The first thing you should know about me, dear reader, is that I have no tolerance for stupidity of any kind. These days ignorance runs so rampant that one must wonder whether anyone will be able to rein it back in when its time for play finally expires; it seems to have no intention of returning to its lowly cave once the current fury resides. Ah, you would think that in voicing these concerns for the well-being of the outside I reveal a humanitarian side of myself. Do not be dissuaded: you will find no such adumbration in my writhing figure. No, I am only concerned with myself and the little life I have built for myself in this hole. One must look out for oneself these days and can hardly ask for much more.
The worst part about isolation, such as the one in which I have enclosed myself, I have concluded, is that everyone else only takes you for some poor sufferer of paranoia. They do not even have the wit anymore to realize that your bitterness is totally your desire, that you want nothing more than to cut yourself off from the world of docile bodies up above, and they insist on offering you their pity. In olden days someone like me would be cast out to the far edges of town and left alone. Parents would tell their children that some strange young rascal lives over yonder, my boy, and if you love me then you will promise not ever to throw the disc around anywhere near there, and if you should find yourself approached by anyone you will get yourself back home immediately. But now those gameplaying children have become the parents and, forgetting the better advice their fathers offered them, instead laugh from a distance while the little runts throw their pebbles.
But I am not so self-centered to think I can escape this hamlet of rubble completely by my own means. That is how a cycle begins, no doubt. So I have enrolled at the local university, the filth of which I can only assume is typical of all such institutions on this side of the tundra. The proud man might say that to enroll in a place like that, even if it receives no public funding, is to compromise one's principles, which then become no principles at all, but mere guests of fancy, coming and going as they please. But to hell, I say, with the vanity of principles and maxims. The man of action has no time for such philosophical jargon.
And yes, while it may surprise you, dear reader, I consider myself such a man. I no sooner smother my passions than let them guide me to enact them, no sooner act on them than betray them for another, more delectable wish. If you do not believe me in how I characterize myself there is simply nothing I can do about it, but if you are only the slightest bit skeptical, only in need of a light nudge to tip you into my discipleship, than I have a story that will surely demonstrate my claims to being a man of action, which would of course be most appropriate for me to actualize.
Like I said, I have been wasting away the time at the local university, where I have actually done quite well for myself in rising to the near-top of my class. I would not have to hyphenate my ranking if I was not being constantly distracted by the awful men and women with whom I must share the lecture halls. If they would allow me merely a moment of silence I would float like a stray bit of ash up past even the brightest of them, but how can one hardly expect such a courtesy these days? I am slipping, I realize, into language that is all too poetical, and there is no one to blame but those awful texts they dare to call the constituents of a worthy curriculum. Excuse me while I take a brief moment to pour a drink and rid myself of these poor habits.
*