MY SEKRIT NIGHT AT THE GOOGLE PARTY

I realize we are right in the middle of ZOMBIE IDOL and that it’s time to open the Zombay des Refusés.

But first I wanted to tell a little personal story and give you a little glimpse into the Joys of Knowing Me.

Never in my life have I gotten so many birthday well-wishes as I did yesterday. Thank you all! As it turned out . . . my birthday turned out to be quite interesting.

About three weeks ago, my friend Winchester Grey sent me a note. Winchester Grey is one of these sly “take over the world” types, a general genius who whistled through a math degree at Oxford, went on to get an acting degree from one of the top drama schools in England, develops games, studies multiple foreign languages for fun, and was employed as a computer wizard for Several Extremely Large Corporations . . . before he was swept up by the juggernaut that is Google . . . where he, to the best of my knowledge, runs the internet. Winchester is one of those people who . . . if you wanted to understand the basic physics of the Millennium Falcon, could not only tell you . . . but could probably build you a small operational model COMPLETE WITH A TINY HAN SOLO INSIDE.



Winchester at home.

About three weeks ago, Winchester sent me a note that said: “Hey! Google is having a super-secret black tie affair to launch a new product. Cannot give details but will be massive. It’s on February 16th. Please say you will come with me. Also, TELL NO ONE. VERY SECRET. WILL BE MAJOR MEDIA COVERAGE THE NEXT DAY.”

I was sitting next to Scott Westerfeld when I got this note, and I immediately turned my computer toward him and said, “LOOK! SEKRITS! TELL NO ONE!” Because when you find out a tantalizing bit of information like that, you MUST tell someone. Scott is pretty much the most trustworthy person you could want, and entrusting the sekrit to him would be much safer than, say, locking it inside of Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe.

Later that night, Justine Larbalestier (who is married to Scott, in case you didn’t know) caught me on IM. The conversation went something like this:

Justine: I HAVE A SEKRIT FOR YOU.

So I thought, “Cool! It’s sekrit day!”

Me: Tell!

Justine: I won’t tell you until you tell me your sekrit.

Me: I have no sekrit. *

Because I was SURE Scott hadn’t told her.

Justine: YOU DO! TELL ME!

Me: No, you are mistaken.

Justine: You told me before you had one.

Had I? Did I? I didn't think I had . . .

Me: No I didn't.

Justine: YOU DID!

Well, clearly she knew something. Maybe Scott had told her? Or maybe he'd told her just enough to get her hooked.

Me: No I really, really don't . . .

Justine: You lie. You are a liar. A lying liar. I know you have one. And I have one. And I am not going to tell you mine until you tell me yours and mine is SO GOOD.

Me: FINE. OKAY. HERE IT IS BUT TELL NO ONE.

Telling Justine a secret is not quite as safe as telling Scott a secret. This is not because Justine is a not a good secret-keeper per se, but more because she is more likely to forget about the part of the secret in which you explained that the secret was a secret.

But I told her anyway, and she said, “HA! I didn’t know anything about a sekrit! Scott told me nothing! I TRICKED YOU! I am the winner of ALL THINGS!”

So, in about four hours, I had managed to tell TWO people Winchester’s big sekrit. And that promptly went up to three, because I then told Oscar Gingersnort, owner of the London Office.

I wrote back to Winchester, saying, “I would love to, but alas. That is my birthday, and Oscar Gingersnort, your fellow countryman, is coming over to help me celebrate.” Because he was. That was the extent of my birthday planning. After that, my only idea was to watch Law and Order and eat frosting out of the container with a spoon.

And Winchester said, “Oh, that is really too bad, but I will see what I can do.”

I didn’t hear anything else about it for a week, so I went about my business with the planning of Law and Order/frosting/spoon scenario . . . when Winchester sent me a forwarded note from his friend at work, saying that his girlfriend was unable to attend the event, so there was one more pass. We could go!

Every few days, Winchester would dazzle me with some little detail about the Google party. He could never say what it was for, or where it was . . . we would just get a hint of its majesty. The only info we were allowed to have was that tuxedos were appropriate (for the guys), I had to be at his house at 5:15, and that Google was sending a car service. The rest was totally shrouded in mystery.

Oscar and I speculated a LOT on the nature of the Google announcement. By the time we showed up at his house yesterday, we were fit to burst. But Winchester was all, “There is a reason we have embargos . . . I can say nothing . . . but all will be known at 6 PM, then I will be free to talk.”

We got into the car, and even the driver was very hush-hush. As I went, Justine sent me a “happy birthday” text. I knew that she and Scott were in all weekend because Scott was violently ill.

We ended up in downtown Manhattan, and the car finally came to a stop in front of a restaurant that I knew from Scott and Justine as being one of the best in New York and one of their absolutely favorites. It’s called WD-50. They keep a menu from WD-50 on their refrigerator as a sign of their affection for it.

The restaurant was quite small and looked kind of empty, but Winchester said that Google had taken the downstairs. We just had to wait for his friend from work to show up so that we could get the other invite and go inside. I was busily reading the menu and getting myself worked up into seventeen shades of frenzy.

“Let’s walk around the block to keep warm,” Winchester said. Which was a good idea, because it was bitter cold. Being the good friend that I am, I was living for the moment when we got inside and I could text Justine back and say, “Not ONLY am I going to the super-cool Google event tonight, it’s at WD-50! Burn! Enjoy the broth and crackers!”

Finally, Winchester’s friend sent a message, and we hurried over and opened the door.

And there were Scott and Justine. All dressed up. Scott, like the other guys, was in a tux.

And at first, my brain said, “Oh, Winchester invited them too!”

And then, two seconds later, my brain said, “There is no Google party, Maureen. There IS NO GOOGLE PARTY.”

And then they all started to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

Once at the table, I began to unravel the scheme . . . all of the cunning that had gone into making me think there was a Google party. They revealed that they had all been exchanging e-mails for WEEKS, enjoying my dim-witted responses and my eager anticipation of “the big new Google product.” Even the fact that Scott was sitting next to me when I got the note, the needling over IM . . . it was all part of the general gaslighting of me. They had tracked EXACTLY how long it took me to tell someone the sekrit. It was something like two minutes.

We had one of the most amazing dinners I have ever had . . . a tasting menu that went on for hours, with delicious wine and champagne. And I was with Scott, Justine, Winchester, and Oscar . . . so I was having the best time a person could ever want to have. I even have some pictures of the experience.



Scott and Justine, smugly going over the details of their trickery.




Not frosting from a jar, but almost as good.

So, thank you EVERYONE. Thanks to Scott and Justine and Winchester and Oscar . . . and to all of YOU for writing in! You guys all made it the best birthday on record!

Now . . . we return to ZOMBIE IDOL. Starting tomorrow, I will be posting some unseen highlights of last week’s zombie collection! Every day, right up until the deadline, there will be new zombies!

And keep getting those entries in! YOU STILL HAVE UNTIL THURSDAY!


(Also, Scott and Justine? And Winchester? Watch your back. Because my memory is long and my patience unflagging.)




* There is one completely inevitable comment on this post that SOMEONE is going to feel compelled to make. In the interests of providing a complete blogging service, I have gone ahead and written the comment so that this person (or these persons) can simply copy and paste. You’re welcome!

COPY BELOW:

mj, don’t u know how to spell secret? You kept spelling it sekrit. How can you be a riter and not know how to spel secret? u are dumb. I cant beleve anyone would publish u if u don’t know that everyone knows that.

I’M ALL ABOUT YOU, AS SOON AS I AM DONE TALKING

Do you ever feel kind of . . . unspooled? You know . . . slightly less than together because you are moving very quickly?

You may not know what I mean, because I’ve read your comments and e-mails, and you guys seem pretty together.

In fact, I think today I’m just going to pay tribute to YOU, the people who leave comments. The unsung heroes of the blogging world. Besides, I have to tell you which commenter is getting the Random Book!

I’ll do all of that just as soon as I finish rambling about myself. Because right now I feel like I’m about six places at once. I’m supposed to be leaving for the UK to go into seclusion in the London Office to finish Suite Scarlett, but I am far from being packed or prepared. There are a number of factors involved. I’ve been busy working, for a start—on Scarlett, and on some other secret things I can’t talk about just yet. My stuff is pretty much everywhere.

Also, I keep stepping on glass.

See, I had this really nice jug that my friend gave me when she moved. It was a special jug, a really fancy handmade one by some amazing artist. I’ve had this jug for two years, sitting on top of a cabinet in my bedroom. The other night, when I went blundering in around two in the morning to get something out of said cabinet, the jug decided it had had enough of its perch and life in general and it dove to the ground. It shattered into approximately eleventy billion pieces, which was nice both for my downstairs neighbors, and for me.

I have a white shag rug in my bedroom, and despite the hour of vacuuming . . . I can’t get all the glass out of it. I find glass. With my feet. I should just call them my “glassfinders” now.

So I keep stepping on glass (this should not be confused with Libba Bray's glass eye) . . . and I also keep forgetting to buy Band Aids when I’m out, so I keep having to wrap my feet in pieces of surgical gauze. I don’t know why I have surgical gauze. I just do.

Also, I skinned my knee. I can’t tell you how. It’s a secret.

Anyway, let’s look at YOUR COMMENTS.

I don’t know why I keep making up these contests where I have to choose things—because you guys always send and write good stuff, so I sit there for hours chewing on my mousepad, trying to pick a winner. Just look at all these good ones I had to choose from:

Totally off topic but, IKEA HOSTEL! 
The web adress says it all. WE NEVER HAVE TO LEAVE!

There is NOTHING off topic about IKEA! I love IKEA! That’s why I keep talking about it. The fact that there is an IKEA you can sleep over at is only going to fuel my desire to go on an IKEA world tour. Cranberry mouse! Round beds! IKEA bathrobes! The Holmenskollen ski jump? Why am I not there already?

jaimie said...
Next time you see Scott Westerfield(sp)try to make him wear a Yoda costume to the next events.

I saw Scott today and I passed this message along. I don’t know what will come of it, but my part is done. I should mention that we had lunch at GOOGLE! Home of The Internets! My friend Winchester Grey showed us around. They have everything at Google! They have all of these amazing restaurants for free, a game room with an air hockey table, massage chairs in the halls, and scooters you can use to scoot down the long hallways.

Remind me again why I’m not a computer engineer?

Oh right. Because I thought Linux was a Peanuts character. And I never did my math homework in high school. Never. Not once. (Except on the bus or in homeroom.) But! I did develop this great trick to hide this fact! Whenever sister would try to get volunteers to go to the board to show the work they had done the night before, I would immediately volunteer. Very, very assertively.

“But why?” you ask. “If you hadn’t done it?”

Because I would then turn and say, “Suzanne and I will do it, Sister.”

This was not how things were done. It was not a partner exercise. But for whatever reason, maybe boredom, she usually allow it. And I would drag my friend Suzanne up to the board. And she ALWAYS did her homework. The entire trick is to expose yourself! Volunteer first! Don’t try to hide it! Bring a friend who knows the answers!

Every once in a while this would backfire kind of spectacularly and she’d throw me a curve ball and make me go to the board and solve the problem on the fly while everyone else would just copy it out of their notebooks. But I like to think that this improved my ability to think quickly under pressure.

I was rambling again, wasn’t I?

Anyway, about Google . . . the creepy part is that they have all these long memos on debugging and testing code in the stalls of the women’s room. They make you work hard there to get all the free food and the scooters. They even make you work while you pee.

Here is a picture of Free Monkey in the lobby.



GOOGLE THIS MONKEY

tobias said...
a quick note: giving something away at random to whoever leaves the best comment is contradictory.
If you would give it away at random it wouldn't matter how good the comment is.

Tobias, I know that English isn’t even your first language. You are Dutch. So it is a little extra embarrassing that you should point this out. Please do not mention this to FREE MONKEY when he comes to visit you in The Netherlands on part two of the FREE MONKEY WORLD TOUR.

agustina said...
Hello, or hola as we say in my country. First Maureen i gotta tell you I love your blog, it´s just hilarious, and I love you, you´re the projection of who I wanna be in a couple of years,you´re fabulous. Why should I get the free signed copy? Because in my country I can´t get a copy of your book, and buying it over the internet would really set me back, since 1 american dollar is like 4 pesos argentinos...

Hola, Agustina! I am very excited to have a reader in Argentina! I just want to say this . . . when you become me, WATCH OUT FOR THE GLASS.

Perhaps Free Monkey can come and visit you at some point? He has many places to go in the next few weeks, but he has never been to South America before.

So who won?

In the end, I had to pick Jessica, who had this to say:

jessica said...
Should it be long and thoughtful? Short and random? 

To be quite frank, I have no idea, therefore, I will explain my love for Girl at Sea.

1. Aidan. I totally fell in love with him, despite the fact that he was sarcastic and mean. What does that say about my choice in men? That just horrible, isn't it?

2. Jellyfish. I've had a fear of the neasty little things since I was jet-skiing in Galveston, TX and I touched one. Not stung, just touched. And I cried. A lot.

1. It is okay to love Aidan. He has many positive qualities too, you know.

2. OH MY GOD YOU GOT STUNG BY A JELLYFISH! YOU POOR THING! THEY WANT TO KILL US ALL! YOU MUST HAVE A BOOK!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!



Danger!

Jessica, e-mail me your address and a book is on its way!

Now I have to get back to the packing so I can get to the London Office and finish this book. Oscar has told me that the slug problem is just about solved . . . which is not as solved as I would like it to be.

But I also have my friends The Cat From Next Door and Screaming Old Lady to see . . . and who knows? Maybe another visit from J. K. Rowling? Although I kind of hope not. Frankly, she freaked me out a little.

GOOGLEGANGER

Welcome to my new home on the web! In order to keep you coming back for more, I promise to update FREQUENTLY, and to make sure the site is full of juicy—if not downright saucy—bits. And I hope to hear from you, too. You know, if you have comments on my books, questions, or if you just like talking to people who have websites. Write to me, and I may even answer right here in this blog. I give terrible advice, but that may be just what you’re looking for! Maybe you like your advice like that.


Anyway, now that I have this site, I got to thinking about what it means to have a web presence. It is said that somewhere in the world, we all have a ghostly double. That person is your doppelganger. It only follows, then, that there should be a name for the phantom yous who share your name, and whose exploits can be found all over the internet.

Your Googlegangers.

Yes, your Googlegangers. If you have a last name like mine (we Johnsons are a dime a dozen), you’re going to have a lot of Googlegangers. But my first name isn’t all that common, unless you’re in Ireland. (In fact, I didn’t know any Maureens when I was little, and was convinced that my parents made the name up just to make my life difficult, instead of naming me Jennifer, which was the name of something like 50% of all girls born in the 70s. Half my family members couldn’t even pronounce it correctly, and absolutely no one could spell it. And don’t even get me started on the subject of those little named license plates for your bike, or the key chains, or the mugs. They never had Maureen. Believe me, I looked. I still look. And if I find a rainbowed and starred bike plate that says “This bike belongs to
MAUREEN” I am going to buy it, even though my bike was stolen several years ago, the very first week I lived in New York, from a locked pole in a locked room in a locked building—so I have nothing to attach it to. I will just wear it around my neck.)


Anyway, now that I’ve got a home on the web, it seemed like the only thing to do was Google myself and see what else I’ve been up to. Here’s what I found out.

1. I SELL HOUSES

First stop was to see who owned www.maureenjohnson.com. Turns out, I am a realtor in Massachusetts. This is weird, because I often feel like a realtor from Massachusetts. I step out the door in New York City, into the insufferable heat or three feet of snow (as the case may be), with the cabs whizzing by . . . and then suddenly a change sweeps over me, and I am craving clam chowder, and I desperately want to show you around some very suitable properties in your price range. Call me. We’ll talk.

2. I AM THE MOTHER OF LAZIRUS LONG FROM TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET

Someday, I really ought to read this book, because for a really, really long time, people have been telling me, “Hey, do you know that your name is . . .”

YES! I KNOW!

This book seems to loom large on the Sci-fi horizon, and it is all about someone named Maureen Johnson. I am not happy to notice that it is remarkable for Maureen Johnson’s many “incestuous encounters.” Great.


3. I WON A PRIZE FOR MY WARM GOAT CHEESE SALAD

For years, I have been bragging to all who would listen about the wonder that is my warm goat cheese salad. And now,
finally, my moment of triumph has come. It’s warm! It’s goaty!


4. I AM A PEFORMANCE ARTIST IN THE MUSICAL “RENT”


What others call erratic behavior, I call art. And I sing: “We’re not going to paa—yyeee. We’re not going to paa-yeeee.”


Okay. I’ve never even seen Rent. I was offered tickets once, but couldn’t go. I can’t remember why. I should go, though, and see what that other Maureen Johnson is doing. It’s probably something sleezy, but probably not as sleezy as “many incestuous encounters.”

5. I AM THE CRAB LADY OF CAPE COD!

I seem to swing to extremes.

Not to get too much on the case of a fellow writer, but I became a little frustrated by this article because it took the author about 39 paragraphs of scenic description before he ever got anywhere near his subject, which was MY GOOGLEGANER, and the only thing I really cared about.

It looks like this Maureen Johnson is all about protecting crabs—and I am nothing if not for wildlife conservation. The fact that I run in mortal terror when I see crabs at the beach (as well as jellyfish, things I believe to be jellyfish but are often just waves or indentations in the sand, and seaweed in threatening-looking formations) is completely irrelevant.

There were other Maureen Johnsons, almost too many to count. I guess my hope is, though, that if you Google me, you’ll end up here. And maybe I can sell you a house. Or a crab. Or a salad. Or something.