In the Future There Will be Bob. And Assorted Fillers.

Another month, another post. Yes, I think I have hit on the perfect post to month ratio. A 1 : 1 ratio leaves me enough free time to carry out my various machinations while also allowing me to write about them. And my machinations are better than all other machinations that other machinators carry out. As I type the word “machinators”, MS Word tells me that ‘machinators’ is not a legal word. And I ask it “What do you know?”, needless to say I do not receive an answer and my colleagues give me a strange look.

Back to the perfect ratio. Sticking to this limit will make sure I put out 12 posts a year. Just enough to keep the demand high enough in the future. Because at one point in time, I will print out all the posts and take this blog offline. The immediate result? A massive hue and cry for ‘John Pereira Originals’! I have included an imaginary conversation that might possibly take place in the future to conclusively prove that what I say will come about.

Bob 1: Hello Bob
Bob 2: Hi Bob.
Bob 1: I got a new original JP piece for my collection, old flower.
Bob 2: Begorrah! Don’t tell me you managed to get your mittens on that extremely rare piece from his Mahagedara period.
Bob 1: You got it right mate! I was walking my kangaroo past this old antiques shop when this framed parchment caught my eye. Turned out to be a genuine copy of a JP printout. Probably only 3 or 4 of that particular piece of writing.
Bob 2: Aye, well you’ll be one lucky son of a camel.
Bob 1: …
Bob 2: ehem. I love what you’ve done with your hair

In case you missed it, the above conversation is yet to happen and proves without doubt that my blog will be a literary treasure for future generations to come. And yes, all people in the future will be named Bob and will have different accents.

Apart from dreaming about the astronomical rise in popularity of my blog I haven’t been upto much. Any student knows that October to December is the busiest time of the year. And if you’re doing your best at trying to fail exams then you have to start not studying by at least July. It’s a hard life but you have to start being a disappointment at some point of your life.

A couple of pretty interesting things did happen during that time though. The first was that I took The Big Step and met up with some people. Meeting people might not seem like a big step, but I had met this bunch online. Specifically, on the now slightly derelict TNL forum. And more recently on the Lame-Duck forum. It was a fun meetup. Two things happened at the meet (aside from all the usual stuff that happens at meetups)

1. I stopped associating people with their avatars. I also realized that most people are different from their online personas
2. Bottle of beer exploded in my face when I opened it. Twice. Thankfully no one noticed the incident. It would have been a bit hard to live down.

The second interesting thing was TNL Onstage. One of the forum members, Lakmaal, was a finalist in the solo category. We went to root for him and I had a brilliant time there as well. Except when I was introduced to some new people.

New Person: Hi John ! I’m xxxx!
Me: … (Thinks “Oh SHIT!”)
New Person: (After being put off by the frantic staring on my part, looks around and moves away. Slowly)
Me: …

This happened a couple of times, and I came to the conclusion that it was the loud noise affecting me. If ever you meet me in a noisy public place, just keep walking. This will save you and me a lot of awkwardness.

Apart from those awkward moments I had a great time.

And something else I wanted to talk about was our forum.

Before I go any further I suppose I should give you some history. Take your mind back to those bygone days……. in October.

Read the post by the Queen of the Dark Asylum for details. Some people got kicked out of the TNL forum. People voiced their thoughts and then some more people got kicked. The end result of all this was that about 30 – 40 people suddenly had no forum to call their own so I (also being a member of the TNL forum) set one up. So now we have a home. It’s a fun place, if you want to join just fill in the form and register. I know for a fact that some of you would fit in there really well.

You might be wondering why I have been rambling on for a page and a half about these mundane activities of mine, well the reason is that a little bird told me that if you don’t post on your blog for more than two months you get taken off Kottu. So to forestall my imminent banishment – before I am able to put my “Plan for Literary Domination” into motion – I decided to put up this filler post. Anyone have any concrete information about this? About Kottu banning, not about plans for literary domination.

Await regular transmissions AFTER Christmas at which point I will again be living on 24 hours a day.

P.S. – The title “In the Future There Will be Bob” should be familiar to all you GTA lovers. It’s supposed to be “In the Future There Will be Robots”