Possumblog

We are pleased to announce...

...the thin, tepid flow of increativity that is the hallmark of Possumblog HAS BEEN RESTORED!

This was made much more difficult than usual by the fact that someone here in the building must have tripped over the power cord to the Internet and yanked it out of the socket, resulting in a complete loss of the ability to access the outside world.

Aside, from, you know, actually going outside.

Or picking up the phone.

ANYway, it wasn’t working for many precious hours--from about 10 this morning until now.

And Possumblog was restored despite the fact that several of you chose to defy my warnings, and touched the handwheel of the stupidity valve in an entirely inappropriate way.

You will be dealt with appropriately.

This whole deal with the machinery has really gotten frustrating--if it’s not server problems with Mu.nu, it’s some sort of computer weirdness going on here, or alternately, some wildly stupid exercise in futility assigned to me by my superiors that does nothing but waste massive amounts of time and paper.

It all makes me wonder if it’s not some sort of cosmic e-mail telling me it’s time to just give up.

The whole thing here is based on spur-o’the-moment inanity (with occasional flashes of undisguised lucidity), most of it relying heavily on commenting on stuff I see on the Web. THAT, in turn, requires the ability to quickly grab and link stuff and throw a few mildly comedic gems in for good measure--all on the fly. If I can’t do that, then all I can do is sit here and do my paying work (which makes my head hurt), or sit here and come up with long, deep, lovingly crafted works that require actual thought and reasoning (which makes my head hurt). Oh, sure, I could do what I’m doing right now--whiling away some time between typing up meeting minutes to type up something with all the snap of a wet tissue, but I don’t think that would live up even to the lowest expectations you might have ever harbored toward Possumblog.

Or maybe it would.

In either case, Possumblog has always been my way of running away and joining the circus, made all the more enjoyable by the fact that I could stay inside in the air conditioning, not have to wear sequined tights (usually), eat something other than three-day-old hot dogs, and not have to smell elephant dung (usually). But when the circus train keeps derailing, it makes it very hard to have anything to run away to when the mood strikes. Oh, sure--there’s that rickety carnival set up in the K-Mart parking lot, but the guy who runs the airplane ride who has the tattoo on his chest of his internal organs frightens me. And let’s face it--it’s not really a circus, is it?

I could be a hobo, I suppose, but eating beans out of a can is only fun for about a week, and then it gets old. And let’s face it--hopping rides on rail cars just isn’t as glam as it used to be. And Glenn Reynolds is always stalking you so he can kill you just for kicks. That’s certainly a strike against it.

Cowboy? Well, there’s guns, which is good, but you also have to work hard--even the shiftless ne’er-do-wells have a lot of prep work to do. And there’s all that dust. And cows. And other cowboys. Probably several of whom thought Brokeback Mountain was a thoughtfully-crafted and timeless love story.

I have thought about running away and becoming a steamboat pilot like Mark Twain--that would be cool. Except steamboats are all floating casinos now and don’t actually go anywhere. And further, reports of Mark Twain’s death are greatly unexaggerated.

Maybe I could be an astronaut--I know Steevil, and he’s a rocket scientist and all, so that would give me an in. You get nifty coveralls to wear, and Dippin’ Dots ice cream, and get to hang around smart people, and--hmm. There’s a drawback. I think you’re supposed to be really smart at doing something to be an astronaut, and I don’t mean stuff like folding paper or arranging pencils. Then again, maybe that lack of skill could be my specialty--they could use me as an experiment and see if I get smarter in space. I mean, if they were willing to send up monkeys, surely they’d be willing to try out a blogger! And I DO like bananas!

Hmph. Maybe I just need a walk around the park.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at July 26, 2006 02:41 PM