Dave Carnie

I have been fired only once in my life. I was working the help desk for telecom giant MFS in San Francisco during the early 1990s. I had access to the newly invented internet and a lot of spare time on my hands. And then Olga got me fired. I remember her name because that’s how I accidentally stumbled upon her site: I was doing a search for the On-Line Guitar Archive. (“By the way, I play guitar.” – River’s Edge.)

“Olga, huh?” I thought when I saw her search result. “I’ll check her out.” I probably thought I was going to see some Russian boobs or something.

No, quite the opposite. Olga was a boring housewife with no intention of showing her boobs or turning into a slutty housewife and getting her mouth buttfucked by a pizza guy. Her website was simply her very own Wikipedia page about her boring self. She included a few pictures and wrote a couple sentences about what she enjoyed doing.

“I enjoy making awesome food for my husband and rollerblading with our dog, Harley,” she wrote on her site. I don’t remember what the dog’s name was, but it was probably Harley because Harley is one of the most popular, yet unimaginative, dog names in America. “You know, because I like Harley Davidson! USA! USA! USA!”

Her site invited me to visit her husband’s page and even Harley’s page. “Haha! That’s hilarious! Did you see Olga’s dog has its own website! Her DOG! Haha!”

Olga’s husband’s site mirrored his wife’s: he enjoys eating her awesome food and rollerblading with Harley. How fascinating.

These nitwits bothered me. The banality irked me. A lot. I was incensed. To me it was something akin to digital pollution and I was offended that these assholes were taking up space and shitting all over the shiny new internet with their drivel. At the bottom of their websites they invited me to write them. “Write us!” Okay. Someone needs to let them know they’re being stupid.

“Dear Olga and Olga’s husband,” I wrote. “How much would it cost someone, not necessarily me, to stick their penis into your dog’s fundament? Love, Dave.”

It was a couple months before I heard back from Olga and her husband, but their response was not delivered in the manner I expected. I had put in my two weeks notice at MFS because Big Brother had been bought by Larry Flynt and I had been offered a salaried staff position in LA. I was practically on my way out the door when Brenda, my supervisor, said, “David. What have you done? An executive from corporate headquarters is here and he wants to talk to you.”

Brenda and I sat across the table from a little man in a suit, the executive from corporate headquarters. “Are you Dave Carnie?” he asked. I said that I was. He pushed a piece of paper at me. “Did you write this?”

When I started reading my email to Olga, I recognised it as my writing, but I couldn’t place what it was in regards to. Two months had passed. At the time, I had been in the habit of sending my mother pranks and nasty letters via email. This new technology shit was fun. So my first thought when I read the letter about fucking somebody’s dog was, “Why are you reading my mom’s email?”

This raised the executive’s eyebrows. He fucks his mother’s dogs?

And then it occurred to me: Olga!

I started laughing. Which of course raised his eyebrows even more, which, in turn, made me laugh even harder. When I calmed down, I explained the whole story to him. “So it’s because they’re idiots and they have these stupid websites and so I just wrote that. Funny, no?”

Funny, no. Fired, yes. Apparently Olga and her husband were so offended by my letter that they contacted the Federal Communications Commission and the FCC contacted corporate headquarters. I was given to understand that bestiality is not part of MFS’s company policy.

Fine with me because I had already put in my two weeks and thus I was actually certified to utter that fantastic thing you’ve always wanted to yell, “You can’t fire me! I quit!” I did not say that, though, because in America you cannot collect unemployment if you quit.

So I moved to LA and worked for Big Brother. And then Big Brother died in 2004. One of the losses most lamented was the quotes section. Even if someone didn’t particularly care for our magazine, they liked the quotes. Everyone liked the quotes.

“oh my god! it’s normal size!” —a stripper, regarding wee man’s wiener

“it will be better than your whole life.” —salman agah to a police officer who had just ticketed him and told him to have a good day

“the next time we go to disneyland with slayer, i’m not going to get so hammered.” —marc mckee

It’s difficult to describe what makes a good quote, just as it’s difficult to try and explain what makes good art. As with porn, ‘you know it when you see it.’ There was only one rule we had: you can’t quote yourself. Because you have no idea what you’re talking about. You can quote yourself about as well as you can tickle yourself. Face it, we’re idiots. We shouldn’t be allowed to go rambling on about ourselves. “Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut,” I say. Which is an odd thing to say when I’m trying to keep my mouth shut? Anyway, we were very strict about this rule. But apparently we are the only people on the planet who abide by this rule because if you look at the internet today, and in particular Twitter, it’s nothing but a bunch of people quoting themselves.

“@totaldouchebag. Haha, I am so very clever! #masturbatingtomyself”

Go. Fuck. Yourself.

Oh. You already are.

The hubris. The arrogance. How did this happen? When did it become okay – nay! normal – to shit with the door open and comment on everything under the sun? I don’t care what you’re doing, and I certainly don’t give a fuck what you think about it.

@KittyBug29: Ann Curry was the only one I liked on the today show… what a terrible mistake. #nbc

I just went to Twitter to find a random example. KittyBug29 was the first to catch my eye. Poor KittyBug. Apparently Ann Curry, whoever the fuck that is, got fired from //Today// (a morning news show) and KittyBug29 feels that this was a mistake. I think it was a mistake for KittyBug to post her opinion on the subject because now I’m going to go through all her shit and read her twits. This feels sort of scandalous, but then again she’s the one that pranced it all out there in public. Oh, I just learned that KittyBug was recently married to a fellow named Sam in Knoxville, Tennessee. Congratulations! Their first anniversary will be April 12, 2013. I know because there’s a photo of a couple of beer koozies that read ‘Kitty & Sam 04.12.2012 Knoxville, Tennessee’. How cute. I’m going to put a reminder on my calendar to send them a creepy congratulations on 4/12/13 from a complete stranger. “Hi. I’m following you.”

@KittyBug29: Just bought my first Christmas gift!!! Feels good to get started early! #lovemynephews

Wow. I just punched myself in the face because someone needs to get punched in the face and I’m the only one here. Besides this being nonsense that could surely go without mention, it was posted at the end of October. Rub it in our faces, bloody do-gooder.

@KittyBug29: It’s Friday!!!! Happy Friday to my besties!!!! @mkbarking @crissy4851 @KBabbles @Courtass @GravyMom57 @sammyravez

Finally, some useful information: the day of the week! It’s Friday? And as I wade through her incessant jibber jabber it appears she does this every Friday. Don’t laugh, it’s an important service she’s providing because at least one of her besties, KBabbles, doesn’t know it’s Friday yet.

@KBabbles: Is it Friday yet? #readyfortheweekend

Thank god for KittyBug29. What would KBubis do without her? I think KBabbles should retweet KittyBug’s Friday post just to reinforce the fact that it is indeed Friday. If she did that, I’d get a Twitter account just so I could retweet KBabbles’ retwat of KittyBug29’s twit. I’d also mark it as a ‘Favourite’. Which is an odd feature I didn’t know about before. What’s that do? Fuck it, I just signed up and I retwittered it, made it my favourite, and now I’m following her. And I’m assuming KittyBug29 will be notified that David Carnie just retwanked her twat? All this twat reminds me of the time my boss had to call me and give me a warning.

“Human Resources has informed me I have to give you a formal warning,” my boss said. “Do not use the word twankunt anymore.”

I’m still not sure which of the three ladies on the email that contained the aforementioned word narked on me. I thought they were cool. All I said was, “That reminds of a British slang word I learned once: twankunt. A twankunt is someone who’s not only a twat but a wanker and a cunt to boot.” My wife told me that the word cunt was probably the offending party. Anyway, I’m forbidden from using the word twankunt in the workplace from now on. Duly noted.

KittyBug29 is evidence why people should be required to get a license to write anything on the internet. And, like a driver’s license, they should be tested to ensure they won’t say anything stupid, or at least not too many stupid things. And they have to pay for the license. And then they have to pay for every word. Kind of like that Chris Rock joke about gun control: “You don’t need no gun control, we need some bullet control. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars. Cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there won’t be no more innocent bystanders.” Let’s see how much KittyBug feels about her besties when every one of those 140 characters costs $140/each. “Buy your own calendar to find out what day it is, bestie bitches!”

‏@KittyBug29: So ready for the weekend!!!!!! Hurry up Friday afternoon!!!!!

So ready for you to shut-up. I wonder how much it would cost someone, not necessarily me, to stick their penis in KittyBug29’s dog’s twankunt? I should send that twat a tweet and ask her. #soreadyfortheend #theend #waitonemorething #kittybugisnotatwat #iwasjustkiddinganditjustsoundedfunny #andalso #nevermind #okaythisisreallytheend.

Dave Carnie is the former editor of Big Brother Magazine. He now works as a consultant to the dairy industry.