I’ll ping you. It’s on my calendar to ping you this morning but I am on a conference call so may not get to pinging you until this afternoon. Ideally, I could ping you before my afternoon meeting but I might have to wait until after the meeting to ping you. I might even just say “screw it” and ping you during the actual meeting. I may have to postpone the ping until evening. Additional unforeseeable delays might mean I can’t ping you until tomorrow. But I’m going to ping you. I hope I can ping you today but if not, rest assured that a ping is nigh.
The ping might be one quick ping, like a finger snap. It might be one long ping, like the sound of a blue whale groaning but in ping form. It might be a series of pings in quick succession, like the rattle of a rattlesnake. It might be a series of pings drawn out over an hour or so, like the drumbeat of island natives prior to a human sacrifice. I might ping you loudly or I might ping you softly. It might be a mellifluous ping — like if Andrea Bocelli was a ping incarnate. Or it might be a cacophonous ping — like the sound of someone vomiting. But a ping. It might not even be an audible ping. It might be a silent ping. The ping might stick around for a while or it might be one of those evanescent pings of which I am so very fond.
I have yet to determine precisely how I will ping you. I have complete and absolute discretion to determine the pinging method. I might ping you via text. I might ping you via email. Or the ping might even take the shape of a good old-fashioned phone call. I could even ping you via an obscure app that is not even invented yet. I might invent the app and call it “Ping.” I might adopt a more classic approach for the ping. I might ping you via CB Radio. But instead of “Breaker breaker” I’ll say, “Pinger Pinger.” I might use a fax machine to ping you. If I do ping you via fax, I will inevitably draw a Roy Lichtenstein pop art onomatopoeia panel that says “PING!!” I might ping you via BlackBerry. I might send you a pet duck named “Ping” with a note around its neck. If I ping you via duck named Ping I will expect you to treat Ping the duck compassionately, even if the ping around its neck brings bad news or is harsh and abrasive. I might adopt a more futuristic method for the ping. Perhaps I will ping you via Tupac hologram. Or ping you via a hologram of Cher that can reach out and slap you like she slapped Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck. That ping would surely resonate. You will have been pinged and astounded simultaneously. I might ping you via Cher herself. Or I might decide to ping you via a Cher celebrity look-alike. I may even ping myself directly to you via teleportation so I can ping you in person.
Substantively, the ping might be positively innocuous. Or it could be the sort of ping that changes life as you know it. The ping could make your life exponentially better or it could be the ping that ruins your life and makes wretched your destiny. I haven’t quite decided the substantive nature of the ping yet. The ping might just be an exclamatory ping. Or it could be a declarative ping. It could be a meta-ping, like the sort of ping that references itself within the ping. It could be an interrogative ping. It might be an interrogative meta-ping such as ‘Did you get my ping?”
No matter the timing or method or the substance of the ping. Know in advance that you will get pinged. And post-ping, you are going to know that you got pinged. You will know that you have been pinged because you are going to get pinged hard and you are going to get pinged good. A ping is imminent my friend. Prepare to get pinged.
I am going to ping you so hard and so good and so fast that you won’t even fucking know what pinged you. It will be a pinging like no other ping you have experienced thus far. Once you recover from my ping you will take a deep breath and attempt to digest the ping, process the ping. I know you like pings to be black or white, but my ping will likely be a shade of gray. The ping will be neither liberal or conservative nor gay or straight nor urban or rural nor skinny or obese. The ping will be fluid and surely defy categorization.
I will likely invite you to acknowledge the ping. I will provide instructions on how to do so in the ping itself. Like the ping will say “Please confirm” or “Let me know.” I will not invite you to ping me back. I am the one pinging you. I am so good at pinging people. I ping people every fucking day, lots of people. I ping people in the morning and I ping people in the night. I ping people at home. I ping people at the office. I have pinged someone on an airplane and on the ski slopes and at the beach and in the produce section at the grocery store. I don’t care where you are when I ping you. I don’t care where I am when I ping you. I just need to ping you.