According to the blogs out of Brooklyn, Friendster peaked on July 4th, about the same time as Williamsburg stopped being the hip hood to hang your iPod. At about that time I grew tired of my real friendster persona and created a fake one. I was a fakester... "Gummi Bears" -- I had over a hundred friends. Us fakesters rallied around Orlan, that provacateuse, as Jonathan Abrams sought to silence our ironic flourishes. I think my account was finally suspended because of the graphic testimonials I left -- Brian's fake persona is still up there. As the pogroms continued, fakesters organized real-world protests and set up other sites where their suspended accounts could be resurrected. But the rabble is correct -- fakesters are only fun on Friendster. In the days after Gummi Bears' suspension, I've felt a supreme sense of loss: a fakester profile made me feel popular. I haven't logged into my real account since. [11/15/03]

I am constantly collecting information on Columbine. The subject of school shootings interests me. As do transcripts from airplanes moments before they've crashed. And buried deep in the Kerwin Report on the Challenger disaster is this uncanny quote: ""The forces on the Orbiter at breakup were probably too low to cause death or serious injury to the crew... It then descended striking the ocean surface about two minutes and forty-five seconds after breakup at a velocity of about 207 miles per hour. The forces imposed by this impact approximated 200 G's, far in excess of the structural limits of the crew compartment or crew survivability levels. ... It is possible, but not certain, that the crew lost consciousness due to an in-flight loss of crew module pressure." [09/10/03]