A bit late with today's entry.  After what I've been through, it's a wonder that I can write at all....
     I've spent most of another good day at the police station, being cross-examined by one lowly flat-foot after another, every one of them trying to make sergeant.  Seems there was another drive-by journalling last night, so of course they came looking for me.  Even though I had an airtight alibi (I was on-line, trying to convince Swedish women I was really Harrison Ford), they preferred to spend their time frisking my mind for incriminating thoughts rather than leave their air conditioned offices and track down the real culprit. 
     At least they fed my martyr complex a good lunch.

     Not that I've always been so innocent.  The fact is that once upon a time in a decade far, far away I fell into a pattern of behavior linguists now recognize as being criminally unfortunate. 
     It was the summer of '77.  I'd just graduated from high school. The words that I had previously drained off into various essays and homework assignments were slowly accumulating in my head.  As the pressure built, I tried to drain them off into a paper journal, but it wasn't enough. 
     Before I knew what was happening, I was spending the nights hanging my head out of the passenger window of a speeding car, screaming that day's insights, observations, and complaints at every innocent person I could find.
     I was drunk - drunk off words.  And ears all over town were paying the price.
     By the third week, every audiologist's office within the tri-county area was full to overflowing with panic-prone people who had plugged their Eustachian tubes with their hands.
     By the fifth week, a sensationalist press had dubbed me "Son of Boswell."

     Of course I got caught - and I'm glad I did.  I don't know where I'd be now if I hadn't, but the words "UN Ambassador" still haunt my dreams. 
     Lucky for me, I got cocky and let things spiral out of control instead.  I started my drive-by journalling earlier and earlier every day, whether I had anything to say yet or not.  I got sloppy with my pronunciations.  I took to hitting the tympanic membranes of old woman at bus stops with split infinitives, Irish slang terms - anything close to mind.  I even tried to pass off the collected wit and wisdom of Henry Gibson as my own.
     Before it was all over, I had fallen to the level of cicada impersonator, just buzzing my lips wildly as my co-conspirator stepped ever harder on the gas.
     When the nonsense-sniffing police dogs finally caught up with us at a light and brought me to heel, I fell to my knees and thanked them in a pool of tears.
     I was just a kid.  A poor, mixed-up kid.
     How was I supposed to know that even nonsense-sniffing police dogs have teeth?
     How was I supposed to know that, in order for there to be a pool of tears, someone present must have been crying?

     But that's all in my past now.  Intensive electric typewriter therapy soon drained my swollen head dry and has kept it mostly dry ever since.  Since May, this online journal has been acting as a kind of mental sump pump, sucking up whatever spare drips of thought and conceptual pus seep into my consciousness and spewing them onto the Internet where they get harmlessly lost among all the other far more infectious drips and pus. 
     Still, the cops harass me. 
     If only I could give them a piece of my mind without violating my probation....

     Oh, my co-conspirator?  He was sentenced to three hours hard time breaking building blocks into smaller blocks, then given a stern talking to.  Apparently that tough love program scared him straight for life as he's now a widely respected 27-year-old delivery man for a local pizzeria.
     That doesn't change the fact that now there's another drive-by journaller on the loose.  One apparently armed with a high-speed assault thesaurus not even available back in '77.  One apparently unaware that a permanent set of chap lips lurks right around the corner.
     Give it up, buddy - now.
     Or at the very least, keep it reasonably clean before you give all of us maniacs a bad name.
 

NOTE to the Russian people: Despite what an entry two days ago may have led you to believe, I do not really have a message in a bottle next to my phone which I read to callers that includes the suggestion that if they happen to be telephonically intoxicated Russians, they should get the hell off the line NOW.  That would be rude.  The message I read actually suggests that such Russians check the Yellow Pages for the clinic nearest them offering to wean them off their phone addiction with daily free fingerings of telegraph keys administered in little plastic cups under the supervision of a professional operator.  I regret any misunderstanding which may have arisen from my poor choice of words. 

NOTE to the French people: Happy Bastille Day!  Anytime you want to come storm my office and get these Russian paratroopers the hell out of my face, feel free.