Day 18- 31,036 Words

I wasn't having any fun with Penny Lane, so I decided that she is now in danger because of the article that Ellie wrote on her behalf.  A group of angry hockey hooligans are now after her and Alejandro.

“Well, now that you know about football in Spain, you understand what it means that I’m afraid right now.  Hockey fans scare me.  Those goons sure do love their hockey fights, and they will do anything to make sure that no pinko commie lefty gets in the way of them.  Remember that mommy blogger from last year who waged a war against hockey fighting because she was afraid that her son who was playing pee wee hockey might start fighting?  The goons showed up in front of her house every day for a month and fought each other just to make sure that her son would see it.  Yeah, it was stupid, and yeah, all of them probably experienced some serious brain damage.  But I think that it only made them crazier for hockey fights.”

“That’s pretty drastic action to take against a mommy blogger.”

“They tend to be pretty powerful, and they can definitely be an explosive bunch. If they feel a threat to their children, however small, they will turn on you in a second. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that Paul Martin’s government was brought down when he turned down an application to give Nickelback the Order of Canada. The mommy bloggers consider it essential to their children’s wellbeing to foster and encourage local, Canadian talent. When they learned that Nickelback had been slighted, they went ballistic and started a chain reaction that eventually led to Martin’s Liberal party going down in defeat and Harper winning his first term as Prime Minister. It should come as no surprise that shortly afterwards, Nickelback got both the Order of Canada and an invitation to play at the Prime Minister’s home. Stephen Harper knows where his bread is buttered – he would never make such a rookie mistake.”

“So how did the mommy bloggers react when one of their own was attacked like that?  Did they circle the wagons?  Did they get their mom jean-clad asses down to her house en masse in their minivans?” Penny Lane asked, never having heard of this strangely powerful group.

“You might have thought that they would,” Alejandro said, “but they seemed to be too busy ‘commenting’ on one another’s blogs.  I’m using the word commenting quite loosely, as they usually just invite other mommy bloggers to read their own blog.  Apparently this incident wasn’t enough to wake them from their narcissistic slumber,” Alejandro concluded sadly.

“But what does this mean for me?  Should I start my own blog to try to appeal to the mommy blog faction?”

“There’s no time for blogging!  Don’t you see?” Alejandro yelled.

“No, I don’t see!  What is it that you’re trying to tell me?”

“You need to get out of town!” Alejandro cried.  “Those hockey goons harassed that poor woman and her family for a month because of one blog post.  She wrote a rap for some kind of ridiculous competition, and the lyrics and video of her rapping were posted on the blog.  No one reads those blogs anyone, not even other mothers—they only post on each other’s blogs with hopes that someone will start reading their blog.  It’s a sad existence, to be sure.  But even that was too much for the goons.  Maybe it was the terrible quality of the rap—the rhyming was quite poor, and she tried to fit too many syllables into some lines.  But I think that it was more than that.  I think that they have hockey rage, and they won’t turn it off for anyone.  Not even a rapping mommy blogger.  You can see it in their eyes, that unrestrainable rage that can only be temporarily satiated by watching some hockey players punch each other during a game.  They live for those five for fighting majors.  In fact, I think that they call themselves Five For Fighting, but not to be confused with the American singer-songwriter with the aforementioned stage name.”

“I’d better make sure not to confuse the two.  You’re sure there’s no relation to John ‘Five For Fighting’ Ondrasik?”

“Yes, I’m sure.  Those goons clearly couldn’t write a song as tender and insightful as ‘100 Years,’ or as pain-ridden as ‘Superman (It’s Not Easy).’  Not even if we gave them 100 typewriters for 100 years.”

Before Penny Lane could tell him to calm down, she heard an angry knock on the door.  They both turned to look in that direction with terrified looks splashed over their faces.

“Did anyone order a pizza?” a woman called from the other side. 

“Oh yeah, I did,” Penny Lane said excitedly.  It was rare, but apparently the situation at hand had managed to momentarily distract her from her lunch.  She wouldn’t let it happen again.  She paid the pizza woman as Alejandro looked at her in awe, wondering how she could put pizza above her own safety.  It was easy, she told him.  Pizza is awesome.

She was in the midst of eating her first slice of pizza with tomatoes (of both the regular and sun dried variety), green peppers, grilled zucchini, eggplant, broccoli, caramelized onions, feta cheese, cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese, pesto as well as extra tomato sauce from the “P, I, Z, Z, A—Gimme Pizza!” pizzeria when she heard another knock on the door.  It wasn’t even deep down, but rather, on the surface, that she knew that this time whatever was behind that door was not going to be as pleasant as the pizza that she was enjoying.