The internet sometimes is the best source of birth control.

Goddamn Chatroulette.  Invented by a seventeen year-old, dicks galore, friends from other countries decked out in hoodies and internet courage*.  I feel like I’m rubbernecking after passing by a horrible accident.

Other than the boil “zit” lancing video, I have maybe 4-5 images burned into my mind permanently due to the internet.  If you’re not already familiar with the ones I’m mentioning, good.  You don’t need to be.  Don’t research them.  There’s absolutely no need.  You will lead a perfectly normal, healthy existence, and probably can still be sarcastically morbid with these images NOT IMPRINTED IN YOUR BRAIN.

1. Motorcycle Face Accident Dude  – Courtesy of Rotten dot Com.  Dude’s Face + Motorcycle Accident = Lack of Face displayed on Internet Site
2. Japanese Shit Volcano Shower Girl  –  Courtesy of “Takes All Kinds” Sexuality.  Shower + Upside Down Japanese Girl + Jesus Help Us That’s a Lot of Diahearra Spewing Vertically Out of Her Asshole = Questioning Humanity’s Pleasure-Issuing Synapses
3. “Goatse” —  Courtesy of “The Body Sure Can Stretch” Philosophy.  Ever wonder what the inside of your body looks like, say, if you decided to check it out via your anus?  This man did.  If you need a giggle, go check out the delightfully clinical Wikipedia description of the “Internet Shock Site.”  If you need to make sure your gag reflex is working, just Google the word.  Takes “spread ‘em” to a whole new level.

Anyway.

Yesterday, since I slept in until 10:30 in the morning, I apparently had the ability to stay up ALL THROUGH TIME and could not sleep at all.  The thought crossed my mind to visit Chatroulette to pass the time.  Honestly, I felt weird about it.  Like, it was the equivalent of drinking alone.  It was okay to do it with friends, but if you are on the site on your own you had a problem.  Then I realized I do drink alone, was drinking alone, and should address those issues another day… Okay, fine, I’ll go on Chatroulette.

After school special advice whooshed through my head as I signed on:  Do not trust anyone, at any point you can be recorded (AKA wear a disguise of awesome Batman proportions), curb your reactions so as not to be the victim of a screen capture or YouTube montage.

Be prepared.  You will be harassed, sexually or otherwise, by signing onto Chatroulette.  It’s a damn wild concept–hell, maybe it’s Youth overreacting to their elementary school music teacher friending them on Facebook– but I’m sure within a year’s time, The Dicks are going to ruin it for the rest of us.  Literal dicks.  Dick after damn dick after damn dick.  Porn is no longer a Hustler mag in a garage, it’s a random 4 second flaccid French dude’s Freedom Fry on a computer screen.  But whatever, your 14 year-old is going to see a lot of dicks on this so-called information superhighway, so make sure you talk to them about the appropriate sites they’re allowed to visit at their sleepovers.  Otherwise they’re going to see dick parades.  Then the cycle continues and those teens will be dicks and ask girls to show their boobs like the assholes they were destined to be.

So, these kids are born with internet courage:

*Internet Courage. (noun) - Fearlessness and conviction that one is correct and protected within the boundaries of cyberspace.  One with internet courage has complete disregard towards anyone’s feelings, and gravitates towards unwarranted attacks.  Stems from desensitization, fueled by the culture of the 2 second attention span and watching episodes of “Family Guy” and the misunderstanding that hurt feelings can be mended with the abbreviations “lol” and “jk”.  Often times someone afflicted with Internet Courage will use all capitalization or long strings of unnecessary punctuation.

There’s no fight or flight anymore, just fight. Which finally brings me to my point.  I’m a little terrified by today’s youth.  I think I saw a 13 year-old’s taint on Chatroulette and frankly I’m having a hard time dealing with it.  Even typing that sentence made shudder again.

Like I said, the goal (my goal) of Chatroulette is to either be with a posse of complete goofballs who can’t be hurt by anyone’s hatred, or to be completely unphased by the dick n’ ball nature of this weird world.  On the screen pops two young kids who see me, a girl on the screen.  A perfect opportunity to test the boundaries of courage and young dickitudedness.

“Ah ha!” they say to themselves.  ”A woman!  Let us show her our chest so that she might show us the same!”

After typing, “MILF,” to woo me, they corrected it to the flattering term, “GILF,” and Kiddo #1 proceeded to show his own underdeveloped tits to the computer screen as a demonstration of what I do in return.  Being 90 years older than them,  I didn’t do much to encourage them, but their own flailing was contagious between the two.  Kiddo #2 takes this opportunity to moon me, his sphincter begging for a reaction.  His friend bounces with his shirt nearly off, and I don’t do much but half-grin at the spectacle.

I’ve been mooned before, and I’m sure I’ve even mooned someone myself.  But there’s mooning from a safe distance, and then there’s accidentally misunderstanding how much a web cam can capture the chiaroscuro one’s back door.  ”Welcome to Chatroulette, Me.”  Here I was sitting on my couch, in dumb sunglasses and a hat, my cat snoring next to me, and there is some English kid’s unknowing asshole winking at me on my screen.  And that is the #5 image that is now burned in my brain thanks to the internet.

I continued to half-grin at the two pre-rapists.  I would not give them the reaction that they wanted.  It worked.  Normally the receiver of this poop-shoot salute would click out of the room and the kids would start over, because there’s only so long one can jump around with an ass or two in the air before running out of things to do with a butt.  So they may have won and actually gotten a subliminal reaction out of me, but at least I had to make them click out of the room after they eventually felt weird being pantless in front of their friend and a stranger on the internet.  Hooray for me being creepy…?

It’s catharsis, writing about this immature cyber-bullying.  It’s also a reason to double up on birth control.  I don’t want to breed an asshole who shows his asshole.  Then again, it’s also hard to not want to suit up in a dumb wig and sunglasses and log on to the damn site again right now for another freak show before bed time.

Dear Maria,

I write you this at a dark time. Netflix didn’t deliver what they promised and your baby Derrick piddled on my favorite tennis shoes.  He’s here staring at me with those damn beady eyes.  I don’t know why you insist in keeping a ferret.  It’s meant to be worn as a necklace not kept as some foppish guard rat. So anyway, not only was I in a state because of that, but once I sat down to awful reruns of “According to Jim” while you were off at your “night classes,” I realized that I have not one friend. No posse. No buddies or pals.

I was just sitting there in your robe with the clicker in my hand.  I realized you were the only one I have and everyone else thinks something else of me.  That’s a very sobering thought.  Or, it would have been if I wasn’t as blitzed as I was.

Now darling, please don’t hold this against me, as I admit that I am weak right now and this fact would break anyone’s heart if they weren’t as strong as I am.  I’m like a python.  A very handsome python.  With a wallet.  And pockets for said wallet.

But why bother, right? Who else will appreciate my routine as much as I do?  If they don’t like “Fawlty Towers” and key parties, who needs them?  Just kidding, darling.  No one has ever taken up my offer for a key party no matter how hard I try, and you’re the only one who will admit to liking John Cleese.

It would be so much easier if my parents hadn’t adopted a second child and instead gave me a real brother. How am I supposed to relate to someone who grew up for the first six months of his life in an orphanage?  There’s just something that connects two people together when they squirt out the same birth canal. No orphanage can provide that type of bond.  But orphans can’t help it.  It’s the diet of gruel and singing while mopping with brushes strapped to their feet.  They’re doomed from the beginning.  An amazing pseudo-brother like me can only help the little tike so much.

I just want to know when this happened.  I think I used to have friends, didn’t I?  A whole lot of them, really.  They would all gather to drink swill with me and march me around on their shoulders.  We’d go to Vegas and have adventures, great ones at that.  We blacked out due to accidentally ingesting rohypnol on the roof of our hotel… Then we found Mike Tyson’s tiger in our room… And my friend lost a tooth, but we made it back for the wedding in time… And the car we wrecked, it was okay that we wrecked it because it was actually a wedding gift… We gave back a baby too.  Oh, those guys.  We had some good times.

But where are they now?  What about my personality has driven everyone away?  I find myself wondering if I’m just a sad sod of a sack nowadays.  Have people made up their mind about me and I can’t get it back?  That’s enough to drive a man to drink if he hadn’t drinked all the booze in the house already.  That reminds me, dear.  I drank your Zima thinking it was tooth paste, so you’ll have to pick up some more on the way home.  Why don’t people like me anymore?

I’ll ask you not to remind me of this tomorrow, as I’m sure these feelings will pass.  I am comfortable in my skin, who I was, (awesome), who I’ve become, (probably more awesomer), and what jerks the company I used to hold have also become (opposite awesomest).  What’s that phrase, “It’s not you, it’s me”?  I agree 100% with that statement if say, you were saying that to me, and then replacing “me” with them, so we could just say, “It’s them, not me.” And I would agree with you agreeing with me about them.  I sincerely believe that you are right to support me, Maria, no matter how much the “Thems” of the world dispute it.  If it’s not me, then it must be them, right?  Or you, I guess.

I’m glad I could express to you these feelings.  If I’ve fallen asleep on the couch, please don’t wake me and just keep my side of the bed warm, darling.

Yours,

Charles