Walking back from Jersey City the other night, a sign posted in the Burger King window caught my eye. I snapped a photo and posted it on Instagram and Facebook with the caption “America: We Give Up!”
People “liked” it, we made some jokes, and life carried on. Or… did it?
You see, last night I checked my Twitter account and, lo and behold, I had four new followers! The Cult of Silby was growing by leaps and bounds. Welcome to the fold, Fleur, Jeannette, Eilidh, and Gisselle. Now, I like to know who is following me—hey, if we’re like-minded, maybe I’ll follow them back!—so I clicked on each one.
What I learned rattled me to the core.
First there was Fleur Chavez’s seemingly innocent tweet of July 26:
OK, sure, who among us hasn’t had a cold slice of leftover pizza in the morning. I wasn’t overly concerned. That is, until I read Jeannette O’Neal’s July 30 tweet:
Now things were getting troubling… especially when I read Eilid Ellis’s tweet from the very same day:
But nothing could’ve prepared me for Gisselle Jordan’s daring admission on that fateful day, July 30:
Ladies and gentlemen, I beg of you, please remember: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It gives you the energy you need to “get up and go” and make it a great day. I’m beginning to think the Whopper is not such a bad option—at least you get your four food groups—but as you can see, it is a slippery slope. And sure, maybe right now the trend is limited to robot Twitter accounts whose endgame must surely be sad single men feverishly typing credit-card numbers into poorly designed pornographic websites. But we must nip this in the bud while we still can. I’m counting on you, America.
So, don’t leave us hanging. Are they part of a cult? An anything-for-breakfast cult?? Sounds interesting.
This whatever breakfast twitter stuff has mentally retarded written all over it.
So I’ll use it as a chance to ask, Do you know if Tom Hoffman is on Facebook? Frank didn’t mention him in an interview about the band, and it seems ridiculous. Tom was the second most important member of Wimp Factor. Our album would have been much more bland if Tom hadn’t rejoined us to pop some crisp drum life into the songs, don’t you think?
I recall back in the 70s my mother told me she had heard someone on TV say burgers for breaksfast are a good idea because of the protein. I even had a science teacher claim ice cream for breakfast was OK because at least you got calcium. Remember Freddie Blassie was ready to eat various items from the Sambo’s lunch/dinner menu until Andy Kaufman reminded him that it was breakfast (Freddie said he usually just ate whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, he didn’t think in terms of meal schedules.). None of this justifies Cheetos for breakfast–in fact, I don’t think consumption of Cheetos can EVER be justified!
Also “breakfast pizza” is probably not leftover cold pizza but pizza made with eggs, cheese and either bacon or sausage, maybe ham. This has been a fairly common item for quite a while now.
Caren: From clicking on their followers, my best guess is that there is endless supply of these “robot” accounts spewing out generic, semi-lifelike phrases. Did you see this article posted in the FB thread? Pretty interesting. As for their purpose, I imagine it’s lurid, but perhaps you have to interact with them to find out more.
Darkf: Tom used to be on Facebook but isn’t anymore. I am a huge fan of his as a drummer and a person and agree that he was a key element in the WFXIV sound. It looks more like the writer didn’t ask a Tom-specific question rather than Frank not mentioning him. The writer only became aware with the full-length which doesn’t list Tom as an official member.
David: Interestingly enough, I was looking for Blassie’s “Pencil Neck Geek” the other day (I don’t own it). I would eat one of those breakfast pizzas right now, and it is 3:19 as I type this.
jack Silby: I loved when the Wimps were staying at Mark Robinson’s house during the album recording, and Mark was going thru his answering machine only to discover Kim Deal from the Breeders left a message. I was like yes! let’s incorporate it. And Tom was like No No No, displaying respect for Mark and sort of Kim too. I was like fuck that, Marc Robinson totally skims his ideas from the pop world and I provided an example or two. I think it makes a great album ending.
I was out of it, I never heard of Fred Blassie until the REM song about Kaufmann. Then I saw the video of the breakfast, still unsure what happened, it was filmed poor quality?Was Andy being a jerk? I forget. I don’t know these people anyway.
Hey Jack, I’ve got a new joke:
I saw an LG ad the other day on this site. That was the brand of phone I had before iPhone. For about 5 minutes I longed for the pre-Smartphone days. That’s all my attention span would allow.
It doesn’t have the all-out cutesyness of a Stephen Wright joke, but I think iit’s n the same vein. It should get a fair amount of likes, I mean laughs, don’t you think?
This would do great in a college town. If I didn’t know my times tables, I would not have passed the captcha. Go Rutgers Math degree!
Added the “captcha” recently when there was a massive wave of comment spam. Has slowed it significantly but they sneak through. Envisioning a warehouse of pennies-per-hour employees mindlessly typing in captchas.
Spam is good for breakfast too.