Crazy Commentary on “Pale Fire.”

Lately, I’ve really been enjoying the discourse to be found by merely typing the names of old friends into a Facebook search. I know that ‘cgi’ stands for ‘computer graphical interface,’ but do the rest of you perceive the implication? Let me yank you, by the hair, up to speed!

You click, you reap. You reap what you sow, and you learn as you weep.

My dear old friend Lynn Chu has an endless supply of verbal firecrackers which she sets off on Facebook in her status posts. She’s perverted the whole purpose of the interface, treating it as a platform into which to pour her matchless pith and venom. Naturally, the whole army of savvy followers she’s engendered seeks to get in a quip. Thus, she has accrued quite the collection of notifications. One can’t believe it when one gets her attention. It’s like Tori Amos and my sister, Dorothy. They go way back; we go way back. But when Lynn waxes eloquent on the issues of the day, the progress (or regress) of our government, her insight is second to none. I am now a novelist. I don’t play the active role in politics that my wife does. I sit and opine, as does Lynn, though without the legion of hurrahs. I say of her remark about ‘the diary that talks back,’ we might have seen this coming, you and I, as we argued aesthetics back in the day. We might have known we’d be doing this same dance down the line until we hit, someday, the ‘mark all as read’ button. But let some troll whisper in your ear: you’re in the wrong quarter of the forum. Get yourself a blog!