Upton Tea’s Winter 2013 newsletter contains the latest installment of Reversals of Fortune in the Tea Industry and it is a doozy. I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, but the title is “Part XXX: Trademark Woes,” and they do not stint on A&P;’s innovation in store brand products. While you’re there, you should order yourself some of their excellent Extra Bergamot Earl Grey, particularly if you like bergamot, which all right-thinking people do.

“German police have developed a Shazam-like smartphone app that allows them to identify far-right rock songs by playing just a brief sample. It could make it harder for neo-Nazis to lure under-18s with music, which is seen as a ‘gateway drug’ into the scene.”

On a recent five-star November afternoon, I decided to visit Trinity Church Cemetery in northern Harlem. Starting at the plateau on Amsterdam Avenue and 154th Street, I followed the winding paths down through a kaleidoscope of autumn leaves and crumbling crypts, which, glowing in the western sun, appeared almost transitory. As one tends to do in cemeteries, I contemplated the end of all things. Lately, I had heard murmurs about “the death” of the internet, and though inclined to dismiss such speculation as a form of insipid nostalgia that often clings to any recollection of the past — and really, what is the internet if not an infinite collection of memories? — I wondered if there might be some truth to the idea. As I ran my fingers over the fading inscription of a tombstone, it occurred to me that, if the internet were really dying, we might inter it here, in this most beautiful cemetery in Manhattan, the last one on the island that still receives bodies of the dead.

Much as I sometimes would like to bury the internet, it only took a few seconds to conclude that any conjecture about its death was premature. We were not (yet) living in a television show about a future in which the electricity has been turned off, leaving a world full of surprisingly clean heterosexuals who wanted to kill each other. Most people still seem to read blogs — or web sites — similar to this one, and if you’re like me, you probably sent or received approximately 100,000 e-mails this morning alone. You may have even participated in a web-based meeting with employees of your company’s offshore vendor in China or India. For the past twenty years, the internet has been a vice of efficiency for the commercial trade of information and goods, and, as we all know, this part of it is not only alive, but also rapacious.

All logic aside, however, the internet still felt a little dead to me. I thought about G____ Reader and wished that a tombstone had been erected in the cemetery to mark its merciless execution. More than just a “feed reader,” G____ Reader had (to me, anyway) represented the blogosphere, the soul of the internet, that once borderless frontier now being relentlessly colonized by the insatiable corporate machines. So maybe blogging was dead, or close to it? It seemed possible. A few weeks earlier, as I was about to dispense my 86,794th heart on Tumblr, my soul hardened and cracked, leaving only a pile of ashes. It was not a bitter or tragic event. I would always consider Tumblr the best cocktail party I had ever attended on the internet, and didn’t regret the years I spent there, ranting, fighting, and LOLing with the wits and demagogues who made up its ranks. The site for me had fulfilled the premise of “social media,” and had done so in a reasonably “artistic” manner; I could fondly recall my dashboard, with its hypnotic photographs and gifs of flowers, ruins, breaking waves, and sun-drenched flocks of birds. (And, of course, as much porn as you could take.)

But I had gradually become incapacitated by the endless sales pitch of my online persona, the implicit dissonance as I compared it to my offline self, the constant cycle of posturing and affirmation. As I grew to know them, my fellow Tumblrs began to seem like family members — I needed a break! Or really, I needed a break from myself. If I sometimes felt like I was writing the novel of my life, it was one in which I had to send every sentence out to be work-shopped. I was beginning to hate myself; I needed to say goodbye.

There was something familiar about this departure — this tiniest and most subjective of deaths — which I realized had echoes in a decision I had made almost fifteen years earlier to leave Brooklyn, where I had lived for most of my twenties. In both cases, there was something unnerving about what I perceived to be bastions of oblivious youth and intensifying wealth. Together these elements seemed to create a stultifying atmosphere of conformity in which I — an aging, insecure, non-heterosexual pessimist — had felt increasingly estranged. But, thankfully, rather than languish in a self-constructed echo chamber of bitterness and self-loathing, I had left. It was better for me to quit, to escape, to start over in a place where I could realign my expectations about exactly what I could offer to my life, and what I could (and could not) expect in return. This process was now unfolding virtually instead of geographically; it made sense to me that the internet, given its ubiquity, is the only place of meaning you can truly leave anymore.

Because I lived just a few blocks away from the cemetery, I had often fantasized about spending eternity here, preferably on one of the hills with river views. One day, perhaps. I watched the sun sink into New Jersey and was consoled by the spectral wings of so many angels emerging from their crypts; they spoke in whispers barely audible above the rustling leaves. The internet, they reassured me, was not dying: I was, and, like everyone else, could soon enough expect to join this parade of the night.

Matthew Gallaway is the author of The Metropolis Case.

“China successfully launched a lunar probe into space Monday morning, on a two-week journey to deliver a robotic rover to the surface of the moon. The mission marks China’s first attempt at soft-landing a spacecraft on an extra-terrestrial body, and could benefit future plans to land Chinese astronauts on the moon.”
 — Dear China,

Please cut yourself some slack on this one and just go for the hard landing. Do not worry about hurting the moon, just RAM THAT ROBOTIC ROVER INTO ITS STUPID SATELLITE CRUST UNTIL WE CAN HEAR THE SCREAMS OF MOON PAIN FROM SPACE. I mean, whatever, do what you feel like, but, you know, if you happen to SMASH THE SHIT OUT OF THE MOON by “accident” I am prepared to look the other way. Metaphorically, I mean. You’d better believe I would be watching the footage of moon destruction OVER AND OVER AND OVER. Anyway, thanks!

Your pal,
Al

“A man was forced to call the emergency services after a toilet roll holder got stuck up his bottom at his house in Newport, South Wales.”

I have a pet theory that the reason organizations like the Murdoch press are so dead-set against bike lanes or anything that makes cycling easier in New York City is because they know that, at some point in the future, the city will inevitably be forced to acknowledge the environmental and congestional factors choking its arteries and limit automotive traffic to such an extent that what remains on the streets will either be delivery vehicles or cabs, and anything they (organizations like the Murdoch press) can do to help forestall that day of reckoning is worth it to them, and also they hate cyclists, which is kind of a fair point because who doesn’t, they (cyclists) are the kind of smug, self-righteous pricks who will happily run you down while they are riding against traffic and then look at you as if you are at fault. You know what? Fuck cyclists. But anyway, Awl pal Alex Pareene says that, bicycles aside, mass transit is doomed in the United States, so I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference anyway. Also, “congestional” may not be a word.

“Mr. Berlusconi embodies some of the best, and many of the worst, features of the Italian character. He has a few of our virtues and all of our vices in spades. He is intuitive, easygoing and often very funny. He knows his soccer, enjoys good food and appreciates romantic songs after dinner. He loves lavish homes, hates rules, tells jokes and uses the odd swear word. He knows how to make money and has no compunction about cutting corners in the process. He cares about his friends (as long as they do what he says), talks fondly about his late mamma and adores his kids. In fact, he loves families so much that he’s had three of them already, plus scores of lady friends on the side. Mr. Berlusconi isn’t just a reflection of the Italian character, but a warning for the nation.”

Because Lord knows you could probably use it as you start digging out from the long weekend this morning, enjoy the majesty of the Grand Canyon during a rare weather inversion on Friday. It really makes you think, right? Okay, as you were, those pain-in-the-ass emails aren’t going to reply to themselves.

by Awl Sponsors

Black Friday is hard to get behind. First of all, the name. Black Friday — see also black plague, black widow, black hole — does not inspire enthusiasm. Then there is the event itself. Predawn call times, lines out the door, mob behavior over brand-name consumer goods.

But then something magical happened. Black Friday spawned Cyber Monday and post-Thanksgiving shopping has been a much more civilized occasion ever since.

This year, our friends at Open Road Media are making the day even sweeter with an unbelievable offer. Today only, every single ebook in their catalog (more than 4,000!) is on sale for up to 80% off as part of their annual Cyber Monday Sale.

Whether you are still recovering from Black Friday or are just sitting there all smug for having had the good sense to pass on the whole affair, fill your preferred reading device with as many ebooks as it can handle and gird yourself for the rest of the holiday shopping season.

These are some of our favorites from Open Road’s expansive list. Be sure to browse the entire collection at openroadmedia.com/cybermonday.

Psst… not sure how to give an ebook as a gift? It’s easy as can be. Learn how at openroadmedia.com/HowtoGiveEbooks.

“The hipsters who settled the Brooklyn neighborhood 10 years ago have declared war on rich kids flocking to new luxury digs on their parents’ dime…. “It’s like Neverland over there,” a 27-year-old yoga studio owner who has lived in the neighborhood for four years complains about a fancy rental complex. “It’s an adult children playground. They’re all, like, subsidized.”