Character Development

Where are my fellow denizens of this cyber-reality? They’re still out there, among us, in the shadows and the light, wearing wigs and not. We pass them on the street, and elsewhere, even on avenues and boulevards, never expecting, never knowing. Do they even know yet? That they’re bound together by an uncommonly common purpose, a glaring reality to be web log authors?

And when destiny does anoint them, and they find themselves with excess time to be spent, used up, online, how do they hide from it? How long can they dwell in the shadows until either fate or their own flawed humanity or a pretentious post from a geneticist/taxi driver draws them out into the light again? And how will they know what awaits them when it finally does? Will they scurry away like cockroaches, the true gods of this world? Or will they rise to the occasion, like a rancid egg makes its way back up the esophagus, and show the world the true contents of their soul?

Four months have passed, and I find it my duty, my evolutionary imperative, to declare to the world that we patrons of the Burnt Toast Diner have returned to the Web, ready to take on the complex and intriguing details of what we call life. How many will answer this call, this mythological song of the siren, and bring forth a literary bounty to share with the Internet access-possessing world?

Can they resist the call to be creators of the written word? Will they? One can no more silence the written word than one could stop an unbridled Jamaican toucan from flaunting its colorful body at the world. Web logging itself is the means of literary evolution. We write because we must, and we adapt. We evolve to every new situation brought about, be it from pop culture or technological advances. And how can evolution take place without random variables entering into the proverbial mix? Is it not possible that you, the readers, with your hifalutin expectations and thirst for entertainment, are the very literary mutagen, the catalyst, necessary for the evolution of a web log? Perhaps it is your duty, your biological imperative, to pass judgment on such works via commenting. Your feedback is the food that fuels our creative word-writing engine.

And so in the coming days, weeks, months and larger units of time measurement, we await as web loggers all over the Universe, including myself, come forth to put their literary chromosomes into the cyber-gene pool that is the Internet. Will this written word propel the human intellect forward? Or can it have a harmful effect, perhaps even assassinating brain cells with its excruciating retardation?

“Um, do you want waffles or not?” the golden-haired female questioned of me, interrupting my all-important philosophical exposition. How can one appreciate what is to come without this word-filled foundation?

“I do believe that I will sample the waffles once again in the hope, an optimistic desire, that they surpass the quality of those which I have become accustomed to living, participating in life, in New York City.” At some point during my order, the obviously unqualified wait person ventured off. Would fate bring her back to take my order? Is it my destiny to consume Burnt Toast Diner’s famed waffles? And why is this recently-deceased musca domestica doing a backstroke in my coffee?