Yep! Running next Weds. Tx.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
________________________________
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:32:44 -0400
To: Adam Rathe<ARathe@manhattanmedia.com>
Subject: Re: Query from Barrett Brown
Adam-
Can't remember if I got back to you, but this looks fine, thanks.
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 12:16 PM, arathe <ARathe@manhattanmedia.com<mailto:ARathe@manhattanmedia.com>> wrote:
Running next week. Readback attachedcuts made for space. Let me know what you think.
Adam
On Jun 19, 2010, at 3:31 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Howdy-
Here's a draft of that piece; let me know if this works for you, as I can make any changes ASAP now.
Robert Heinlein was fond of pointing out that the practical foundations of the sexual revolution were established with the invention of the automobile. Pre-automotive society was filled with a variety of obstacles, intentional and otherwise, that prevented young men and women to associate on their own terms; patriarchal laws and conventions as well as chaperons of both the formal and self-appointed variety made unsanctioned coupling a difficult and sometimes dangerous enterprise, and this intentional tyranny of the puritan elderly over the exuberant young was in unconscious alliance with other, more mundane societal attributes, such as those of housing and distance. A young man with an automobile, then, had a range of advantages over his immediate ancestors in terms of his ability to find willing young women, to impress them, to bring them away to some secluded spot where the pair might take their parlay to its logical and racially necessary conclusion. This was not the intended purpose of the automobile, of course, but then every new technology bears eventual secondary consequences that are obscure even to its creators.
By the 1990s, the primary and intended consequence of the automobile - vastly increased mobility - had resulted in another consequence, somewhat intentional but perhaps not too well though out: the widespread proliferation of cities built in such a way that practical transportation was not just facilitated by the auto, but now largely dependent on it. As a result of this result, untold numbers of children would now be effectively raised under a procedural sort of chaperonage by which parents would control the means of physical interaction - transportation being the limiting factor in such an environment - and a large portion of the youth would thus be shuttled around from point A to point B, day after day. There were some limitations to the limitations - certain destinations could be viably walked to and one child generally had access to a few others nearby - but by and large, technology and convention had succeeded in putting much of a generation in the firm grip of some terrible cabal of hovering mothers, most of whom are, I think, fascists.
As in all ages, though, there existed a fluid and anarchic conspiracy of the young against the constraints intended for them by the mass of their elders. Code words for liquor and marijuana allowed us to collaborate on evening plans even while being shuttled around to each other's homes by our overseers; pornography was distributed through the usual channels; technical specs for the deployment of the gravity bong were transmitted by oral tradition; adult collaborators willing to buy cigarettes for minors were identified and made known to the various cells. But the omnipresent revolt was of course imperfect in implementation, and thus it was that countless man hours were tragically wasted in pursuit of the non-existent hallucinogenic effect of banana peels, while knowledge of which sorts of cough syrups would make one trip if consumed in sufficiently disgusting quantities was limited to a proud elite. Perhaps most troubling of all to the various steering committees, though, was the question of sex, and how to make it occur more often.
And then, quite suddenly, there arose the internet. This brought an immediate and decisive end to the problem of pornography, previously so constraining to those with absent fathers. The futurists among us saw far greater potential, though, and immediately set to work devising new and glorious ways in which to advance our collective aspirations. By accessing these technological Akashik records, we were able to verify that the banana peel rumor was mere disinformation and that you couldn't really get high from plucking leaves from the pot plants that someone's mom's boyfriend had accidentally grown in someone's backyard and then eating those leaves in a peanut butter sandwich. We even discovered that Marilyn Manson was not really Paul from The Wonder Years, although the illuminated few chose to keep this knowledge to ourselves for the good of the blissful many. A hypothesis to the effect that one could annoy people more efficiently by way of an internet forum post than a prank call was given weight through controlled experiment and submitted to asshole cousins for peer review. Meanwhile, I myself struggled with the problem of how to go about touching breasts.
I do not think myself amiss in boasting that, at 13, I was uniquely situated to investigate the possibility of using the internet for such purposes; having been raised by a single mother and a series of female cats, I was already an accomplished investigator into the feminine psyche. Additionally, I had established a theorem linking alcoholism in friends' moms to the probability of finding interesting things in their dresser drawers; and being a bibliophile by nature, I had successfully conducted a number of going-to-bookstores-and-covertly-ripping-out-pages-of-erotica-paperbacks-and-pocketing-them operations (or GTBCROPEPP Ops, in case this comes up again). Surely, I was ready to harness the nascent internet in order to rationalize the means of reproduction.
At this time - 1995 or so - there existed local BBS systems to which one could connect simply by knowing the phone number. One of these catered to a wealthy district of my home city where internet use had proliferated quickly, and it was here that I was to make contact with the girl who would become my co-conspirator in this matter. Early in our communication, Tracy informed me that I "could touch [her] breasts if [I] want to." I conveyed in turn that this would be to my satisfaction and that I would also entertain other proposals of a similar nature. Over the next few months, I was able to graduate to second base to third and finally to dry humping, which the baseball metaphor does not accommodate, but at any rate I do not care for sports.
Meanwhile, I provided regular lectures to my colleagues on the nature of my discoveries. It was noted that the medium of online communication bypasses shyness of both the masculine and feminine strains, while also facilitating quick and efficient location of those cooperative sorts of girls which are all too rare in many of our nations classrooms. Logging on to some online entity that served one's own locale allowed one to expand one's options to encompass the whole of the city, rather than simply fellow students and those friends' sisters' friends who happened to be staying over on some particular night. I evangelized quite firmly on behalf of this new technology, and soon certain of my associates had located their own e-girlfriends, established sexual negotiations, and ensured in advance that having one's parents drive one to go meet a girl at a movie theater to see The Mask or some such stupid fucking thing would be worth leaving home for in an era in which the Nintendo 64 had made all but the most successful dates entirely obsolete.
The internet and its multitude of secondary social effects has taken a great deal of flack from certain quarters. Some of this criticism is warranted, but much of it is based in a misguided sort of mentality that would prefer to deny the individual the choice to choose ones own destiny as best one can. In the realm of romance, the rise of online dating has provided each of us with the opportunity to move beyond the narrow limits of geography, social circles, and accidental meetings, and instead to pursue, if we wish, a more systematic search for the mate most attuned to our selves and our desires. The rise of online dating was nothing less than a second sexual revolution that built upon the first, adding the indisputably consequential gain of informed and viable decision making to victories already won in the arena of social convention. The end result of both was more and better sex; further justification is unnecessary.
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 10:49 AM, arathe <ARathe@manhattanmedia.com<mailto:ARathe@manhattanmedia.com>> wrote:
Sure thing.
Take care.
On Jun 15, 2010, at 10:44 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Hi-
Sorry, have been travelling for the last couple of weeks and finishing up some projects; I'll have this piece written for you within the next few days, just have to finish up one last column right quick.
I'm in Texas covering a Sarah Palin rally for Vanity Fair and visiting family at the moment and won't be back in NYC for another couple of weeks at least, but you can send checks to my mom's P.O. box at the following address:
3419 Westminster Ave. #25
Dallas, Texas
75205
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 10:32 AM, arathe <ARathe@manhattanmedia.com<mailto:ARathe@manhattanmedia.com>> wrote:
Whatever happened with this? Also, have a check for you... what's the address?
On May 19, 2010, at 9:44 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Yeah, I just used the pen name for the other one because I serve as a political activist/commentator and have a lot of conservative enemies so I don't want to alienate all my little liberal allies by associating myself with rape since I already go hunting and shit and that already hurts everyone's precious feelings. I'll put my name on everything else.
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:41 AM, arathe <ARathe@manhattanmedia.com<mailto:ARathe@manhattanmedia.com>> wrote:
Sure, let's go for it. Would you be willing to write this under your name, though? I'm being asked to use less pseudonyms.
On May 19, 2010, at 9:33 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Yeah, I did and saw some funny coming-of-age stuff when I was a kid and I've been meaning to exploit it.
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:24 AM, arathe <ARathe@manhattanmedia.com<mailto:ARathe@manhattanmedia.com>> wrote:
Usually FoTW is a first-person storyare you thinking about writing about your own experience with AOL chatrooms in 1995?
On May 19, 2010, at 9:15 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Adam-
Would you be interested in another Flavor of the Week, this time dealing with the nature and history of internet-prompted sexual relationships? Narrative-wise, I was thinking of writing about 1995 and the dynamic by which 13-year-olds suddenly had access to the entire pool of 13-year-olds across the city rather than girls at one's school, to say nothing of the proclivity for text-based interaction between adolescents to get right to the point. Let me know if this interests you; I'll try to make it amusing.
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com<mailto:barriticus@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi, Adam-
In addition to the Flavor of the Month I sent you (and let me know that you received it if you get a moment), wanted to see if you or another editor would be interested in a short piece on 205 Knickerbocker, former site of Joe and Mary's restaurant where Carmine Galante of the Bonanno crime family was assassinated in 1979, and the amusing twist whereby the current owner, a middle-aged Puerto Rican and former correctional officer, has decided to make it into a cafe geared towards "you people, yuppies," as he told me this morning after accosting me on a walk. I figured this might be amusingly telling in terms of the gentrification that's going on in Bushwick, what with the old mobster hangout soon to be succumbing to this sort of thing. At any rate, he insisted on showing me around (this happens to me a lot for some reason) and filling me in on his plans for the hipster-targeted cafe.
Let me know if this interests you or if you can forward this to another editor who might be inclined to consider a short piece on this.
On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 9:02 AM, arathe <ARathe@manhattanmedia.com<mailto:ARathe@manhattanmedia.com>> wrote:
HI Barrett,e
We're always looking for contributors for Flavor of the Week, so please do sendlong.
Take care,
Adam
Adam Rathe
Arts & Entertainment Editor
New York Press
79 Madison Avenue, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10016
212-284-9730
http://twitter.com/N_YPress
On Apr 17, 2010, at 4:32 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Hi, Adam-
This is Barrett Brown; I'm a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, True/Slant, Skeptic, and the Skeptical Inquirer, and my second book is set for release this summer. Although I specialize in politics and media criticism, I've also done quite a bit else, having written for nerve.com<http://nerve.com>, Hustler, Oui, and a few other sex-based outlets here and there. I'm also seeing Selena Leong, who wrote a piece for you under her pen name recently, and she gave me your contact info.
Let me know if you'd like me to send along some ideas for Flavor of the Week, as I'd love to write a couple sex columns.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302