The worst thing about the makeup isn't the dirty looks, or even putting it on. Not even taking it off. Somewhere between the psychology grad students' psycho-babble and comic book geek's accusations of Joker or Crow fanaticism, is a place that makes me want to curl up and die.

The psycho-babble is probably closest to true, though. The first time I did it was to cover the bruise I got from mouthing off to Mr. Saul... dad. Don't get excited, this isn't some story of childhood abuse -- I tanj-damned deserved it. And then I hid it. Yeah, who the hell knows.

It was the same old, same old, and I just got tired of him ragging on me for being online. I don't understand how someone can go lay in the grass and stare at clouds and that's normal, but sitting in a chair and staring at data isn't. What's the difference?

Think about that.

He was in fine form, and we went straight to "freaks" and "geeks" -- those people online I talk to. Because, you know, that's not normal. They're not real. I get sunburns from a ball of flaming gas ninety-three million miles away. Yet somehow a couple of hundred miles means someone's not real.

Think about that.

Really, really, tell me what's real. Tell me what's normal. What's healthy. Like that woman who spends all day getting shit-faced and throwing up whatever she eats so she can squeeze into a cocktail dress and play hostess. Or that man that's never around and bought his eighteen year old daughter a Hello Kitty backpack for some random day he thought might be her birthday. Because that sounds so healthy and normal. I can take being shit on, really. It's when the shit tells me that I stink, is when I get pissed.

It's not all of tomorrow's yesterdays that make me cry. It's all of the one days. One day, I will be the norm. One day, we'll embrace the datasphere instead of touching or skimming it. One day, not in my lifetime, the Jokers and Crows will be accepted.



"Ordinary World" - Duran Duran
And I don't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive