Damien Galeone

I am supposed to be writing a tweet but instead I brew a kettle of coffee and pace around the flat. My pacing causes Běla to retreat under the couch to her happy place. I pour the coffee and head back to the computer.

I sit at my desk and dream up a deranged fantasy.

This fantasy reminds me of the films I’ve seen of the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. My students accuse me of using text-speak on Twitter, and they produce a great deal of evidence which is displayed on charts and backed up by traumatized witnesses. People are smoking cigarettes and murmurs run through the crowd. All the while I sit in a bulletproof cube and look humble.

I am found guilty and accept my sentence: Twenty-five years of rewriting all of Shakespeare’s plays in text speak on a black board. In Florida. In August.

2BRo2B, dat is da ?

This fantasy is like the ones I used to have in elementary school. In my elementary school day dreams I was often nude and forced to sing the “Perfect Strangers” theme on a table in our school cafeteria. Plus I always had the head of a monkey and it was usually tater tot day.

I spend fifteen minutes trying to make the post as witty as possible. I am seventeen characters over the limit and my frustration level reaches that of Gargamel’s at the end of every Smurf episode.

I give up on any semblance of humor, post the tweet and go for a walk. Walks are great for rationalistic epiphanies.

On my walk I realize that Twitter is the elementary school of online social networking. And by that logic I am surely the tuba-playing kid with a glandular weight problem, a hairy mole on his chin, bad dandruff and a forehead birthmark shaped like male genitalia. My name, in this epiphanous fantasy, is Dorkus Wenisface.

It’s all Lee’s fault.

Lee told me to start a Twitter account in order to reach the gazillions of potential readers who are dying to have Damien Galeone in their lives. Sadly, these gazillions remain ignorant of this desperate need. Sadder still is the fact that this doesn’t seem to bother them one bit.

This is evidenced by the mocking numbers I see every time I login to Twitter.

Following: 22 people
Followers: 9 people
Messages: 0

Of the nine people following me on Twitter, one of them has the handle “Homotweets.” I don’t have the heart to knock him off my list of followers, as I figure he is another uncool kid in our elementary school group. I have been followed by two prostitutes and a guy who named himself “The Fuckin’ Tim.” As if the name Tim ever needs a definite article.

The two prostitutes and The Fuckin’ Tim have since stopped following me. What I could have done to lose their sponsorship will forever be a mystery to me.

On my epiphany walk I find that I have slipped into a sort of meditative state of Zen Nerdism. I am muttering this mantra:

Embrace your uncoolness.

Of course, it’s so simple! If you are going to be uncool anyway, be so uncool that it disturbs the equilibrium of the cool barometer.

I am now the leader of the uncoolest clique at Twitter Elementary School. In the elementary school that is Twitter, I have become the shameless kid who wears suspenders and a fez. I carry Magic cards and an inhaler in a fanny pack and bring my stuffed animal to the cafeteria. I wear a cape and run the Dungeons & Dragons club. I have named my birthmark Yoda and speak (and translate) Klingon.

So, today is the first day of my uncool Twitter life.

@Alec Baldwin there is a tweet about my level of hate for Michael Bay.
@Patton Oswalt there is a tweet about when M*A*S*H went bad. And I sincerely meant it.
@Neil Gaiman there is a tweet about the correct word for a group of librarians.
@Everyone there is one about applying my cat’s hemorrhoid.
@Alyssa Milano there is one about how I referred to her and my cat in the same blog.

So far, no responses. But that’s OK, there’s a Billy the Exterminator marathon tonight and tater tots are on the menu.