"followers"?

[NB: For whatever reason, I'm currently able to surf from my motel room, so I'm taking advantage of this to write the following post.]

There are several jokes I hear repeatedly on this walk, two of them more frequently than all the others. The first is the "Ah, just like Forrest Gump!" wisecrack, given in response to my saying that I'm crossing the country on foot. I saw "Gump" when I was in Korea in the 90s, but didn't realize how deeply the story must have affected American pop culture. It's 14 years later, and people are still making "Gump" references as though the movie had come out yesterday.

The second joke I hear is that a guy on a religious pilgrimage (I've already expressed my discomfort with this word) might end up attracting followers. I realize it's a joke, but this is a truly disturbing prospect. Anyone who gets to know me well enough will realize that they'd be better off seeking wisdom from a pile of horseshit than from me. While my ego would love for me to play the role of guru, my conscience would know it was all a sham. To imagine people latching on to my walk and following me... that would give me the heebie-jeebies.

If I acquire a traveling companion (the word "companion" is derived from Latin roots that point to the idea of sharing bread), I hope it happens something along the lines of Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef's cool collaboration in "For a Few Dollars More," which is still one of the best buddy flicks out there. So, no: acquiring a gaggle of lost souls and then ministering to them just ain't for me.

This brings me to the Blogger "follower" feature, which is apparently some sort of new cyber-gadget I can tack onto the blog. Over the past few days, whenever I sign in to Blogger to write a post, I've been seeing a line of text informing me that I have X number of followers. You can imagine my chagrin-- my inner pansy is cringing in a corner and screaming "Oh, no! It's happening!"

I'll need to find out more about what Blogger's "follower" feature is; more likely than not, it's just some innocent gizmo I can add to my sidebar (unless it's there already...?). I'm hoping it's not a tool that makes stalking easier.

Keep your fingers and tentacles crossed as I find out who my followers are, what they want, and whether they plan to eat my brain or take me to the mother ship for anal probing. I've currently got four followers, according to Blogger, and in East Asian numerology, four represents death.*

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*In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, the pronunciations of the Chinese characters for "4" and "death" are the same, despite the fact that the characters look completely different. In Korea, you'll often find yourself in buildings with either no fourth floor, or an "F" floor instead of a "4th" floor (you'll see "1, 2, 3, F, 5" on the elevator buttons, or just "1, 2, 3, 5, 6").

I guess it's no more ridiculous a superstition than our obsession with the number 13.


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