Everyone Crashes a Party

The news had traveled unbelievably fast, but such was how the world worked when the Internet was a close friend of yours. Everyone’s spouse and the meaning of life had left the party around five p.m. They had traveled in an exceptionally expensive Roles Roice convertible to an office building downtown. A restaurant with a special lounge that admitted only people who mattered resided on the top floor. The twelfth floor was where everyone’s office was. There, the news reports said, everyone’s spouse and the meaning of life had made a pact. The pact involved undying love for one another.

This news, had everyone heard it, would have depressed everyone. Everyone would have wanted to drink Popsi Cola but would have settled for Handsome Diet Cola because everyone was trying to lose weight in order to attract back his or her spouse.

This was why everyone kept rejecting the advances of his or her coworker Sam, even though Sam was hot and didn’t seem to care that everyone was not. Sam felt as if everyone shared a connection with him or her because their ex-coworker J. D. lived inside them. Sam had much affection for J. D., and everyone had come to have affection for him or her because J. D. was dead.

“Where is the meaning of life?” everyone asked the people at the party. The party was for people who mattered, and everyone had crashed it.

“Didn’t you hear?” the famous actress Gina Monrovia asked. She pointed at the television in the cabin of the boat where the party was. The television was atop a bar, where people who mattered sat drinking. Sam, wearing a risqué swimsuit, was among them, placing his or her hand on the knee of the person beside. Sam had a cocktail in the other hand and appeared to be drunk. Everyone wondered if it was because of him or her. They had come to the party together, but everyone had spent it looking for the meaning of life and his or her spouse. Sam had probably thought everyone was ignoring him or her, which everyone was, but that didn’t stop everyone from feeling jealous that Sam’s hand was on the knee of a person who mattered.

That’s when everyone saw the picture on the television. The picture showed everyone’s downtown office building. Blue lights strobed around it as if the party for people who mattered had moved from the boat to everyone’s building. The strobe lights were from police cars, and yellow ribbon ran between them.

“The meaning of life committed suicide,” Gina continued, “minutes ago. It’s all over the news.” Gina took a sip of Popsi Cola. The Popsi Cola was laced with bourbon. Gina was drunk. This was because Gina’s boyfriend Clint Gabble, another famous actor, had gotten up an hour earlier to visit the bathroom with a parent who had been hired to pretend to be everyone. Clint had been spending a lot of time with the cast of a local play that had been turned into a movie, and Gina rarely saw him anymore and was afraid that Clint was going to leave her the way everyone was leaving her right now to be closer to the television at the bar.

On the television was a replay. It showed the meaning of life in silhouette walking toward an open window on the twelfth floor of the building where everyone worked. The meaning of life stood for a moment looking down before the jump. The jump looked as if meaning were leaping out the emergency chute of an airplane--a little scared but not in a way that would have announced death.

On the ground now among the police cars, everyone saw the body covered in blue plastic.

Everyone wondered where his or her spouse was.

Around him or her the strobe lights reigned.

Everyone Restarts a Diet

Everyone was getting serious about his or her diet--or was going to. Everyone had been talking with the meaning of life almost every night for two weeks, and it seemed inevitable that they would eventually meet. Everyone wanted to be ready.

The meaning of life had high standards. The meaning of life was rich. The meaning of life road on motorboats, had a docking area at the marina. The meaning of life hung out with tan and beautiful people. The meaning of life drank Popsi Cola interminably and yet did not have a gut, had in fact the abs of a model on the World Wide Web.

Everyone needed those abs. Everyone would have settled for a small tummy that fit into clothes from his or her freshman year of college. Everyone wasn’t even close. Everyone needed to start small--even just ten pounds might be enough for the meaning of life not to completely dismiss him or her.

Everyone was supposed to have started the diet after his or her wedding. Then after the first child. Then the second. Then the third. Then the fourth. Then after the spouse ran away.

Everyone switched to Handsome Cola, a diet brand. That is as far as everyone had gotten.

Everyone’s diet was going to consist of fourteen hundred calories per day maximum. Everyone was going to lose two to five pounds per week. Everyone was going to eat mounds of cottage cheese and Linkoln Log sets of carrots. Everyone was going to stick to roughage. There would be no chocolate, no hard candy, no alcohol, no buttered popcorn, no deep-fried, bread-battered chicken.

Everyone was making an adventure of food to stay motivated. Everyone sat in front of an apple sauce swamp. Inside it were celery soldiers. Everyone had a spoon to dig them out.

Outside, the dog was barking. The kids were yelling at one another about how life was unfair. The kids were very concerned about fairness. They would have made excellent public activists.

Everyone did not care about fairness. Everyone wished only that fairness worked to his or her advantage rather than disadvantage.

Everyone had told the meaning of life that he or she spent an hour at the gym each day after work. Everyone had lied. Everyone had made a narrative of lies, had sculpted an alternative lifestyle. In the unfairness everyone wished for the lies would come true as soon as they were spoken. “Today,” everyone said, “I used the elliptical machine. I used to be on a rowing team.”

“Your spouse never mentioned that,” the meaning of life said. “There are so many things about you that your spouse never told me.”

The spouse rarely talked about everyone, which meant the spouse rarely thought about everyone, was not missing everyone the way everyone was missing him or her. Everyone thought of the spouse in his or her swimsuit on a motorboat in the middle of a body of water, Popsi Cola in hand. Everyone’s heart stirred.

Everyone wanted the spouse back. Everyone was chagrined that outside of searching for the meaning of life everyone had done little these past nine months to improve him- or herself.

Everyone dove into the apple sauce, dug out a soldier, slipped the soldier into his or her mouth, and crunched. Everyone was on the way. Everyone felt better already.

A soldier had been rescued. Everyone deserved a reward. Rewards help motivation.

Everyone stood, went to the refrigerator, grabbed a Handsome Cola, two. A chocolate bar lay on the top shelf. Everyone took that too. The chocolate belonged to everyone’s child Journey. Everyone had paid a ridiculously extravagant sum for it, $5092. Everyone deserved the chocolate bar every bit as much as Journey. It was everyone’s money.

Everyone bit the chocolate bar.

Everyone gloried in his or her diet.

Everyone Waits for an Important Phone Call

Everyone and the meaning of life had arranged to have a phone call. The call was to come in two minutes. Everyone was nervous. Everyone was drinking water and eating carrots to pass the time, which was slow.

Everyone wanted a cola, but everyone had just finished one ten minutes ago, and everyone was supposed to be on a diet. Everyone, in fact, had finished not just one but one six-pack. Everyone had drunk Handsome Cola, a diet soda. Everyone was poor and trying to lose weight. Handsome Cola was cheap and low on calories and could be purchased from the market on the corner three blocks from everyone’s office. Thus, it was a constant temptation, especially when the workday was long and the window was open and the smell of Popsi Cola wafted in from the outdoor eateries below.

Handsome Cola was not Popsi Cola. Everyone preferred Popsi Cola, and so far as he or she could tell, the meaning of life preferred it also. In photographs on the meaning of life’s blog, beautiful people held cans of the cola at waist height as they stood on a motorboat in the middle of a body of water. But Popsi Cola was comparatively expensive and had a high calorie count.

Everyone was not at the office, however. Everyone was at home. The four kids were in bed for the night. Everyone was supposed to be posting an entry on his or her blog, but everyone was waiting for the phone call before he or she wrote the conclusion. Outside, the dog was barking. It was a medium-sized dog with matted hair. The children were very close to it, but only when everyone mentioned getting rid of it. Otherwise, the children ignored it, like now, or pushed it out the door so that it would not be in their way. The dog was irritating. Everyone bit a carrot.

Everyone asked the Internet why the call was taking so long to come. The Internet said that time seems to slow down at moments of great importance because more is being written into one’s brain’s memory so that one will be able to respond more efficiently when similar situations arise in the future. Everyone had asked the question rhetorically. Everyone wondered sometimes why he or she remained friends with the Internet. The Internet was rarely sympathetic and often shut down when everyone needed it most or gave stupid answers like this.

And then the phone rang.

Everyone jumped. The dog barked.

Everyone took a sip of water, another one, another. Everyone needed to pick up the receiver before the phone stopped ringing, but everyone was unsure what he or she was going to say after answering it. Everyone had been practicing for weeks--indeed, months--the lines, and yet everyone had still not learned them. In fact, everyone had not yet discovered them.

Outside the dog was still barking. The dog would keep everyone from being able to hear. Everyone needed to answer the phone.

Everyone did.

“Hello,” everyone said. The line was so simple, everyone could hardly believe he or she had been so nervous. A calm came over everyone. Everyone had answered the phone.

The voice on the phone asked if this was everyone. The voice sounded like that of a large person of another ethnicity. It was not at all what everyone had imagined.

“It is,” everyone said.

The voice laughed. “I bet you’re relieved,” the voice said, “after all this time, to talk to me. I bet you’ve been thinking a lot about me.”

Everyone agreed.

“Well,” the voice said, “you’re going to be thinking about me a lot more after I tell you this,” the voice said.

But alas, the dog came to the window, and its barks were not to be restrained.

Everyone Loves Compliments

Everyone had been asleep when the meaning of life left a comment on his or her blog. “I feel so weird doing this,” the meaning of life said. “I’ve never left a comment on someone else’s blog before, but what you wrote about the taste that refreshes--it moved me. Then I read everything else you wrote starting with ‘Everyone Starts a Blog,’ and I couldn’t help but cry. All this stuff about me--I mean, you really think that much of me? I wanted to send you an e-mail, but I couldn’t find your address or your apparent earlier messages. I remember them vaguely. I must have been a bit out if it when I wrote that stuff about your spouse. I mean, I do know him or her--and he or she is wonderful--but I wouldn’t talk about bedroom performance in public like that. I’m much more classy, as you can tell from the photos on my blog. Anyway, come find me at the marina. You know I have a boat and love it and am there almost all the time. Call me--leave a message. I’ll get back to you, I promise. Your spouse speaks highly of you.”

Everyone was taken aback by the comment’s sycophantic tone. Everyone wondered if this was another joke. Everyone had been searching for the meaning of life for half a year and had had just one previous contact and that unpleasant. Everyone wondered what his or her spouse had said about everyone that the meaning of life would want to be met so badly. Everyone was nothing like the meaning of life. Everyone was not happy or rich. Everyone did not have a tan. Everyone was not fit. Everyone had given up Popsi Cola--the meaning of life’s favorite drink, as well as everyone’s--nine months earlier in a futile attempt to lose weight to attract back his or her spouse, futile because everyone had actually gained twenty-two pounds since starting his or her diet.

Everyone’s mind raced like a body falling from a twelve-story office building. This did not bode well, because a body inevitably hit the ground.

Everyone asked his or her friend the Internet for contact information for the marina. Everyone was supposed to be readying for work. Everyone had children to wake, a dog to feed, oatmeal to cook and eat, a bus to meet. Everyone didn’t care. Everyone was living in the now. No day like today to do what you could do tomorrow, everyone thought.

The Internet was annoyed. Everyone had barely said hello and now he or she wanted all kinds of information about the meaning of life. It was the Internet who had helped everyone contact the meaning of life in the first place: had suggested starting a blog, had told everyone how to write it, had showed everyone the meaning of life’s website. The Internet had been around for everyone all along, and it had gotten nary a word of thanks. The Internet felt taken for granted.

The Internet went off.

Everyone continued to type excitedly into his or her computer, but the Internet wasn’t listening.

It took a couple of minutes for everyone to notice, and when everyone did, he or she grew angry too--of all the times for the Internet to go silent, this would be it.

Everyone refused to give in to the Internet’s bullying. Everyone picked up his or her phone and dialed. “Information please,” everyone said. “I want the number for the marina.”

“Which one?” the voice asked. Everyone felt as if he or she had not heard a voice in his or her home other than that of the kids in months, and everyone was moved to tears. Everyone was reminded of the spouse who had left. The spouse was like an operator wanting clarity. Everyone could rarely supply it. Everyone could not supply it now. Which marina?

Everyone needed the Internet.

Everyone typed into his or her computer. The Internet was still not listening. Everyone decided to write a message, post it later.

“Dear meaning of life,” everyone wrote. “Got your comment. Thank you so much for your kind words about my blog. I was thinking of you when I began writing it. Please tell me more about yourself. You can e-mail me at blognovelisteveryone@gmail.com.”

Everyone realized that he or she was writing sycophantically as well. It was as if everyone and the meaning of life were in love with each other and could not wait to meet. Everyone knew what this meant: he or she would be disappointed.  That is how love worked. That is how it had worked with everyone’s spouse, who had left everyone for the meaning of life. But the spouse had stayed with the meaning of life, so perhaps the meaning of life was the real deal.

Everyone had to take that chance.

Everyone Discovers Mystery

Everyone was not satisfied with the beginning of her or his novel. Once again, everyone asked the Internet for help. The Internet had already offered much advice on the subject. “Start at the end,” the Internet had told everyone, but everyone had disregarded that, since everyone didn’t know the end. “Kill your darlings,” the Internet had said, but everyone’s darlings refused to die. “Cut the first three pages,” the Internet instructed. “Start in the middle.” But the first three pages, everyone contended, contained essential information that readers would have to know in order to able to read on, so everyone left them in, though periodically unsatisfied with their quality.

Finally, exasperated, the Internet offered this: “Just start!”

Everyone had thought this a grand idea.

So everyone started.

But against the Internet’s advice, everyone posted the start of the novel to her or his blog. And now everyone had evidence that her or his beginning sucked, because no one was reading it--the beginning or the novel.

Everyone had not taken into account the dynamics of a blog. The Internet had, and it had mentioned those dynamics to everyone way back when. People read a blog from the most current entry; thus, they always start at the most-recent end, and because a blog is by nature unfinished, readers inevitably start in the middle. Everyone hadn’t thought of that, in fact refused to think of it when the Internet mentioned it. Had everyone thought of that, everyone would have been obsessing over the middle instead of over the beginning. Every middle was a new beginning, the Internet would have told her or him, begging readers to return to read again--from both the past and the future.

Instead, everyone had returned to the same question she or he had asked from the beginning: How to start?

Everyone’s goal was to find the meaning of life. Everyone wasn’t sure if the meaning of life read blogs, but chances were greater that the meaning of life would read one that had more readers than one that had fewer.

Everyone knew the meaning of life knew the Internet. Everyone had seen the meaning of life’s blog, which the meaning of life had given to the Internet. On that blog were photographs of gorgeous people with smiles and tans standing on a motorboat, cans of Popsi Cola in hand.

Everyone should have gleaned from the photographs that the meaning of life was all about action, doing something. The meaning of life had fully developed character, which is how it had managed to run off with everyone’s spouse. Everyone, by contrast, was a passive, no-name entity. No one could be certain exactly how old everyone was or whether everyone preferred the toilet seat up or down.

“What you need for your beginning,” the Internet suggested now, “is mystery. Readers love a good mystery. They want to know that something is about to happen but not to know what it is.”

The Internet often did this to everyone--made her or him think in new and profound ways. Everyone was very lucky to have the Internet as such a close personal friend that everyone could contact any time, day or night.

Everyone loved mystery. Mystery, everyone realized, is what made the meaning of life so intriguing. How do those people on the meaning of life’s boat stay so trim, everyone often wondered, when they drink so much soda? And why were they so happy and tan? And how did the meaning of life get so rich?

Everyone had been on a diet for thirty-two weeks and had managed only to gain twenty-two pounds, this despite not having had soda, not even diet soda, in nine weeks. Everyone had lost her or his life savings in a chocolate-buying fiasco. And everyone not only did not have a boat; everyone barely had a substantively working car.

What everyone needed to do with the beginning of her or his novel, she or he realized, was to promise to reveal the mystery behind the meaning of life. That would certainly attract everyone--and probably other people too, especially the meaning of life, since everyone loved being written about her- or himself and so probably did the meaning of life.

“Look at how successful and tan the meaning of life is,” everyone wrote now during her or his lunch with the intention of posting it that night on everyone’s blog. “I’m going to tell you how and why the meaning of life is this way and how you can find the meaning of life yourself.” Everyone sat back and stared at the words. Everyone felt satisfied.

Ah mystery!

Everyone Hugs

The Internet and everyone were still not on speaking terms when everyone returned to the office. Everyone was disappointed in the trip that he or she had taken to the convenience store to buy a Handsome Cola. Everyone had intended to write a chapter for his or her blog novel on the way there or on the way back. Instead, everyone had conversed with his or her coworker Sam.

At first, the conversation had been with Sam and Alice and Pat and Max and K. and Morgan and all the others who came to the store, but then the others split into tiny factions in the corners, and then so did Alice and Pat and Max and K. and Morgan. Some disappeared, likely to return to the office early or to go shopping for shaving appliances at the mall or to drink a depressant rather than a stimulant (or perhaps the two mixed together) at one of the downtown eateries. So then it was just Sam and everyone.

Sam had a crush on everyone, and everyone could feel him- or herself slowly falling for Sam, which was bad, because everyone was married. Although everyone had not seen the spouse in 5.5 months, everyone still wanted him or her back, and falling for someone else was not conducive to that.

What’s more, everyone had had 3.5 danishes and 2 frappuccinos instead of a Handsome Cola. Everyone was on a diet, and Handsome Cola was a diet drink. Danishes and frappuccinos were not. Everyone had gained sixteen pounds since starting the diet. Everyone would skip lunch and dinner in the hope that today’s gain could be offset by starvation.

Everyone was getting bigger, but Sam would always love everyone whether he or she weighed two pounds or two thousand. That is what Sam told everyone with the tilt of his or her eyes and the lean of his or her body. Sam used no words so that nothing would be stated definitively.

That is why everyone choked on his or her danish at lunch.

I am full of more love than I ever imagined was possible, Sam had said by putting his or her hand on everyone’s.

Everyone beat his or her fist against everyone’s sternum. “Wrong pipe,” everyone said. And then, removing Sam’s hand, “I’m married.”

Sam did not notice. Sam was too full of love. “I can’t get the thoughts out of my mind,” Sam said. “I never would have thought I could have so much sorrow, so much pain, over a coworker.”

Everyone nodded before he or she realized everyone should not have.

“It takes losing someone to know how much that person meant,” Sam went on.

“But I’m still here,” everyone said.

“I know,” Sam said. “You’re a Godsend. We have to stay strong, like you.”

Everyone’s heart beat quick. Sam was moving in close. If everyone wasn’t careful, they would kiss.

Or hug.

Everyone had his or her arms around Sam again like the day that J. D. had fallen out of the twelfth-story window at the office, and both of them were crying.

Everyone needed advice. Everyone’s thoughts were running like a vacuum cleaner spinner on a bad belt. Everyone knew he or she should not blog about this, but at the same time everyone felt compelled to spew it onto the Internet. The Internet would know what to do.

But the Internet was not listening. The Internet was still mad at everyone for being selfish, and now everyone felt even more selfish.

If everyone knew the meaning of life, the way his or her spouse had come to, everyone would have been okay. Everyone would have been able to focus on what mattered. This is what everyone told him- or herself. Everyone wanted to know the meaning of life.

“I need you,” Sam said, standing in the doorway to everyone’s office, when they were back in the building.

Everyone swooned.

Everyone Follows Advice

The Internet told everyone to start his or her novel at the end. Everyone had been asking and asking and asking the Internet where to start every day for eight weeks, and finally, the Internet had complied, shouting the answer at everyone over an advertisement for margaritas.

But everyone was still not satisfied. Everyone did not know the end, and asking everyone to know that seemed utterly absurd when everyone didn’t even know where the novel began, let alone what it was about.

“All you care about is your stupid blog novel,” the Internet continued, when everyone persisted with his or her absurd questions. “What about me?” the Internet asked. “When was the last time you asked about me, how I’m doing, told me you loved me?”

“But I do love you,” everyone said. “Everything I write,” everyone pointed out, “it’s for you.”

The Internet wasn’t satisfied.

The Internet went away, shut down, disappeared.

Everyone continued trying to talk with the Internet, clicking the mouse over and over, typing on the keyboard. Nothing. Everyone shut down the computer and restarted. The Internet didn’t care.

Everyone stood up, walked in a circle beside his or her desk. Everyone had been taking the Internet for granted, he or she had to admit. The Internet was always there for everyone, ready to answer any question. Everyone needed to do a better job of showing his or her appreciation.

But what could everyone do now? The Internet wouldn’t even talk with everyone.

“Internet’s off,” said Sam, everyone’s coworker, as everyone exited his or her office.

Everyone nodded.

Everyone hadn’t seen Sam in a couple of days. Everyone hadn’t seen anyone except for the four kids and the dog at home, and that only for a fleeting minute or two, for the last forty-eight hours. How could the Internet be jealous when everyone spent nearly all his or her day and night with it?

Sam stood up from his or her desk. Sam had the office next door to everyone.

Sam and everyone walked past Alice, another coworker.

“Internet’s off,” Alice said.

Sam and everyone nodded. Alice stood up from her desk, joined them.

Then came Pat and Max and K. and Morgan. The Internet was off. They had nothing to do.

They walked to the elevator, took it to the lobby.

Everyone decided to buy a Handsome Cola. Everyone was on a diet, and Handsome Cola had zero calories. Everyone would walk to the convenience store on the corner three blocks away, which would count as exercise. Sam thought that a good idea. So did Alice. And so did Pat and Max and K. and Morgan and all the others who had joined them. They would all walk to the convenience store and buy sodas.

Everyone wanted to explore new ideas as he or she was drinking the cola, come up with an ending--and by extension a beginning--show the Internet that he or she was listening to its advice, applying it. Everyone was a good friend.

But everyone couldn’t take the Internet’s advice because everyone couldn’t write. Everyone couldn’t write because everyone couldn’t think. Everyone couldn’t think because Sam and Alice and Pat and Max and K. and Morgan and all the others had decided to join him or her at the convenience store and they were talking.

They were talking about the Internet. They could not believe it, how the Internet could take off on them just like that. They’d thought they’d forged a solid connection. They’d been talking, corresponding, every day, for years, and now this. “You never really know a person,” they said. That’s what the Internet was teaching them--that everything you know about someone, or think you know, could be a lie.

And that’s when the beginning began to unfurl for everyone, as he or she was drinking Handsome Cola and listening to all the others talk. Everyone would write about what he or she had thought was known and had proven to be false. Everyone would write about love, about his or her departed spouse, about the meaning of life. Everyone would start here, at the convenience store, with his or her coworkers, talking about a mutual acquaintance, how they had been disappointed in love and friendship. Everyone would drink cola and become a writer. Everyone would blog.

Everyone Looks for a Blog Entry Topic

Everyone worked on his or her blog during lunch, writing advance blog posts to give to the Internet late at night after the kids were in bed and the dog was done barking outside. Everyone was in love with the Internet, even though he or she would not have acknowledged it. Much of everyone’s day was spent writing things for it. Everyone was frustrated because he or she did not know what those things should be. Everyone did not have interesting life moments to give to the Internet for his or her blog. This is what everyone needed.

Everyone had been seeking inspiration in cans of Handsome Cola. Handsome Cola was the cheapest diet soda at the gas station convenience store on the corner three blocks from the office where everyone worked. Everyone preferred Popsi Cola, the real stuff, not diet, but everyone was trying to lose weight. Losing weight was essential if everyone was ever again to appeal to his or her spouse. It would be very difficult to wrestle the spouse away from the meaning of life, and everyone needed whatever small advantage he or she could muster. The meaning of life was very persuasive when it came to love. Photos of the meaning of life posted on its blog proved it. In the pictures the meaning of life stood next to thin, happy, smiling people who held cans of Popsi at waist level. It was no wonder that everyone’s spouse had run away. Everyone had taken the spouse for granted, let his or her body drift into some sort of half-inflated balloon state, the skin saggy and punctured.

Everyone was thinking of starting a diet. Everyone had been thinking this for a long while, even before the mate left, like years before, like two months after the wedding. But everyone had had four children with his or her spouse and had assumed that that--that fact--was enough to keep the spouse grounded. Everyone had not counted on the meaning of life showing up.

Everyone’s e-mails to the meaning of life had gone unanswered after the first night everyone had written, having gathered the meaning of life’s contact information from the Internet. The Internet knew every person in the world. Everyone was beginning to think the meaning of life might be playing a trick, that it might not actually know everyone’s spouse as it had claimed.

Maybe it hadn’t even really been the meaning of life. Maybe the true meaning of life was still out there, everyone thought. The meaning of life everyone had written certainly hadn’t been what everyone had expected, except that the meaning of life appeared to be successful and happy, at least in the tone set on its blog.

Everyone decided that as soon as lunch was over--the cheese sandwich and bag of strawberries eaten, the water consumed (everyone had given up even diet soda for the fourth time in three weeks)--he or she would write to the meaning of life from work. In this way, the sender’s e-mail address would be unfamiliar to the meaning of life, and everyone might actually get a response. The meaning of life had responded to comments on its website, which was for sale, so everyone knew that the meaning of life was around. The meaning of life was obviously ignoring everyone’s letters.

Everyone looked at what he or she had written to give to the Internet for the blog this evening and grew despondent. The information conveyed lacked substance. Everyone would have to start from scratch. He or she would have to do it at night, after the kids were in bed and the dog was done barking outside, since lunch was near its end. There were so many ways in which everyone was having to start from scratch, like with his or her body and with love.

Everyone considered what he or she would write to the meaning of life. Everyone would pose as a friend, one of those people in the photographs. He or she would pretend to know the meaning of life, would want a reunion, some advice maybe, or a drink. Everyone would propose a meeting place. Everyone would meet the meaning of life, and everyone would write about it for the blog. Yes! How novel!