Webpage News: Somebody Goes Underground

Somebody Goes Underground
January 2013 by Somebody

Hi, fans. I'm writing this update from somewhere deep in the earth. Working on this website had gotten to be so much like digging the proverbial hole to China, I woke up one morning and thought, "Why not dig a real hole to China?" I know that might seem like a foolish undertaking -- and kind of pointless too -- but I'm already one eighth of the way there, according to my calculations. That's right, never underestimate the power of yoga and high quality vitamins. Basically, I just needed a long break from Somebody's Webpage. I was spending so much time in front of the computer, I forgot to buy Christmas presents and show up for the annual holiday get-together. My relatives probably put out a missing persons report on me at some point -- I assumed those knocks on my front door were my Seventh-day Adventist friends paying me another visit. The final straw was missing my own funeral. Not to worry, I'm obviously still alive and have straightened out that little misunderstanding.

So here I am, a thousand miles underground in an attempt to gain a new perspective on life and maybe generate a little buzz for the website too. The situation down here is, shall we say, somewhat less than fragrant. For some reason it keeps getting hotter as I go deeper. Digging through the lower crust was no party either. It turns out there's several species of creatures living in the crystal caves there -- aliens and whatnot -- and most of them are not real fond of visitors. Lucky for me, I had the foresight to bring my old metal trash can lid to shield myself from their alarming neural disrupter-beam attacks.

The food situation is less than optimal, and my diet has been limited mostly to the snacks I brought in my backpack. Obviously, there's not a lot of fast food restaurants in the region. However, I was invited to dinner one night by a non-hostile subterranean dweller who could speak a little English. He calls himself Quintillus, and he prepared a stew which consisted mostly of snake flesh and algae. It was tastier than you would expect, and a nice break from energy bars and trailmix.

Getting enough water has also been tough. I drank all my bottled water, so now I just have to wait until there's a storm up at the surface and hope some of the raindrops fall down the hole and into my mouth. If anybody is reading this, please do me a favor and toss some more water down here. And while you're at it, a spill-proof thermos of three-quarters decaf with agave nectar and soy creamer would be nice. I'll email you the GPS coordinates.

A special thank-you goes to my friend, Crazy Typeface, who is handling the website maintenance duties while I'm away. CT is the esteemed moderator of the Digital Werewolf computer forum, and somewhat of a web guru, so I know the site is in good hands while I'm gone. As you might guess, internet access is patchy down here, although, if you're reading this, it means I was able to successfully send this column to CT via my Blackberry.

I still have a long way to go and I'm wondering how much hotter it's going to get. Before I left, I described my plans to Rudy, who works at the deli down the street from our office, and he warned me that it's hot as hell in the middle of the earth, but I think he's probably confused because of his religious background. His parents were devout Catholics, and they take the Bible a little too literally, if you know what I mean. Science was never my best subject in school, but everybody knows the hell thing is just a story cooked up by the church to scare people. Sure, there's lava and stuff down here, which is causing this heat, but down toward the center it's got to be cooler. It's only common sense.

When you've dug a hole like this one, the time inevitably comes when you start to ask yourself, "What am I doing down here? I could be enjoying the cool weather up at the surface. I could be kicked back on the couch with a good DVD and a big bowl of popcorn. I need to get back to my web design work and those ballroom dancing classes that I registered for. But instead I'm down here with only a ten dollar shovel for a friend." If there is a lesson in this, it is that when you run away from your problems, you end up with a bigger set of problems.

It's starting to look like this little adventure of mine was a flawed concept from the beginning. I'm dirty, sore, and hungry, and my to-do list back home isn't getting any shorter. Plus, I just realized that if I somehow managed to dig all the way through the earth to China, I could be apprehended by the Chinese authorities and forced to work in an iPhone factory. I think the smart decision at this point would be to call it quits. Which raises another question. How do I get out of here? A thousand miles is a long way to climb. If you have any ideas, leave a comment.