Crash McFarlane hopped into his iPod, desperate to reach the blogosphere before dark.
The iPod sputtered to life, creaking and shuddering as it soared above the docking station. McFarlane prayed that the batteries would last. If they gave out before he reached the outer blog ring, he’d be stranded in Bluetooth territory when the sporks came out.
Once clear of the ebonic barrier, Crash set the iPod to shuffle to conserve energy. He sailed above the playstation, absently watching the kleenex bots meticulously detoxing the muffin-toppers and zine phishers. He wondered if he would ever come this way again.
The bloggers had made it very clear that they wouldn’t hesitate to TiVo his beloved Wiki if he didn’t return with the emoticon before dusk. He reflected on the irony of the situation: he knew that the power to defeat the bloggers lay within the emoticon itself, but only Google knew how to use it, and only the bloggers knew how to reach the old man. There was no other solution: he would have to turn the emoticon over to them, giving them the power to floam the entire city.
He wished there was some other way, but he couldn’t bear to allow Wiki to be TiVo’d. If the bloggers had given him the choice, he’d have gladly allowed himself to be TiVo’d in Wiki’s place. But they would not be so merciful. If he failed to deliver the emoticon, he would have to live with the fact that he had allowed the Wi-Fi energy of the TiVo device to turn Wiki into a mindless spork. So here he was, doing the bidding of the blogosphere, feeling like a complete palm pilot.
Eventually Crash nodded off, exhausted from hours of web hacking to retrieve the emoticon from the Wintel spamcops. He awoke to the sound of the gentle bling-bling alerting him that the iPod was nearing the Youtube. The tube would take him to the outer blogosphere, where the blogrollers were constantly shoring up the blog ring to protect the blogosphere from spork attacks.
Crash checked the battery levels. Two percent. Just enough to get him to the Youtube gateway. From there, the Youtube would propel the iPod to the blogosphere.
Suddenly the gaydar sounded. The neocon showed two spamcops approaching rapidly from behind.
Crash took the iPod out of safe mode and hit the accelerator. The Wii engines roared to life and the iPod rocketed toward the Youtube gateway. Crash could practically see the battery levels dropping. He wasn’t going to make it.
The gaydar blinged again: The spamcops had launched a volley of Gnutella logic bombs.
Crash looked down, scanning the netscape for a place to ditch the iPod. He spotted a small patch of blue. No, he thought. It can't be. Can it?
As the blue patch grew larger, there could no longer be any doubt. It was a long shot, but it was his only chance.
He jammed the joystick forward and the iPod hurtled downward, toward the Blue Screen of Death.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Listed on humor-blogs.com
Labels: Blogging, Fiction, Language, Science Fiction
| posted by Diesel at Monday, February 05, 2007 |
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Leave a comment! |
Traffic whoring again, Diesel?
Pretty funny, all the same.
Allen - I can honestly say that this wasn't a traffic-whoring experiment (although it did occur to me after I started writing it that I was going to get a lot of misguided Googlers hitting my site...).
I was reflecting on how lousy the sci-fi writers of the 60s and 70s were at predicting the future, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if one of those guys somehow got a bunch of the details of the future right but still got all the big stuff wrong?" This is what I came up with.
"Dude?"
"WHAT!?!"
"Sheesh! Touchy this morning! What'd you do? Put money on da Bears?"
"I'm trying to pay the rent. So whaddaya want?"
"I thought Your Almightiness might be able to explain Gnutella."
"What's to explain? A bunch of software engineers went broke and went into food processi ... Wait a minute! Let me see that!"
"I thought you were writing a grant proposal. Weird stuff, eh?"
"Yeah. But right up your alley. I thought you lived in the Blue Screen of Death, dude."
"Better than spinning in a rainbow and going all dizzy, dude."
"Yeah? Well, just be glad you're not in this story with your Zune, dude. You'd never even get airborne."
"Uh huh. 'Scuse me while I fly through a Windows, dude."
"Like your hero there? No wonder they call him Crash."
Oh, no, not the Blue Screen of Death! Whatever will our hero do?
I'm not a big fan of autobiographies, Diesel.
Oh, no. No you don't, no way. I'm not getting sucked into even one more damned serialized blog story. Not even yours, Diesel.
Shit. OK, ok... Then what?
(And, I know what you're talking about. A.C. Clarke's press people are always bragging about how he predicted the communication satellite, but they don't spend too much time explaining why we aren't flying around yet in our aerocars. Good post, goofball.)
Amoeba - Almost as funny as the conversation I had with my wife while writing this post:
"Can you think of any more proper nouns like Google or TiVo" that have become English words?"
She throws out a few that I'd already thought of. "I can't think of any more."
"Ok."
She walks over to check on the kids in their bedroom. She opens their door and shouts, "You'd better not be floaming in there!"
"Thanks," I say.
Goldennib - Find out next time! Along with me!
Joel - But it's a flying auto-biography!
Al - And then there was Cleve Cartmill (I think that was his name) who was investigated by the F.B.I. for a story about a particularly powerful bomb that he wrote in the early 40s....
I'll probably do another installment next weekend, when I run out of material.
I'm with your wife, I hate floam. That suff gets everywhere, and dog hair gets in it. Yuck.
Oh....so it is.
In that case, I can't wait for part 2!!!
My mother-in-law would not understand word one of this post. Chortle.
Proud to say I've never in my life used an emoticon--
I remain--
jocelyn
Diesel, power down the PC and go outside and get some fresh air. Just do it my friend. There's still hope but you have to get away from this for a while.
Incidentally, for a moment I thought you said "gay bar".
Alright, this is my second time through and I am still speechless.
I'm voting with Dan on this one. Put down the mouse and get outside, blog boy. Youo'll thank us for this someday.
Are the Gnutella logic bombs made of chocolate and hazelnuts? If so, how can they be acquired?
Just...you know...LOL.
If the Blue Screen Of Death is anything like the Candacian Hammer of Doom and Death, there is no hope for world whatsoever. Looks like your headache is gone. Hated hearing you had a bad one. Great story. And yes, they missed it by....this much.
I have just one question. What is floam and is it as bad as it sounds?
-wolfe, coming late to the party
wolfe's Musings.
Oh and is this an incredibly clever reference to Leslie McFarlane, actual author of the initial Hardy Boy books, writing under the name Franklin W. Dixon?
Or just... an incredibly clever reference to something else.
-wolfe
Robin - Yeah, my wife hates it. I'm not sure why we get our kids toys we don't want them to play with.
Joel - Maybe I'll let you write it.
Jocelyn - Ah, but do you know the etymology of the word "chortle"? And yes, I'm still going to add you to my blogroll, as soon as I've solved my "technical difficulties."
Dan - Fresh air? Gay bar? Capital ideas, my friend!
Logo - There's a fine line between retirement and insanity.
Claire - Mmmmmm, logic bombs...
Gregory - Yes, I do.
Gawpo - I'd google that if my PC weren't driving me nuts right now.
Wolfe - It's pretty much what it sounds like.
And er, yeah, that's exactly where I got the name.
Too damn funny!