Man Lives Without Internet for Three Days!! Pictures Inside

First of all I have to admit, I have lied to you. There are no pictures, and more directly this is the internet so you're not really looking inside (unless you took it literally and ripped your monitor open. In that case, I'm sorry, but your monitor is now broken therefore you can't read my apology, damn). I have, however, lived through a horrific ordeal testing my mettle as a man, and the millennia of instincts bred into my perfected human form (look at profile pic to get that joke). That's right ladies and gentlemen (and Kellen) I spent a weekend without the internet. No MySpace, no Blogger, no celebrity gossip, no Lebanese threat updates (those pesky Lebanese!). How did I do it? With lot's of prayer, meditation, and large amounts of alcohol. Oh, and the company of my lovely wife, Ella. And now fresh from my trip to Outer Mongolia (ie. Baton Rouge), I bring you:

The Drunken Rogue and the Disconnected Weekend

Ella has family in the Red Stick (Baton Rouge for the uninitiated, thank you, Mrs. Reinowski), she also has about 600,000 family friends in the B.R. area (roughly ninety percent of the Greater Baton Rouge population is related somehow to my wife). So of course, since we are celebrating our second wedding anniversary (and enjoying a long weekend thanks to a couple of vacation days) we scheduled time in the four day weekend to see each and every one of them. We scheduled lunches with the first 50,000, dinners with the next 175,000, drinks with about 220,000, and then the rest we told to meet us at "Coffee Call" for beignets and coffee (for our yankee readers, beignets are God's favorite food, sweet bread, deep fried and covered with powdered sugar. Seriously you'd kill your mother over one).

I have really fallen head over heels for Baton Rouge in the last couple of years. The city has an atmosphere that I enjoy, it's beautiful in that particularly Louisiana way, and we both (the Mrs. and I) have a lot of friends in and around B.R. It didn't hit me as I packed Friday. I didn't think about it while I was cleaning the house and boarding the dog. It never crossed my mind as I drove to pick up Ella from class, but then somewhere between Dry Prong and Opelousas, a shiver went down my spine: I was without internet for the entire weekend. What would my readers do, left without new drops of genius (not to be confused with Drops of Jupiter, a song by a sub-par pop band) to read? I imagined them bleery eyed, and pale, constantly hitting refresh hoping, praying for an update, "Surely Joel hasn't abandoned us!." But more importantly what would I do? These daily deposits in the bank of cyberspace keep me balanced, give me something to sort of plan my day around:

Wake up, read the newspaper, check MySpace, eat lunch, go to work, check MySpace, read the latest celebrity gossip and movie news, check MySpace, post new blog, check MySpace and Blogger for hit counts, do the dance of victory as my page hits soar, go to bed, wake up do it all over again.

What if Suri Cruise made her first appearance (or demands) while I was disconnected? Sure if the anti-christ really took over during the weekend, Fox News would probably break in with coverage but that would be like 15 seconds after I could have known online. I wasn't sure at the beginning of the weekend if I would make it, or if sometime Sunday night, I'd run screaming into an internet cafe yelling, "Give me MySpace or give me Death!" As it turns out, it was unpleasant to be wireless (not in the cool, "I can use my mouse without being right in front of the computer" way, but in the "Gran and Gramps don't get that internet thingy" way), but not completely undoable. I imagine with training, I might even be able to go a day without MySpace while in civilization, you know, by choice. But why would you want to?

Thanks to all the family and friends for the well-wishes about the anniversary (who knew Ella would let me stay around this long?). Thanks also to all our B.R. friends, Bear, D, Nick, Ellie and Ryan especially for showing us a good time. The point of this whole diatribe is that I am back in a big way. The latest installment of The Life and Times of The Drunken Rogue (part five for those playing along at home) is forthcoming (should be up midday tomorrow). Truth and Spectacle (the best place for movie reviews from a Romanian, a Drunken Rogue and Kyle) is taking off nicely, several reviews should be posted this week, and Apathy as Activism (political news and commentary, fair and balanced...no really it's pretty fair) is dropping bombs like Israel on Hezbollah (see I can use topical humor), although we are looking for a new writer there. We would rather get someone that skews liberally but good writing is more important than political persuasion. If you (or someone you know) is interested message me or leave a comment. Al Quaeda members need not apply. Thanks for listening, thanks for commenting and especially thanks for the kudos (I love the kudos). Feel free to subscribe, I promise only to stalk you two or three times a day.

Until next time, Rogue out!