“First there was the ‘staycation,’ now it’s the ‘workation.’”
 — No.

Fellow in Britain is having dinner at a restaurant. At a nearby table, a couple is unable to comfort a crying infant. Our diner walks over to the couple and suggests that perhaps the baby might need to be put to bed. You can guess what happened next.

by Myles Tanzer

The internet hive mind is scary. Geeks operating together as one Voltron-like force of good or evil is an intimidating kind of deal — and leaving the house, for some Internet people, is equally scary. But getting drunk and hanging out with members of the hive mind isn’t actually that bad! Saturday was World Reddit Meetup day, and, to observe, members of the Internet forum Reddit — a wholly owned subsidiary of Condé Nast Digital! — met up at 160 or so locations around the world, including d.b.a. in the East Village.

As cover, I went with my friend Nicole — she’s an actual Redditor. We were met by the event’s organizer, a burly New Jersey man who works on the Rutgers University Internet network. He told everyone about the heat other Redditors gave him for organizing this bar event while there was already a picnic event planned for Governors Island. (He just “wanted to get wasted.” Reasonable!)

A Californian clad in a LucasFilms t-shirt was the friendliest one at the table. He made sure to speak to everyone personally; he’s one of those people who’s insanely good at listening. He frequently jumped back into conversation by greeting everyone with a “Hi everybody” like Dr. Nick from The Simpsons.

Joe, a giggly long-haired James Franco look-a-like, works as a programmer for a small marketing firm down in SoHo and loves his new apartment in Brooklyn. Joe is an active member of r/trees (the popular subreddit centered around stoner culture, after r/Marijuana went south).

About three women came to this event, of the 30 or so people that showed up. (Reddit’s 4.1 million users each month are 86% male, according to Condé Nast.)

At one point, a 30-something Indian guy announced that he just had come back from India and had “brought some presents for the ladies.” Nicole was forced to choose which color of strange satchel she wanted (she choose purple).

Another guy, who was just out of Nicole’s hand-shaking-radius, loudly said, “It’s not that I can’t reach you, I don’t want to touch you.”

One of the young women in attendance came with her boyfriend, and she was way more into Reddit than he was. She’s active on r/gifts — where anonymous Redditors send gifts to each other, like an ongoing Secret Santa. She’s received a lot of stuff like “nice pens” and “vibrating cock rings” (both still unused and in their respective packagings).

Most of the talk was actually about Reddit: how addicting it is, how browsing it at work is tricky, how great it is. Our host summed it up nicely: “We can have inside jokes and someone would come up and ask how long we’ve known each other for. And I’d be like ‘nah we just met.’ It’s like the weirdest website ever.”

For a 30-way blind date, the conversation was surprisingly really good and no one’s really that nerdy if everyone else around them is too. It was darn near enjoyable! Nicole and I left in a good mood, and on the way out we shook hands with our new Internet pals. She reached across the table to shake with a nervous IT guy and he spilled his entire beer all over his lap. IRL lulz were certainly had at his expense.

Myles Tanzer goes outside sometimes.

In case you missed it over the weekend: “’Brady Bunch’ mom Florence Henderson admits ex-mayor John Lindsay gave her crabs in one-night-stand”

Mating and dating in America’s gayest city has been turned on its head. With one smooth twist of Andrew Cuomo’s gloating pen, New York City’s gays now find themselves in a whole different ballgame (as it were) of sexy-time outcomes. Now, like the ladies, the gays must think: am I marriage material? Am I marriage material if I put out on the first date? When and how do we get engaged? And how can we best torture our single friends with expensive destination weddings that require multiple-leg flights and pre-parties and annoying and eccentric gift registries? Long-time couples are in a similar ruckus — even those who’ve never wanted to get married, or think marriage is a relic of the subjugating patriarchy (well?), now have to affirm their choice to not marry. Meanwhile, gays of all stripes will get taken with the moment and marry up and then have a really, really confusing April 15, 2012. What are the legal ramifications of getting married? Gays have no idea. The real winners are gay attorneys, who should basically open up a drive-by prenup shack on Eighth Avenue. All that we know for sure is that, right now, pretty much everyone admires Captain Cuomo.

Is this the world’s ugliest dog? Sure, why the hell not.

• Remember how I told you last week there were going to be fireworks in the East River, nicely visible from Brooklyn? Yeah, my fireworks party didn’t go so well either, as there were none. Sorry! But supposedly there are some fireworks Saturday night. (Don’t take it from me, ask someone else apparently. Fireworks credibility: ruined!)

• Warning: Sunday is gay pride. Don’t go west of Broadway. Upside: that means tonight is the drag march. Starts at 7 p.m., Tompkins Square Park.

• Tonight Bob Mould plays at the Highline Ballroom! Have you read his book yet? He’s on tour — reading tour — across (parts!) of the country. (Related: Pat Benatar is also on tour — music tour — and is playing in Jersey on Saturday!)

• And tonight “Perfectly Damaged” opens at Derek Eller Gallery — artwork that’s been “kicked, dragged, cut, burnt, melted, sprayed, shot, and tossed in a blender.”

• Did you know Housing Works is having an online summer sale?

• “From 1937 to 1941, ‘Pins & Needles’ was a hit musical comedy revue running on Broadway. But this was no ordinary Broadway musical: it was written for and performed by members of The International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union.” The just-opened revival “is a joint endeavor of the Obie-winning Foundry Theater and Families United for Racial and Economic Equality.”

• On Saturday, at 1 p.m…. “Cowgirl Cowhunt is a 90-minute strategic hide-and-seek variant set in 1919 that casts players as historically important cowgirls, rustlers or cattle, each competing head-to-head to be Queen of the Range.” For real.

• Or you can also stay home and read about Julie Taymor’s “Spiderman” disaster, the burning love of Bon Iver, the world’s best dinosaur TV show, how books really get their titles and what is up with all those bees. Just don’t fly anywhere.

Photo by Guian Bolisay

If you would like to see footage of an elk rescuing a marmot from drowning, knock yourselves out. Me, I am SO READY for the weekend to come.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Sometime I’ll perfect my adoration.

Here, let me practice:
For you I’ll lose every button.
and give up one of my pillows.

You know the way we say
it’s only money
it’s only food
it’s only Sunday at 4:00?

There’s still time.
And we’re still in the skinflint sheets
of a place we’d rather not be,
languid among no-account debris

trying halfway to understand
the guy from the sports bar
and his pharmacy scam, in case
it would make a good movie.

I’ll pretend to miss the day we met
if you can try not so much to mind
the piercing when we go wrong,
foaming in the evening, toxic refraction,

to baffle some diminishing sun into
peach-rust-gold derivatives, innate lame
screensaver that (we can’t help ourselves)
gongs inside us anyway in bold-banged time

abashing abashing abashing.

Inadequate Response to the Decade

Resentful of this,
a feeling put on
(put upon by)
a climate of thought.

But nobody wears cloaks anymore
so the metaphor becomes a mothball
nobody uses anymore either.

That afternoon, you stopped in
ones and twos
as I opened the door
and opened it
and checked up and down the street.

Agonized the knuckles,
absently. Checking the phones,
turning off and on
everything in the house.

You were each
dusty and poundeyed
after hiking the Queensboro

until we gathered
(and heard from Susanne)
a collection of bottles
a television nobody wanted to watch
a tart of frozen figs from Vinny’s backyard

our backs to the gleaming plate
of that vile window.

Left to Learn

In our off-season we booked a cabin
on a boat and headed to an island
off the coast of somewhere.

I climbed out front to watch the waves
while you made yourself at home
on the decks, catching up on your reading.

When we arrived, the locals, a burble
of children in red tee shirts and shiny bangs,
presented us with a chest of props

and wished us welcome. I found the stage
at the center of town and clomped around on it.
You stood to the side, holding my purse.

At some point I pushed a dresser
up a flight of stairs, then came back to find you
dancing with a pair of swords and a satin sheet.

I didn’t know you could that.
I assumed you’d learned it in Japan.

Shanna Compton’s books include Down Spooky, For Girls & Others, and Gamers. She’s currently at work on her third poetry collection, with recent pieces appearing in

Eoagh, Ducts, No Tell Motel, and Court Green. She lives on the internet at shannacompton.com.

For more poetry, visit The Poetry Section’s vast archive. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

As we wait for those nasty pictures of desiccated organs and the like to grace our cigarette packs, why not take a look at how they do it around the world. Warning: Thailand will make you retch a little.