July 29th, 2001

Yo! What up homies? Long time no see! It's been a verified age since I've seen you all here. I haven't had much to say, but the natives are getting restless, and I think it's about time I got off my lazy butt and wrote something. (Special thanks to PrincessRumi for the motivating kick that made me fall off my chair and accidentally uncover my ranting hat.) Anyway, please keep your arms and legs inside the car until the rant comes to a full and complete stop.

I recently took a trip out into the Sierras. I had a lot of fun, but while I was planning for this backpack, I was worried. You see, I'm just a lowly gamer geek, and I had heard rumours that the outside was inhabited by strange and often dangerous creatures. Stories recounted to me included tales of rabid earthworms, nasty seagulls that flocked together and poked eyes out, evil brain eating squirrels, foreign tourists, and bunnies. But these tales of terror were nothing compared to the tales I had heard of the legendary creature called, the "bear."

Now the stories differ, but most people agree that "bears" are large furry mammals. These "terrors of the mountains" seem to be quite intelligent, so intelligent in fact, that they've trained the Rangers to invent challenging ways to hide food. This caused the bears to train hard in the art of food getting (Hey Booboo! Another Pic-a-nic Basket!) so that their brain power rose ever higher. This in turn caused many bears to seek work in the big city, which while decreasing the amount of bear sightings, also contributed to suburban sprawl, and took thousands of jobs away from hard working americans. If there ever were a reason for unions... but I digress.

I saw no sign of these "bears" while I was adventuring outside. Some scholars may scoff at my observations, but I observed a distinct lack of technology between nine and ten thousand feet of elevation, which meant only one thing... The bears have gone to work for ISP's. There is no other explanation. The bears have taken their systems and their high speed modems, and gone out into the harsh job market that is computer science. Dealings with ISP's seems to confirm the fact that humans are no longer needed to run today's modern internet.

On another note, I also did some soul searching while I was out on the trail, and I puzzled something for a while. "Why in the world do I go hiking?" The only answers I could come up with was a) I liked the scenery, and b) it felt so good to stop. So naturally, me being as brainy as I usually am, I came up with an idea. Instead of hiking all that way, why don't we just skip that idea altogether. Instead of Backpacking, I propose the activity of Stopping. You get a 60 pound pack, and then stop, set up camp, and go to bed. All the satisfaction of hiking, without the muscular stress!

Anyway, this is SMiH(ARRRRRGH, my achilles tendon!) signing off!