Blog Love Omega Glee: The Solstice Of The Pamphleteer (20 June 2012)

The longest day of the year in Cleaveland arrives and what do Francine and Jake due to celebrate it?

Have a picnic on the shores of Lake Eerie?

No.

Play a game of frisbee in the park and otherwise frolic in the sun?

No.

Spend all day inside on the computer working on their blogs?

Yes!

How severed can one get from the cycles of nature?

Never completely severed, but pretty close.

Jake sits on his bed with Rudy the cat in his lap and reads one of the pamphlets that Francine is investigating. This one is on how the rich are going to use nanobot technology to become cyborgs and live forever, gradually becoming less biological and more technological, or, if you'd prefer, more artificial and less natural. "This guy uses a lot of wrestling terms," Jake says.

"How do you know it's a guy?" Francine says, not looking up from the computer, where she's reading a website that claims the pamphlets stem from Dick in the White House.

"What?"

"How do you know it's a guy? It could be a woman. Or it could be a group of people."

"I don't know. They all read like they're written by the same person. Plus he keeps using wrestling language."

"'He'? Don't be sexist."

"It could be a sentient computer too, so how about if I use 'it'. Maybe it's an alien shapeshifting lizard demon turned rogue and wanting to expose the sinister plans of its race to humanity. Or maybe it's a cat, and the cat can spell very well."

"'It'? I guess that's fine."

"So, 'it' uses wrestling terms like 'submit', 'pinned down', and 'countout'. He even . . ."

"It."

". . . OK, 'it'. 'It' even uses the term 'stiff'."

"'Stiff'? That's a common word. What's unusual about that?"

"Yeah, but he uses it in a wrestling way. 'Stiff' in wrestling means your opponent is hitting you hard. Like, 'Bob you were working a little stiff tonight. Those punches hurt.' 'Well, Bill, I wanted to make it look real.' In this pamphlet, he, er, it writes, 'The implant surgery is a stiff one,' which doesn't make much sense unless you interpret it in the wrestling sense, which means the surgery hurts or is severe. The whole thing reminds me of something The Pamphleteer would hand out."

"The Pamphleteer?"

"He's a wrestler. His gimmick is that he passes out leaflets and tries to inflame the crowd. But it turns out he was passing out booklets for real. He used to be in the WWWWWW, but he got fired for trying to form a labor union. He's been working in the independents since."

Francine turns around, "And he travels around the country a lot, right?"

"Yeah, probably to wherever he can get a booking."

"He could be our it."

"You think so? I was half-kidding."

"It sounds as plausible as anything else I've come across. I'll check it out. I have determined something else though."

"What?"

"The English language needs an indefinite pronoun."

"How about 'they'?"

"That's still plural, and what if the person or thing is singular?"

"Hmm . . . I see what you mean. Why don't we figure out if The Pamphleteer is behind your pamphlets first though?"

"OK."

"Unless you want to wrestle me now. I can't promise I won't work 'stiff' though," Jake laughs.

"Oh, stop," Francine says, and turns back to the computer.

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.