The Internet is a Playground Read online

  Simon

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Monday 16 November 2009 3:52 p.m.

  To: Simon Edhouse

  Subject: Re: Logo Design

  Dear Simon,

  Disregarding the fact that you have still not paid me for work I completed earlier this year despite several assertions that you would do so, I would be delighted to spend my free time creating logos and pie charts for you based on further vague promises of future possible payment. Please find attached pie chart as requested and let me know of any changes required.

  Regards, David

  David’s enthusiasm for doing free work for Simon

  From: Simon Edhouse

  Date: Monday 16 November 2009 4:11 p.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: Logo Design

  Is that supposed to be a fucking joke? I told you the previous projects did not go ahead. I invested a lot more time and energy in those projects than you did. If you put as much energy into the projects as you do being a dickhead you would be a lot more successful.

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Monday 16 November 2009 5:27 p.m.

  To: Simon Edhouse

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  Dear Simon,

  You are correct and I apologize. Your last project was actually both commercially viable and original. Unfortunately, the part that was commercially viable was not original, and the part that was original was not commercially viable.

  I would no doubt find your ideas more “cutting edge” and original if I had traveled forward in time from the 1950s, but as it stands, your ideas for technology-based projects that have already been put into application by other people several years before you thought of them fail to generate the enthusiasm they possibly deserve. Having said that, though, if I had traveled forward in time, my time machine would probably put your peer-to-peer networking technology to shame, because it would have not only commercial viability but also an awesome logo and accompanying pie charts.

  Regardless, I have, as requested, attached a logo that represents the peer-to-peer-networking project you are currently working on and how it feels working with you in general.

  Regards, David

  From: Simon Edhouse

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 11:07 a.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  You just crossed the line. You have no idea about the potential this project has. The technology allows users to network peer to peer, add contacts, share information and is potentially worth many millions of dollars and your short sightedness just cost you any chance of being involved.

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 1:36 p.m.

  To: Simon Edhouse

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  Dear Simon,

  So you have invented Twitter. Congratulations. This is where that time machine would definitely have come in quite handy.

  When I was about twelve, I read that time slows down when approaching the speed of light, so I constructed a time machine by securing my father’s portable generator to the back of my mini-bike with rope and attaching the drive belt to the back wheel. Unfortunately, instead of traveling through time and finding myself in the future, I traveled about fifty meters along the footpath at two hundred miles per hour before finding myself in a bush. When asked by the nurse filling out the hospital accident report, “Cause of accident?” I stated, “time travel attempt,” but she wrote down “stupidity.”

  If I did have a working time machine, the first thing I would do is go back four days and tell myself to read the warning on the hair removal cream packaging where it recommends not using on sensitive areas. I would then travel several months back to warn myself against agreeing to do copious amounts of design work for an old man wielding the business-plan equivalent of a retarded child poking itself in the eye with a spoon, before finally traveling back to 1982 and explaining to myself the long-term photographic repercussions of going to the hairdresser and asking for a haircut exactly like Simon Le Bon’s the day before a large family gathering.

  Regards, David

  From: Simon Edhouse

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 3:29 p.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  You really are a fucking idiot and have no idea what you are talking about. The project I am working on will be more successful than twitter within a year. When I sell the project for 40 million dollars I will ignore any e-mails from you begging to be a part of it and will send you a postcard from my yaght. Ciao.

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 3:58 p.m.

  To: Simon Edhouse

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  Probability of Simon selling his project for forty million dollars and sending me a postcard from his yacht

  From: Simon Edhouse

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 4:10 p.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  Anyone else would be able to see the opportunity I am presenting but not you. You have to be a fucking smart arse about it. All I was asking for was a logo and a few pie charts which would have taken you a few fucking hours.

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 4:25 p.m.

  To: Simon Edhouse

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  Dear Simon,

  Actually, you were asking me to design a logotype, which would have taken me a few hours—and fifteen years’ experience. For free. With pie charts. Usually when people don’t ask me to design them a logo, pie charts, or website, I, in return, do not ask them to paint my apartment, drive me to the airport, represent me in court, or whatever it is they do for a living. Unfortunately, though, as your business model consists entirely of “Facebook is cool; I am going to make a website just like that,” this non-exchange of free services has no foundation, as you offer nothing of which I won’t ask for.

  Regards, David

  From: Simon Edhouse

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 4:43 p.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  What the fuck is your point? Are you going to do the logo and charts for me or not?

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 5:02 p.m.

  To: Simon Edhouse

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  From: Simon Edhouse

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 5:13 p.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

  Do not ever e-mail me again.

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 5:19 p.m.

  To: Simon Edhouse

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo

  Design

  OK, good luck with your project. If you need anything, let me know.

  Regards, David

  From: Simon Edhouse

  Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 5:27 p.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo

  Design

  Get fucked.

  Statements my offspring has made

  Sometimes I cannot work out my offspring. One moment he will state something that catches me off guard with its clarity, then the next, come out with something that causes me to think there may have been a mix-up in the hospital.

  I was called into his school to speak with the teacher recently. Her statement, “He has a good sense of humor, but he is the only one that gets it,” slightly concerned me. But her explanation of why he had received three detentions made me laugh, which is not the reaction she expected:
>
  Detention 1: Raised his hand during math class and asked, “If Kate (a large girl in his class) did not eat for five weeks, would she get skinny or die?”

  Detention 2: After teachers had calmed down a very upset child, it was discovered that Seb had told her, “I heard the teachers saying that your parents died today and you are going to have to live at the school.”

  Detention 3: While the principal was explaining the “no nut policy” due to nut allergies during a school assembly, Seb yelled out, “That’s a lot of nuts,” after watching the movie Kung Pow the night before.

  Money

  “If I had a million dollars, I would buy a house with big robot legs.”

  Paying $7.50 for a coffee

  “We should open up a shop next to that one, buy their coffees and sell them from our shop for a dollar more.”

  Our four-door Mazda sedan

  “We should paint flames on the side. Girls like cars with flames on the side. You will never get a girlfriend in a car that looks like this.”

  DVD rental prices

  “It makes no sense, this one is four dollars for a whole week and this one is six dollars for one night. It is backward. Someone should tell them.”

  After being offered a yogurt sample in a supermarket

  “She was nice. You should ask her to be your girlfriend before someone else does.”

  Paying for petrol

  “Leaves burn. Why can’t we just fill our car up with them? They are free.”

  On being asked in an elevator what he wants to be when he grows up

  “Either a model or a police sniper.”

  Girls

  “You can’t trust girls. When I get a girlfriend I am not going to tell her where I live or work.”

  On being told his mini-bike had been stolen

  “I hope they are riding it and the petrol tank blows up and their legs and arms get blown off, and when they are in the hospital, they think, ‘I really wish I hadn’t stolen that motorbike.’”

  The supermarket

  “If they made the aisles wider we could drive our car in and grab things through the window and pay on the way out, like at McDonalds.”

  Regarding my being upset over a breakup

  “She was ugly and fat, anyway. I don’t even know how you could kiss her.”

  Explaining the game Grand Theft Auto 4 to his grandmother

  “I don’t shoot everybody, just the drug dealers and hookers.”

  2001: A Space Odyssey

  “This movie is so boring. I would rather be staring at the wall and holding my breath for two hours.”

  Static electricity

  “If I am standing on carpet and I get electrocuted, does everybody in the room die apart from me?”

  Being told that the park belongs to everybody

  “We should buy a fence and make people pay us two dollars to get in.”

  Relationships

  “I am going to have seven girlfriends when I get older so that I can be with a different one every day and then start again on Mondays.”

  Swimming

  “If you swim in the sea, then you should always go swimming with a fat girl because sharks will go for her first.”

  Shoplifting

  “If we went into a shop and I put a stereo on and danced, you could run out with a different stereo while everyone is looking at me.”

  Cleaning

  “It will just get messy again. I like it like this; it shows we have better things to do than cleaning.”

  Marriage

  “If you get married, do you have to let your wife look at your penis?”

  Super Powers

  “If I could have only one super power it would be to breathe in space.”

  On having homosexuality explained

  “That’s gross. Not the bit about girls kissing girls, though, that’s pretty good.”

  School

  “I don’t understand why I have to go to school at all; the Internet knows more than all the teachers there put together.”

  Hygiene

  “You should never wash your hands; that way, you will have more germs than everything else, and germs won’t go on you because there is no room.”

  Education should be secondary to discipline

  I do not get along all that well with my son’s teacher. Since the day she gave him a brochure explaining “the real meaning of Easter,” I have had my eye on her. Recently, my offspring took a game called Tower Defense to school on his USB drive. As far as games are concerned, it is strategic and positive. At least it’s not about stealing autos and shooting hookers. While I understand it was a breach of the rules, I do not feel being banned from using school computers is an appropriate punishment. I do, however, feel that an appropriate punishment for handing out medieval metaphysic propaganda to children would be a good old-fashioned stoning.

  From: Margaret Bennett

  Date: Friday 22 August 2009 3:40 p.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: computer room

  Hello David

  I tried to call you but your phone is off. Just letting you know that Seb bought a flash drive to school yesterday and copied a game onto the school computers which is against the school rules and he has been banned from using the computer room for the rest of the term.

  Sincerely, Margaret

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Monday 24 August 2009 9:16 a.m.

  To: Margaret Bennett

  Subject: Re: computer room

  Dear Maggie,

  Thank you for your e-mail. I am not answering my mobile phone at the moment due to a few issues with my landlord and neighbors. I am also experiencing iPhone envy and every second spent using my Nokia is like being trapped in a loveless marriage. Where you stay together for the kids. And the kids all have iPhones. I was not aware that my son taking software to school was in breach of school rules. Although the game is strategic and public domain, not to mention that it was I who copied it and gave it to him, I agree that banning him from access to the computers at school is an appropriate punishment. Especially considering his enthusiasm for the subject. Also, though physical discipline is no longer administered in the public school system, it would probably be appropriate in this instance if nobody is watching. I know from experience that he can take a punch.

  Regards, David

  From: Margaret Bennett

  Date: Tuesday 25 August 2009 10:37 a.m.

  To: David Thorne

  Subject: Re: Re: computer room

  David

  We would never strike a student and whether the software is pirated or not is not the issue. He denied having the drive which means he knew he shouldn’t have it here then it was found in his bag so I feel the punishment is suitable.

  Margaret

  From: David Thorne

  Date: Tuesday 25 August 2009 11:04 a.m.

  To: Margaret Bennett

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: computer room

  Dear Maggie,

  Yes, I agree. Education and access to the tools necessary for such should always come secondary to discipline. When I was young, discipline was an accepted part of each school day. Once, when I colored outside the lines, I was forced to stand in the playground with a sign around my neck that read “non-conformist” while the other children pelted me with rubble from the recently torched school library. Apparently, a copy of Biggles had been found behind a filing cabinet.

  Another time, because I desperately wanted a Battlestar Galactica jacket like Apollo in the television series, using brown house paint from the shed at home, I painted my denim jacket and used Araldite to attach brass door hinges as clasps. Feeling that it was an excellent representation, and despite the oil-based paint still being soaking wet, I wore it to school the next day. Unfortunately, the paint dried while I was sitting in Mrs. Bowman’s English class, securing me to the chair. After the school handyman cut me free, I was sent to the principal for damaging school property. My punishment was to scrap
e wads of chewing gum off the bottom of every chair in the school after hours. It took several weeks, and it was during this lonely time that I created my imaginary friend Mr. Wrigley. During class, when the teacher was not looking, we would pass each other notes regarding the merits of disciplinary action and how one day we would own real Battlestar Galactica jackets.