Pants down for freedom! The United States is going old-school and not imprisoning people without a trial. Sort of. Most of us have at least agreed that we shouldn't.

Mr. President doesn't seem to care for it. If the government were Las Vegas, the man would have been branded a jinx long ago. Already, anything he opposes gains the virtue of not being supported by him. If he bets against a horse, I would bet on that horse to win. If he bets on a horse to win, I would bet on that horse to somehow cost the United States billions of dollars and thousands of American lives, which is worse.

I wish our President would quit gambling and just go back to drinking.

I am a firm believer in Hru-doo, which is kind of like the Voodoo my older brother studies but firmly entrenched in science. Some time ago, I began a ritual to create a new being. My Hru-doo manual outlined the procedure. Relatively simple, as sci-thaumatics goes. It is technically a sacrifice, but I didn't have to make any ridiculous symbols or chant any magic words.

All I had to do was kill every monk seal in the world. Now that that's taken care of, I can claim my reward.

In hindsight, I should have specified what new being I wanted. Ah, well. At least I don't have to worry about those damn seals knocking over my trash cans. Still, I got myself pretty excited for a cybernetic monkey army.

One of my other esoteric studies, as of two days ago, is the Way of the Samurai. Technically I am a ronin, since I have no master. So far it's going okay. The Way of the Warrior touches upon a variety of aspects of daily life that might seem to have little to do with wildly swinging a sword around and shouting made-up Japanese (the cornerstone of my previous experience).

Cleanliness is important. Getting up early is important. Not losing my temper. Seeking improvement in all things, never protection. Be prepared for death; live as if already dead.

Which reminds me, when I die I need my brain destroyed so I don't come back as a zombie. And maybe shoot me with a silver bullet so I don't come back as a werewolf. Oh, and a stake through the heart so I don't become some weepy brooding vampire. Most importantly, bury me in a speedboat so I don't come back as a manatee.

Tee hee. Shunning my cell phone now makes me invisible in Europe as well as the US. Well, except for all the video surveillance, I mean. But I welcome video surveillance because I can bring back the old-tymey disguise kit.

No one ever suspects the organ-grinder.

I also hope to employ modern technologies. My buddy Scott has promised in a legally binding Facebook wall comment that he will build me one of those monkeys with brain-controlled robotic arms.

This is only a few steps away from my dream: to implant four robotic arms onto my body and then two, longer tentacles. I will then terrorize crime under the moniker "Graduate Student Squid".

Evildoers beware.

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.