Lumberjacks

The lumberyard was nearly empty; it was, after all, the end of the fiscal quarter. Why would anyone hang out there? Besides myself, I mean. The office folk designated me to personally make the long and perilous trek to the lumberyard in search of coal to burn during the harsh autumn. We're very environmentally conscious, so the lumberyard we use has to have a reputation for being humane with the trees. If word got out that we were dealing with lumberjacks that took joy in the destruction of the great sequoia, it would easily become the worst public relations fiasco of the haydecade. And by worst, I mean best.

I can picture it now: me, standing at a podium in the Ronald Reagan Memorial Environmental Center, getting ready to accept the Humane Society's award for proper hygiene. But hark- off in the distance, a lumberjack chuckles mercilessly as an endangered square-rooted sabre-oak falls to the forest floor. Stripped of my honor, I'm forced to resign in disgrace, shunned by my family and/or coworkers. Fruitless, it seems, would be my pitiful explanation that I had nothing to do with the unemotional logger. "If only I'd known my company had hired an unauthorized person to log endangered trees with glee!" I'd cry. Then the bouncer would tell me to get lost, or he'd put a fist in my knee. The fool- I have no knees.

My entire body is the product of pure thought. You can't dilute that, despite what some keynote government motivational speakers would like you to believe. In the spirit of friendship and father-son bonding, I extended an olive branch to them all back in the 80s. The 1780s, right before the constitution was written. But they all spat on me- even Thomas Jefferson. And I carried him, man. Without me to supply a sleepy young Jefferson with coffee from the future, he never would have written the Declaration of Independence, the United States would never have purchased Louisiana from France, and Darth Vader would've been real. And did they even ask me if I might've wanted my face carved into Mt. Rushmore?! Bah! I don't need their pity. I'm immortal.

The Lady What Loved Jesus

The hallway is empty, the lights are off. Why would the lights need to be on, anyway? It's the middle of the day. Waste of electricity, those lightbulbs would be.

I'm just sitting there- actually, I'm standing, minding my own business. Ah, how nice... how peaceful... how serene. Then, from the opposing end of the hall comes a voice:

"I love you Jesus! I worship you, Jesus! Oh, merciful..."

I turned my head up to see a middle aged woman walking by, declaring her undying love of the Christian messiah. She seemed to be heading toward the soft drink machine, so I just assumed she'd spent the day outside and was incredibly thirsty.

But she didn't buy a soda. Instead, she walked a little way down the hall, and back again. The whole time, she continued to profess her spiritual inclinations, apparently unaware of anyone else in the building. Three minutes later, she walked away, still praising the 2000 year old keystone of western civilization. I didn't say anything the whole time, since it was so unexpected I was caught off guard, and it's not my job to interfere with the lives of others. That's the prime directive, and I follow it to the letter. If I don't, Starfleet Command could give me a court martial. It happened to Kirk, you know. One day he's an admiral... then, bang! Captain again. Prime Directive, man.

Anyway, it wouldn't have seemed so strange if she hadn't kept using the word "Jesus" over and over again, in her unexpected run-on prayer. I mean, the variations were astounding.

It was sort of like going to a fancy restaurant, and the guy at the table next to you pulls out a set of bronze-plated utensils he brought from home. Completely unexpected, but not really a problem. And hey, the experience allowed me to combine Christianity and Star Trek in an exciting new way that's sure to become a literary genre decades from now.

Firefox

Internet Explorer is too old, they said. Security holes, and whatnot. A complete lack of tabbed browsing betrays a sadness in the behemoth's rendering engine, one that a mere facelift can't cure. Opera's a nice browser. Reminds me of swiss cheese, the way is tears apart my carefully constructed web pages with a flick of the wrist. "Switch to Firefox," Edmonde says. "Firefox is the future!" I scoff at him. "Opera," I tell him, "is a million times better than your precious Firefox. When our brave laser battalions were Taking Gist in the War of Roses, where was your Firefox then?!" He goes silent.

It's not that I have a grudge against Firefox... I just... the logo. Think about it, people! Firefox's main icon (indeed, its only icon) is a fox racing 'round the world. What does that say about anything?! Look at Opera: A big red letter "O," shimmering at the edges. And Internet Explorer, a fancy "E" with a ring in an elliptical orbit. Notice anything? Anyone? I'll tell you, since you obviously don't have the willpower to accept the inevitable. Letters. They're both linked by letters. Vowels, to be precise. It has been standard convention, since the founding of the Internet in 1993, to represent the venerable medium with vowels. Firefox breaks this convention, throwing civilized society into chaos, disrupting valuable company time and resources.

Until such time as Firefox, as well as the other "leech browsers" (I include Safari in this bunch) clean up their act and make it incumbent upon themselves to join the vowel-based community, I shun them. I shun them all! I absolutely refuse to change the way I do business to "make room" for their irresponsibilities. Now, I've worked for Mozilla for over 20 years, back when they were still a garage band. I'm sad to say, the name "Firefox" might have been my own doing. You see, the band was falling apart. Microsoft tore us up at the "Battle of the Bands" the previous week, and we were looking to go in a new direction. I said, "why not change that big, unwieldy lizard to something smaller?" They ate it up; two days later, they left a forty-foot fox on my front lawn. I was outraged, and ordered the police to burn it. Once the Mozilla roadies saw what I was doing, it hit them: Firefox. And for that, I truly apologize to Letter-Theory web enthusiasts. I don't expect to be forgiven, just forgotten.