Hits and Misses

I like to joke around, knowing that I'm the only one who writes and reads this blog - it's a discipline I follow while I pretend to live on a desert island, giving an honorable nod to all the independent men and women who cleared the land for my existence.

On this desert island, I have a small grove of trees. I call it my mangrove, my maleness dominating the pheromonic breeze.

One day, after climbing a palm tree, trying to find any new palms to replace my old, calloused ones, I saw that I was not alone.

A boat of stranded cruise ship passengers had landed on the other side and were eating my crabs.

I snuck through my mangrove and gave them a sorry sight, having forgotten what clothes were like.

In their horror, they dashed for the boat, shipwrecked though they were.

"Is that a tent pole?" one asked.

"Tadpole?" I replied, the wind carrying their voices to the curious sharks swimming by.

I followed their gaze and looked down. One thing about hanging around on a desert isle is losing your sense of humanity. I no longer cared what I looked like or who I was. Apparently my manhood, being what it is, cast its eyes upon the lot of well-dressed passers-by and cast a vote I'd not counted in a long time.

"Fear not, landlubbers. 'Tis but a rash decision of mine. 'Twill pass soon enough."

They approached me as my sundial gnomon returned to its case.

"Who are you?" they asked each in their own way.

"I? I'm who I am."

They sat with me and drank coconut milk. They explained their situation. Seems like there's this thing called a computing machine that gives humans an excuse to stare at flat surfaces for long periods of time. A group of them had tapped into a keg full of other computing machines' innards and devised a method for mixing the innards into a most surly brew. They called it "The Sims," short for a phrase I've since forgotten.

After helping themselves to another set of my crabs, they commenced to eating my coconuts. I felt obliged to meet their hungry demands because their story was fascinating for one who spent his days in quiet meditation upon the myriad changes of a blue sky.

The ones with me had watched a moving image called "The Last Starfighter" and with their trancelike device called "The Sims," they boiled up a mess of goods that allowed them to sim the world as it really is. The ones who'd booked passage on the ship were the sims' sims, they were. They'd accomplished what no other simian had ever imagined - they'd merged their sim-siminy, sim-siminy, sim-sim-sherry drink into what they called the real world. There were no longer any difference between the two.

I, being of sane mind and body, having endured as a child reruns of "Gilligan's Island," "Castaway" and "Lost" until I was corpse-like numb, have heard many a tale. The dolphins have kept me in stitches for days, hemming me up after I swim with the hammerheads.

Sims? Real world? Computing machines? Have they gone mad? Are we not all on this island together, speaking the language given to us by our ancestral gods? Do they not see that we'll starve if they stay on my patch of land together with me?

I like my mangrove. But you know what? I like my blue skies and blue topaz bay even better. You can guess what I did next. I cut down my trees, lashed together a raft, drew up a map and pointed them passengers back to their cruise ship parked offshore while it emptied its bowels in my general direction. Let them simmer on that.