Jimmy Chen

You should, before anything, gently down that bass and not smash it. It makes for a grand cover photo, but the kids today don’t know the value of a hard-earned American dollar. You smash a bass to pieces and the record company replaces it faster than you can say per diem.

The trick to being alive is to simply start moving and to not stop, to impersonate a functional human being, to get off the bus at the right stop, to take your food out when the microwave beeps, to smile when others smile, and to cry alone.

To the stoic sitter, this is how one does it. True, I am not the happiest or most well-adjusted person in the world, but I do have reason on my side. Goodbye burrito, goodbye Pad Thai, says the polite rationalist.

Not only are personalities passively exerted by Gmail themes, but more so, they are a concession to the motif we choose to live with daily. Find out who you are in the following.

The plucked and rhetorically placed human pubic hair, detached from its symbolic transgression, is merely a pubic hair. It is not inherently “gross,” as we are all primates with hair on our bodies; and yes, some of these hairs reside in moist areas redolent of secretions from the vicinity.

The follow establishes one’s presence in their target’s mind, as everyone scours their followers for attractive profile pics, while maintaining an innocuous, impersonal distance. A follow is followed by the followed clicking on the follower’s linked account, by which their location (i.e. feasibility) is assessed.

Kafka lived online before the internet: a one-sided spasm of impulsive, desperate communication towards abstract entities wrapped in a pretty face. His aphorisms would have been the world’s greatest tweets; his diary entries ponderous blog posts with that nightmarish 0 comments.

I will say, my calm dissenters, the unfollow actually displays more conviction and integrity than that ingratiating follow. It is a rather profound gesture, filled with such derision and/or dismissal that one must respect it.

I will imagine the world-at-large as a prison, and my condominium as the sole small courtyard on which a free man such as myself may walk in tight circles, metaphorically, of course.

However sad your barely lived tale is, I write to you–in ways you would have to have lived to understand–with envy.

In which this Chinese contributor proposes some “ethnic-cred” to this enterprise while conceding to being somewhat subjective, and hungry.

Light pop culture chatter with my mom — whose verbal observances of my body have been going on since I was a child — over morning coffee during a weekend visit. Grammatical errors and logical strains on her part have been preserved for authenticity of this account.