.

 

Etc.

Yes, Scott, said Rebecca. We were at her place. Rebecca is a research librarian and I am a series of tubes, so what we talk about together is data—sorting it, viewing it, eating it. We talked about starting a company, an organizing organization with an aluminum office. Our agency would promise to apply the latest library science and Semantic Web principles to each client's need for structure. Bring us all of your receipts, manuals, press clippings, laptops, and un-replied-to emails, we'd say. We'll make sense of it all! And then we'd dump the whole pile in the trash, and each client would be charged $1,000 and handed a golf pencil and a lined notebook as a parting gift, problem solved. “Think less,” we'd advise. “Do less.” Once the word got out there would be thousands of people begging us to take them on. After a year or two we would just leave the company, stop answering the phone, and forget about the office rent.

“You're both nerds,” Scott had said. “And yet neither of you are rich.”

Rebecca said, Yes, Scott. Her cat Rockstar sniffed my hand.

“Let's watch it again,” said Scott. So we gathered around the computer and watched the Donnie Davies video for the sixth time.

“I just can't get enough,” said Scott.

“Me neither,” I said.

“It's okay to be funny again,” said Scott. “This video grants us permission.”

“It does,” I said.

“So,“ asked Scott, “why aren't you funny?”


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Ftrain.com is the website of Paul Ford and his pseudonyms. It is showing its age. I'm rewriting the code but it's taking some time.

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About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.

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Recent

@20, by Paul Ford. Not any kind of eulogy, thanks. And no header image, either. (October 15)

Recent Offsite Work: Code and Prose. As a hobby I write. (January 14)

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10 Timeframes. (June 20)

Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out. (April 10)

Why I Am Leaving the People of the Red Valley. (April 7)

Welcome to the Company. (September 21)

“Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?”. Forgot to tell you about this. (July 20)

“The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. An essay for TheMorningNews.org. (July 11)

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