THE REAL REAL WORLD

This is the true story of nine people, picked by birth and marriage to live in a house in Florida around the Christmas holiday and have their lives blogged. Watch what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting...familial.

It's that time of the year, when people who have nothing in common with each other besides serially subletting the same womb get together to celebrate the birth of someone they probably have even less in common with. My family will gather in the "I Can't Believe It's Not A Democracy" state of Florida, where many of them already live and are disenfranchised. Most of the rest of us who live in states where they actually count the votes will gather in a rental home picked out by my niece from a list of about 6,700 web sites, according to Google. The house has an address, so we're hoping it actually exists. It may end up being imaginary, in which case we'll kill my niece and serve her in a rich bearnaise sauce.

As far as I can divine, this particular house has no high speed internet access, making actual blogging problematic. Nevertheless, I am packing the Official Laptop of The Crossbow Project, which I recently purchased with money that should be in my 401K. Since the house supposedly has phone lines (how quaint!), I should be able to partake of NetZero, assuming my housemates exclusively use their cell phones to contact their dealers. That sister-in-law of mine, what a crank fiend!

We depart from Philadelphia's piquant (or, more accurately, urine-soaked) airport on Thursday. More to follow...