Bob Hayes Online

Preface: I wrote this intending to submit to the Onion as a “hey, how about hiring me to write funny bits like this for ya” entry. Then I found out they don’t accept submissions. Alas. Thus, I present to you the fruit of my genius.

Area man and political activist Aaron Mulholland has no idea that not a single person among his 573 Facebook friends actually reads his multiple daily Facebook status updates, notes, and online game achievements. To the contrary, he believes that his “social networking” efforts not only boost the bottom line of his online candle distribution business, but advance his bafflingly wide array of political causes.

“Every time they click on my profile they see that URL for ultimate-candles.com, and those sales add up!” says the sad-eyed University of Oregon graduate, who did actually have friends in college but lost them through a series of divorces, ill-advised moves, parasitic outbreaks and natural disasters. “And for my friends, working to make the world better was always the most important thing, so I know they appreciate being kept informed of the struggles going on.”

Mulholland’s extensive collection of online friends was accumulated by a painstaking cross-indexing of multiple yearbooks and employer internal telephone directories with the online networking site’s “Search” feature, coupled with thousands of unsolicited “Friend” requests to anyone with a similar-enough name. Despite the tenuous or nonexistent connection he actually has with nearly all of those on his friend list, there are actually approximately 87 people who do not automatically block his never-ending series of updates on health care reform, political corruption, libertarian theory, Bolivia, and rumors from the sets of upcoming science fiction movies.

Forty-three of those addresses are in fact automatic spam harvester accounts, which send the greying would-be candle mogul approximately 99.998% of the e-mails which regularly fill his e-mail Inbox, contributing to the illusion that he is connected to anyone in the entire world. Of the remaining 44 accounts, 42 are people who actually did know Mulholland in his younger, much less annoying, days, and who for their own sense of being committed to keeping the social enterprise alive allow his rambles, oblique political references, and raving delusions to pass across their Facebook screens, quietly unread save for an occasional “Like” bestowed on a link to a particularly clever YouTube video. The remaining two accounts are Mulholland’s alternate account that he uses for cyber-dating, which he friended in a moment of loneliness one solitary Christmas, and his cousin Edward in Tuscaloosa, who registered for Facebook in August of 2003, accepted Mulholland’s friend invitation, and then never logged in again.

“In the end, what matters is that I make a difference. Almost every day, I add another friend from my unceasing cultivation of some tiny shred of genuine contact. And that adds up – within a few years, I’ll have a network of thousands of loyal friends! Friends who won’t desert me when some bitch runs away with my fucking best friend. Fuck me, Pete. I mean, fuck me.” Mulholland then collapsed sobbing on his couch, where he would cry for the next twenty minutes before regaining some sense of equilibrium, smoking three joints, ordering a pizza and settling in for some World of Warcraft.

Stephanie having dinner downstairs and watching her show as a special treat, calls up “what can I have for dessert?”

Cruel father: “You can have bupkiss, nada, or niente!”

Kind mother: “You can have some of your Halloween candy.”

A few minutes later, Stephanie upstairs: “I’m going to have a Bob Kiss!”

Me: “A what?”

Her: “A Bob Kiss! One of these!” – and rummaging around in her gift bag from the birthday party on Saturday, she pulls out some chocolate treat or another. “This! This is a Bob Kiss! Daddy said I could have one for dessert!”

A Bob Kiss it is, angel.

Eight wonderful and fulfilling years. I love you, honey.

Pretty impressive. These things often turn out to be hoaxes, but this one has a legitimate feel.

And young Mr. Hignite seems to have done his homework.

Not to dump on Alas, but this is just priceless.

“We have to pretend that we’re not going to fund abortions, but secretly it’s OK, don’t worry, we are totally lying to convince these yokels here to vote with us today, we’ll distract them with shiny objects when it comes time to vote again later For Reals.”

Really? That’s really the strategy?

Good thing there aren’t any Internets or public watchdogs who would notice that kind of behavior, and make the people engaging in it look like sleazy hacks. Luckily all those Democratic congresscritters currently being duped are all illiterate, and will never comprehend (or indeed, learn about) this approach.

My friend Barry is verklempt that the health care debacle stampeding its way over the cliff may well disrupt abortion coverage for many American women.

Because many small employers are expected to switch to using the exchanges, this means that women who currently have abortion coverage through their small employer, will have their coverage replaced with insurance that doesn’t cover abortion.

You mean running health insurance through the government might MESS UP private choices privately negotiated, by putting the whole thing under the control of the political class?

CRA-A-AZY!

One of the games I’ve played on Facebook is called Realm of Empires. It’s a quite involved game of village development and medieval combat. You start out with just one village and a few troops; from there you can conquer huge sections of the world, make alliances and treaties with your neighbors, and try and crown yourself king. (Gee, why would I find this game interesting?)

Positives: it’s a lot of fun to build up your villages and get them nice and strong, so that you can bully the local neutrals into signing on with your empire. The graphics are quite pretty without being disruptive or distracting. The game has a quest system that introduces you to all the game features and gives you bonus gold for learning how the game works – which means you rarely encounter a player who’s just completely clueless about how the game is supposed to work. Setting up your attacks is challenging.

Negatives: the game lacks some verisimilitude; you can support a village with troops from another village, but the supporting troops can’t be “localized” – the city that built a troop is that troop’s city, forevermore. This makes organizing your empire at higher levels somewhat challenging. The map doesn’t show troops in motion, which would be cool and would really bring the game more to life.

Most of the things I find I don’t like are things where the game could be better and cooler, though, not things where the game is bad. For example, it would be great if you could have profitable, quiet trade with your peaceful neighbors. As things stand, there isn’t much incentive to be friends with people other than to avoid having to fight them; being friendly just means you leave each other alone as the game exists. I’d also like to see more high fantasy elements, like court wizards (good on defense, boost village productivity) or higher levels of palace. But these are quibbles.

The game itself is quite fun, it’s easy to play in just a few minutes a day, and it’s free to start. You can buy servants to get access to some management tools but this isn’t necessary until you’re quite into the game, and there are lots of free offers you can do to get more servants if you don’t want to shell out the $5 or so you might need in a month to play the game at the fullest level. Recommended to anyone wanting an enjoyable building/fighting game with a medieval theme.

Here’s a screenshot of the area around my main complex of villages:

and here’s a shot of my army list, of a village about to become part of the Kingdom of Bob.

I have some very exciting news to share with my readers.

My daughter Stephanie, age 6, has just been informed that she will be admitted to the Oxford University class of 2024! What’s more, she’s been granted a full scholarship on the basis of her astonishing artistic talent (last week’s opus, “Car Made From Two Cardboard Boxes With Little Mermaid Plates For Wheels And Plastic Cups For Headlights”, has already been photographed for the cover of Artforum’s January issue), as well as being named a Fulbright Scholar for the year!

Some people might think that these awards and accolades are slightly premature, given that Stephanie was only 11 days into the first grade when the Oxford people began making their selections. Such resistance to the greatness and majesty of my daughter’s obvious, blinding talent is probably rooted in sexism. Clearly, when an artist and scholar of Stephanie’s power arrive on stage, quotidian considerations of measured accomplishment or observed success – on anything – must go by the boards, and only reactionaries rooted in an oppressive hegemony of dead white maleness would have any objection.

Since Oxford will be paying her full freight, she plans on using the Fulbright money to buy more Polly Pocket dolls. Even the greatest of our artists – and clearly, Stephanie has already ascended from merely human status into the realms of the demigods – continue to draw inspiration from the popular culture.

She might even create her next masterpiece around an Olympic theme.

OK, so they don’t believe us.

Normally I would say “whatever”, but in this instance what “they” think has some bearing on what we’ll pay.

So I think that perhaps we need to show them a second time.

I was at the rally. I’ll be honest – I don’t think were two million of us there; I somewhat doubt there were one million.

But there were a hell of a lot more than 70,000 of us.

And now they want to PUT US IN JAIL if we don’t want to buy their insurance policies. Man, I wish I was an insurance salesman with that kind of firepower! “Ma’am, I suggest that you just sign the policy. I don’t want Officer Murphy over there to have to put you in the squad car, ma’am.”

Not just no. Hell no.

And so I think, this once, that we do actually have something to prove.

Forgive a personal aside. After the rally, my wife and I took the opportunity to visit Mount Vernon, to pay our respects to General Washington and his wife. Neither of us had been before and it was invigorating to see where Washington had been, where he had lived and led. Yet, both while we were there and after we left, I felt saddened to think of what Washington would think of us today. Perennially indebted, led by rogue after rogue, paying shattering taxes for a debilitating nanny state – what a spectacle we would present to that titan!

Yet, there are things that our Founding Father would approve of, too. One, I think, is that despite whatever initial astonishment he might feel at the prospect, in time he would be delighted to know that the liberty he established has reached the stage where an American of African descent could become its chief executive.

The other is that he would be delighted to know that as the Republic was threatened, there would continue to be brave men and women who would defend her, both on and off the battlefield.

I propose another March on Washington, to make unmistakable what has been mistaken. I propose that two million American patriots, taxpayers, lovers of freedom – at least two million – come to Washington this fall, to demonstrate once again – and this time irrefutably – that there are millions of us, that we are angry at what has been done and is being done to this our beloved country, and that we will not stand by and watch.

I propose that the March be held on December 15, 2009, the 218th anniversary of the day the Bill of Rights became law in these United States. (April 15 would be an even better day, but that’s too far in the future – we’ve got to put a stop to these people now.) October 31, 2009. It’s a Saturday, the last one before the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons take over the memespace. It’s Halloween – the best time to resist The Man. We can have one heck of a barbecue/picnic/protest march/rally in the daytime, and a heck of a party that night.

And I propose that there be a central registry for attendees to sign in, attest their name, address, and citizenship – you know, the things that are impossible for us to expect voters to do – so that whether the media decides to cover it or not, we’ll have proof that we were there.

I’d love to organize it (and will if drafted) but the people who facilitated the 9/12 rally would be the obvious choice. I’ll go. I’ll sell the contents of my garage if I have to to pay for it, but I’ll go.

We have a country to defend.

My wife and I ended up at the huge health care protest today. We hadn’t even known there was going to be an event (cut us some slack, it’s been busy) until I read in the paper (yes, I read a paper – I hope my 75 cents keeps the Post alive for another day or two) that the organizers of the event had a bomb threat yesterday. We decided to go, and it was very interesting.

Capitol police say about 1.5 million people were there; other estimates have topped 2 million. Honestly, that seems (very) high, but it’s notoriously difficult to get a good count when you’re in the middle of the crowd. I would have guessed a few hundred thousand – maybe a million on the high end. It was a very polite crowd, and from what I saw the (tiny) group of counterprotestors wasn’t abused. (OK, I did march along with them for a few moments shouting “I want free money! Free money now!”, but my wife made me come back. Spoilsport.)

99% of the crowd were people who have never been in a protest in their entire life. The crowd was older – lots and lots of vets and cornfed Midwestern types. Interestingly, the Mall was left quite clean when everyone had left – conservatives pick up their trash, I guess. The other half of the mall was reserved for a black family group having a huge “family reunion” and picnic – despite the rampant racism and black hatred, our 2 million didn’t go and beat up their hundred thousand or so. (Maybe the racists didn’t want to embarrass the black people marching with us.)

LOTS of signs, mostly handmade. Some organizations and media figures have been beating the drum for this apparently (I can’t stand Glenn Beck so we never watch his show) but everybody there we talked to had gotten themselves to DC, no astroturf that we could see beyond the scattering of pre-printed signs. I was absolutely shocked at the size of the crowd; we got onto the Metro to go into DC at Shady Grove, the northernmost red line stop, and the line for the farecards filled the entire lobby as a bunch of people who had never been to DC before tried to figure out the system. (It didn’t help that there are now two different kinds of farecards.) The whole Metro system was semi-overwhelmed by the numbers, but they did a great job keeping everybody moving and other than the crowds the transportation situation was quite smooth.

It’s hard to figure the impact of events like this. But if I was a moderate Democrat congressman on the fence, I think I would have just been pushed off. There are a lot more people out there who won’t stand for what they see as socialized medicine, than people had guessed.

Later we went to the National Gallery of Art and looked at the Spanish swords and armor display, which was pretty awesome. Armor-making by the gunpowder age had become a truly refined science, and they had some replica pieces made of stainless steel you could try on. Anyone who wants to see a photo of me clutching a mailed gauntlet to my chest or wearing a visored helmet should check here next week when I get home and get a chance to upload pictures.

I’m currently shopping for a gauntlet of my own.