Stretching

...that's what I do to rules. Bending them, pulling on them, yanking them by their little furry ears so hard that if they were actual puppies, and I were a heartless bastard, they'd go YI YI YI YI!

'Cause you know what I've been doing the past half hour? Reading, and then re-reading, old blog posts. IF you have a blog and I read you, I probably know you better than you know yourself. If your blog were the plot of Lost, I could explain the polar bears AND the smoke by now, not to mention why Hurley STILL hasn't dropped any weight.

I swear that perhaps the cruelest part of drastically decreasing time on the Internet is the inability to give it up entirely. I am obligated to check my e-mail for work reasons, and therefore can't just say "Frack it," no matter a) how much easier it would make things and b) how often I try to work in slang from now-defunct Sci-Fi leaning TV shows. I'm just shiny like that.

And so, instead of the pleasant little thrill I get in my belly when I've given up sugar, say, and it's going well and I'm bypassing candy here and chocolate there and all the junk in the work staff room, I'm living under this uneasy cloud of almost-but-not-quite. I can almost stop being online, but not quite, which makes even the smallest hit of rapid blinks from a computer screen hit my system like cheap heroin. I read one new blog post on one new blog ('cause I didn't outlaw the blogs in my Blogger favs, remember?), and the old brain starts a-leapin' in thay way brains do when they can just click click click their way down a train of thought. "(Click) Oh, so and so is blogging about recipes. That one for that salad goods sounds good (Click). What the hell is escarole again (Click)? Wow-- that much calcium? (Click)?....pause....Do I have osteoporosis? (CLICKCLICKCLICK)

Except I CAN'T DO THAT NOW! And that's not an entirely great example, but you get the drift.

I'm telling you this: I'm a dog without a bone. A bird without a song. A man without a country. And all of this is a very good reason why I intend to make it to the end of this damn challenge and NEVER LOOK BACK. I'm going to surf so long and so hard that all my muscles atrophy and I become a screechy brain in a jar like Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And how much is it KILLING me right now that I can't even look up how "Krang" is spelled?

I'll just be over here in the corner with my parchment and the Gutenberg printing press. Send me a carrier pigeon if you want anything. I'll try to respond by post. Or telegram. Or morse code.

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