Omaha, NE (UPS) Social media expert Joe Craig, an IT expert to dozens of local, regional and national businesses and non-profits, died early Wednesday night. At the insistence of President Obama, an autopsy was immediately performed. The Omaha coroner announced at 3:02 on Thanksgiving morning that Craig died from ‘excessive tweeting.’ An extensive search of the Internet reveals that Twitter use has never been listed before as a cause of death, but it didn’t come as a surprise to many of his friends.
“Some guys want to die while running, or watching the Cornhuskers at Memorial Stadium, or in their sleep,” remarked his good friend Brian Kilroy, “but the way that Joe liked to tweet, you just knew that would be the way he’d want to go.”
Joe Craig’s death has left the Dundee neighborhood reeling from grief. “It’s one thing to realize that I won’t see him at PTO meetings anymore,” lamented Amy Nodes, “but I only saw him a few times a week. It really hits me when I don’t know what time he wakes up, where he’s having coffee, what he’s having for dinner, and which kid he’s watching at a sporting event. I know more about him than my husband.”
Joe leaves behind loving wife Kim and three children. He also leaves a gaping hole in the social media universe, with dozens of nerds expected to vie for Dundee’s now-open mayor spot on FourSquare. Joe passed away just 100 tweets shy of his 20,000th tweet. His death is expected to add back at least 10 minutes of productive time per day to all of his followers.
After the coroner completed the autopsy, Councilman Lee Vokal announced that Craig’s body would lie in state for the next five days at the home of Jay Slagle, a family friend and author of Jack and Noah’s Big Day. Joe was an unpaid social media consultant for the book, and had apparently foretold of his possible demise when he told Dan Lacroix, a close friend, “I’ll go to my grave trying to get 500 copies sold for Slagle.”
In the tradition of literary geniuses who have passed away, Kim Craig plans to release Joe’s final unpublished work posthumously. It reads, in its entirety, “Good morning, Dundee, driving down Dodge Street in heavy traff….”
Later in the day, thousands of people who arrived en masse at the Dundee house where his body was lying in state. Police provided crowd control and rerouted traffic at the home of Jay Slagle, the shameless Dundee-famous children's book author who wouldn't hesitate to exploit his friend's death in order to sell more books.
The Omaha World Herald reported that in the two years before Craig's death, he signed over 100 contracts with local and national companies that provided that the companies' products would be prominently featured by Joe's body during public viewings after his death. Pringles, Tostitos and other companies reportedly paid over $10,000 each for the product placement. It is unclear whether Jay Slagle, who organized the viewing, paid to have stacks of Jack and Noah's Big Day placed next to Craig's body.
A photo of Craig lying in state has gone viral on the Internet, and shows a basset hound presumably guarding the body of her master, Joe Craig. The photo below has been posted by countless media outlets, but only Julie Cornandby, a hard-hitting special assignment reporter at local ABC affiliate Channel 7, bothered to find out if the story was real. In an exclusive interview with Cornandby, Slagle contradicted reports that the dog, Stella the basset hound, had been Joe Craig's dog. "No, she's not paying her last respects," he said. "Stella has a tremendous sense of smell, and she knows that there are Doritos on the table. She's just waiting for the crowds to go away so she can eat." Fortunately, the Internet doesn't really care whether a story is true or not, so the picture will continue to portray a man who died too young, and a dog who loved too much.
In her annual Thanksgiving television show, media giant Martha Stewart shared a few of her favorite Thanksgiving traditions. This year's show provided a few surprises, including Stewart's suggestion that recently-deceased relatives could be used as centerpieces for the dining table. Stewart is exceptionally rich and has often been accused of making bad decisions, which led to her conviction for insider-trading and selecting Target as her partner for high-fashion retail items. She may have stumbled again with this latest recommendation. It appears that she got the idea from the Internet, after seeing Joe Craig's body lying in state on a dining room table. "He's been a good friend," Slagle said, "and I figured our dining room table was big enough that we'd have room to seat 11 or 12 for dinner even if Joe's body was in the middle of it. I mean, seriously, he's like 140 or 145 pounds soaking wet. We might have to put the turkey on his chest, but I think we'll be fine."
Late on Thanksgiving Day, in a shocking turn of events, Joe Craig surfaced at the Omaha holiday lights festival, just over 24 hours after he was pronounced dead from excessive tweeting. He did not, in fact, die on November 27, but rather had abnormally low system performance. With a simple reboot by his wife, Joe was back to normal in just a few minutes. All of Dundee rejoiced at the news, but many lamented that coffee prices would not be falling as predicted, since Joe would push up demand. Jay Slagle, who was responsible for funeral arrangements, is now scrambling to find another way to drive traffic to his book's website.
Jack and Noah’s Big Day by Jay Slagle is available for $9.99 at the Bookworm bookstore in Omaha or on-line at Amazon. Learn more about the book at www.jayslagle.com. Follow his ‘20 Days of Stupid’ project from November 23rd thru December 12th on Twitter (JaySlagleWrites), Instagram (JaySlagleWrites), Facebook (JackAndNoahsBigDay) and his website (www.jayslagle.com). The book is available for reservations at the Omaha Public Library.