Christopher Moore's Blog

So, I have to tell you, I’m a little disappointed. I’ve been on Myspace for over a week now and no one has lured me to a remote location to have sex with me, nor have they lured me to a remote location to rob me, nor has anyone stolen my identity and bought a Boeing 767 and filled it with hookers and cocaine while pretending to be me, despite what is left of a very impressive four-figure credit limit on my Gold Visa. (And they don’t just give those to everyone – you often have to have a pulse.)

I don’t blame MySpace. This is not the first time technology has let me down. Not ten years ago I started playing violent video games. I like to fly my cyber-freak flag from the cockpit of a giant robot, because you have not reigned terror until you have reigned terror down from a 100 tons of rocket-armed Kyoto iron. That’s just the way I roll. But I have also Quaked and Doomed and Wolfensteined, I have Half Lifed and even Warcrafted. I have raised and destroyed Empires, shot peasants out of catapults, (and you have not trebucheted, until you’ve trebucheted a half-dozen medieval milk-maids into the side of the Cathedral at Notre Dame, let me tell you), and kicked a hooker to death in the midst of a little Grand Theft Auto. I have popped hapless noobs in the head with a silenced 9mm., and mowed down platoons of red bastards with a souped-up warthog, but despite promises to the contrary, by congress and people who focus on the family, I am yet to destroy a single city or perpetrate a single massacre in real life. I guess what I’m saying is, where is the love?

I still escort spiders out of the house in a pan kept for that purpose, rather than smashing them. I say excuse me to people on the bus when they bump into me, and when propositioned by the hookers down on Broadway, (which happens a lot, because I am smoking hot ) I always say, “no thank you”. I hardly ever say, “I don’t know–How much to kick you to death?” In fact, the closest thing to violence I have perpetrated in the last year was last week when I was on the phone with a tech support person in Bangalore, who kept reading me the same section out of the manual, despite my telling her eight times that I already tried that, so I told her that when I hung up I was going to go have a burger and I hoped it was her grandma. But Holy Spray-Cheese Jesus on a Cracker, she wouldn’t listen. Still, not really violence.

No, it turns out, according to this Stephen Green* guy and three million Iraqis, the thing that turns young people to violence, (this one will blow you away) is sending them to the desert, giving them a gun, and telling them to go kill people. I feel a little ripped off. I may have to slaughter some Orcs to assuage my bruised psyche.

Nope, I haven’t been molested on MySpace, I don’t have a brain tumor from my cell phone, I have not taken to molesting turtles from exposure to Internet porn, I haven’t joined a Satanic cult from listening to streaming Ozzy, I haven’t kicked a single hooker to death or even stolen a car from playing video games, I haven’t turned into a gelatinous torso-boy from watching TV, I haven’t gotten swept to Nigeria and fleeced of a fortune, I haven’t lost the ability to punctuate and capitalize from texting, and I haven’t had to take in a homeless Metallica band member who was impoverished by MP3 downloads.

My Internet tubes are completely congested with paranoia, and yet none of those things have come to pass. Here I sit, blogging for my eight virtual friends, all of whom are probably pirates, biding their time between stealing software and setting each other on fire and posting it on YouTube, and luring each other to remote locations to trade Shikira bootlegs, while they wait for their Nigerian passports to come through. And all I can say is:

Hey Technology? You lied to me!

Carry on.

(I’m adding here, that in the week that I’ve been on MySpace, I have had no less than fifty technical errors, including trying to post this blog. The biggest lie of technology is is that it will even do what it’s designed to do, let alone change your character. Just make the fucking thing work, okay? You can corrupt me if you have time left over. )

*the psycho soldier who led the gang rape and murder of a 14 year old Iraqi girl and her family. Great column in the Washington Post on him yesterday 8/1/06. Unfortunately, I can’t find the URL to link it.

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