Just another fart in a skillet.
Brooding is one of those many useful parts of life that you cannot admit to anymore. People will jump all over you, try to get you committed, drop you off at a yoga retreat. — Ken Layne, “Encounters with Coyote-Man,” on Desert Oracle Radio
I wasn’t brooding, exactly. But I had seen something like the 89,261,254th story on how E. Lawn Mulch has beshat Twatter. Or maybe it was the 63,294,204th “hot take” on how Orange Hitler skirted Buttface’s Maginot line.
Whatever the cause, the effect was my consultation via Apple Messages with colleagues Steve Frothingham and Hal Walter about undertaking a little urban renewal on the virtual town square.
Start sinking today!
“How about ‘TarPit™?'” I pitched to Steve. “‘Stumble into TarPit™ and start sinking today!'”
Instead of a page, users would get a Morass. Instead of tweets or posts, Bubbles:
“Dumbo’s going down for the third time!”
“Hey, I gotta reBubble that … whoops, too late, he’s a goner.”
“I think you are on to something,” replied Steve, who has a magazine and a website to put out and probably included that “to” out of professional courtesy.
As Steve seemed busy for some reason, I took the proposal to Hal, fronting him a couple of Bubbles I thought might be representative of the TarPit™ community.
“Help, help, I’m sinking!”
“Good! ’Bout time, you libtard cuck! Die! Die! Die!”
Hal found the concept interesting but, as is his practice, gave it a redneck spin.
“I’ma launch one called ‘Skillet,’ he announced. “Posts will be referred to as ‘Farts,’ as in, ‘I just Farted about ——.’ And they will be Farts in a Skillet.”
Well sir, I don’t mind telling you we got right on down to some cowboy cooking.
“Instead of ‘Friending,’ people will ‘Sniff’ each other,” Hal declared. “As in, ‘She sent me a Sniff request so I Sniffed her.'”
“ReFarting will be called ‘Lighting,” I added. “‘Hey, I just Lit your Fart!'”
Some unresolved discussion followed about whether direct messages (DMs) should be rebranded “Silent But Deadly” (SBDs) or “Pull My Finger” (PMFs).
As regards a logo, I was thinking — since we’re talking social media here and probably poaching more than a few red hats from Twatter — that we needed something monstrously racist, like a cartoon of a grinning pinto bean sporting a garish sombrero, a huge mustache, and a prominent gold tooth. Good draw for the NextDoor-OffMyLawn shutins, too.
Nope, said Hal. “The logo is just a frying pan: ‘SKILLET.'”
“That would be simpler,” I agreed. “Avoid the DOJ. Also, the Brown Berets.”
“Fucking A,” said Hal. “They don’t play.”
In the end nothing came of all this spitballing, which is probably just as well. It starts with a noble quest — help people heap abuse upon each other without getting punched (and while making bank for yourself) — and next thing you know you’re going off-piste into virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and space travel to places that make Ash Fork, Arizona, look like Maui.
Pretty soon you’re wearing a goggled helmet for real because you can’t breathe what Nuevo Arizona (the planet formerly known as Mars) has for an atmosphere. Orange Hitler’s Meata avatar runs your HOA. And E. Lawn Mulch is doing donuts outside your pod in his AWD Testo with an AI Sex-O-Bot 9000™ working his lap like a Sherwin-Williams paint shaker.
“There goes the neighborhood,” you grumble on NextPod-OffMySand. And then Mark Schmuckerberg Farts at you, and Jeff Bozos Lights it, and your pod explodes before you can create a GoFundMe to underwrite your return trip to Earth.
Tags: antisocial media, Buttface, E. Lawn Mulch, Jeff Bozos, Mark Schmuckerberg, Orange Hitler, Skillet™, TarPit™, Twatter
Mad Blog Media 
January 30, 2023 at 8:10 am |
This made my day and it’s only 7:09 a.m.!
January 30, 2023 at 8:14 am |
Whah, thankee, ma’am. I was feeling particularly silly and it just kinda happened.
January 30, 2023 at 9:03 am |
Wowser, PO’G! It’s a good thing you don’t build cars on Monday mornings! 🙂
But if you willit, put it in the SKiLLET! 🙂
Tip of the sombrero, mi amigo! And a rimshot too!
January 30, 2023 at 3:29 pm |
JD, I actually started the piece on Sunday, then left it to marinate overnight, which proved to be a good thing, because a couple of my favorite bits came to me on Monday morning. Basically everything after “They don’t play.”
Maybe 32 years after quitting newspapers I’m finally becoming a morning person?
January 30, 2023 at 9:14 am |
I want some of whatever it is you were smoking.
January 30, 2023 at 3:29 pm |
I don’t think it’s possible to share an acid flashback.
January 30, 2023 at 9:55 am |
When you and your compadres start word slinging, I get all giddy reading it! Skillet is taken by some band, but “Tarpit” looks safe enough.
January 30, 2023 at 3:34 pm |
I saw the band Skillet while I was searching for a good pic to use as the logo. Haven’t tried listening to them, though.
We did listen to (and watch) the 2022 documentary “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song.” Now I’ve got the song stuck in my head.
January 30, 2023 at 7:05 pm |
Christian rock, whatever the hell that is. I doubt they will make it on my playlist.
January 30, 2023 at 10:02 am |
I dug out the old Ronson, found some fluid for it and was all ready for the some skittle re-chucking and then disaster happened. I forgot that I’d made a pot of speckled beans last evening and a short emanation escaped during a quick test of the old Ronson. Singed hairs, burnt fingers and spil’t coffee all over. One should post disclaimers about IOFS (idiots, open flames and flippin’ skillets).
“E. Lawn Mulch”. I like that!
January 30, 2023 at 3:38 pm |
If you did it over a toilet I hope you were humming “Smoke On the Water.”
January 30, 2023 at 11:51 am |
Either way-Skillet or TarPit-sign me up. I’ve got my credit card and IRA account out and ready. And a few lawyers on retainer along with a few loose Michigan Militia types who have been woebegone and wandering around aimlessly since several of their bro’s got packed off to the Big House. Yessir what we needs in more sociopath media alright.
January 30, 2023 at 3:51 pm |
The growing popularity of the decentralized social-media outfit Mastodon got me thinking about TarPit®. And I see you’ve been thinking about Warren Zevon because your comment contains (wait for it) lawyers, guns, and money.
January 30, 2023 at 7:23 pm |
One of my favorite songs. As well as favorite authors.
January 30, 2023 at 12:16 pm |
Sounds a bit like FartBook from “LetterKenny”
Thanks for the intro and rec to the Hulu show, eh
January 30, 2023 at 3:56 pm |
Shoot, I’d forgotten about FartBook. Glad to hear you’re enjoying “Letterkenny.” That’s one you can burn right through. We watched the entire series in about three weeks, then moved on to the spinoff “Shoresey,” which was OK but not nearly as good as “Letterkenny.”
If you’d like some more TV from the Great White North have a look at “Corner Gas.” It’s less bawdy but amusing nonetheless.
January 30, 2023 at 8:18 pm |
Ms. Mia could have been a model for this carton art. https://www.boredpanda.com/milk-package-cat-depot-milgrad-vera-zvereva-russia/
January 31, 2023 at 12:41 pm |
Discussing bicycles as we were, sometime in the past, I think, I thought it worth mentioning this article:
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/oscar-sevilla-revives-retro-puncture-protection-hack/
I recall now the tire sweepers of yester-year, but I had forgotten the idea of their use Certainly there has been many times where I’ve used my hands to sweep tires while riding typically after knowledge that I’ve ridden through a patch of glass, and have done so with my shoes (it makes nasty tires marks on shiny new shoes though), but I hadn’t have thought of something like electrical tape. Cool! Great cheap idea. I like that.
You were talking about bikes right?
January 31, 2023 at 7:27 pm |
I used to have those wire tire wipers on my bikes back in the day. It amazes me that such a simple and effective flat preventive has gone, as they say, out of fashion.
February 1, 2023 at 5:50 am |
Merrill Callaway, a veteran cycle tourist I met shortly after we moved to The Duck! City, used old-school wire tire sweepers. I’d seen them elsewhere, but not for years. A good alternative to laying hands on your tires as you ride.
During a largish weekend training ride Back in the Day™ in the cycling mecca of Bibleburg a dude in midpack sweeping the rear tire with one hand got it jammed between tire and seat tube and went down hard, taking a bunch of people with him. If I recall correctly he broke his pelvis and another guy did a collarbone.
I was near the front and didn’t see it, but heard it. One of those awful pileups that sounds like an F-100 en route to the landfill hitting a pothole and launching a couple old metal trash barrels full of empty beer cans and food tins onto a lumpy stretch of bad chip-seal.
February 1, 2023 at 7:19 am |
The first set of wheels I got that had bladed spokes convinced me not to put my hands near a rotating wheel. New tire tech eliminates the need for sweepers. But, if you are still using sew ups………