Microserfs

It seems everybody's trying to find a word that expresses mare bigness than the mere word "supermodel"-hyper model-gigamodel-negamodel. Michael suggested that

our inability to come up with a word bigger than supermodel reflects our inability to deal with the crushing weight of history we've created for ourselves as a species.

We got off work early (7:00) to shop, but we all came back in around 10:00 and started working again, until around 1:00. Slaves, or what?

Around midnight, December 25, Susan grunted, "Uhhh, Merry Christmas." We all reciprocated, and then went back to work.

Christmas Day, 1993

We sat inside and opened prezzies over coffee. Outside it was Richie Cu

But where is everybody's family? Why isn't everybody with their families! Nobody went home. Bug still can't face his parents in Idaho; Susan either (her mother is in Schaumberg, Illinois; her father is in Irvine, down south); Karla-not likely. Only Anatole went to visit his parents, and then only because they're three hours north in Santa Rosa.

Anyway, we're all so broke this year that we agreed not to buy anything expensive for anyone, and it was fun. Gag gifts. Christmas really brings out the geek in tech people:

• From Todd to Bug: a brown Wackenhut security baseball cap

• From Karla to me: the IBM PC version of The $100,000 Pyramid

• From me to Karla: a Hewlett-Packard calculator with jewels for buttons

• From Ethan to all of us: CandyCaller toy cellular phone filled with candies

• From Bug in all of our stockings: Dream Whip, nondairy whip topping

• From me to Karla: a Play-Doh fun factory insect-shaped insect extruding device ("Look-softer, less crumbly Play-Doh," she squealed.)

• From various people to various people: Ren & Stimpy screen-savers ("Screensavers are the macrame of the '90s," Susan boldly exclaimed.)

• From Susan to all of us: HANDMADE Martha-Stewart-y gift baskets, which made us all feel cheap. Michael asked her outright: "Susan, where did you find the discretionary time to assemble these?" She looked guilty, and then told Michael to piss off, and it was fu

For some reason, everyone gave Susan premoistened towelette-related products. It's one of those jokes that went out of control the way sometimes things go out of control for no obvious reason. A spontaneous nonlinear event. She received:

• 124 klear screen™ premoistened towelettes, "with love from Dan and Karla" (I also mailed Abe a bottle of Spray-N-Clean so he can remove the nasal encrustations on his Mac screens)

• Celeste® sam-com 3205 premoistened towelettes specifically targeted for consumer electronics mouthpieces- from Ethan. ("'Cleans and freshens communications

equipment.'' I stole a wad of them from business class on United last year.")

• "Pocket Wetty" brand premoistened towelettes from Japan, made by Wakodo KK. (¥ 145, thank you, Anatole.)

Everybody gave Mom a rock for Christmas and she said they were the best presents she's ever had. Everybody tried to give her a really good rock. It's so weird-everyone genuinely tried to find a cool rock.

Todd made a joke about Charlie Brown trick-or-treating and getting a rock in his bag, and saying, "I got a rock," but Mom didn't catch the media reference.

Needless to say, there was much merchandise from Fry's:

• From me to Dad: a wall calendar with pictures of different model train sets for every month

• From Abe to Susan: Copy of Quicken, the oddly religious personal/financial software program that has no option for roommates or other non-Cold War era sex/space-sharing alliances.

• From Susan to Todd: SIMMs (Macintosh memory modules: Single Inline Memory Modules)

• From everyone to everyone: Video and audio cables

• From Michael to Dad: an old-fashioned red Craftsman tool chest

• From Santa to all of us in our stockings: diet Cokes, Hostess products, blank video tapes, and batteries!

Of course: minivan-loads of Star Trekiana-

• three British import CDs of William Shatner karaokeing "Mr. Tamborine Man" (famous career mistake #487) as well as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

• Starlog magazine subscriptions

• bootleg galley proofs of the upcoming Gene Rodenberry biography

• Next Generation mouse pads

• photo glossies of Data, Riker, Dea

• a plastic Starship Enterprise Control Center as well as a Franklin Mint Starship Enterprise replica

• a Deep Space Nine yo-yo, but no one has really clicked into Deep Space Nine yet, so it wasn't popular and sat on the coffee table

Overheard: "It got rated four-and-a-half mice by MacUser!"

Mom made a turkey for di

In the background the TV set was playing a Wheel of Fortune rerun, and was making a ding-ding-ding sound. Mom asked, "What's that noise," and Susan said, "Someone just bought a vowel."

Then the BIG surprise was that ABE appeared! Like something from a Disney movie, right in the middle of di

After di

I almost made Dad a cardboard sign saying, "will manage for food" but then I felt like a bad, bad son, and then, like clockwork, I got to feeling depressed for fifty something's, imagining them standing at the corner of El Camino Real and Rengstorff Avenue holding up such a sign. And I can't believe Michael got Dad a nice tool kit for Christmas. How fucking thoughtful.

SUNDAY

December 26,1993

All family'ed out.

Karla and I drove down the hill to Syntex, birthplace of the birth control pill, a little bit below Mom and Dad's house, down on Hillview Avenue-a 1970s Utopian, Andromeda Strainishly empty tech complex. We sat in the grass amphitheater by the leafless birch trees, looked at the sculptures from the sculpture garden, walked over the walkways and pretended we were Susan Dey and Bobby Sherman on a date, falling through a dark cultural warp, and landing inside the technological dream that underwrote the free-wheelin', swingfest TV-lifestyle of that era.

Syntex was the first corporation to invent the "workplace as campus." Before California high-tech parks, the most a corporation ever did for an employee was maybe supply a house, maybe a car, maybe a doctor, and maybe a place to buy groceries. Begi