Today, my phone number of eight years returns to the Numeral Graveyard. I let it die.

I'm not sure why. There are memories that peek up, dull-scaled fish that blink the eyelids they do not have against the little light that filters through the murk. I didn't always have a cell phone. Yet, I survived somehow. I...remember phone numbers. Actual strings of digits that when struck in a certain order would transmit my voice across precious metals strung along the earth from wooden poles like barren Christmas trees put up by the world's worst manic-depressive.

There are so many ways to communicate. I can speak. I can gesture. There is Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Livejournal, Blogger, email, Instant Messenger, I understand the United States has an elaborate human-and-machine-powered pay-to-play courier service of some kind (which hardly ever suffers Injun attacks anymore), and the phone, eh, the tele-phone, which is kind of like text-messaging except the human voice is use to send aural renderings of written words.

Composing the message was faster as well. I credit this to succinct words and phrases such as "like", "you know?", and "word" (to indicate agreement or affirmation) which substituted entire parts of a sentence, mainly clauses, adjectives, and descriptive language.

I predict that someone will figure out how to detect when a person is composing a text message to someone else, for example, to me. As the person is texting me, my cell would detect if the message reaches 90 characters or so and automatically send "I know, right?" in the middle of the composing process. That programmer will make millions. Until I kill them. I suspect it may end up being that same guy that created Comic sans.

Which is bullshit. Removing something from something that already exists is not creating (listen up, Intelligent Designers). I cannot cut off one of the earbuds from an iPod and then claim I've invented a new mp3 player. That is not innovation; that is laziness.

I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing. If I decide I'm wrong, I'm sure I can find another cell phone somewhere.

As a self-declared Level 34 Scamp, I take pleasure in knowing that my location and travel patterns can no longer be triangulated or, if I were using Bluetooth, broadcast to marketers.

Not that any marketers would, really. I ams as broke as the proverbial joke. And you know I got jokes.

The song Bangers & Mash by Radiohead seems to channel Pearl Jam. I like it a lot.

The preceding was brought to you absolutely, 100% pants-free. Happy Friday.

Disclaimer: All misspellings are intentional, as always. But not the racial slurs. Those kinda just slip out. It causes me shame.

I imagine it is odd to live on an island. As I spend my time landlocked, whenever I wander too far I just find the road that leads me home. If I lived on an island, I wouldn't have that once I set upon another land. But then, perhaps the entire ocean leads home, eventually. The earth is round, water doesn't tarry, and I look good in an ocean kayak.

Although you'd expect me to be taller judging only by my torso. That's me; short legs, long torso, big head. I'll have to put a stabilizing pontoon on the side, or perhaps just make it a catamaran. T'would be a lame way to die; tipping over and drowning because of my huge noggin, worse still because I'm technically drowning while in a boat.

This might be acceptable if I were some hip-hop superstar and I had a huge stretch hummer limo with a giant hot-tub in which I sailed around in a tiny yacht which also had a hot tub.

The stretch hummer might swerve to miss a person and into a restaurant, causing me to fall into the tiny yacht hot tub which is so shallow I bang my head mightily (my diamond-encrusted Admiral hat will provide no protection whatsoever) and pass out until I drown. I will drown slowly, but the various divisions of rescue personnel will have a heated discussion about exactly who has jurisdiction over a maritime emergency committed in a motor vehicle that was driving through the fake cobbled streets of the Paris Las Vegas Casino.

Turns out it was the responsibility of the busboy responsible for the tables in the particular section of the restaurant where the stretch hummer finally stopped. He was taking a union-required break, which he was then using to take up the habit of smoking so he would have an excuse to talk to one of the hostesses.

These bits of trivia, including the fate of my diamond-encrusted hat, were forever lost to me as I lay drowning.

The plan:

Part Lauren: Let's create a graphic novel about "corn syrup" personified rather like the "thing" in cloverfield (i dont care what anyone says, it was a good movie) and a team of superheros whose mission it is to eradicate corn syrup from the face of the planet. the superheros can have secret identities and suffer emotional scaring from what corn syrup has done to their parents.there will be lots of leather and spandex, and really fast cars that are fueled by garbage thus lessening the amount of material in landfills. and a really kick ass theme song written by Danny Elfman. i think that combined you and i have enough friends to pull this off.

Part Gurg: Yes, yes! I have the beginning and the ending: The corn syrup monster rear its glistening head from the cornfields of Iowa and have a horrible spawning process in which it shoots babies across the world. I'm picturing something reminiscent of a giant ear of corn popping, if the popped corn looked like 80-pound naked mole rats covered in coagulating cream cheese. At the end after hunting down all the leader ears, (in a montage) our superheros will corner the Mother Ear and just before they are about to destroy it, the monster will reanimate the bodies of their dead families (almost perfectly preserved. The superheros will face off as some try to destroy the corn zombies and some try to save them. During the fracas, the Mother Ear escapes. Our surviving heroes stand grimly vigilant against a setting sun. The final shot is a sunrise over a stumbling Chinese peasant and we realize...the monster is in China!

The End???

Will you do your part? For Freedom?

I want a giant keyboard for my computer. Huge, with each key the size of my palm and arranged around me like an early 80's synth pop keyboardist. Whilst I do love the latest in word processing technology, I get very little tactile satisfaction from the little tap-tap-tap. There are times when I'm over-full with searing passions, feral thoughts, and sulfurous plumes of uncertainty.

In times of such confusion, the only logical course is to proceed as if I know exactly what I am doing and all is going exactly as planned.

These modern keys do not reciprocate. Every touch, any touch, yields the same result on the page. As it should, I suppose. I shouldn't run around thinking my concerns are vastly different from everyone else's. Quantitatively, perhaps, but not qualitatively.

I've said this before. Somewhere. I don't remember when. Or perhaps I meant to say it and never got around to it. This happens often. I worry about repeating myself when I should worry about never putting something down in the first place. Unsettling, to say the least, to lose a thought. Thoughts are quick, yes. Fleeting, often. But they're not smoke rings. A quick pen can skewer them from the aether and pin them like an insect in a collection; fragile still but far more observable.

Perhaps I can rig up many small bongos and strike them for each symbol. I'll start collecting them now and worry about how to wire it when I have enough.

Until then, I shall have to type quietly on, and endure the pinprick torture of being left unsatisfied.

As well as being a self-declared unlicensed zombie hunter, I am now a replicant humanoid detective, affectionately referred to as a "Blade Runner". "Blade Runner" may not make much sense at first but when broken down it is clear that "blade" refers to any dangerous tool, such as the genetically engineered humanoids, and the "runner" part refers to when those dangerous tools quit doing their job and escape to try to realize their hopes and dreams.

Foolish humanoids.

That's where I come in. Back to the space mines, all of you! I take this new responsibility very seriously. Plus, if I get good at this it follows that I might also be good at detecting stuff about regular humans. Unlike now. Where I miss obvious stuff and fail to follow most social and cultural protocol.

I'm in zombie hunter mode right now. During my recent trip to a quiet town in the forest to visitSibbitt, I ran afoul of a young woman hell-bent on destroying us all with her molecular tinkering. She claims she was attempting to synthesize mass quantities of an anti-carcinogen found in minuscule quantities in coral reefs.

I'm not fooled.

The entire story (rather, the beginning of the story) can be found on
Sibbitt's journal, which I discovered written hastily on old, tattered paper in an abandoned room of his house which I was only able to unlock after I found The Key of Thanatos. Also with the journal was The Bullet-Proof Kilt, ammunition for a gun I don't have (but I suspect may turn up), and The Security ID Badge to a nearby bio-technology lab.

So far so good. Once I find Sibbitt we should be ready to go. I just hope he gets back soon. Judging by the suspicious ongoing "test" of the emergency broadcast system on tv, time may not be on our side.