-9-a-}-A-6-0-©-*-0-»-A-0-fl-,,-AOU. .?.G.O.S.T.b.l.~.N.6.e.e.i.i.u.ii.B.0/ / /S/b/c/d/e/A/6oOO?Of~lT'lJnLrt^^^ ' ' I ' I A A I ' „ ' „ ' „ ' ' U ' U ' ' ' U ' ' U ' U ' ] c U A V A I vUAcH]UA]c$]cPR5151525253535454555556561111111111Dusty tried to get him to wear a pair of striped boxers but Dad politely refused.

SATURDAY

Today was the day Karla and I finally moved into our (temporarily) own place … the Apple friend of Anatole who’s going to Tasmania for eight months to study batik (she got the layoff package … it’s like backward Microsoft) and so we’re house-sitting for her. Like so many techie houses, it’s big, sterile, stuffed with consumer electronics, and there’s nothing on the walls and there are about six empty rooms lit by dozens of skylights. At least it’s not one of these big Mediterranean 1980s stucco houses Susan calls “Drug Lord” houses — ostentatious stucco monuments with a Porsche 928-S parked out front.

Anyway, to remedy the house’s sterility we’re doing what Ethan did with his photo of the collapsed freeway overpass, and we’re making photocopy blowups of cool images. We’ve made blowups of Barry Diller (inventor of the Movie of the Week back in 1973 — in an office inside the ABC Entertainment Complex, Century City, Los Angeles, California) as well as a blowup of the ABC Entertainment Complex’s twin towers.

I also enlarged an elegant undamaged California freeway cloverleaf from the seminal Handbook of Highway Engineering. And needless to say we did a double portrait of BILL. One right-side up — another upside down.

Ethan delivered to us a bottle of 1977 Cabernet as a housewarming present and said he felt jealous of our posters — the highest compliment, coming from him.

Todd and Dusty seem to have found soulmates in each other. They spend their precious few hours of post- code time discussing the vagaries of the New Human Body — in the office and at gym, deciding which mini-muscle needs alteration, discussing steroids as though they were Pez, and figuring out the mechanics of cosmetic surgery. They want to become “post-human” —to make their bodies like the Bionic Woman’s and the Six Million Dollar Man’s — to go to the next level of bodyhood.

Todd was in a chatting mode today — love’s first sweep, and I know what it is — and he told me of how happy Dusty makes him feel, of how pretty he thinks she is, of how she seems to believe in something and to believe more than Todd believes. “It’s as if all those one-night stands never mattered. Because all I care about is Dusty crushing my body (Have you ever done that Daniel … been crushed? God, is it sexy) and having her speak to me. Nobody’s ever spoken to me before. I mean, not to me. I was always just a soul to be harvested or a human unit. But with Dusty I’m me, and I don’t have to fake normality.”

“That’s how I feel with Karla,” I said.

Todd said, “She pumps me. Love is just this great big pump.”

Todd, on top of his coding work, is designing an Oop! Muscleman starter kit that will fold and mutate like a GoBot or a protein molecule into bulldozers, tanks, satellite stations, and Kalashnikovs. Michael thinks it’ll be a big hit.

Michael is making each of us design an Oop! starter module so that we can utilize all segments of our brain aside from the cattle-blindered coding part of our brain. Michael is really such a slave driver. He squishes everything he can out of us. It’s very Bill, so we can relate to it. I’m doing a space station.

Susan, among her many tasks — the main one of which is designing the Oop! user interface — is designing a dancing skeletons program. She has a burned-out Stanford medical grad student