Righty still wasn't back with those laptops, so Belle-Saige tried to pry some information out of the bad bloggers' ringleader, Jason. She said, "What on Earth gave you varmints the idea you have a right to shutdown all the lesbian blogs?"
Jason didn't even have to stop and think about that one. Just as serious as could be, he said, "Fifty-two percent of the voters in California just made it pretty clear that you people gotta be stopped from tryin' to live alongside us like equals. Now, knowin' like we do that bloggin' is an act of creativity between a man and his computer, or a woman and hers, me and the boys're doin' our part to keep you unnaturals from takin' over the blogosphere."
We could tell Sierra-Dawn had to fight hard to keep from beating the living poop right out of Jason. Controlling her rage real tight, she asked, "And what is it you boys blog about?"
Tommy, the dark quiet one, got animated for the first time and spoke right up. "Mine's called Tread Lightly. It's a blog about tire treads. See? I post a picture of a different tire tread every day, along with the tread's specs, and some examples of the kind of vehicle it should be used on. Then I open the whole thing up for discussion in my comments."
None of us knew quite what to say to that. Even Starr Ann had absolutely nothing.
Jason chuckled and whittled on his stick a little bit more. "Yeah, Tommy, meant to tell you I saw your post yesterday, The Seven Sizes of BF Goodrich g-Force T/A Drag Radial. Nice one, by the way. So, what's with the guy that commented you was gettin' the g-force Radial mixed up with the g-force Super Sport?"
Tommy laughed right along. "Don't ask me, Jason. You know how those Michelin fanatics can be. I just thanked him for his comment and went on with my business."
Jason said he thought that showed a lot of class on Tommy's part.
Just to break the tension, Belle-Saige muttered something insincere about how interesting that sounded.
A few short minutes earlier, we'd have never thought we'd be glad to see Righty coming back with those laptops, but his return was a big relief because when he handed a laptop to each of the bad bloggers, they had to stop their fascinating blog talk and boot up their machines.
Tommy went directly to The Starr Ann Chronicles, Jason himself pulled up Candy Is My Favorite Poison, and Righty clicked his desktop shortcut to Let's Be In Life.
Them being so familiar with our blogs made Starr Ann wonder aloud, "How's it happen you guys have our URLs bookmarked?"
The fourth blogger, Buster, let the others keep working and proudly announced, "We do our homework, little missy. Been visitin' and commentin' on your blogs for months now."
Starr Ann narrowed her eyes. "You're Clarissa Marie, aren't you?"
Buster smiled bigger than you want a man with his teeth to really smile, and said, "At your service. Nice of you to treat me like one o'your team."
Well, what really made me sick was that Clarissa Marie even emailed me once pleading for advice on the nuances of, shall we say, a certain Hitachi appliance. In a way, I was glad I'd passed that one along to Paladin, since she's the expert. In another way, I wasn't looking forward to the conversation where I'd have to tell Paladin she gave, shall we say, confidential tutoring not to Clarissa Marie, but to Buster. Dang. The Internet's a tricky place.
Anyway, once they were all connected to our sites, Jason got real snappy. He said, "Hurry it up, girls, out with your IDs and passwords or this is where things get unpleasant!"
Since the hateful bloggers were sitting side by side, with the four of us lesbians facing them, we had a real good view of the tall dark cowgirl sneaking up behind them, yet they were totally clueless.
In what the rest of us lesbians realized was an effort to give that stealthy cowgirl time to get real close, Sierra-Dawn offerred, "My userid is stupidREDNECK, redneck all in caps."
Righty tapped that in and paused, waiting for the password, which Sierra-Dawn pretended to have trouble remembering. She said, "Password's BigotedSlobs. No, wait! That's my password on Facebook. Um, Blogger password is...um...Asshat!"
Righty tried that and failed to gain access. Heh. He shot Sierra-Dawn a mean look, to which she said, all innocent, "Did you include the exclamation mark?"
Well, that was just enough stalling. That tall dark cowgirl had climbed on top of the boulder behind the bad bloggers and had her pistols pointing right down at 'em. "I must ask you please to move your hands away from your mice."
There was a little confused cussin' on the part of the bad bloggers when they turned around and realized their party was over. In fact, Righty went all white and his eyes rolled back in his head as he just about fainted.
Jason didn't look too good, either, but he was at least able to speak. He said, all terrified, "Who are you?"In answer, that mysterious cowgirl told Tommy, who had The Starr Ann Chronicles up on his screen, "Mister, if you keep your hand very still, you might not lose it." Then she took aim and squeezed off the most perfect shot any of us ever saw, first skimming the bullet over the mouse wheel just enough to put Tommy's cursor smack dab on top of one of the links. Then the bullet glanced downward with just enough force to click on the link. Immediately, the screen filled up with images of a beautiful cowgirl blog, while off-screen everything around us flooded with color again, and we were sure as anything that the cowgirl pulling off our daring rescue was none other than Wild Flower, from Cowgirl's Land.
We all yelled, "Dang!"
You could tell the bad bloggers were eaten up with rage as the five of us lesbians made introductions all around and traded several sincere compliments concerning each other's blogs. Once that was done, we had ourselves a dilemma. None of us had the stomach to actually tie those boys up so we could make our escape. An experience like that could ruin a girl forever regarding the use of restraints, if you get my drift.
Wild Flower squared her shoulders and said, "I have the solution, if you don't mind."
Her plan was brilliant! Wild Flower held her gun on those bad bloggers and ordered them to uninstall all their firewalls, remove their virus protections, and nix their key scramblers. Once their laptops were all naked and vulnerable, Wild Flower delivered her final punch. She said, "Please, would you now go to your SPAM folders, open the emails one by one, and download the attachments they have inside."
Last we saw of those lesbiaphobic bloggers, they were crying like babies, flailing around on their keyboards, trying desperately to stop the destruction.
Wild Flower just looked around at our smiling faces and said, "Heh."
Then Sierra-Dawn whistled and hollered out, "Lickety Split!"
In unison, the rest of us said, "Lick a what?"
Then we had a good laugh when Sierra-Dawn's horse came racing up to her and Sierra-Dawn explained, "My horse, girls! Her name's Lickety Split."
There was one more little delay while Belle-Saige brushed her hair. Seems she'd been totally distracted ever since the ruckus, when she was just positive her hair got slightly messed up.
As we rode off with a beautiful sunset at our backs, I said to Wild Flower, "Well, my fearless friend, seems we'll get to share that bottle of Wild Turkey a lot sooner than we ever dreamed."
Then Starr Ann, that evil thing, had to go and tell everybody how I came this close to mailing a bottle of bourbon to Wild Flower over in Madrid. How was I supposed to know the postal service considers it a felony to mail hard liquor?
When Starr Ann finished her story, Wild Flower said, "Margo, if you are in the sheriff's jail for anything, I will bring this whole Posse and we will break you free."
Dang! Walking away from bad guys sure is empowering. Wild Flower sounded like she could just about conquer the world.
Starr Ann said, "Speaking of the Posse, I guess you all know you'd be a real welcome addition, if you agree to join us."
Belle-Saige, Sierra-Dawn and Wild Flower all said, "Dang!"
