The Internet is a strange place. The Wandering Bus urban legend I wrote in 2011 has apparently taken root online and begun the creeping, Catholic saint-like process of transforming into a real urban legend.
I probably should have guessed, since that post is regularly one of the top-performing posts on my blog (“top-performing” be very relative). But thank you to Philebrity for hearing about this story, being intrigued, doing some sleuthing, and letting me know.
Even better, thank you for calling me a “writer/comic/communications manager” with “an almost Haruki Murakami-esque modern fabulist style.” THANK YOU. SOMEBODY gets it. That’s all I’ve ever been going for. Should I ever have need of a dust jacket, that’s going on there no matter how inappropriate.
When I wrote for The Onion, I had the voyeuristic experience of reading the comment section on the GOOMF videos. This is a stronger feeling, perhaps because unlike The Onion, my name is on this one. Or was – it’s been stripped out. So now it feels like someone else is retelling your campfire story, and you’re sitting around the fire keeping quiet.
Claiming your writing credits are important, but I’m not going to lay claim to this anywhere. If you come across this blog post and want to debunk the legend, go for it. But frankly, I’d be pretty proud of helping germinate an urban legend of a wandering SEPTA bus picking up lost souls in need of destination-less departures.
—
UPDATE: I was feeling all benevolent ‘n shit about my donation to our cultural medium until I actually followed the links in the Philebrity article. Turns out there’s a Tumblr I’ve never heard of but apparently a lot of other people have. By my standards (see above about relative top performance) 4,900 anythings is a lot. Damn. Now I know how Kris Straub feels about content attribution.
nicholas mirra: blog 