If you'll please Jess, pardon me-
My floppy connectivity
Equally is out of luck.
This morning the dang disk got stuck.

As for solutions, there's no song
I'll make one up before too long
But now I'll moan in agony.
And write some stupid poetry.

I'm sorry. Until I figure out what to do now the messages from this end of the globe may be very short. Phooey. I hate this machine. I'll try to explain in depth later.

What’s that? I just heard some disturbing news! I was at my good friend Arby’s house checking my email and I read this email from a good friend something about pubbin and clubbin and going to a party and then…

Wait just a darn second! Who dares flirt with the mother of my internet love child!? Who is he? Just let me get my hands on him! Let me at ‘em! Grr!

(In a slightly Mickish whimper) Wait… what do you mean you don’t date ugly guys… but I thought… I… Oh no! (begins to cry) Its been a lie all along!? (Cries harder and harder) You mean I never even had a chance? Not even a hope? Not one? Not even a single one?
NOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!!
Where will I go now? What will I do? My heart… oh how it aches! I am alone again! Lost… destitute, alone!!! Without my precious Jess, my angel my one true love! I am nothing! I am dust! I thought I had something special… something true! And now its over, revealed to be a pitiful horrendous lie!
She doesn’t date ugly guys!
Woe is me!!!!!
What hope now do I have!? What will become of me now that I have been rejected? Surely there are no exceptions! Surely, none are exempt! Discarded on the perfectly plausible (and not so unlikely might I add) basis of my looks alone!
And for what? The manly friend at the party she attended! Oh how I pale in comparison! How I vanish against the brilliance of his testosterone shine! Woe is me! Oh woe is me!!!

(nervously) So uh… Jess. What’s up? I uh, I wrote you and uh… well actually I wrote you a lot of times and I uh, well I hadn’t heard from you and I was… I don’t know. Jess? Did I do something wrong? What happened? Whatever it was Jess, I swear, I can change! Anything I’ll do it! Anything for you Jess! I will!
I know I’m not perfect, far from it… a mere shadow in contrast you your radiant glow… But I don’t what I’d do without you! I wake every morning and breathe the air wishing I was there… on that lovely continent, breathing in the ocean… or whatever it is you smell when you wake up. Oh Jess… Oh, Jess! Have I wronged you? Have I been too clingy? I know I must have been… but only because I long to hear (read) the words the pour from your sweet lips! I drink them in like honey! They are as water in a barren desert to my ever-thirsty ears (eyes)!

(Thickly French accent with a side of mustard) Oh now my dearest you must tire of these ever-superfluous letters that I write and write and write and… eh’ it is a habit I cannot break it seems. Forgive me… I meant nothing by them… They were merely embellishment, mere embellishment my dear. Of course I would only embellish so much for only one person my dearest, only one, none of the others would ever…
Did I say others? But of course not, there are no others, how could there be there is only one and that is you…
And besides, even if there were others it would not matter all so much for I am not in love with them the same way I am with you. I mean… I would not be. If there were others which there are none so it does not matter and there is no point in discussing any of them at all…
And by them I of course mean the imaginary others that do not exist but for this conversation my dearest…

(Caleb Roy steps in.) Hey! Frenchman! Back off you gutless whore! (proceeds to violently pummel Frenchy man-whore with blazing fists of fury.) I said back! All of you! You! The whiny one! Skitter away you hapless coward! No girl needs a man who whimpers like that! (whiny guy cries out and flees) And you! Mick is it? Why you dirty rotten… Learn to take a hint will you? I flew all the way down here to Australia to emphasize to you the meaning of the word HINT! She doesn’t like you! Bugger off old man! (Mick hurriedly buggers off.) Well there then! That takes care of them! Jess? Are you alright? Did they hurt you at all?
I’m so sorry jess, I came as quickly as I could… What about Johnny, is he alright? No bruises, no beatings? No emotional scarring? Eating healthily? Sleeping full nights? Oh good… Sorry to fly in like this all of a sudden like……………

So I woke up the next morning and was like- Wow, that was one heck of a dream. I mean I actually beat the chili out of a French guy. Goodness! Then I crawled out of bed and got ready for school. J It was weird…
I’m sorry again, for the whole, getting cut offline incident, I need to pay closer attention to what I’m doing. (slaps self in head) I seriously sat there for two hours doing everything I could think of to try to reconnect… Nothing. Oo! I haven’t talked to you in so long!!! Eesh! It’s a nightmare. Honestly, you have no idea how much your conversations mean to me… No idea. And this freakering internet situation REFUSES to cooperate! Still! Another nightmare…
For whenever that day or night comes once again:
I’ll always be here, and forever your friend.
When internet works and I’m on MSN
We’ll talk with much laughter, as long as we can.

^_^ -Caleb

So here’s the deal, now listen up.
It seems I’m running out of luck.
And this may not quite bother you.
But my computer’s freaking screwed.

It all began some time ago.
The grass was gray, (and yet- no snow?)
Sometimes our seasons can’t recall
What time to drop what needs to fall.

I don’t recall the exact date
But had I known what cruel fate
Would cause the very worst of frowns
I might have thought to write it down

We’re moving on this fateful day.
Just packing up, hauling away
A million boxes (maybe less)
The fridge, the sofa, and the chest.

All loaded into separate trucks
(I guarantee you, moving sucks…)
Though I’ll admit, and I confess
I’ve bothered over far FAR less.

I’ve gotten used to traveling
I moved nine times before eighteen!
But why? What reason could there be?
I’m sorry, it’s a long story.

And thus will not be mentioned here.
But we’ll be moving in two years.
As is the way we’ve always done.
It’s boring, hard, and ZERO fun.

This time took place just months ago.
Another house! Lets have a go!
And see if we can once again
Move out in three days then move in!

We made the move and set up shop
(we filled the new house to the top
with furniture and boxes too)
But don’t arrange until that’s through.

I set to work on my machine
My internet connecting thing.
Computer, as its often called
Though what it did left me appalled.

I tried to connect to the net
And what did I suddenly get?
An error message- what the heck?
I read it twice to double check.

“Dear user, there’s no dial tone.
And that’s because you have no phone.
Without the phone I can’t connect
To the retarded internet.”

I blinked and read it a third time.
Since when can my computer rhyme?
What had it said? No telephone?
That was the problem. That alone.

Turns out that unfortunately.
There is no connectivity
in the new house just at these times.
We haven’t yet set up phone lines!

So I resolved to merely beg
Posting cost an arm and leg
A favor please? Your internet?
My kinder friends though still regret.

My postings became very light.
My written works, a raring sight.
Until the day that finally
I knew that I would be set free.

Phones we finally did get-
New house, new room, and INTERNET!
I boot computer up again
And click the world wide web open

“Dear user, sorry, still no good.
Before you try, you always should
Check that your outlet in the wall…
Is not defective. That is all.”

OH NOW THAT’S IT! YOU’RE GOING DOWN!
I held computer upside down.
Prepared to throw it violently.
(just for pretend, but not really)

“Hey! Wait!” It cried out in my hands.
HOW ARE YOU TALKING!? I demand.
“Just put me down you raving twit!”
And so I did and that was it.

Refusing now to talk to me
I guess… at least not audibly.
The wall-jack’s shot apparently
So still no connectivity.

And then I had a brilliant thought!
And it could really work! Why not?
Our Spring break ended none too soon.
I’m back in school all afternoon!

But school I know has Internet.
And all I had to do was get
The writing from my home to there
And zip drives travel anywhere-

I have one disk, with room to waste
A mobile drive with storage space!
The disk goes in the drive you see
And out again through USB

Into the target school’s machine
And files are transferred one-two-three!
And POOF! I upload all my things!
My tales and all of my writings!

“ZIP ZIP ZIP!” Zip drive will go
And faster than before you know
I have my files and everything…
Finally connectivity.

And that went well for a good while
I wrote and posted with a style
What things I wrote! What words I spoke!
Until the day my zip drive broke.

Oookay, lets see what’s happened since
We moved away and moved back in
I lost the phone lines, then- lets see…
That meant no connectivity.

I tried and failed many a time.
Computer though did learn to rhyme…
The wall jack with the telephone
Was broken, which left PLAN C alone.

PLAN C was the Zip drive I used
I thought I’d win! But nope- I lose.
All of it worked so beautifully
But never trust technology.

My new solution sounds just great.
The oldest route there was to take.
It’s the last thing I’ve got to use
What irony again did choose…

The name is the ironic bit
Two words that sum the whole of it
Who’d have thought a little disk
Could answer a call such as this?

The two-word name describes it well
From start to end, enduring hell
And all to get one little thing
A “Floppy-Connectivity.”

Authors Notes :

A floppy disk! Get it? Get it? You don’t get it… Oy. NUMBER FOUR! Are you enjoying the ride? Its one AM! I fell phenomenal! My brain is trying to escape out of my ears! And I just uploaded this poem to the internet at school using a flaming floppy disk! These things are extinct in most parts of the world nowadays! What? In this day and age you can fit several thousand of these guys’ memory capacities into a chip the size of a postage stamp!
Still working on getting back up and running at the new house. I’ve torn into the wall and tried to rewire the jack twice now. It’s a deep internal problem apparently. Bugger! I’ll get you yet Jackman! Arr!!!

Houston, we have a problem.

Disaster has struck as the never-ending battle with the forces of technology rages on!

My USB zip drive broke. Several days ago… The zip drive was what I used to carry files from home to school where I could upload and post them on the blog. Now… It’s broken. So the only thing I can carry is a tune. Things may be very brief until I get another way to access this stinking thing. I’ll ahead and tell you the rest of the story, de-dramatized.

The ballots came back from the last round. Omar had… won. My poor heart broke. That was the decision round too. If I had won that round, I would have gone to nationals. If I had one first round… I would have gone to nationals. I could have lost to Omar and won 1st round and still go to nationals on a double elimination rule. But I got screwed over first round… AcK! But it was a good debate with Omar… I read through the ballot. There it was right there “disrespectful.” A comment left by one of the judges. Well, at least someone had noticed it.

So I basically had the rest of the day to do nothing. For twelve hours…
I mostly slept. Later I found a piano and played it. I like to play piano when stuff ain’t quite goin’ right. Then I amused myself by balancing things in the cafeteria. I built a stack of over a dozen coke cans, water bottles, and Gatorade containers in a completely vertical manner that ended up taller than I was with absolutely zero base and yet finding that perfect center of gravity. It became to tall… “Its huge! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Unfortunately the tower proved ultimately unstable and completely collapsed following a gentle nudge by a guy named Evan Harrington. Pity. Tsk tsk. So I rebuilt it. I’m a very patient person… I stacked things for about three hours. Played piano for one. Then I balanced a four-legged chair on two legs. THAT was hard. Apparently I’m a prodigy in balancing things. The greatest feat by far though was when I took a pen and (get this) balanced it straight up on its head AND THEN, balanced ANOTHER pen straight up on top of the FIRST one. And it STAYED! It was phenomenal. People took pictures. So basically I lost and balanced stuff all day.
Gosh darn it I WILL get internet in this house sooner or later. If it kills me… Till then I’ll have to again use arby as a correspondence. The poor hasn’t been too well though recently. Things not exactly looking up are they. But it’s a part of playing that field… And is not very kind to him…
What were you crying about!? I read your blog and you were like- “I cried!” And I was like- “Whoa WHAT!? My little Jessica crying? NOOOooOooo!” I couldn’t feel my eyebrows for the rest of the day I was so sad! What’s going on!? I can’t check email, I can’t view private comments, I can’t chat MSN… I’m completely in the dark! Eek! OH! I need to get internet!
I’ll figure something out. God willing… But time will float between. I’ll write a poem. Yeah! A poem! That’s what I’ll do. About how terrible it is without internet and a working ZIP drive here in southwest Missouri (Mi-Zer-EE)). Untill then though I’m still stranded without any major means of communicating with my favorite continent/country/island ever! Talk to you when remotely possible. ^_^ -Caleb.

Aw... how very romantic. How very sweet. The dim lights, the soft music dancing about the air as he holds her and she nestles herself in his arms. Everything is... perfect. (deep breath) ... Wrong. Hello again Jess, here's that commercial we talked about while I put the finishing touches on the last explanation of a weekend that is so far past now that I wonder why I don't just come out with it! (Though there are more detailed stories of much farther histories... Ned Kelly for instance.) COMMERCIAL: HEY! Are YOU looking to have a good time? Do you thrive while grinding to the steady beat of modern rap? Do you prefer lyrics and lights that suggest you altogether SCREW dancing, and skip straight into the part where you SCREW her? If so, than we've got the party for YOU! Here at PROM Incorporated the night is all about you. From the floor to the ceiling, to the free punch and drinks, everything is especially considered to make your PROM a night to remember, at least... as soon as you get over all the things you wish you could forget... We promise to give you music so vile and provacative that would cause a lesser pervert to bleed out the eardrums! Long gone are the days of soft tunes and harmonic melodies, no more are the ways of love songs and romance- No, this is modern times my friend! We've upgraded your total audio experience to include a plethora of raging drunken singers belting into microphones about either A: how many women they've slept with in the past few days, B: how many of those women wanted the raging drunken to sleep with them, C: how they got the ones who didn't ever want to sleep with them to sleep with them. D: how many of these women were strangled shortly after intercourse, E: how they blamed the deaths on someone else and got them locked away for the rest of their lives. F: How immediately after the previous occurences they felt the intense and powerful desire to do it all over again. G: so they did. H: the amazing revelations that can come with having sex with a person, I: How they weren't sure if they loved someone and the only way to ever tell is to 'give em a good hard bangin' J: having just had sex he knows that of course he loves her, duh K: how much he loves this girl he just slept with, L: oh he loves her- really really loves her, M: He loves her so much he'd do anything for her! N: Loves her loves her loves- Hello! (as another woman walks by) O: I nevuh actually luved da girl. I was jus' playin. Right? P: Girls having an intense fight over this worthless male, Q: Guy watches fight with amusement, hoping the new one wins because he hasn't had sex with her yet. R: Changes his mind, wishes he could just sleep with both of them together at the same time S: while watching fight, the second womans boyfriend wanders past. T: Ragin drunken rapper shoots boyfriend with uzi so not to cause added conflict. U: Police come and rapper swears through six minutes of song. V: Rapper blames an apparent uzi related death on the two girls still fighting tooth and nail. W: Police believe the raging drunken rapper because according to the rapper- "i so smooth..." X: Women are hauled away to prison, Y: six more minutes of swearing Z: Rapper is sad because of the fact that he lost his women when another walks by and he instantly forgets everything. Now THAT's a tune I want to move to! And hey! Forget those gentle slow dances with your partner! Who does that nowadays anyway? Again this is modern times! PROM Incorporated knows that you'll have a much better time dancing our way! We've discovered that while dancing, it is entirely possible to achieve intercourse right through your clothes! But be warned, pregnancy has become an issue, so make sure to take lots of pills before the dance to both achieve immediate infertlity and equally get you stoned out of your mind! YEAH! Don't want to stick with your original partner? Not a problem! PROM Incorporated has devised a system that assures you full experience satisfaction. The dance floor has been custom crafted to be very small. We know that by the end of the night, every one of you will have congregated in the center like a single massive writhing dot of bodies and legs and arms each pressing into another and all of it just EXPLODING with horomones! WHOO! That's that I'm talking about! Don't be like those drips that just sit by the side muttering about how disgusting this is, and how its nothing like it was supposed to be, those who bug the disc jockey every five seconds trying to get him to play something mature and decent like Jazz! Who wants a party pooper like that raining on the most memorable night of your life! Get into the action! Get into your partner! Get into the music! Get laid! Get into the experiece! PROM INC!