This was the wackiest of the stops on our tour.
And when I say wacky, I mostly mean gay. But I don't want to offend
gay people. Geeze, do I ever NOT want to offend gays or lesbians. Gay
people are just fine as far as I'm concerned. I've been good friends
with many gay men and women, and because of that, it's just not part
of my nature to want to offend them, or any one group of people for
that matter with my adjectives. So on that note, let me simply rephrase
what I meant: Emoticon '01 was entirely created for and by retards.
Imagine a room where everyone speaks in abbreviations and delights in
the idea of recreating the world around them in letters. Not stories
- just letters, numbers, punctuation, like this: aG;!~l'kS^*7h/. Now
pretend to yourself that at a large conference, covering three floors
of convention space, thousands upon thousands of people have met - people
who haven't spoken a single word out loud for probably 3 years now or
more. Text-enabled cell phones, excuse me, "web phones" abound, and
essentially, the entire building is set on "vibrate." I'm not kidding.
In their convention pamphlet they discuss how long it took them to find
a building that matched up with California's strict earthquake ordinances.
Not one phone rings inside - it's too frightening to these pod people.
There was a little bar there that served only food that could be abbreviated,
or already was. Stuff like:
p-nuts ;*O bbq ribs @:o) so d pop B=( p-za : ) m&m's :*p
The bartender's shirt read "Wut'l U Hav?" I asked for a Sprite, and
the guy just stared at me. Several of the surrounding "tribesman"
did a litte dance around me, shaking their heads in violent "no" patterns
and twiddling their fingers at me like choreographed swimmers. Timb,
catching on, said "I think you need to abbreviate it." They all shot
a glance at him and covered their ears, like his voice really hurt them.
I said "frickin', how do I abbreviate Sprite?" We couldn't come up with
anything, and they were starting to look violent, so Timb yelled "Give
him an A&W!" I think that's what saved our lives. One by one they gradually
moved away, except this little nudist 3 year old who kept rubbing her
one ear and staring at me like she'd never seen a Christian before.
She had a semi-colon painted on the side of her belly button, and a
parenthesis on the other side. I assume her belly button was the nose,
and that her stomache was winking at me. I don't know :*?.
Anyway, we left, and at the door, Timb turned back to yell "BRB!" We
were met with a wave of people yelling back "LOL!" I heard a couple
"ROFL's" in there, too. Whatever they they had said, the sudden burst
of noise eminating from their as-yet-unused vocal cords created a shockwave
of sound that did little to me or Timb, but left them floundering on
their backs. 1000's of people cut down by the power of voice. It was
like "Dune." You ever see that movie?
Gary: Our work is done here. Timb: lol. Gary: Did you have fun? Timb: ROFLMAO Gary: Stop shouting you ASCII-hole.
