— M i a b i . F i l m s

I’m sitting in a church at a promo shoot we’re doing for work. This is a full-on professional shoot with upwards of 100 people cast and crew. I’m the client or, a “Suit”, and therefore have nothing to do but watch. Doing my best to stay out of the crew’s way, I take a pew and whip out my laptop. What a perfect opportunity to blog. (besides, being on a laptop makes me look important, even though all I really want to do is paint mustaches on people in Photoshop)

I assume of course, because I’m in church, that there must be some divine wireless connection that will be available to me, with download speeds that would let me get The Fast and the Furious from bit torrent in less than 5 minutes. I wouldn’t even have to search for it. I’ll just open my computer, it’ll begin to glow, and I’ll be instantly connected to Godnet. And it will be fast. And furious.

This of course does not work because god is magic and wireless internet is not and cross-platform software that would converge the two has yet to be written. Still in need of a wireless connection, I check the available networks in my laptop’s menu bar. To my luck I find the church’s own network. It’s locked. Feeling I have something brilliant to blog about, I feverishly start trying different passwords in the hope of somehow stealing wireless bandwidth from Christianity itself. I try all the usual suspects. J-E-S-U-S-I-S-B-E-S-T, G-O-D-1, H-O-L-Y-G-H-O-S-T. Nothing seems to be working. I’m looking for a sign. Anything that will allow me to get on Miabifilms and/or check to see how my fantasy baseball team did last night.

The rain outside had been heavy all night. This morning it’s overcast, with a near constant mist swirling about. A dreary day that makes life extra difficult for the crew that have to deal with cold and damp conditions. At that, the mist subsided. The sun peaked through. Could this be my sign? Would Godnet go online? No. But what does happen is the EP of the shoot comes in from the sunshine and sees that I’m having problems getting on the internet. He tells me I’m on the wrong wireless network and gives me the password to the correct one.

Perfect. I get online having tried and failed to hack into the church’s wireless. I suddenly feel a wave of guilt come over me and before I can begin to blog about the need for an alternative to toilet paper, I close the laptop and head to a confessional.

At least I haven’t been struck by lightning.