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7 Archimedes, 35 A.T. (Jul. 27, 2003) - 4:42 p.m. In which our plucky young zero has not been fighting Neff.I COMMAND YOU TO RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE AND RESCUE MY DAUGHTER. So, yesterday afternoon, CB and I were chatting merrily away when— Okay, we weren't chatting "merrily" as such. We were trying to get to the root of some of my psychological issues, and making something that I thought rhymed with progress. All of a sudden, a passing daddy-ogre informed me that an expotition I'd thought wasn't happening until Monday was about to leave. A good chunk of the way down through Maryland and West Virginia, I had the brooding anxieties I tend to get when my routine or expectations are upset. It occurred to me that maybe the first time we BurrLoomi moved in my lifetime, back when I was too young to remember, left some scars on my psyche. That would explain my desperate need to find a routine and settle into it, and why I'm content with a room slightly smaller than the one I used to have in Mississippi — on some deep level, maybe I associate apartments (like the one we lived in before that first move and the one we live in now) with happiness. Or I could just be talking to hear my head rattle. I do that, you may have noticed. Anyway, the 'rents had an appointment to look at a timeshare, and there was a mall in the vicinity that I might never otherwise get to, so they dropped me off there, and I explored around. Three hours after our scheduled meeting time, my hanging around in Thoreaufare (our scheduled meeting place) without buying anything was unsettling the staff to the point where they felt comfortable telling me about it. As continuity would have it, that was about the time I got sick of waiting for the people with the car to show up so I could know whether or not they'd had dinner. I decided that if they hadn't gotten fed by now, it was their own lookout, and headed over to the Dwarf Grill to fill my face, leaving instructions with the staff on whom they were to look for and what they were to say. As I suspected it would, this act of giving up caused their waveforms to collapse. Or, at least, they showed up within minutes of my sitting down to eat. (Dad got a burger from an ex-Johnny Rockets, Mum had Then, to recompense the bookstore people for putting up with me, I went and bought the first MT collection. It was partly being a fan, partly seeing it in a brick-and-mortar setting. And, of course, partly having the comics available for offline reading. In the all-new annotation to this strip, the Fredartist writes: Largo is the kind of person who will fall down a flight of stairs, run back up, and fall right down again. Piro sits at the bottom of the stairs and wonders if they are safe to climb or not. We all know people like that. Some of us are people like that. (Then again, my life is neither a dating sim nor a first-person shooter. It's a game of The Sims played by someone who only checks his Sim once a real-time hour or so.) And some of us just need Fan Appreciation Bats. I'm sure CB could use one. Or else a cardboard tube. Anyway, this mishap was something of a breaking point. I was willing to believe it was just the atomic sales-pitch they were being subjected to that was keeping them, but at the back of my mind, something kept saying What if...? Specifically, What if they're stranded somewhere, with no way to contact me, leaving me with no way to get back home? Or worse, what if they're in the hospital, or the morgue, and nobody knows where to find me? So yeah, we're thinking about getting cell-phones. And yes, as Mil said, I'm well aware that this would basically be the three of us burning our human-race membership cards and pissing on the ashes, but better that than have some other part of our lives get pissed on. As Grandpa Winnegan said, "What cometh to a man if he gain the world and lose his arse?" Speaking of Mil and Margret ("Tch — you've already seen a movie today"), I've been to two movies this month, and one of them rocked. The other...well, it didn't rock, but it wasn't as bad as some reviewers have said. Okay, granted, Quartermain (sic) acted rings around nearly everyone else on the screen, but given that he's been acting longer than some've them have been alive, that's understandable. I think Mina, for one, did a creditable job, even if they did have to show us why she was picked for the League. And Dorian was appropriately louche and bishy, enough so to make me glad he didn't get cast as Aragorn (who's supposed, after all, to look fouler and feel fairer). Oh, and my evil twin finally deigned to post the OotP review I mailed him over a month ago. I'd link directly to it, but that would bypass the LJ-cuts, and his ability to do LJ-cuts was the main reason I wanted him to be the one to post it in the first place. (He seems to have garbled a few things, but with any luck, my mentioning that will get him to fix them.) -30-
last time, on The Slack Shack - our next inciting exstallment 
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