Baby’s First Internet
Text by Kevin Fanning
Not sure how to explain the internet to your young ones? Presenting a series of nursery rhymes to teach children how to comport themselves on the online.
* * *
Do not stop to think or edit:
You must be the first who said it.
You heard a brand-new band? What luck!
You’ll be the first to say they suck.
In order to increase renown,
add “bacon” to most any noun.
It’s not your job to right a wrong,
just mark it FAIL and move along.
Rather than felicitations,
send your friend an application.
To be an expert’s no great tax:
Write common sense and call it “hacks.”
Your friends won’t like it, on the real,
but you must Flickr every meal.
In disagreements, all your readers
must be branded Nazi leaders.
It doesn’t matter what you say,
just publish it twelve times per day.
* * *
Kean Soo is a cartoonist and the creator of
Jellaby, a graphic novel that was first serialized as a web comic at
The Secret Friend Society. An assistant editor and regular contributor to the
Flight series of anthologies, he occasionally daydreams about updating
his personal web site with something meaningful.
Kevin Fanning has been a TMN Contributing Writer since 2002. He is constantly starting new projects that never get finished. His favorite season is fall, but according to his color chart he is a winter. He keeps a strict account of his various websites and internet-based miscellanea at
kevinfanning.com. He symbolizes hope.
» More by Kevin Fanning
TODAY’S FEATURE
In times of respite, the mind settles, focusing on what’s really relevant. Here are the
TMN READERS’ AND WRITERS’ hot picks: the jam that fueled parties all summer long, the show we turned down the A/C to hear, and more.
Secret Service
Margaret Mason reports from 2004’s Democratic National Convention on giant paper cuts, political souvenirs, and how all those signs get together.
NEWSLETTER
More addictive than heroin, more challenging than Sudoku:
the TMN Map Quiz, delivered hot, fresh, and diabolical to your inbox every Friday.
» SIGN UP
DIGEST
David Byrne’s first collaboration with Brian Eno in 27 years: Eno calls it “electronic gospel”; we call it the sound of studio perfection.
