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Spaghetti Teens is a fanzine dedicated to publishing the work

of young creative people. Send in your artwork, playlists, essays,

and spaghetti recipes to Serena at spaghettiteens@gmail.com

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ART BY SERENA HOCHAROEN X ABBY TAYLOR…4-5

OVERHEARD IN A COFFEEHOUSE ……………………….

BY TOM LADENDORF………………………………………..6-7

SCIENCE FICTION AND ROBOT SELF-PORTRAITS…..

BY SERENA HOCHAROEN……………….………………..8-11

THE INTERNET AGE: A MISDIAGNOSIS……….………..

BY DANIEL AMMER………………………………………12-15

KANYE WEST QUOTES……………………………….….16

HEAR ME NOW THAT I AM DEAD INSIDE…….………..

BY SERENA HOCHAROEN………………………..………….17

RADIOLOGICAL INFATUATION…….…………….………..

BY DANIEL AMMER……………………………….……..18-19

ABBY TAYLOR: A SPAGHETTI TEEN…….……BACK COVER

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overheard in a coffeehouse tom ladendorf

“…but, I mean, nothing that we have now will compare to what we’ll

have in 20 or 30 years. And I’m not just talking about computers and

smartphones and the things that will replace smartphones – it’s gonna go so

much deeper than that. Like TV. Like, right now, neuroscientists can already

see what parts of the brain are being stimulated by different kinds of activity.

But in 30 years? They’ll be able to map the individual neurons – literally, be

able to map a correspondence between individual neurons firing, the feelings

and cognitions they cause, and what is causing their firing. So if you’re a

neuroscientist, you do a study on 100 people and show them all 3 hours of

great TV, recording neuronal activity the whole time. When you’re done,

you can pick apart the funniest moments of each show (if we’re talking

about comedy – if we’re talking drama, say the most exciting or deeply felt

moments), identify what they’re doing to the brain, have a computer analyze

the linguistic patterns in the dialogue, and – so here’s the really crazy part –

reverse engineer funniness. So for these 100 people, you know (or your

computer knows) how to write the empirically, scientifically funniest joke.

And you can see where this is going: with computers, you’ll have such

advanced linguistic processing that you can literally have computers write

the dialogue of a show for you. Just, say, feed them a situation, a premise, a

cast – and maybe you do this really precisely, into a database, or maybe

computers will just be able to parse your speech – and then you have the

computer write, or actually compute, an episode. In an instant. And it’s the

funniest episode of this show, this theoretical show, anyone has ever seen.

And then you can do this with your favorite shows. You take your favorite

episodes, run a study on some people, watch their heads, and then in half an

hour, you have a computer write a season or two of the show, where every

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episode is as funny as the funniest episode. This is for real – this is going

to be nuts.”

“Wow, yeah, that’s pretty fucki—“

“And look, I already know what you’re going to say: ‘That’s cool,

but that’s just TV. It’s just mindless entertainment. There’s no depth to it.

It’s not art.’ Or whatever. But this is going to go beyond TV. If we’re

talking about doing this with TV by monitoring brain responses of people

watching TV, why not do the same thing with movies? And books? And

I’m not just talking about comedies, or just about entertainment – I’m

saying that you’ll be able to generate scripts for hundreds of Citizen

Kanes, Casablancas – and, you know, with the movies, you’ll only

generate a script, and it’ll be brilliant, but it’ll just be a script, but with

books, I mean, shit, you’ll literally be able to generate hundreds of

Dickens novels. Or Tolstoy, or Shakespeare, or whoever. And when I say

something like you’ll have a computer writing hundreds of Hamlets, I’m

not talking about hundreds of plays that are pretty much just rewrites of

Hamlet; I’m talking about hundreds of plays with the same depth of

feeling, the same linguistic complexity, and the same resulting catharsis,

as Hamlet. And you’ll be able to mix it up – to say that this play is going

to be equally influenced by Hamlet and Macbeth but it’s set in Mexico in

the 1930s. Or maybe you like mix Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams,

or, you know, you’ll be able to get really crazy, and mix like Thomas

Pynchon and David Lynch and Dostoevsky. It’s literally fucking

boundless, and with advances in computers, you’ll get it all in an instant.

It’ll be like editing pictures in Photoshop or whatever.”

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sci-fi by serena hocharoen

I am being overtaken by technology. It’s weird that I say that, because I’m not in New York City. I’ve

checked my Facebook account on my phone hundreds of times today and I have only been awake for

one hour, the majority of which I spent in bed. Greg, my brother, texted me asking for my home address

twenty-five minutes ago, but I haven’t replied. I’m getting lazier with texting him. I should start caring

about people. He lives in New York City, the first city in the United States to have adopted the working

robot class into their daily lives. When it happened, there was a televised celebration where the mayor

cut the red tape and let the robots walk down the red carpet or whatever.

“Jane, if you don’t text me back I’m calling you,” he texted me again.

I don’t understand why Greg needs to call so often. He called last week. He said the subways are

emptier now that a lot of people don’t have to work anymore. He’s still scared that there’s going to be a

robot invasion eventually, though. Whatever. I don’t understand why it’s so urgent that he needs my

home address.

I refresh my News Feed for the tenth time since getting back in bed this morning. In reality New York is

being overtaken by technology. But then what am I being overtaken by?

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TECHNOLOGY IS THE ADVANCEMENT OF HUMAN NATURE

TECHNOLOGY IS THE HINDERANCE THAT WILL LEAD TO THE ULTIMITE DEMISE OF THE

PLANET

TECHNOLOGY IS... well perhaps that is the best way to look at it.

Technology, simply put, is not a thing. It's an idea or a concept that an individual imposes meaning on,

positive or negative, in order to best fit or support their current mindset in the midst of a lecture, an

argument, or a lonely or angry emotional breakdown. It becomes the target of the good, the bad, and the

other. If presented with the question "what is technology?" one would have trouble materializing it in a few

short sentences. But, I digress and I shall instead make my own point on this subject using very recent life

events.

As far back into my short life as I can remember people have been cautious about the rush of technologies

available to the kids of my generation and have been consistently theorized a vast number of ways that this

very technology could lead to a variety of negative results. A handful of the more fleshed out theories in

pop-culture are mass neglect of our environment (It's Such a Beautiful Day and other Isaac Asimov shorts),

mass obesity (see Wall-E), degradation of social skills (The Feed), and perhaps most prominent is the fear

of artificial intelligence as portrayed in the Tron Series (starting in 1982), iRobot, or the latest film to be

released in 2015 featuring everyone's favorite South African Shock-Rap outfit Die Antword (Chappie). Yet

these are not the fears that keep most modern parents up, as these issues would not occur for a few

generations. Instead they worry about our social health, the ability to communicate, how much we learn,

and evolving in a way that is alien to them. Some of these are slightly more reasonable than others, but

often times the serious issues are not the ones that are recognized or altered (an unfortunate trend that

seems to riddle the med- and psych- areas of science). One major concern that I have a new found

appreciation for is something more along the lines of a social addiction or at least heavy reliance and the

result (something of a withdrawal I would argue) that comes about when we as a people (perhaps mostly

with young people but with adults and parents these days as well) are removed from said technology for a

matter of mere days.

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So here's what happened (and in some form or another is still happening) to me. I am currently studying

abroad in South East Asia for a semester away from my campus in the Midwest of America. Much of my

reason for going so far away was originally to get away from all of my social normalities, rely on my

phone less (I have a bad habit of about 3000 texts on a slow month), and to try to avoid mediums of

conversation like e-mail and Facebook in order to build quick relationships for my almost 5 month stay. I

still stand by these goals and I've been doing alright in some areas, but it began with a rocky start...

Upon landing in Hong Kong for a surprise 24 hour layover, things were fine. I was able to access the

airport internet with enough time to send a quick email to my parents and figure out the location of my

hotel. Locations and direction - these are things that I now realize I take for granted, but this realization did

not occur for another two days. The knowledge that this layover was not planned for, temporary, and taken

care of by other powers was enough to prevent any sorts of panic or uneasiness. The following day I

boarded my flight to my final destination in Singapore.

Upon landing there were no issues. In retrospect it would have been a kind thing to contact my parents to

let them know I was still alive but I figured I would do it at the dorm that I would be living at since it was

bound to have some kind of internet access, which turned out to be a bad assumption. During the weeks

that lead up to my study abroad experience, everyone said that you would have some amount of shock and

negative recoil as a result either culturally, socially, or a feeling of being seriously lost. While it wasn't that

I didn't believe that this was going to happen to me, I didn't realize that it would be such a hit, at least of the

latter two. As for the remainder of the events of the night, I was not able to figure out the wi-fi, nor was it

available in our rooms. A student gave me my key and took me to my room and his advice was to "get

some sleep and figure it out in the morning." The rooms are tiny and not exactly the chrome-like

cleanliness that one might imagine when one thinks about Singapore. After making my bed I fell asleep, a

dim inclining of panic and underwhelm beginning to build in my chest, but somehow 20 hours of traveling

managed to quell that for the time being.

The morning was the first stage.

I knew I had to register somewhere in Singapore. That was the one thought in my head. I had no internet

connection to check my email for directions and I had no sense of direction or map so I began to search for

an office. I was only pointed to a bus stop and told to take it... now began the second stage in the anxiety

that would follow me around for a few days.

Being lost with only a destination of a bus stop and no resources to fall back on was somehow numbing to

feelings, any feelings. I was not, at this point, excited to be in on the other side of the planet. I was not

afraid of being lost. I was not worried that I had not contacted my parents in a day (which doesn't seem like

a big deal even now, but I suppose when your son is the stranger in a strange land, I see where it could

cause problems for parents). I was not worried that I did not know anyone. I simply had a minor headache,

a fuzziness from just waking up, and a bus titled A1 to catch.

If it was not for the French guy sitting across the aisle from me, I'm not sure what I would have done. I

explained that I was a new student and had just landed and he got OFF the bus with me to point me to the

registration office. It was the first clear set of directions that I had received since the student from the night

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before telling me to go to sleep. This was also the first set of real instructions that I received that did not

come complete with a written email, something that I have become very used to as a student. I was

redirected in the office to the first theme of my international adventure: lines. This line was on the caliber

of DMVs in the middle of the day back home. There was a line to get a receipt to wait for your number to

be called to wait in another line to only begin to register for a student visa, if you think I am joking then I

am glad you find this humorous. Thankfully, the angels in Singapore were there to guide me. I received a

Facebook message (while being on someone else’s phone for the internet) from a student from my

university back home - a born Singaporean - who asked me if I would like a small tour, being that he was

available for the afternoon. I am forever grateful of this offer. I was able to find the general vicinity of my

classes and where internet access was available. Upon logging on to the internet, I realized my parents had

panicked and asked the university to contact me personally, this is what I mean when I stated that it is not

only my generation now dependent on and this medium of socializing. After this tour I simply stumbled

upon the other Americans from my university in the subway station. With that, I went to Chinatown for my

first Singaporean meal. Later I was able to acquire an Ethernet cable to connect to the web from my room, I

finished unpacking and I went to bed. While this seems like the perfect ending to a story that would lead to

a totally smooth transition, that would be for a short boring story.

The days that came were what caused me to reflect upon the technology in my life and the social

expectations it causes. I expect to be socially stimulated every time I flip open my laptop and hit the keys

"f"-"a"-"c"-enter and feel an immediate sense of connection which will allow me to plan for the day or the

week, thus, fulfilling my actions. However this is not the case when you are on a fourteen hour time

change, starting school in three days, and all your Facebook contacts are still on vacation for the next two

weeks. The stimulation, in this case, is not available and where do you go from there when the internet

cannot provide you with that kick of social fulfillment?

This is the problem and reality that I would like to address for you. It is only an issue that lasts for a few

days, so in many senses of the word "problem," is slight overkill. People that derive minute amounts of

stimulation from social media and mobile devices are generally aware of how to survive without them (I

hope), however that does not mean that they will not feel a strong amount of withdrawal and anxiety when

the technology is not available to them. It is not that my generation is crippled by this technology but we

are socially dependent on it.

A common criticism among many is attachment to mobile devices. It is a hindrance on social interactions

in a small sense. Almost everyone has that one acquaintance who will flip out and dive into a lecture based

on how (s)he's lived with their flip phone since the 4th grade and they love it since...etc. so most people can

survive without their devices during the course of their interactions with this and most other persons

however, I have an obsolete bar phone in my pocket now with 5 contacts (two of which are emergency

numbers) and 25 sent messages in the 4 weeks that I've had it yet I still look at my phone during the slow

points in lecture, simply hoping for that little bit of stimulation that I used to get from the vibration of

receiving a text.

And this lack of stimulation builds up to drug-like issues. I spent much of my alone time during the first

few days staring at a blank screen, expecting to get something from it while I fought feelings of

simultaneous sluggishness and jitters. I was uneasy with the shift and to a small extent I still am, but there

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have been ways I've been able to beat it. In simple interactions with international and Singaporean students,

even just hellos and eye contact help. Exercise helps to replace some of the needed endorphins from the

lack of electronic stimulation and getting on a sleep schedule have all allowed me to calm down to the

point where I am comfortable and capable of being productive after about a two week period of

uneasiness.

So, back to my point: technology is far from killing us. Obesity is due in large amounts to the sugar intake

of children and the lack of participation in organized and unorganized sports for a multitude of reasons,

very few having anything to do with the children's choices (http://www.aspenprojectplay.org/the-facts).

Artificial intelligence is carefully contained in Mario simulations. We are quite capable of forming new

bonds with other human beings in real life. We are capable of accomplishing assignments and doing well in

interviews and ultimately having a profession, in fact rejecting technology completely will cripple an

individual in this field. And some of us like staring at our phones or playing massive multiplayer video

games too much, that I can agree with. But the caution that I've rarely heard about in any public

announcement or argument on a newscast is our social dependence on these technologies and its prevalence

in our lives as almost a drug habit. Again, this only becomes a problem when we are stripped of our ability

to stay connected and thrown into a stressful and trying environment and I am by no means suggesting an

abandonment of this technology (it SHOULD be embraced) but having the awareness of this addiction to

this new stimulation is just what is needed to transcend it and take advantage of the time that we are living

in. Indeed, with this awareness, this generation can continue to move forward and avoid some of the

negative effects of technology while continuing to rapidly improve the living quality of the vast majority of

people on this planet. Hell, practicing this awareness may someday even help prevent the robot apocalypse.

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KANYE WEST x 21ST

CENTURY

I'm living in that 21st Century

Doin' something mean to it

Do it better than anybody

You ever seen do it

Screams from the haters

Got a nice ring to it

I guess every superhero

need his theme music

- Power

I’m living in the future

So the present is my past

My presence is a present

Kiss my ass

- Monster

Bitch I’m cold…I

Ain’t used to being told stop

So I could never be your robot

- Robocop

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hear me now that i am dead inside serena hocharoen

1. unluck – james blake

2. kerosene – big black

3. new calm pt ii - ought

4. heart cooks brain – modest mouse

5. light up gold i – parquet courts

6. your hand in mine – explosions in the sky

7. metatron – darkside

8. gray death – xiu xiu

playlist can be streamed here: http://8tracks.com/serenus/hear-me-now-that-i-am-dead-inside

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