Picture it, August 10, 2005: In a last-minute effort to write in this web log before embarking on a cruise to Bermuda, our hero David lugs his Powerbook to a hipster café on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that boasts a free WiFi Internet connection. Much to his horror, he has arrived at the beginning of a satanic ceremony known as “Story Hour,” marked by the presence of dozens of human babies—along with their harried nannies, massive buggy strollers, and enough accoutrements to choke a giraffe—and an unending chorus of “The Wheels on the Bus.”
In the name of the Internet, our hero decides to brave this cacophony for a few minutes, only to be greeted with the hideous spectacle of nannies not only changing the shittiest diapers imaginable right in middle of a café, but tossing the used bundles into the trashcan right next to the counter, where the food is located!!!!!
Thus, while David was typing this, he was seeing the nastiest version imaginable of this
*
Picture it, August 19, 2005: Our hero David steps into the salon to keep his haircut appointment. In the waiting room, three female stylists between clients giggle and murmur over something appearing on their mobile phone screens. Bored and vaguely curious, our hero pays attention to this ritual for several moments, until its purpose becomes nauseatingly clear.
They are exchanging photographs of their boyfriends’ penises, snapped with camera phones of unwitting subjects.
*
Picture it, August 26, 2005: In the express checkout line at Safeway, our hero David waits to purchase four boxes of dishwashing detergent, behind a man carrying only a bottle of Snapple iced tea. The other man’s attention is drawn to the tabloid rack, which features an advertisement for the latest J.Lo. extravaganza, Monster-in-Law, bearing the tagline “Come and Get It” directly adjacent to the star’s monstrous cleavage.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” the man asks of our hero.
“I can’t imagine,” says David.
“It means you got a date tonight with her, and you gonna get some.”
“Get some of what?” our hero asks as a woman resembling his grandmother enters the line behind him.
“You gonna get some of that, man.” He indicates the curves on the advertisement. “She wants you to take her home. She wants to do stuff with you, man.”
“I believe she is barking up the wrong tree,” says David frostily.
“Yeah, well.” The other man then changes the topic to a Women’s Studies class he once took, during which he learned about the advertising industry’s exploitation of women’s sexuality for fun and profit. “It’s terrible, man. It’s terrible what they do.”
Our hero agrees that it is, indeed, terrible.
“They once asked me—I was the only guy in the class, and they went around talking about it, and they came to me—would you rather your lover be sexually unfaithful or emotionally unfaithful? I was like, I don’t gotta answer that, do I?”
“And what did you say?” David only asks because he knows he is bound by the Geneva Conventions of checkout line conversation. Fortunately, it is suddenly the other man’s turn to pay for his purchase. Then he takes his Snapple iced tea and wanders away, leaving our hero with his four boxes of dishwashing detergent, feeling vaguely unclean.
