On her computer, promising herself that this will be her last game, Francine starts a new round of Minesweeper, a video game that, of course, only fascinates her when she is supposed to be doing something else. That something else is working on a piece for her blog about transhumanism. Showing that she hasn't transcended humanity yet though, Francine procrastinates instead.
Having exhausted the logic of using the numbers to uncover mines, she has to depend on luck for the last mine, which is in one of two remaining uncovered squares. Click on the wrong one and kaboom! With an eye on the timer in hopes of beating her best score, she is hovering her mouse over the final two squares, one right above the other, switching back and forth attempting to intuit the right choice when she gets an instant message.
"Cool Cleaveland" says, "I thought your post yesterday about the parade was hilarious, Franzine, but I was sorry to hear about the lawsuit."
Francine notes the timer on Minesweeper and realizes that she can't beat her best time anymore anyway, so she replies.
"Sorry about what lawsuit?" she types and sends, and goes back to picking a square, any square, in the game.
She still hasn't picked when "Cool Cleaveland" messages back, "You haven't heard? Mellani Googles himself constantly, and he saw your post about the parade and tweeted that he's thinking of suing you for libel and defamation of character. I'll cover the whole thing in the next email newsletter, but you should get on Twitter. Mellani's more steamed than a clam at a bake. Anyway, I'm sure that you'll be hearing from him soon."
Cool Cleaveland is an email newsletter and more that lets you know what's going on in Cleaveland that's cool. Twitter is the electronic messaging system for people who find blogs beyond their attention span limits. Mellani is Rinor "Ryan" Mellani, the "boy mayor" of Lackwood. When Francine and Jake needed a break from his parents yesterday, they wandered down to the Memorial Day parade, where Francine found Mellani's attempts to fawn over the electorate amusing enough that she took a picture of him politicking and posted it on her blog in a post which read, "Someone should tell Mellani, the 'boy mayor' of Lackwood --yes, that's him dressed as Harry Potter doing 'magical things for Lackwood'--that the election was last year and he won. Maybe he has designs on higher office already, but he was acting in the Lackwood Memorial Day parade yesterday like he was still running for office. He was so obsequious that he wasn't just shaking hands and kissing babies, he was giving handjobs and french-kissing babies."
"Great," Francine thinks, "A lawsuit. He'll probably claim I was trying to suggest he was a child-molester. Why is it that the politicians who are the funniest never have a sense of humor? I wonder if the process server will send me the summons via Twitter. At least I'll be in Cool Cleaveland."
She thinks some more, "Hmm . . . maybe I'll get some more blog hits off this."
She clicks on the top square.
It's a mine.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.
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