I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP PLEASE READ AHEAD WITH CAUTION THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!

Several weeks ago, unbeknownst to me, my blog began publishing its own posts, and publicizing these posts on my various social networking sites. These are posts that I have not written. I’m sorry if you feel fooled or otherwise insulted, or perhaps even offended by what has been posted lately, but I repeat, MY BLOG HAS BEEN DOING THIS WITHOUT MY PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION. 

There are two reasons that I haven’t mentioned anything until now. First, I honestly (perhaps naïvely) thought that the silent treatment was the best recourse. If only I ignored my blog, I believed that it just might dry up and go away. Many of you obviously caught on to what was going on and were right, therefore, to join me in this silent resistance, and to respond in kind, with nothing.

Although a good overall tactic—and one I might still recommend employing for false blogs such as mine was—doing nothing was not, ultimately, enough. The second reason that I haven’t mentioned anything until now is because my blog, I feel, has been putting out posts that are clearly much better than anything that I could come up with.

Nevertheless, since yesterday morning, I’ve migrated my blog to another blog and have changed my password and avatar and my likes and dislikes. I no longer publicize to my former social networking sites. In a way, because of my old blog, I’ve gone into a digital witness protection program. All you knew about me in the past is over. That old me is dead. (I’m still married to Janice, Mom, yes, but her name is Sherry, and FYI, we no longer have any kids. Also, Sherry has bone cancer and is going through chemotherapy. Please send flowers.)

But the story is not over. Everyday for work I go off to a building that looks exactly like several other buildings sitting next to it and all around it in what is called a “Business Park.” I say hi to Cynthia as I walk past her into the interior beyond the reception area where all day, every day, I doodle on scratch pieces of paper as I pretend to take and make my calls. I sit in the meetings and doodle as I pretend to field questions and nod my head as if I’m actually listening. I spend my lunch hour in the corner of the lunchroom with a plastic plant reading plays by Samuel Beckett.

I’m only trying to paint the picture of the normal sort of American guy that I am. I’m working to bring home the benefits, with the hope of one day rising to some lower level mid-management position. I’m not crazy, in other words. I might be boring, but I’m not crazy. But then this brings me to the call I received this late morning, just before lunch.

The receptionist buzzed me and said that ObsessedByEverythingDolphins was on the line. But how could this be? I wondered. In my new life and corresponding new blog, I was going to write about dolphins: my love for them, my thoughts on them, my unhealthy (at times) obsession with them. Of course I knew immediately what was going on. It was my old blog, DeathClap, only pretending to be calling in the name of my new blog.

“Hello?” the receptionist said. “Do you want me to send him through or not?” She had been waiting for me to respond.

“Yes—or wait. Cynthia?”

“Yes?” she said.

“Please send him to my Voice Mail.”

“I will.”

And she did. And in my Voice Mail, my blog remained throughout most of the afternoon until just before 5 PM today, when I finally had the courage to listen to it. The message was a series of staticky clicks that at first confused me until I understood that my blog was using Morse code.

For those of you who have read my old blog, you will remember my post, “My Early Training in Morse Code.” Again, refer to that particular post (read especially the last two lines), and you will understand immediately why my blog chose to communicate with me in this manner. Of course it was spooky. And then my blog ended its message thus: I WILL FIND YOU.

I’m only saying all these things for reasons that, and I apologize ahead of time for any inconvenience or discomfort that this may cause, but if you sense my writing approaching its previous brilliance, then will you know what has happened. I’ve been hacked! And you should respond accordingly, as you have in the past, with nothing.