ME: Where should I be?
ME 2: A little to the left.
ME: No …
ME 3: By the snakes?
ME: WHAT?!?
ME 3: Haha! Made you look. There are no snakes.
ME: Fuck off.
ME 2: We all agreed not to joke about snakes.
ME: No, I just don’t know where to be.
ME 2: Or to the right, maybe.
ME 4: Denmark.
ME: No …
ME 3: Why Denmark?
ME: Not so much a physical space …
ME 4: I hear Denmark’s nice. I’ve always wanted to go.
ME 2: Or maybe take a step back.
ME 3: Nobody agrees with you on Denmark.
ME 2: I’ll go to Denmark.
ME 5: I’d like to be at the first space shuttle launch. 1981.
ME 3: You’re misunderstanding the assignment.
ME: Not really an assignment, just a running question in my head.
ME 5: Or the Apollo 11 launch. Wouldn’t that be incredible to see!
ME 3: The question was where, not when.
ME 5: The question is relevant if you consider time to be a physical dimension distinct from but inextricably intertwined with space.
ME 3: Well, that was total nonsense.
ME 5: Every where you are is also every when you are.
ME 3: Fuck you.
ME 2: I’d like to have a front row seat for Ichiro Suzuki’s “The Throw”. April 11th, 2001 in Oakland.
ME 4: YES!
ME 5: TAKE ME TO THAT EXACT SPOT!
ME 3: Fuck, yes!
ME: I would like to see that.
ME 3: Okay, but where in the ballpark would you like to be when you see it?
ME 2: Right behind third base. I want to see it coming right at me. I want to see his eyes as he lines up the throw. I want to see the unassuming baserunner overtaken by the bullet fired at him out of right field.
ME: Killshot.
ME 4: He was dead before he even took off.
ME 3: Nuh-uh.
ME 2: Where would you want to be?
ME 3: Halfway down the third base line. I want to see the ball coming at me, but I want some perspective on the distance.
ME 4: Front row off of first base. I want to see the full distance, the line of the ball, but mostly I want to see the actual throw itself. The scoop, the windup and the follow-through.
ME 5: Can I be overhead?
ME 3: HOW?
ME 2: Like in a blimp?
ME 4: Parachuting in?
ME 5: No, just like hovering overhead when he makes the throw.
ME 3: Again, HOW?
ME 5: I assume if we’re able to travel back in time, we can also choose our relative position in space.
ME: If you had the / TARDIS.
ME 4: TARDIS. Duh.
ME 5: The TARDIS would work.
ME 3: Suppose maybe we don’t have access to a TARDIS.
ME 2: Tell me how we even got there if not in the TARDIS.
ME 3: That’s absolute nonsense.
ME 2: What were we talking about before?
ME: This conversation has already veered way off course from where I started.
ME 2: Pretty typical of our work, wouldn’t you say?
ME: I don’t know where to be in the online space.
ME 3: Oh no.
ME 5: Why do I feel like a fun conversation just got boring?
ME 2: Also typical of our work?
ME 3: No, do please fuck off for that one.
ME: What kind of presence I should have and where should it be.
ME 3: God, why are we preoccupied with this?
ME 4: That sounds delightfully existential.
ME 3: It’s not.
ME 5: It only sounds that way.
ME: I’m here, in the Substack. I occasionally post a thing. We’re on Blue Sky.
ME 2: Twitter.
ME 4: X.
ME 3: Don’t call it that.
ME 2: Please don’t call it that.
ME 4: It felt wrong as soon as I said it.
ME 5: It’s factually correct though.
ME 3: Big fucking deal.
ME: Such a stupid name.
ME 2: We really should get rid of it.
ME: I basically only use it for reposting comic book art when solicits come around. But, yeah.
ME 4: Substack, Blue Sky, the site that shall not be named …
ME 5: Instagram.
ME 2: We only post mostly dog pics over there.
ME: Facebook.
ME 3: We never go on Facebook anymore.
ME 4: I’d go on Facebook.
ME 3: Don’t you fucking dare!
ME 2: Can’t see any good coming from that.
ME: Those are all the online spaces.
ME 4: Is that enough?
ME 3: More than enough.
ME 5: That’s not the question.
ME: I kind of want to try the Ghost interface for newsletters.
ME 2: Is it much different from this?
ME: That’s what I want to find out.
ME 5: That’s not the question we’re really trying to address.
ME 3: I don’t think we need to revisit the brief moments we entertained starting a podcast.
ME 2: I think we should all collectively try to forget that.
ME 5: What do we want to say?
ME: What do you mean?
ME 5: That’s the question we’re really asking. Not where should we be. What do we want to say?
<PAUSE>
ME 5: Three?
ME 3: Fuck if I know.
ME 5: Four?
ME 4: I’m not sure.
ME 2: That’s always been the quandary.
ME: I often feel compelled to say something. I feel like it’s a responsibility to say something, especially like now, when bullies have too much power and control and they’re twisting the world into an uglier place.
ME 3: The aggressive authoritarianism of small men.
ME: So now, especially now, and most often always, but I never feel articulate enough to say what I want to say or smart enough to know what I’m talking about or even if I’m right.
ME 4: Neither articulate nor smart tends to flourish on one place / in particular.
ME 3: Don’t fucking say / it.
ME 4: Twitter!
ME 3: God, I’m gonna barf.
ME 2: Do you think you know how?
ME 5: No judgement. I share the same reticence.
ME 4: We could also choose to be nowhere. Nothing demands that we be anywhere on social media. At all.
ME: What about when we want to say something?
ME 2: Put it in a play.
ME 3: Or a movie.
ME 4: Or in a comic.
ME 5: We journal now. It can go in there.
ME 3: Or we go up to the asshole who said the thing we disagree with and tell them to fuck off.
ME: I don’t think they let me people just walk up to the White House like that.
ME 5: That’s probably the exact reason why.
ME 2: Wherever we are, it just needs to be fun. If it’s not fun, then there’s no point. And writing this out has been fun.
ME: It has.
ME 5: We wouldn’t be able to write this out on Twitter anyway.
ME 4: I could do it on Facebook.
ME 3: I’m gonna throw you in a fucking lake!
ME: I still want to try the Ghost interface. I like the newsletters I get that use that platform.
ME 3: Who’s that again?
ME: Al Ewing. Cavan Scott. Dan Watters.
ME 2: You already did it, didn’t you?
ME: … maybe.
ME 5: So we’re settled?
ME 3: Ish.
ME 4: Settled-ish.
ME: Where we want to be isn’t as important as saying what we want to say.
ME 2: And how we want to say it …
ME: We’re not settled on that.
ME 2: But this was fun, so maybe we’ll do something like this again.
ME 5: Any way we want to wrap up?
ME: Thank you for reading this. If you made it all the way through to the end. I hope this was fun to read. I enjoyed writing it. I used to post tweets like this — obviously much much shorter — on Twitter, in this format of a dialogue with different internal voices, usually highlighting how much of a doof I can be.
ME 3: Can we quickly Google ‘doof’ to make sure it isn’t a colloquial euphemism for a genital that we don’t want to be to call ourselves?
ME 2: A genital?
ME 3: Shut up.
ME 4: I think ‘doof’ is universal.
ME 5: The universal language of doof.
ME: Again, we’re veering off course from where we started.
ME 2: Told you it was typical of our work.
ME: Again, thank you all for reading. If you enjoyed reading this, please let me know. If it was fun to read, I’ll do more dialogues like this. God knows I talk to myself all the time in real life, having a conversation with myself —
ME 4: My-selves.
ME 3: Fuck you.
ME: … I can always write more of this shit.
ME 5: Let’s take a nap before rehearsal tonight.
ME 2: I’ve already passed out.
ME: Take care, everyone! See you soon!
ME 3: This is … pretty accurate.
ME 2: Oh, hey there, real quick: if you don’t know about Ichiro Suzuki’s “The Throw” here’s the video of it. This was early on in Ichiro’s MLB career. He had a reputation for hitting that preceded him coming over from the Japanese leagues, but no one had seen — let alone tested — his arm out of right field. I remember seeing this and it blew my fucking mind. Enjoy!
