Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about persuasion, an error message, and SCANDAL!

30DBC PROMPT: "Wow! In the discussions today our beloved Neva Prosperous Snow celebrating suggested an ad campaign to save the camp in her entry. I thought it was wicked awesome so here we are with the challenge. Well, each of you are very talented writers. Norb and I believe you could write an ad campaign convincing people that this camp is a great place to visit. Show us what you got. Maybe we can convince Nell and Merle with our help this place would be worth giving it another try."

Hey campers! Remember what I said the other day about it being weird writing to your own prompt? I think the only thing weirder than that sometimes is writing to a prompt you've been mentioned in . I didn't really think about it last night when I first saw it, and it didn't click with me the two other times I looked at it earlier today...but the minute I glanced it over after pasting it into my text entry box, I was like "WHAAAAAT?!" (with my basso-toned voice going up at least an octave for good measure). But that's ok...I've already had to do an exercise like this once this week, in my very first (Business Communications) class yesterday. We had to write a persuasive letter to our professor under the guise that there was only one empty seat left in her class, and 13 of us trying to be the one she lets in. I looked like an idiot because I was the first one done, with three solid paragraphs, but I couldn't get it to print to the classroom printer. Meanwhile, the rest of these hacks were struggling with a couple sentences here and a couple sentences there...but whatever. That's not the point.

I think we're gonna have to be creative in launching an advertising campaign for the campground, for sure. I wouldn't be against a camping version of this borderline-obnoxious Six Flags commercial  . We'd have to (unfortunately? fortunately?) play up the strengths of the area and its, ummmm, unique features...and we'd have to somehow convince the sharkhorses not to get all batshit crazy with the influx of visitors.

Of course, because we don't really have a budget, we're gonna have to staff and film this thing ourselves. Who's got the sweet camera? Or at least a decent smartphone that takes quality video? I'm nominating 30DBC Creator/Founder to play some kind of role similar to the dancing old guy...he's probably in the best shape between myself, him and Charlie ~ . Unless ANN Counselor, Lesbian & Happy wants to assume the part of an eager dancing host.

I don't really know what the rest of us would do though...but we'd have to include cutaway shots featuring:

Charlie ~ and myself playing Beer Toss with the big hole in the tree...one of the many activities at Camp Bloggawhynotta.

Noyoki and amy-Has a great future ahead posing next to a jovial sharkhorse that's been sated with gummy bears and tummy rubs...because there are plenty of native animals playing in their natural habitat.

💙 Carly and Prosperous Snow celebrating conversing over cups of hot cocoa next to a roaring campfire while fighting off the urge to put marshmallows in the gaping mouth of ElaineElaine , who's already fallen asleep at the hint of sundown...to flaunt the communal spirit of togetherness.

And it wouldn't be a trip to camp without a ride on Finn O'Flaherty 's spaceship...because there's a bunch of attractions for the whole family to enjoy!

And then, underneath a shot of Nell, Merle, Lyn's a sly fox and myself waving, would be the address, phone number, and website info while our new theme music   plays us to the fade-out.

BCF PROMPT: "There is an error message on your laptop/computer that will not close after you visited a secret government website. What does it say? I am sure you can write an amusing story with this."

Yup...another instance of The Man tryin' to hold us down; that's what it is. Although I've never personally been on The Darknet before, I've read a little about it and I've probably been to some other places of ill repute on the legit information superhighway (Do people still refer to the internet as that? ), and I haven't been busted for anything outlandish or illegal or immoral, so maybe I'm not trying hard enough . I also haven't gotten any viruses, pop-ups or confounding error messages; then again, I don't subscribe to mail order pharmacies or bride listings either, and as far as I know nobody's got a hit out on me. At least I keep telling myself that.

But say one day, while running the numbers for Camp Bloggawhynotta's budget, I got sucked down a rabbit hole of videos by obscure 80's bands on YouTube (let's face it...I have a terrible attention span and serious procrastination issues, so it could happen). And suppose I played the following chain of songs:

Go West, "King Of Wishful Thinking"  
The Romantics, "Talking In Your Sleep"  
Animotion, "Obsession"  
Wang Chung, "Dance Hall Days"  
Kajagoogoo, "Too Shy"  

But before I decided to go back to doing actual work, I'd shut down and go grab a sandwich...only, those five songs happened to unlock a secret government operative from the 80's, G.R.A.W.K., otherwise known as The Government of Russian/American Woryld Kontrol.

Turns out there was some shady back-room dealings between President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev toward the end of the Cold War that no one knew about, and since the internet wasn't really a thing back then, all the information was encrypted seven times over and passed through a generation only to languish in the supposed dead space of long-forgotten bands that barely amounted to much in their brief stay atop the pop culture radar. But I had to be slackin' and stumble across this...turns out they were gonna end the threat of nuclear war all together via a dance-off. The winner of Dance Fever with Denny Terrio   was going to face off against the winner of Nikolai Jaksitov's Nyet YOU Shut Up Vund Dants, and the losing country would have to turn over the keys to all the nukes and satellites and whatever else would've blown up the planet real nice back in '85. But the whole thing was cancelled at the last minute when something called The Cola Wars   broke out, forcing a much more public form of peace between Mother Russia and The United States.

Anyway, so I somehow unlocked the G.R.A.W.K. master mainframe, and now I can't get out of it. Every time I click on the little red X on the bottom left corner (it's a Soviet design thing, apparently), it just brings up the same message in another stacked and tiered dialogue box..."I must break you"   followed by what I can only imagine are instructions in Russian for performing cranial-rectal immersion techniques.

I didn't know what to do, and as per typical me when I get into situations like this, I prefer not to tell anyone else until it's absolutely too late because I don't want to look like an incompetent troublemaker. I hopped on Lyn's workstation while she was out giving potential camping families the guided tour of the facilities, opened up iTunes, and used our corporate credit card to download the band America's entire catalog. I saved it to a flash drive and jammed it into the USB port of my system...thankfully late 70's/early 80's soft rock made by dudes who were probably smoother with the ladies than your dad was turned out to be just the thing to break free from the G.R.A.W.K. database of lame, anticlimactic peace-mongering the world was no doubt ill-prepared for.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

Because if this never happened, what kind of world would we be living in today?

"Knock out this!"
Lyrics.  

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

"An admired mentor asks for help covering up a scandal. Did she say scandal? What is it?"

I'm gonna come off sounding like a jerk for saying this and I really don't mean to, but here goes: I don't think I have anyone I'd consider to be a "mentor", and if I did I don't think she'd be a woman. Wait, that last part sounds funny (and not in a "ha ha" kind of way)...would it be "I don't think he'd be a woman"? Whatever. No mentor, so I guess the sex isn't important. I mean gender. Yeah, that.

So I guess then I'll just answer this in vague terms...if someone I really respected wanted me to cover up some kind of scandal, I'd have to ask myself a few things. 1) How serious is it?; 2) Am I risking jail time?; 3) How bad am I gonna get dragged through the mud if this cover-up blows up on us?; and 4) What's in it for me? If the answer to #4 is "lots of money and total immunity", hell yeah! Count me in, my man!

But what are we covering up? Lyn heard about my little adventure with G.R.A.W.K. because I was a moron and left Reese's peanut butter cup smudges on her mouse when I was using her computer to download the band America's catalog. And since I'm not yet qualified to be the director of IT at Camp Bloggawhynotta, we've got to somehow keep this on the down-low so as not to panic Merle and Nell. But how? I know...I'll conveniently spill my Mountain Dew on the router! Sure, we'll be without internet for however long it takes to drive over to town and pick up a new one, and while that's happening I'll pretend I'm looking into the "problem" from all angles, but what I'll really be doing is erasing the browsing history from all the computers and performing the tasks necessary so nobody's the wiser about G.R.A.W.K. except me and you. Sounds like a plan.

The moral to this blog entry, folks: Always find a way to throw someone else's money at a bad situation.

💙 Carly , maybe you can shed some light on this: What is Tim Hortons trying to accomplish with this doughnut??  

Yes, I get it...the Buffalo Bills have looked damn near awful all preseason, but thanks to Deadspin we have a comprehensive guide to how bad this Bills season is going to be  . Save yourself the factual evidence and skip right down to the section titled "Hear it from Bills fans!" for the real value in entertainment this piece has to offer.

A few weeks ago, I believe Charlie had posted within an entry something about people hurrying to get on buses or elevators before everyone else had finished getting off...I think I may have actually experienced something today that by and large has completely trumped his scenario.

But first, the setup: At school, the layout of the main building is kinda weird. The main staircases are on one side of the building, and the elevators are on the other side of the building (that side has stairs too, but they're the fire escape stairs and are kinda out of the way, as opposed to the big gaudy staircases on the other side). The elevators are ridiculously small...maybe they fit four average-sized people comfortably. I try to take the elevator as much as possible because I still can't do stairs well, and if I have a class on the second floor that's on the same side as the elevators, it makes sense (and I also hate having to waste steps).

So I went over to the elevator today, and an older woman with a walker pressed the button and got in. She was talking to another woman...who proceeded to lean against the frame of the elevator to keep the door from closing, and continued their conversation.

Mind you, these hallways are plenty big enough and lined with all sorts of chairs and couches, just for these kinds of occasions. So who does that? Who stands in the frame of an elevator to have a conversation? And of course, I'm a pussy and don't say anything...I just cough, clear my throat, shift my weight from one leg to the other a few times, roll my eyes, sigh, and get huffy, all in the name of avoiding confrontation with strange old ladies. And I know the ill leaner saw me...I made the mistake of making eye contact with her, and she still didn't move.

I hope she felt like an a-hole when I stomped and stormed through the fire exit door, but it's usually the people who should most feel like an a-hole who never do. And yeah, I should've said something, but I don't know these people or their purpose on campus; for all I know one of them could've been a professor I haven't met yet, and that's a Hell I don't need to be making for myself the first week of classes.

Man, so many big names already signed up for September's official round of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" ...and I don't think I'm gonna be able to do it. I've got night classes Mondays and Tuesdays at the Cortland Extension of TC3 in addition to other classes on the main campus, so I don't know when I'd have time to bust out an entry...I suppose I could use my day off on Wednesdays to catch up, but I'd still be sacrificing points to lateness and in what's shaping up to be a strong group of September challengers, I don't like the idea of handing away the opportunity to compete in what should be a tight race from the 1st to the 30th. But I'll consider judging a week again...maybe.

Well, I think that about covers everything. It better...I don't even wanna see what this word count looks like tonight. All I know is the text entry box slider is a hell of a lot smaller than it usually is by the time I get to this point in the entry. Damn. Oh well...hey, it's the weekend! Be safe and try to relax a little, if you're not already. Peace, workin' overtime, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!