The Wormlips Scrapbook

I just had an extremely scary realization.

Ever since there was an Internet I’ve sought approbation from strangers on it. I don’t know why. I didn’t even know I was doing it. But there you have it: the hideous truth. I’m pretty sure it all started on eBay, where each day I’d watch my positive feedback numbers climb. I’ll never forget the first praise I received. And I’ll never forget the night my tally rolled from 99 to 100. I told my family. I took pictures. The blue star by my name was a source of deep pride.Since I haven’t being hanging around eBay for a few years I assumed I’d outgrown this approval thing. I was wrong. After I uploaded my video of Stella to YouTube this week, I went back to see if anyone had watched it. They had. I checked again today. When I saw that someone had “favorited” it, I nearly shrieked for joy. They liked it; they really liked it!

I get creepier. Recently I wrote a spontaneous user review of a product on Amazon. I wrote about an electric teapot. I don’t care about electric teapots and I may not even care about the people who shop for them.

I should’ve seen the warning signs this summer when I wrote my first review, about an electronic timer. I lovingly entitled it How a Polder Changed My Life. 10 of 10 people found it helpful.

I’m going to change the subject now. La la la la la la la la.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thanksgiving 1999 was a watershed time for me: my father introduced me to eBay. He had already been tromping around there for several months, picking up cast-iron tractor seats by the dozen and railroad date nails by the hundred, and the occasional antique dynamite blaster. With patience he guided me through eBay’s intricacies. He shed light on the mind of the desperate bidder, using me as an example. He taught me the value of strategic lurking. And he tried to help me understand a cardinal truth: There’ll always be another item like the one on which you’re overbidding.

I come from a long line of acquirers of useless objects, so I suppose my affair with eBay was inevitable. It became my everything: my inspiration to wake up early, my reward at the end of a long work day, my companion into the wee hours. As many as three and four packages started to arrive at my door each afternoon.

They say you can find anything on eBay, but in eight years of searching I’ve never found my holy grail: a dolphin lamp like the one Katie got me at Goodwill.

For better or worse, my quest has led me past many other bright and shiny objects now in my possession — some the first piece in what would become an entire collection. I marveled at how eBay so tangibly evoked my childhood as I stumbled (and bid) upon long-forgotten artifacts, like the 1956 Econolite motion lamp depicting a John Bull steam locomotive and the 1964 set of monster stickers just like the ones I’d plastered all over my bedroom door.

Within months my house was swollen, like an old golfer’s belly, with eBay detritus. In fact, I started running out of things to want. I added final items to collections, like the hundred hand-tinted linen postcards of America’s first motels.

In desperation I resorted to buying useful items. For inspiration I checked on what friends and family were buying. I even checked on my enemies — those who routinely materialized three seconds before close of auction to outbid me — and placed bids on what they wanted.

I wanted revenge. It was personal.

Here’s some advice: When you have lost all hope of ever wanting another thing, try a search of your own first name. You might discover that in Brooklyn in the late 1800s there was a tin can manufacturer whose lithography is beautiful and collectible.

“How shallow can a person be?” you may ask. “How could someone waste money when there is such need in the world?”

It is an excellent and important question, to which my response is: “Pity me. Imagine the magnitude of the emotional and spiritual void I’m trying to fill.”

There have been benefits to my time on eBay. I am now something of an expert in motion lamps. I got some good cardio-vascular exercise while watching devious creeps outbid me. And can you believe that over 200 people have left feedback telling me how much they appreciate me? 211 people, to be exact. That’s more than admire any of my peers — even my own bonny brother.

Oh, bloody hell! I just went online to fact-check, and discovered that my brother has insidiously crept up on me so that he’s only one vote behind me. Oh nooooooooooooooo! What do I do?!?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In closing I’d like to excerpt Weird Al Yankovic’s brilliant eBay parody:

I’ll buy your knick-knacks. Just check my feedback.
“A++” they all say. They love me on eBay.

I’ll buy your tchotchkes. Sell me your watch, please.
I’ll buy. I’ll buy. I’ll buy. I’ll buy. I’m highest bidder!

Junk keeps arriving in the mail from that worldwide garage sale…

I haven’t bought anything on eBay for a couple years now. I changed. It changed. As it became mainstream — a successful business — that dusty-attic feeling of discovering hidden treasure vanished. Prices went up. Automated “sniping” made it easy for people to blast you out of the water with a high bid at the last second. No need for revenge; it wasn’t personal any more.

One of the saddest moments of my life was when Dad asked me to close out his eBay account. He couldn’t get to his computer anymore because of the progression of his ALS. I’d known he was dying, but I think that’s when I first really understood.

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Here’s my very second Web video! I’m so excited.

It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of two generous strangers: the person who developed the video plug-in, and the one who offered, out of the blue, to convert my video file for me. The Internet can be a wonderful place. It’s almost like real life. Sometimes better.

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How many lives do I really need? I can’t even handle the one I’ve got.

Over the past year I’ve started to hear more about Second Life, an Internet world where lonely strangers can chat in an alley and a thousand may gather for a worldwide conference. It’s a beautiful place, with vivid sunsets, rippling water, waving palms… and I haven’t even seen what lies beyond Orientation Island.

My work requires that I keep up with screamingly fast changes in technology. I try. Really, I do. I spend probably sixteen hours a day on, or within shouting distance of, the Internet. I gasp my way down the information superhighway, running as hard as I can. It’s like the Bay-to-Breakers race. In the front are the real athletes, there to win, followed by the weekend warriors. After that are the Elvises and the guys who are naked except maybe a t-shirt that reads Ask Me About My Penis (an unnecessary question). There was that one guy with the silvered, glittery… oh, never mind.

Then come the brides, the Carmen Mirandas and the occasional W and Osama. Bringing up the rear is a cheerful handful of friends yanking an old red wagon that was full of champagne but isn’t any more. That’s where you’ll find me.

Still, I’m in the race. Not everyone can say the same.

Up by the Elvises are some of my colleagues on The DNA Files. During our meeting today, we talked about Second Life. Loretta and Sally are among those who really grasp how it works and understand its power as a communication tool. It’s exciting stuff to think about, but damned if I can get it to work. As I told them, I can’t even get my avatar functioning. She’s still half-naked and semi-bald, and all she ever does is fall off cliffs.

I shouldn’t be embarrassed. Only a year ago I’d never heard of avatars. Do you know the term’s derivation, by the way? Here’s the definition from my dictionary widget:

(Hindu) A manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher. Origin from Sanskrit avatāra: descent.

Inspired by what I heard at today’s meeting, I decided to give Second Life a second chance tonight…

I settle down at my keyboard and log on. There, right where I left her, is Dillo McMillon, my avatar. She stands hunch-shouldered from inactivity, looking like a hooker on the abandoned gray street corner in Move City.

The falsetto of Antony & the Johnsons starts playing on my iTunes…

One day I’ll grow up to be a beautiful woman. One day I’ll grow up to be a beautiful girl. But today I am … a boy.

A lot of people tell me that the avatar they create is an idealized version of themselves: younger or taller or thinner. I’ve gone the opposite route. Dillo is a gross exaggeration of my most unappealing features: a chin like Dudley Do-Right and thin slashes for lips (they don’t call me “wormlips” for nothing). What I didn’t intend was the fur on Dillo’s back or the hair falling out of her head in patches.

Now on iTunes Amy Rigby is wondering Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?

What happened to Babe and Stud? Too much KFC and Bud…

Dillo needs a little makeover. It’ll take just a few minutes. I start with a new body. I set my height at 89 percent and decide on zero percent for body thickness. I adjust the face shear control.

I’ve just finished shaping my head and am adjusting the inside corners of my eyes when blam, some guy on a Segway slams right into me… and then drives off. Hit and run in Second Life. I get knocked clear off the screen and can’t find myself again for several minutes.

Skaggs and Rice sing…

I’m on my way to where the soul never dies. My darkest night will turn to day where the soul never dies.

Lesson: Never edit your appearance while standing in the street.

I dust myself off and put on finishing touches. While there are three adjustments you can make to your body, there are 26 for hair. I adjust my breast size and, with regret, slide the breast gravity control all the way to the right. A guy named Dennis walks by, stares at me a while as my breasts go up and down, and then moves on.

I can’t figure out how to put my tattoos on. I give up after accidentally painting a sunset beach scene across my entire torso.

Hoyt Axton sings…

Work your fingers to the bone. What do you get? Bony fingers, bony fingers.

At last I’m done, and it’s taken three hours. I “save” myself and start sashaying down the street. There’s a tweeting sound as a man flies through the sky past me. I’m feelin’ good. I’m lookin’ fine.

Oh my God, I forgot to put on feet. I’m wandering around on stumps.

There, that’s better. A nice size 7.

I see from the list of the options that I can do other things — shrug, look bored, blow a kiss, cry — but I don’t know how. I try flying. I fly the way I dance: elegant and graceful while I’m in the air, a disaster upon landing.

I buzz around on a Segway and run over a rat. On purpose.

Some nerdy guy stops and stares at me for, like, three minutes. Take a picture; it lasts longer, I think. He writes bonjour. I panic: what to do? I write hi. He turns and runs away. Typical guy.

It’s Amy Rigby again…

Hey, I love you. You’re perfect. Don’t ever change. Don’t ever change.

Second Life crashes. That’s okay. I’m bored anyway.

So now, somewhere in Move City stands an avatar named Dillo, abandoned once again on a remote street corner. Is she condemned to a life of neglect, or — worse — fleeting attentions from beer-bellied young eggheads? Will her life’s highlights be the occasional stroll off a precipice or collision with a tall building?

Or is her future as glittering as a Bay-to-Breakers penis?

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