Status Updates From The Nineties

“This is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food loving boy from Arkansas.” ~ Toni Morrison, The New Yorker

“Nostalgia: a dial tone, followed by 11 rapid beeps from an invisible touch tone telephone; 3 or 4 high-pitched electronic whistles, collapsing into a longer whistle resembling the flatlining of a dying patient hooked to an EKG machine; finally, a few more beeps absorbed into a wall of white noise, and then the white noise abruptly doubled, meaning the receiving modem was now interacting with the calling modem.”