Greetings mobbers. Please forgive any and all grammar and spelling blunder s. It's late.

Last Friday, I awoke to find three men at my apartment's front door. Not j ust men - detectives with the Austin Police Department, badges in hand. "Is your nam e (insert my real name here)?", thus ending my half-second speculation that they were looking for a roommate or were at the wrong house.

"Um, yeah" I replied and immediately paniced. A death? Serious injury? H ad I been followed on one of my nighttime dumpster-raiding adventures? I played it s afe and asked if there'd been a death.

"No," the only un-mustached cop said. "We'd like to have a word with you. Mind if we step inside?" I told them I'd step outside, which really seemed to irk them. I tried to go get a shirt, but I was told it could wait. Hmm. This seemed serious . I stepped outside and offered them a seat on my ratty old porch-couch. They said the y'd prefer to stand.

"We'll get right to the point. What do you know about "Slash Mobs". Ha. Ha, ha. For those of you that don't know, I am/was the moderator of this now nonexistan t Yahoo group: Slash Mob Austin. A quote from the main page (which I had to get from www.cheesebikini.com/archives/000751.html, as the group is no more ):

"The Slash Mob Project is an interesting phenomenon where people gather at a determined point, kill all surrounding onlookers, and then disperse as fast as arriving, thus leaving the onlookers dazed, bewildered, and hopefully dead by what th ey just experienced... Join the group to find out what great ideas pop up around Austin, to show o ff your new fannypack, and to kill people."

"Slash mobs?" I asked. "Um, why are you asking me this?" I didn't know wh at to do. Previous experience with law enforcement has taught me to not demand my law yer (like I have one) right off the bat. It only pisses them off and makes it look like either you've got something to hide or you're used to being questioned or both. N o, it's better for all parties involved to let 'em ask away, answer what you feel c omfortable with answering, not incriminate yourself, and hope they go on their merry w ay with only a stern look and a lecture.

"Well, we received word that someone with your [looks at a little notebook I hadn't noticed he was holding that he's holding] IP address going under the handle [looks at notebook] 'the beatles they rock' was the founder of the [looks at notebook ] Yahoo group [looks at notebook] 'Austin Slash Mobs'". All right. They at least could've sent three dicks that'd heard about this crazy new sensation called 'the interne t' before that morning. The cop looked tired. They all looked tired. All my sleep y brain could think about was boy, I'd hate to be a cop.

"Do you like the Beatles?" one of them *actually* asked in their best kinde rgarten teacher voice. Great. Good cop/bad cop begins.

"Ah, no. It's a bad joke. Listen, yeah, I formed that group. I think I c an see where this is going. It's a parody of the flash mob phenomenon." Blank stares, followed by:

"Care to explain?"

I ran through a brief (because there's no other) history of flash mobs, fro m their orgins in New York way back in May to me being interviewed by a New York Ti mes reporter - true! She saw my posts I'd been spamming various flash mob frou ps with that held a link to the Slash Mob group. She claimed she was doing a piece on flash mob backlash, whatever that is. Everybody loves flash mobs, as far as I ca n tell. The piece has yet to run.

"Why did you pick Slash Mob? Why did you threaten to kill those not involv ed? That's a serious crime, Mr.____. You know that, right?"

"It's a parody! I thought satire was covered under the First Amendment, ri ght?" I stuttered. when i'm nervous, I stutter and shake even more than I usually do.

"Yes, it is, and I don't know that there's a real crime involved here. We don't want to have to visit you again, do you understand?" Un-mustache said.

Understand? I didn't understand why I was paid a visit in the first place. "Wha - uh, yeah, I understand." I'd love to say I argued, that I bravely stood up to these evil beasts, that I fought off their demons with a battle cry of "Censorship!". At least mention my love of slasher movies. But I didn't. they hadn't mentioned so me out- of-state warrants that I may or may not have, and I really wanted to keep i t that way.

For some reason they gave me a card on the way out. I proudly stuck it to my refrigerator with a gob of spit. Weird thing is, it vanished later that da= y, same as my proud little Yahoo group. They claimed I violated their ToS, which I very well might have having stolen most of the text on my fromt page from the text on the f ront page of this group. Oh, and I threatened to kill a bunch of anonymous fictional people with my fictional group of Slashmobbers.