Colleagues, Acquaintances Suspect Mark Zuckerberg Is Masked Vigilante

[A tribute to the Onion.]

Palo Alto – Mayor Patrick Burt reiterated his standing order for the immediate arrest of the local masked vigilante known popularly as "the Faceless." Some see this as an election-time political move to better position himself to win the hardliner vote.

Since 2004, the Faceless, has been fighting crime on the streets of the once anarchic Palo Alto to the vexation of elected officials. All attempts to enforce arrest the vigilante have been unsuccessful for close to six years.  Though no public accusations have been made, many residents believe that the Faceless is none other than the CEO and founder of Facebook, multi-millionaire playboy Mark Zuckerberg.

To residents of Palo Alto, the city was, until quite recently, a den of fear and violence.  By day, the city was just another dirty American urban area filled with abandoned and burned-out shells of buildings and suffering from a weak government's inability to maintain law and order.  At night, Palo Alto was a war zone.  The under-equipped, woefully under-staffed Palo Alto police force used to have the highest mortality rate in the country.  Fire fights, arson, car jacking, rape, murder and burglary were all common up until six years ago.

In 2004, residents reported seeing a man who "moved like a ninja and swore like a pirate," dressed in a white, featureless outfit, intervening in crimes as they took place.  Arrests skyrocketed as bludgeoned would-be offenders were found on the steps of the police station bound and gagged with incriminating evidence on their persons.  The appearance of the vigilante, who local papers christened the Faceless, coincided with Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg's relocation to Palo Alto.

"He loves Palo Alto, no matter how much of a dump and a haven to miscreants it is," fellow founder and share holder, Dustin Masowitz said.  "When we first moved here, we saw this guy get mugged right outside our house.  He took it really badly and wouldn’t stop muttering about somebody who raised him getting shot and how it was all his fault."  Mr. Masowitz seemed to lose himself in silent contemplation for a moment and then continued, "But he couldn't be the Faceless.  I mean, you saw The Social Network.  He's a sociopath. I know the guy."

Indeed a great deal of public disgust has been directed at Mr. Zuckerberg in the wake of the blockbuster The Social Network, which critics are calling a "defining film" of the millennial generation.  Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer said, "You could tell it really hurt him, to be villainized like that."

"But, you know, it's funny," said Sandberg, "I was walking by his office late one night a few years ago and I thought I heard him say on the phone, 'Mr. Mezrich, I want you to write a book.'  After that movie came out I saw him on the street looking at one of the posters and I could have sworn I heard him say something like, 'This is my burden' and then he started quoting The Iliad." She added, "He does that, sometimes."

Acquaintances of Mr. Zuckerberg have reported similar strange incidents and capricious behavior.  Many say he is a skilled martial artist and frequently makes pilgrimages to Japan, China and Tibet to receive training, but he always publicly dismisses these excursions as business trips.  Though his affairs with super models and actresses are famous, Mr. Maskovitz said he has often heard Mr. Zuckerberg longingly whispering "Diaspora," the name of a local super-villainess.

Eduardo Saverin, another of Facebook's co-founders, said in an interview that he believes he that Mr. Zuckerberg never sleeps, though "He naps through board meetings, he never seems to go home except when he's throwing some party."

Friends have said that as much as Mr. Zuckerberg is dedicated to Facebook, he has a passionate, though muted obsession with justice.  His library is filled with Greek and Latin classics, in addition to comic books, Sir Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe and social philosophy.

Most peculiar of all is Mr. Zuckerberg's tendency to disappear suddenly when the ":(" beacon flashes in the sky.

"I was sitting in his office late talking to him about the ConnectU lawsuit," Mr. Saverin said, "and I looked away for a moment.  When I looked back he was gone.  The window was open, but his office is ten stories up…"

The beacon,  popularly known as "the frowny face," is mounted on the Palo Alto police station.  Chief of police Dennis Burns, who has often been accused of being lax in his efforts to arrest the vigilante, has refused to comment on the Faceless or the beacon.

Attempts to reach Mr. Zuckerberg for an interview were unsuccessful. This reporter went to the Zuckerberg mansion, a sprawling, gaudy estate, and was told by Zuckerberg's English butler that the owner was at a tennis tournament. After leaving the grounds, night fell and the "frowny face" could be seen against the cloudy sky. This reporter saw a blurry, faceless figure leap across the rooftops, going toward the city.

Tribute to Chuck Palahniuk

To Chuck Palahniuk:

And IB muttered, "This city..."

"I came back for the soil," DB said. She returned shortly after the flood waters that followed Hurricane Katrina finally receded. Most of St. Bernard Parish has been a sugar plantations for centuries up until very recently. It's rich, sweet soil for gardening.

"It's home," said OH. "There's a lot of history in this area. New Orleans is the fulcrum of the country... The city has to be here."

"You'll meet the nicest people you'll ever know in this city," JH said. "Everywhere you go, there'll be someone with food."

"My cousin was by the levee in the woods when it happened," DB said. "He said he heard a sound like a bomb going off and then everything went quiet. And then he saw deer, squirrels, birds, all these animals, every animal in the forest started running past him. The entire forest was in a stampede to get out of there."

VG: "The first time the fire department realized something was wrong, a friend of mine was in the room with the New Orleans chief. He got a call from some guys who said, -- There are all these fires on the north shore. -- Well, why aren't you putting them out? -- We can't get to them. -- Why can't you get to them? -- Because of all the water in the streets. And then the chief yelled, 'Fuck! The levees broke! It's the only explanation...'"

"You know, I wouldn't be surprised if they blew up the levees for Betsy," said LD. "But for Katrina the whole city was destroyed. Nobody got anything out of that."

"I have a friend in the National Guard," said JWB, a St. Bernard Parish resident, "And he told me, swear to god, that the year before Katrina he was ordered to go out to the levees and bury dynamite. They didn't blow it up then. But they did for Katrina."

"No matter what you heard, saw, or read about Katrina, it was much worse than that," KM said.

DB has gardened is her life. From seeds, scraps, and branches DB has coaxed out an entire perennial paradise. All of the plants have a purpose, though -- "Butterflies like pizzas and hummingbirds like ice cream cones," DB says, explaining the shapes of the flowers in her garden.

Behind his gutted, rotting house, JY keeps chickens. He and his wife bring their kids out to see chickens several times a week, to feed and water them. It turns out, he discovered, that the city has a limit on how many animals a person can have on the property: four. He culled the flock down from a dozen to the city's prescribed limit.

VG: (paraphrased) Actually, CNN was one of the first news agencies to report the levees breaking. X was in a community center with her cameraman. Suddenly the councilwoman from the Ninth Ward rushed inside and yelled, 'Please, come quick! People are dying!' So X and her camera man followed the councilwoman up to the Claiborne bridge, I think. All the electricity in the city was out so it was pitch black and they couldn't get any visual footage, but they could hear it. Standing on the bridge, surrounded by a pitch black, muggy night the reporters and councilwoman could hear the sound of rushing water, a deluge, and the screams of thousands.

"I was at a bar the other night and this guy sitting next to me asked me where I was from," AO said, "And when I said I was here for a year with AmeriCorps he said, 'Get out now. Because if you don't, you'll never leave.'"

"This town doesn't like to drink," JC said, "it likes to be drunk." But, "All the things that are great about this city are starting to go away. I mean, some policemen are starting to bust you for drinking on the streets... They're getting after bars because their bands for being too loud."

"I don't like New Orleans, actually," admits JY. JY received a great deal of money from Road Home, but could only use it to elevate the house. There are specialized services in New Orleans for elevating houses. JY told the contractor to raise the house as far as he could with the  tens of thousands of dollars he received from Road Home. This turned out to be nine feet. None of the money could be used to build anything else, even a staircase. The only way to get into the gutted house, now, is with a ladder.

JY laughed and explained that he tells his friends they can store things in his house if they want to. No one can get in it, not without a ladder. It's the safest place to store things.

Author of Showdown in Desire, Orissa Arend, spoke at Fair Grinds Coffee. She described a shootout between the New Orleans Police department and the local chapter of the Black Panthers. It appears, from witness reports, that the police issued no warning and, without provocation, shot at the house for a half hour before the Black Panthers inside were allowed to surrender and leave the building. Miraculously, no one was hurt or killed. One Panther said he spoke to a black officer at the scene. They echoed one another's words, "Sorry, but I'm on this side." And then the started talking about the Saints.

"... I don't think I've ever been in a place full of happier people than when Drew Brees paraded as king of Bacchus one week after the Saints won the Super Bowl," said SD. "The happiness of the crowds that night was unbelievable, and I'm so glad I was able to be a part of such a great celebration--even if I didn't get one of the mini footballs Drew was throwing from the float."

"I get the impression that people came here to have a parade and a city got in their way," NF said.

"The great thing about this place is you can be anything. You can do anything," JC said. "I could decide to be an astronaut tomorrow and I could do it. I've never wanted to, but I could."

Mania

Fair Warning: Sexual and scatological content. I originally called this "Shit Story" and wrote it after reading a lot of Charles Bukowski, so it's a lot more visceral than what I usually write.

To Charles Bukowski and Sarah Kane


"I haven't shat or pissed in seven years," she tells him, negotiating each word around the Marlboro.

Because he doesn't know what else to say, Isaiah asks, "Haven't you seen a doctor about that?"

"Of course." Her words fall out white clouds against an off-white carpet and light cream plaster walls. The air is a stinking thick haze of tobacco smoke. There are only a handful of boxes next to them; they sit on the only pieces of furniture he can see, two metal folding chairs. The room is bare.

"If you don't shit or piss for a week the body poisons itself -- drowns in its own filth," she says. "The doctors said there was nothing wrong with me. One or two actually went as far as to say I was lying. But I haven't defecated or urinated for about the last quarter of my life."

"That must be uncomfortable," Isaiah says, his desire to fuck her quickly subsiding with this new bit of information, thus he had no reason to stay. He'd made his delivery -- the last that evening -- a thirty-six pack of downy toilet paper, to one Beatrice Smith who, despite his usual gamut of old ladies and stay-at-home moms, turned out to be an attractive young woman, shorts tight enough to count her change at a glance and a tight white T-shirt thin enough to see the absence of a bra. Her hair was tied back in a red bandana. When she turned to get him the money and a drink he decided she had the best ass he'd seen in months. So they sat down for drinks, he a beer and she a Long Island iced tea. Then she told him she hadn't shat in seven years.

Kill the beer and go, he thinks. Bitch is crazy. Still. "So, why order the largest and most expensive package of toilet paper?" he asks indicating the behemoth sitting next to him.

She shrugs. "Entertaining guests. I've made a rule, you see. Once I've run through three of these I move. That usually takes about a year of entertaining guests, boyfriends and whoever else walks in."

"So," Isaiah says, "you have a certain threshold of shit you take before you move."

"Exactly."

The wind blows, the apartment groans and the rain slaps the window at the termination of freezing, forming a sliding layer of ice on the glass. It looks like the whole world is melting.

"Want another drink?" Beatrice asks.

"Yeah," Isaiah says before he realizes he's handing her his empty. He calls to her after she disappears into the kitchen. "So, how long have you been doing the one-year-and-then-move thing?"

"Seven years."

"Since your problems started?"

"Since my problems started?" she says and it sounds like she's telling the punchline of a dirty joke. "My problems started a long time before that."

She reemerges from the kitchen, hands him his beer, sits down and gets to work on a martini. "What about you?" she asks. "How'd you end up with this shit job? Having to deliver toilet paper at four in the morning to weirdos and ass holes."

"It's not so bad when the weather isn't a mother fucker," he says. He considers hammering the beer and excusing himself; it's a good rule to keep the subject as far away from himself as possible.

She nods and lights another cigarette. "I'm surprised anyone does deliveries in this weather."

"Somebody's gotta do it. Gotta get those batteries, bottles of water, beer, groceries, nails, light bulbs or whatever to all the people too lazy to get it themselves. I nearly skidded off the road four times getting here."

She takes a drag of her cigarette. "You think I'm lazy?"

Mistake. "I didn't mean you. I just meant…"

"No," she says smoke. "You meant people are lazy. All of them. We're people too. We'd all like it if we had everything handed over right now."

"Yeah," he says. She takes a drag. They listen to the rain break. That wasn't what he meant, but better she think that than whatever it was he did believe. "That's what I meant."

She eats one of the green olives in two tiny bites, sucking off the gin and vermouth with full lips. It's arousing and Isaiah suddenly remembers his intended purpose. He hasn't gotten laid in a month and it was agony in his groin. So, she's full of shit. Most people are. He glances at her thighs, crossed, shaved, perfect, smooth.

The building groans.

"You nearly died three times driving here?" she asks.

"Yeah." He crosses his legs. "I've never seen a storm like this. The whole world's been turned to ice."

She nods, drags. "I've seen worse."

"That's rough."

"That's life. Need to use the bathroom?"

"No." He kills the beer. "You didn't bring very much with you?"

"Booze, clothes, books, games. I don't need anything else. I can fit everything I own in my car."

"I haven't moved in a long time."

"I guess so. I have wanderlust. Drink?"

"Sure."

He follows her to kitchen and sees a well stocked bar on the counter. Bombay Sapphire, Johnny Walker Black, Grey Goose and all the bottom shelves. "You're a bartender?"

"It's the one profession, besides prostitution, that you can find a job anywhere. Johnny?"

"Yes." While she pours, he talks. "I just have the odd jobs. Deliverer, chef, I worked at Toys R Us before I got this job. Manager position."

"What's the strangest thing you've ever delivered?"

She turns and pushes a glass into his hands. He tries hard to consider as Beatrice leans against the counter, close to him, pulling her shirt tighter.

"Weirdest thing? Well, this is pretty strange. Toilet paper to a woman who doesn't shit." He laughs. She doesn't. He clears his throat and thinks. "The weirdest thing. Probably the time I had to deliver for a party. At least, I think it was a party. This woman ordered three cases of beer, a dozen tubs of ice cream and a lot of mixed candy. When I pulled up to the drive, out of town in the country, she had three little kids, no older than ten. She paid me and gave me a twenty dollar tip. Didn't look like anyone was coming to a party. The kids were screaming and the ice cream was melting as she paid me. That was weird."

Beatrice stares at him, sips her drink and he watches the outline of her nipples. "Do you want to stay the night?" she asks.

"Well," Isaiah says without thinking and realizes he has nothing to say.

She moves closer to him, wraps a hand around his waist and presses her crotch against his. He sits down his drink on the counter, wraps his arms around her and imagines kissing her, but doesn't. He tries, but doesn't. The building creeks.

"I want to fuck you," he says.

"I want to fuck you," she repeats.

She pulls him to her bedroom and undresses them both. They lie on her bare mattress. He wraps around her; she is so small in his arms and frame. The window rattles and the room stinks of smoke, but neither moves, neither does anything. It is not sexual, Isaiah realizes. He has no desire; he is too tired for that. It just is.

"I want to fuck you," he says.

"Then why don't you?" she asks. He cannot see her face.

"Because it's never enough. You know, I had a nympho girlfriend once. We had sex four times a day and we hated each other. It's just too hard to break things off with someone who's the solution to your own desire."

Between her ass cheeks his penis is limp.

"All my boyfriends I've ever had called me worthless," Beatrice said. "I tried to fix my life and discovered that it wasn't worth the effort."

"It's never enough," he says.

"I smoke until I'm sick."

"Keep trying to leave and never get anywhere."

"The shit builds up until I can't take it."

"Everyday I just wish I were someone else, somewhere else, but I wake up in the same bed."

"Black out dreams are the best."

"It's never enough. Just to fuck."

"I'd love to just have sex and sleep and that's it."

"I'd love to just fuck and sleep and that's it."

They wake up the next morning and the window is royal purple stained glass. The whole world is frozen. Both are awake, but neither moves. She does not light a cigarette. He's limp. They look at each other. They see one another's breath and feel the other's warmth and fall asleep again.

Premise

It's only fair to admit that everyone warned me it was a bad idea to spend the week alone at the Body House.  But I have a deadline, I told them.  You're spending the week at a secluded, New England mansion where a family was murdered, among other things, and it's rumored to be haunted, they said.  They said, This is not the best way to meet a deadline.  You've never met my editor, I told them.

At first I was able to get a lot of work done and the house was quiet and peaceful.  It is my understanding that this is the way of things.  On the second day, though, on my walk through the woods I saw an apparition of a hanged man, eyes bulging, tongue lolling, swinging in the trail in front of me.  That was inconvenient.  I shrugged and decided that I'd have to skip the morning walks from now on.  It was more time to write, anyway.

The problem was I was out of ideas.  The story wasn't going anywhere.  For five months solid I'd been hammering out chapters about the Smith family tragedy.  They were losing the family farm, John was an alcoholic, Shawna was seized by wanderlust, Lydia was estranged, and Simon sat at the window all day drinking chamomile tea speaking to no one.  It's boring, they told me.  But I knew better.  Even so, the sixth month of the endeavor came and I hit a wall when Shawna asked for a divorce and John sat at the kitchen table speechless.  That's what I couldn't get past.  That was the trouble, the divorce.

That and the blood curdling screams from the basement that started at 10:37 exactly every night and lasted until dawn.  On the fourth day I improvised ear plugs from Q-tips, but that only helped so much.  I've never been a sound sleeper.

On the third day, no progress made, I started reading some old journals that the last occupant had left behind.  It all started out very normal, all about the life of a secluded heiress in New England.  The longer I read, though, the more intelligible the writing became and it was frequently interrupted by archaic symbols and abstract drawings of death and destruction.  Some of it was written in blood.  The diarist wrote of nightmares that haunted her through the day, of a Dark one that feeds on pain and anguish that would consume the world.  I wasn't impressed.  Clearly a wanna-be hack or cartoonist.  No Anne Frank's diary to be found in that house.

I made good progress on the fourth day.  John spoke up and told Shawna to leave and then went on a binge.  Lydia, the prodigal, finally revealed that while she was away in Europe she became romantically involved with a woman, had a breakdown due to her Christian upbringing, and returned home out of an act of desperation.  Simon was still sitting at the window with his tea, but you couldn't have everything.

I was feeling pretty good about myself and felt the urge to masturbate.  Just then, though, the door to the study creaked open and in the gloom of the cellar I saw two blood red eyes staring at me.  There were things watching me all over the house, I realized.  I've never been an exhibitionist and masturbation is really a private act so I just decided to call it an early night.

On the fifth night the screaming stopped.  This was a welcome relief for all of five minutes until I heard someone tramping, ostentatiously up the stairs.  A moment later a slender woman as pale as death flung open my door.  She then proceeded, in a shrill, scratchy voice to tell me how her twin brother had raped her and then locked her in the basement, telling everyone that she was mad and then, after years of seclusion and psychological torture, he killed her.

I listened as best I could.  After you get published, people do this to you all the time.  They tell you sob stories hoping you'll write about it so they can brag to their friends that such and scuh book was based on them.  Ridiculous.  Anyway, the pale girls' story wasn't worth the lost sleep.  No one believes stories like that because that's not life.

On the sixth and last day I was able to finish the draft despite untenable circumstances.  Just after I started working, blood began to drip from the walls.  It started as a trickle and then a steady stream.  It wasn't long before the house was flooded and I had to use the desk as a work space and ad hoc life boat.  I kept telling myself I didn't deserve this and powered through.

The family had called an emotional armistice in order to get through the business of selling the farm.  In cleaning out all the family possessions they slowly began to remember good times, but it wasn't enough to heal old wounds.  In the final chapter, the family is staying in the empty house one last night when an electrical fire starts.  They all get out safely, and the story ends with all the family watching their home and financial security burn to cinders.

It was a day early, but I decided that staying another night at the Body House would just mean another night of lost sleep so I drove back to Iowa.  My editor, when she got the novel, sent me a dubious email.  When I asked her for clarification she said it was boring and I told her she could fuck herself.

A week passed and the bills came.  My bag was empty and after some desperate pleading I got my editor to talk to me again.  How do you feel about horror? I asked her.  She said that I should stay out of her personal life.  I told her I was bored and angry and frustrated and haunted.  I told her how a tornado took my house when I was sixteen, every woman I've ever dated was named Sarah, I lived as a woman for a year, I declared bankruptcy once, I am a rock-paper-scissors international champion, and how could life be so unbelievable?

She asked, Have you ever considered writing nonficiton?