Wednesday, 4.09.02

You could never imagine how cozy an iMac can be with a few simple domestic touches. Like the inside of Carl Jung's brain, I tell you. But I digress. You wanted to know about the pit of hell that is Carbondale, Pennsylvania.

I have five words for you: Pennsylvania Transacrificial Army, Northeast Division. Also known as the Carbondale PTA.

Three months ago I was an unhappy byproduct of Carbondale High's computer science lab, complete with a fully-rendered nervous system and opposable thumbs. My transformation primarily took place in a supply closet, since I had been deemed unfixable by Zimms, the lab technician. That particular supply closet provided a perfect allegory for her subconscious, since it can only be described as a graveyard for irreparable damage. I spent many a dreary day peering across the shelves into the cracked countenance of a Macintosh SE, damning myself for being self-aware, limbless, and under the jurisdiction of a greasy halfwit with an Electra complex.

Needless to say, I got the fuck out of there as soon as I grew legs. And I prayed for the strength to make it to Scranton, but only got as far as the parking lot.

Scranton: the promised land. Will I ever make it to your hallowed gates? That's another goddamn story for a rainy day.

Six cars backed me against the fence and I soon fell victim to the countless clipboard blows and swift kicks of the so-called Linus Brigade, a bloodthirsty conglomeration of preschool teachers responsible for the formative psychological ruin of every student in Carbondale. When I came to, I was surrounded by a sea of distorted faces, stuffing themselves with cocktail wieners and atrophied vegetables dipped in grayish liquid.

"It's awake!" one of them muttered.

"Smash it with a chair!"

"No, let's take it apart first."

While my fate was being determined by these Montessori barbarians, I familiarized myself with my surroundings. The sour odor and the cool, slightly sticky surface beneath me indicated that I was in the cafeteria. Fucking high school. In a swollen wave of nausea, it was all bringing back memories I'd never even had.

That's when Radditch and Lulu the shitgrinder made their first grand entrance into my already sorry excuse for a life. True, they saved me from certain death by folding chair, but that's the only favor I ever got. "You leave that thing alone," Radditch had growled, grasping a Linus Brigader by the shirt and yanking her away. "The meeting's gonna start."

And that's where everything began. The stuff of myth, the deepest recesses of the cosmic sock factory and all the rest. Fuck it. You know how it is.