Apparently, the writers at CNN.com have a fourth-grade sense of humor…

Just like me.

If you’re like me, when you purchase something you really want online, the first thing you do is test drive the tracking number (assuming you didn’t get stuck with USPS).

The tracking number becomes your new best friend that you must call every fifteen minutes or IM, just to see what he/she is up to.

Foam: Hey, it’s me. Where r u?
UPS: 7:45 PM – Package data transmitted to UPS.
Foam: Cool. I’ll c u later?
UPS: 8:00 PM – Picked up.
Foam: ROFL.

Foam: It’s me.
UPS: 9:15 PM – Arrived at UPS facility.
Foam: Natch.
UPS: 9:50 PM – Departed UPS facility.
Foam: WTF? U r teh Rox0rz.

But then the friendship becomes one-sided and soured, especially if the order is shipping cross-country using ground service.

Foam: Hey.
Foam: Yo.
Foam: Mana Mana.
Foam: Doo Doo Da Doo Doo.
Foam: So Ronery.
Foam: FUK U LAMO.
Foam: Hello?

See the tracking number betrays the friendship, leaves you sitting and wondering where the package is in the world. That’s why I’m proposing that UPS, FedEx, DHL and the others adopt a GPS system for tracking packages.

How great would it be to see the truck your package is on rumbling over the summit on I-80, or docked at the facility closest to your house? It would keep you in constant contact with your purchase in those feverish days after hitting “Place Order.”

Personally, I’ve checked my Xbox 360 order so many times without a change that I can’t help from imagining some methed-out trucker sitting on a filthy bed in a seedy motel room in Little America, Wyoming, trading my console for sexual favors from the local gamers unlucky enough to have one. I know, it’s probably not true. He’s more likely in Reno.

If I were to stand next to myself and begin typing simultaneously with the other Foam, I would find that the mirror would always shift just enough to produce a slightly different sentence.

Sure, you could attribute it to the keyboards, for I would require two. The second would likely be just different enough to create a widening gap between the texts. Either the keys are mushier or the return is just three or four millimeters farther to the right, forcing me (which one of me I do not know) to take an extra four milliseconds to strike it.

Suddenly, I’m trailing myself and trying desperately to keep up. But I cannot, so I put my head down and start pounding furiously at the keys, not looking at the screen, the way the color orange looks just beyond it, the way the calendar sits just off to the right and up about four inches, the way the bills lie stacked up under the iMac. I would miss all of these things and their impact on what I’m trying to say, and in that moment that I try to keep up with myself, I don’t fall behind.

Instead I fall off to the side like a race car thats tapped softly by another car and slams wildly into the bleachers. In trying to regain position, I do nothing more than solidify my own defeat.

Not that this was a competition. A competitive metaphor, perhaps, but racing yourself is akin more to masturbation than NASCAR.

So I’d crash and burn, hop out of my car and walk around the grass next to the track, not interested in the fact that I am actually alive. No, I’m far to consumed with my inability to resume, with my wrecked vehicle…

My wrecked vehicle.

It sits there like a lump, like a pork butt roast waiting to be tossed into the BBQ sauce and crock potted for eight hours. I could trim the fat. I should. But you know how much I like to taste the hot juice mixed with the sugary sauce. Instead I plop it in the pot and slam the lid on tightly as if I had a point to make in cooking. As if a meal would yield any sort of philosophical solution to my inability to keep up with myself…

Myself.

There I go. I’m typing like a fiend about this or that. I don’t even know.

I remember that tonight’s project had something to do with Certainty, the online novel-in-progress that I’m co-writing with another author. I think it’s an outline, or a plan of some kind that will bring the story to life on the internet.

A plan of some kind.

I stepped ahead of myself and turned around to see what I was doing. It was a lot and nothing at all. Such a cliche juxtaposition, I could do nothing to encourage myself to take charge of it, to understand it, to call it what it is.

It’s life. It’s my life. And here I am living it and witnessing it. When I’m done will I find it funny or sad or strange or glorious? When I’m done will I remember floatingfoam dot com?

How many live bloggers will exist when I’m done?

Will one of them be called floating foam?

Both my selves shrug their shoulders and take a sip of wine out of the same cup. One of them continues to work hard while the other leans back, swishes the wine around in his mouth, and contemplates how LCD monitors project light and color.

I see that SuperK put down his new Xbox 360 controller (which I’m guessing is no longer white) and ventured over to Morrison’s to do some bartending. Mistaking the home-town pub for a trendy gay bar, he was struck down by a neighborhood hairstylist and thrown into a tailspin of fatty, deep-friend food binging. At least that’s what I could glean from my brief survey of the article (I mainly look at his pictures).

So I thought it was in his best interest to post about the Xbox today and get him back into the game and out of the bar. After all, he could be on his way to Kenny’s right now, planning to urinate in the last dry corner.

According to this article, some young Alaskan entrepreneurs thought it would be prudent to stand in line all night at Best Buy, purchase new Xbox 360s, and then try to sell them to the unfortunate parents waiting in line who arrived too late to get one. When all of the parents pelted the punks with lectures on fairness, honesty and other liberal propaganda, the young businessmen took their loot and headed for McDonalds for a slight repast and strategy meeting.

A couple of dad’s followed them there and robbed them at gunpoint.

And now for a short quiz.

The moral of the story is:

a) Don’t turn your back on a liberal with a gun
b) Don’t fuck with a desperate dad with a gun
c) Don’t purchase anything from Best Buy without a gun
d) Don’t underestimate the power of the Christmas spirit without a gun

Link via Joystiq.