New Jersey.
That’s why the three of us had decided to hole up at Oz’s hotel in the Village. Going back to Brooklyn would have locked us out of our chances of finding the Internet. I kicked in some money for Oz’s room, and Tobey offered Oz his last fifty bucks to watch her shower. It’s probably for the best she declined, considering I’m fairly certain he just wanted to make more lame Australia jokes. “Crikey, that’s not a rack. Now that’s a rack!”
“Well, what now?” I asked.
“Whaddya mean, what now?” Tobey barked. “We didn’t even come down here for OWS, remember? We’re following my dream.”
“To be the most sexually retarded blogger the Net has ever seen?”
“Not that dream. The one I told you this morning.”
Tobey claimed he’d woken from a vision: that we were well on our way to discovering who stole the Internet. I was skeptical and paid no attention. After all, most of Tobey’s inspiring dreams involved jokes about how hot he still is for Demi Moore. (“If my right arm got sheared off in an industrial accident while Demi Moore was blowing me, my only concern would be losing consciousness before she finished.”)
Furthermore, while I was clearly uncomfortable with the knee-jerk liberal OWS crowd, Tobey was also falling prey to the Right’s growing influence. The Apocalypse had been hard on the political left. TV ratings and radio listenership were way up, and that’s where the Right thrives. NPR is no match for the multipronged attack of Republican talk radio, and MSNBC can’t compete with Fox. The Internet was the only thing that the Left was almost kind of good at. And while it’s refreshing not to have my inbox flooded with sophomoric MoveOn.org vids comparing Sarah Palin to Hitler, it’s a little frightening that even with a Democrat in office, the public influence war is over. All we have is The New York Times, and who’s shelling out two bucks for a paper in this economy?
Tobey had got up from his couch, wiping sleep out of his eyes and holding court in the hotel room. “Gladstone,” he said. “I’ve seen it. Why are we making this so hard? Terrorist Internet chatter intercepted somewhere downtown. Duh? Why don’t we go to the Ground Zero mosque?”
“Park51? For the same reason we’re not going to the Olive Garden in Times Square. It’s a stupid idea. Plus, the mosque doesn’t even come with bread sticks.”
Tobey and I went back and forth until Oz threw off the covers to interrupt. “I know you guys think I’m just some chick from a country filled with crocodile hunters and baby-eating dingos, but if I could…”
“And Vegemite sandwiches,” Tobey added.
“Yes. Vegemite sandwiches. Thank you. But it doesn’t really matter who’s right. We’re out of ideas. Terrorist sympathizers or slandered Muslims, the mosque is downtown and we’ve got fuck-all intelligence so, y’know, why not?”
The Mosque Not at Ground Zero
The three of us left the OWS crowd and headed down Rector Street still carrying the supplies we’d gathered that morning. Like any mission composed of people who didn’t know what they were doing, we decided the first thing we needed to do was pack. The Kmart in Penn Station gave us plenty of opportunities to fill our arms without reason. Swiss army knives, compasses, backpacks, and even a self-inflatable raft. It wasn’t until we were done shopping that we realized our purchases were gleaned more from old MacGyver episodes than anything we might need in the Apocalypse. But seeing as we didn’t know what that was exactly, who’s to say they weren’t the same thing. Besides, the whole MacGyver thing reminded me of Martin, and that made me happy. I liked remembering him from before he became a lawyer. Unlike me, he’d finished law school and settled in Alaska as a public defender. It didn’t agree with him. He shot himself years later, sometime after we stopped acknowledging each other’s birthdays even with the help of
That’s why the three of us had decided to hole up at Oz’s hotel in the Village. Going back to Brooklyn would have locked us out of our chances of finding the Internet. I kicked in some money for Oz’s room, and Tobey offered Oz his last fifty bucks to watch her shower. It’s probably for the best she declined, considering I’m fairly certain he just wanted to make more lame Australia jokes. “Crikey, that’s not a rack. Now that’s a rack!”
“Well, what now?” I asked.
“Whaddya mean, what now?” Tobey barked. “We didn’t even come down here for OWS, remember? We’re following my dream.”
“To be the most sexually retarded blogger the Net has ever seen?”
“Not that dream. The one I told you this morning.”
Tobey claimed he’d woken from a vision: that we were well on our way to discovering who stole the Internet. I was skeptical and paid no attention. After all, most of Tobey’s inspiring dreams involved jokes about how hot he still is for Demi Moore. (“If my right arm got sheared off in an industrial accident while Demi Moore was blowing me, my only concern would be losing consciousness before she finished.”)
Furthermore, while I was clearly uncomfortable with the knee-jerk liberal OWS crowd, Tobey was also falling prey to the Right’s growing influence. The Apocalypse had been hard on the political left. TV ratings and radio listenership were way up, and that’s where the Right thrives. NPR is no match for the multipronged attack of Republican talk radio, and MSNBC can’t compete with Fox. The Internet was the only thing that the Left was almost kind of good at. And while it’s refreshing not to have my inbox flooded with sophomoric MoveOn.org vids comparing Sarah Palin to Hitler, it’s a little frightening that even with a Democrat in office, the public influence war is over. All we have is The New York Times, and who’s shelling out two bucks for a paper in this economy?
Tobey had got up from his couch, wiping sleep out of his eyes and holding court in the hotel room. “Gladstone,” he said. “I’ve seen it. Why are we making this so hard? Terrorist Internet chatter intercepted somewhere downtown. Duh? Why don’t we go to the Ground Zero mosque?”
“Park51? For the same reason we’re not going to the Olive Garden in Times Square. It’s a stupid idea. Plus, the mosque doesn’t even come with bread sticks.”
Tobey and I went back and forth until Oz threw off the covers to interrupt. “I know you guys think I’m just some chick from a country filled with crocodile hunters and baby-eating dingos, but if I could…”
“And Vegemite sandwiches,” Tobey added.
“Yes. Vegemite sandwiches. Thank you. But it doesn’t really matter who’s right. We’re out of ideas. Terrorist sympathizers or slandered Muslims, the mosque is downtown and we’ve got fuck-all intelligence so, y’know, why not?”
The Mosque Not at Ground Zero
The three of us left the OWS crowd and headed down Rector Street still carrying the supplies we’d gathered that morning. Like any mission composed of people who didn’t know what they were doing, we decided the first thing we needed to do was pack. The Kmart in Penn Station gave us plenty of opportunities to fill our arms without reason. Swiss army knives, compasses, backpacks, and even a self-inflatable raft. It wasn’t until we were done shopping that we realized our purchases were gleaned more from old MacGyver episodes than anything we might need in the Apocalypse. But seeing as we didn’t know what that was exactly, who’s to say they weren’t the same thing. Besides, the whole MacGyver thing reminded me of Martin, and that made me happy. I liked remembering him from before he became a lawyer. Unlike me, he’d finished law school and settled in Alaska as a public defender. It didn’t agree with him. He shot himself years later, sometime after we stopped acknowledging each other’s birthdays even with the help of
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