New Tab is a cross
between Shoplifting from American Apparel
and Lenny Bruce is Dead, combining
the best elements of both. That means funny and poetic observations about
Montreal delivered through the eyes of a detached and self-aware narrator.
Thankfully Morissette, unlike Tao Lin, seems to tolerate the inclusion of human
emotion from time to time. The result is a wisecracking cyborg take on the
world, or what I like to call Oculus Riff:
Tab 1
“I am a terrible employee,” I typed. “Sometimes I think I
can’t possibly care less but then it happens again. I care less than I was
caring.”
“I know that feeling,” typed Shannon. “Two years ago I
worked at Fabricland during the summer. It was so underwhelming that it was
almost overwhelming.”
Tab 2
“My dad is a business guy,” typed Shannon. “It’s his entire
personality. When I was home for Christmas, he lectured me about my romantic
life. He said I was open for business but running that business to the ground.”
Tab 3
The entire time I had courted her, she hadn’t figured out
that I was courting her. At some point, she had introduced me to her friend
Mason, who wore polo shirts and was self-confident and cheerful and didn’t seem
to view his own existence as some sort of perplexing burden.
Tab 4
But here’s the thing: Maybe I didn’t want to live in a city
so much as observe one from a close distance, like in Sim City. Living in a
city was like living multiple lives, each capable of crushing me. It meant
forcing myself to meet people, impenetrable three-dimensional emotion
factories, being nice to them because I never knew what being nice to them
could lead to, parties to attend or job opportunities or collaborating on
something or whatever else. The insane number of possibilities a city offered.
Trying to compute that number in my head felt like a kind of string theory.
Tab 5
My approach with women was like stacking blocks really high
in Tetris while waiting for a straight line that might never come.
Tab 6
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s like, there’s these people on Facebook
I’ve never met, but then I see their profiles all the time attending things I
want to go to, so I kind of know them from that, and if I see them in public,
it’s always weird, like I don’t think of them as people, I think of them as
characters, like characters from a sitcom.”
Tab 7
By setting the alarm on my phone for ten, I knew I would get
to work late enough for people to notice but not late enough for them to
complain. I had slept less than three hours, had a body that felt like a bag of
oatmeal, didn’t want to exit the bed. I wanted my pillow to be a supercomputer,
allowing me to complete work tasks by rolling my head around on it.
Tab 8
At night, I was either going to parties or hiding in my
room. I felt as if my goal overall was to be invited to all the parties, but
never go. I was starting to view parties as an infinitely renewable resource,
like I could skip one and all that would do is make ten more appear. Still, it
was comforting to know that parties were there if I needed them to be there,
like a low-hanging fruit.
Tab 9
“I think some people secretly don’t want you to be
productive, because if you are, it puts more pressure on them to accomplish
something,” I said. “They want you to go out with them all the time so that
everyone’s mediocre and no one has to try.”
Tab 10
Unscrew my penis and replace it with a take a penny, leave a penny tray.
Unscrew my penis and replace it with a take a penny, leave a penny tray.
