Hello World!
June 2013 by Somebody
Hi fans, it's Somebody. I'm happy to say I've made it back to society in one piece and my hole-digging days are definitely over. As you may recall, I wrote my last installment from the bottom of a 1000-mile-deep pit. I had been attempting to dig a hole to China, but then got really tired and hungry and decided to give up. The only problem was, I didn't have a way to get out of there. I mean, digging the hole was relatively easy. You just shovel the dirt and you go straight down. But getting out of the hole -- that's a different story altogether.
I was pondering that question, and frantically sending "Help!" messages to everyone I knew with my Blackberry, when suddenly I felt myself floating in the air, a couple of feet off the ground. I continued to float upward and didn't understand what was happening at first. I was worried that I would drop suddenly and be killed or injured. After about 15 minutes of continuous upward floating, I began to theorize about what was happening, and decided that the dormant telepathic powers of our website fans must have been activated by their emotional concern for my well-being after they read my last Webpage News post. That's the most obvious explanation. I've heard about this kind of thing happening on that Coast to Coast radio show.
After a couple of hours of moderate-speed upward flight, it became clear that whatever force was lifting me was also smart enough not to smash me against the rocky walls of the tunnel. I dozed off for a while, and when I awoke I could see a small spot of light from the surface. It grew continuously larger until I emerged from the pit. I was hoping to be levitated all the way home, since I had left my car parked back at the office in town, but about five miles outside of Louisville the fans must have lost interest, because gravity reasserted itself and I dropped to the ground, which luckily was only a few feet below. I got out my phone and unsuccessfully tried to reach someone who could give me a ride. I walked for a while and reached a highway, and after a while was able to flag down an approaching bus. I had to beg and plead with the bus driver to let me onboard because I smelled so bad from my underground hole-digging adventure. Finally he agreed, but demanded that I sit all the way in back.
The bus ride was relaxing, and I started to think about how I was going to get cleaned up. Hygiene in general has become a challenge since I gave up my apartment and started living full-time in my small office in the historic slum section of Louisville. I've been washing my hair in the sink there, and on weekends I usually take a shower at my brother's house in the suburbs, if his wife, Fiona, isn't there. That woman makes no secret of her loathing for me and my website, and even called the police one time when I showed up. Whenever I can't get a shower at my brother's house, I go jump in a public water fountain or the pool at the local YMCA.
So, I got the bus to let me off pretty close to where my brother lives and walked a couple of miles his house. I knocked on the door and, of course, Fiona answered it. She stood there and stared at me with her usual cold expression, apparently not surprised in the least by my sweat and dirt-covered condition, but when the smell hit her, she staggered slightly on her feet and muttered, "I can't do this. Just... go away," and slammed the door.
I wandered off down the street and got out my phone again and called my friend General Strangeness, who is one of our esteemed contributors at Somebody's Webpage. He answered this time, and I filled him in on my situation. He came and picked me up in his borrowed yellow-orange '72 Datsun, and took me to the little shack where he lives in the backyard of a friend's house. He got out the garden hose and filled his washtub up with water and some bubble bath soap. After my first bath the water turned dark brown, so we dumped out the water and I took a second bath.
After that we dined on fruit salad, made from fruit the General had picked from fruit trees around the neighborhood, and his signature dish, mac and cheese from a box. Not only is it the cheesiest, it really hits the spot when recovering from a failed subterranean adventure. After getting cleaned up and some decent food, I was finally starting to feel human again. Say what you want about him, but you'll never have a better friend in this world than General Strangeness. Later he gave me a ride to the office, where I lay down on my bed in the back room and went to sleep for about three days straight.
Before I went home, we drank some coffee and discussed the recent lack of writing submissions from our usual contributors. In case you haven't noticed, the number of new articles posted on our site for the last year or so has been few and far between. We just haven't been getting submissions from the usual people we used to count on. I can't help but wonder, does this represent a mass exodus, or is it just a temporary lull in activity? Have they decided that my pie-in-the-sky promises of Internet fame and fortune are just a lot of hot air?
I posed these questions to the General, and his reply was that he just hasn't been inspired to write much since his failed run for the presidency in 2012. Also, the seasonal springtime boost in his lawn care business has been keeping him busy. I'm sure if I asked the other contributors, they would have similar reasons. They are busy with their jobs and their lives, which is not surprising, considering that we've been making no money here at Somebody's Webpage, and therefore they have no financial incentive to be involved with the site. That's life in the website biz, I suppose. I'm just going to try to remember the immortal words of Sting and set my birds free and hope they eventually return.
To be honest, I've slacked off on my writing a lot lately too. It's not easy to write when you spend four months of your life digging a hole with very little food and water. But even though I've made it back to civilization, I have decided to put my big-picture plans for the site on the backburner in order to concentrate on improving my web design skills. I'm hoping to take my skills to the level where I can really feel good about myself as a web designer, to the point where it becomes second nature instead of a constant challenge. This will require me to master my various software programs and learn some programming languages. I've got a stack of 57 computer books that I plan to read from cover to cover, going through various exercises and taking extensive notes. After that I'll be ready to run with the big dogs. Hello world! (A little nerd humor there.)
So that's where we're at. As a fan of our site, your response to this might be, "What does this mean for Somebody's Webpage? Is it a failed project like the hole to China, doomed to be abandoned in favor of greener pastures?" My answer to this is NO WAY! Consider this current lull in our activity to be a necessary step on the way to achieving our ultimate destiny, which is to become THE GREATEST WEBSITE IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE!!!
Copyright 2013 by Somebody's Webpage