Saturday, December 04, 2004
The Message is the Medium
Bill stares in horror at the glowing computer screens, each virtually shrieking the same blood-curdling message in his ears:
YOU DIDN'T WIPE YOUR FEET, DID YOU, YOU BAD BOY? YOU'RE TRACKING MUD ALL OVER MY AATCC-COMPLIANT ANTI-STATIC CARPET!
Bill is, well, paralyzed. He can feel the Mother Blog seeping up through his muddy boots, taking possession, cell by cell, of his legs, his groin, his lower belly. He wants to scream--but can't. Slowly but surely he is being pixelated into an electronic image of the Munch painting ...
At that moment Doug bursts into the sanctuary with a baseball bat and begins smashing terminals with Vikingesque abandon. Sparks fly. Bill can feel some sensation in his chest--just his imagination? No, he can feel the pixelation recede. They're going to beat this thing!
But then Doug too begins to lose headway. His motions become jerky, then sluggish. He shimmers and shudders as the pixelation effect kicks in. His resolution plunges precipitously.
But just as the boys think all is lost, one wall of the sanctuary explodes: the Mullah Billdoug blog, roaring with power, bursts through the wall in a shower of plaster dust, sound insulation, and styrofoam packing peanuts! Bill and Doug, momentarily depixelated, dash to the blog and climb in, Bill behind the wheel. He throws it into reverse and floors the blogas pedal--thankfully, the bad blogas has been processed out of the system. This ain't the Mullah Billdoug blog for nothing! The engine roars and the blog lays tracks back out through the gaping wall.
Bill is looking back to negotiate the hole and doesn't see what Doug sees: a swarm of coleopteric system administrators, converging on the fleeing car.
"Go!" Doug yells. Bill, of course, shifts badly, doesn't pull the shift lever all the way from reverse to drive, and when he hits the blogas the engine revs impotently until Doug reaches over and taps it into drive. With a ferocious thud the car lurches into gear and peels out of the church parking lot, thousands of iridescent beetles in hot pursuit.
