It’s as typical of a Saturday afternoon as I have ever and always had. Driving up the I-5, listening to On the Media on NPR. Air conditioning on, the sun slanting through the side window, keeping one side of my warmer than the other. I always think I’m going to be early, usually I’m late, today I was right on time. 4 p.m. I pull into the gravel driveway that leads to the back of Miracles and hear the crunch of the small pebbles under my tires.

Amy’s working, she’s got The Clash playing (”Combat Rock”), and the place is spotless, coffee fresh.

Off she goes with her Urban Outfitted friends and Miracle’s afternoon tranquility is mine. I put in the Old 97’s, “Fight Songs” - for whatever reason, the one album left here that has not been scratched or stolen and make myself some Potentially Kosher Sushi and a double soy mexican mocha.

Last week a fellow drug dealer had to write a paper on a movie that was a play adaptation. She asked for a recommendation.

“Six Degrees of Separation” by John Guare - there’s no doubt about it. Not only is it a great movie with great actors, but you get to see Will Smith’s thingy.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, and the play itself is really well written - I have it in print if you want to borrow it.”
“Like, you see the Fresh Prince’s Penis?”
“Well, for a few frames … uh, yeah” (a brief aside: last night Simone somehow convinced me to go see Jersey Girl with her. It was by the director of Clerks and Mall Rats so I figured it couldn’t be so bad. Then again, it has J-Lo and Ben Afflek and I should have known better. Anyway, Will Smith makes a cameo and mentions how incredibly hung he is. Another reason, therefore, to see Six Degrees of Separation is to know that he is lying.)

The theory of Six Degrees of Separation was first expounded by Harvard sociologist Stanley Milgram in 1967 who laboriously interviewed people across New England and painstakingly mapped out their networks of friends in what are known as “sociograms.” In the end, Milgram proclaimed that every person in the world is connected to every other person by an average of six degrees of separation - or five other friends between you and some Tibetan Buddhist Monk. The theory became wildly popular. Epidemiologists warned that it went to show how vulnerable we are to world wide disease outbreaks. Anti-war activists used it as a foundation against violence - that in the end you are killing a friend of a friend.

30 years later, with the assistance of powerful computing technology, Milgram’s contemporary peers found that the actual statistical number was really 5.87. On average, 5.87 persons between you and everyone else who is inhaling and exhaling right now. Breath in, breath out.

This morning I woke slowly. I stretched, scratched myself, and put on some ambient electronic music which took about six degrees of separation to reach my wax filled ears. Recorded by musicians, uploaded onto a computer, uploaded onto a server, broadcasted through the ether of the internet, downloaded onto my computer, bytes transformed into soundwaves using iTunes, and through the little black cable going from my computer to my bose stereo. 128 kilobytes of information per second from who the hell knows where to start my day right.

I felt good, motivated, and put on the first coat of concrete stain onto our balcony. “Brownstone” the color is called. Which will be covered by a Pollock like drip coat of “patina.” Is that really the name of a color? Patina?

And then I started reading the first three hours of “Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours,” waiting for the stain to dry.

I took a walk on the beach - it was packed, a Saturday, sunny and blue - and started thinking about my friends. A few hours earlier - somewhere between brownstone and PHP - I had logged on to Friendster for the first time in weeks. An email had come in my inbox telling me that a high school friend whom I had not spoken to in years wanted to be approved as my friend. There was no message, no “hey, long time no see.” Just “X wants to be your friend: confirm or deny.” I looked at her profile, saw we had some common interests - things we didn’t even know existed when we were in high school - and clicked approve.

Walking between the seaweed and near naked college girls tanning, I started pondering how internet social networks are changing our lives. How if you have a profile on some site like Friendster or Myspace that you never know who already knows something about you. Interests, favorite books, favorite movies. But what is really amazing is how you know so many people through so many other people. I have seen some Friendster users who I knew through more than 20 “chains” of friends. And rarely was there more than two or three degrees between us. I realized that between going to high school in San Diego, working at a popular coffee shop in San Diego, and going to college in San Diego, I have about 1.5 degrees of separation with all of coastal San Diego - from downtown all the way up to Carlsbad. This is not popularity, this is how it is for all of us. We just didn’t know it before.

Looking at everyone’s gym perfect bodies, I realized I should get some exercise and started running towards the pier. Then a preposterous thought entered my head. What if there was a Friendster-like network based on who we have masturbated to. In your own personal network is every person - from hollywood celebrities to that cute 8th grade teacher - that you have ever thought about while touching yourself. You can also see who those people have masturbated to. And you could see all those who have masturbated to you and everyone else that they have masturbated to. Just imagine it, I mean really - think of a Friendster like page with the profiles of every person you have ever masturbated to. What kind of collection would it be like? What do they have in common? What do they look like? Now think of those potential faces who have masturbated to you. What kind of conclusions could you come up with? Do people tend to masturbate to people who are more attractive than they are? Who do the most attractive people masturbate to? A statistical analysis would be mind boggling, more valuable than the invention of peanut butter.

I started feeling a little short of breath and settled down to a walk next to a group of cute college girls. One of them looked familiar and we made eye contact. I headed home, detirmined to finish hour four of “Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours.” But once I got home, jumping in the shower and looking down at the peculiar patterns of sand that gathered around my feet, curiosity took over me and I logged back on to Friendster. I wanted to take a look at my personal network, I wanted to see how many people in my network I had masturbated to.

Surprisingly - if my memory is to be trusted - very very few. I looked through friends of friends, but still nothing, not a single face that jumped out and said, “yeah, you’ve definitely wanked to me.”

I did find something else though: irony. Everywhere you look there was irony. Descriptions were filled with self-deprecating, clever remarks which don’t say that they are smart but make it sound like they are smart. Or “testimonials” of friends which are usually stories about stupid things that these people have done, making them sound almost as cool as the writer of the testimonial him/herself The art of modest self promotion.

Many literary critics and scholars cite Cervantes’ Don Quixote as the first modern novel because of its use of irony. Irony that has wound its way into Western literature ever since. Western literature and Friendster (and yes, this blog). But why? What is so appealing about irony? Why is it cooler than sternfaced reality. What can irony reveal that a lack of irony cannot?

If you have any answers to any of these questions, please leave a comment, and ironically as you possibly can tell us why we can’t seem to transcend it. Or if you would like to help me make masturbatory sociograms for a master’s thesis in Sexuality Studies at some university in the Netherlands, you may also leave a comment.