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A Johnny Internet Tale Thank you, Uncle Miltie! The sun was warm in the clear blue sky as the raven circled high overhead. "Just one more day," he thought to himself as he banked against the southwest wind to get enough spin for another go-around. "One more day and I coulda slayed 'em all." The raven was right, of course. The possibilities for outrageously bad, verboten humor would have been endless if March had only 30 days. Still, he'd pretended it had all worked out that way and amused himself with an inner monologue that literally cracked him up. As he chortled over a joke no one else would ever hear (especially from a raven), he involuntarily folded his wings and fell like a stone before snapping out of it just above the ground. Extending his wide black wings, he flapped them a couple of times and flew straight into a power line. The loud pop caused several citizens to turn their heads, but no one noticed the small flurry of stinky black feathers in the dust and gum wrappers spiraling across the unpaved parking lot. Johnny Internet waited for the dust devil to cross the alley and hurried on his way, late for his morning latte. As he rounded the corner, he was pleased to find a single shiny feather on the sidewalk and picked it up, tucking it into his shirt pocket. Johnny never saw a feather he didn't like, but there was something special about this one. "Good medicine, maybe" he told himself, patting his chest to make sure the feather was still there. Down on the Paseo del Pueblo, the usual long line of traffic snaked through town. Weekend Harley riders weaved from side to side, keeping their balance in the snail's pace stop-and-go. (Johnny loved the blat-a-tat-tat from their big chrome pipes.) A side-by-side pair of especially fine V-twins chugged slowly by, one purple and the other one red. Skinny brown-skinned girls impeccably dressed in perfect blouses and tight pants sat lightly on the rear saddles, chatting back and forth with arms around their boyfriends' waists. One girl turned to the other and laughed as a gust of wind whipped her long dark hair back and forth, then let it drop. The sun shone and no one was in a hurry as the traffic inched. What a day! The corner coffee bar was crowded with more than the usual number of kids, rich wannabes, and middle-aged Anglo hustlers. Pushing his way past people lying about houses and keeping in touch, Johnny looked around and decided today was made for moving, not standing in line. Walking home, he remembered the press release he was supposed to write. Oh, that press release. In a misbegotten effort to squeeze more money out of his Macintosh, he'd fired off an email to apply for a job he found listed at a Web site. It sounded perfect and even specified "Mac-savvy journalist" as the candidate of choice. To his delight and amazement, he'd gotten an almost immediate phone call in reply from the distant software company that had posted the ad. Oh, they liked him, all right. There was only one thing wrong. The earnest business major half his age on the other end was sincere, no doubt, but Johnny had the feeling he was being probed by alien exobiologists or interviewed by a cult. It wasn't so much the essence of the communication itself (which suggested to him an exchange with an ex-spouse in a dentist's waiting room) as what they wanted him to do, namely use his reputation and contacts to ensure the company's press releases were posted at major Mac sites. He needed the money desperately, but then again, where was it? The person doing the hiring couldn't or wouldn't say, and the next thing they wanted was what amounted to a free audition press release for a soon to-be-released product. Aw, screw the amoral bastards anyway! If he ever was to sell out, he'd know when to jump, and now wasn't it. The squawking of a dozen ravens high in the Siberian elms interrupted his thought processes as Johnny strode up the walk to the apartment. This was no bad thing, since he'd been thinking much too narrowly anyway from down inside a very deep rut. He went inside, made himself a fresh pot of his very own coffee, then came back outside with a steaming mugful to look at the paper and sit in the sun. A gust of wind soon scattered the sections he'd already read. After retrieving them, he located a fist-sized stone and weighted them down. A few blocks away from the latilla-walled yard, he could hear more motorcycles blatting along the Paseo. After a while he began to feel a strange combination of manic energy and preternatural calm, and slowly the magic began to flow back into his veins. A moment or two later, Johnny rediscovered the shiny black feather in his shirt pocket. Holding it in his fingers, he thought about birds and sunshine and motorcycles and brown-skinned girls. Life was a piece 'o cake, and someone had just given him a fork. Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr runs a few Web sites of his own, namely Zoozone, Fotofeed, and JHFarr.com. Please feel free to check them out after hitting every possible Applelinks page and clicking on all our ad banners.
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"GRACK!" is © copyright 2002, John H. Farr, all rights reserved
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