The Unabashed Admission

On Mondays and Wednesdays I sit in the computer lab and I “work,” which, by all means, could be construed by someone to mean that I perform tasks that contribute to society by forming a product or rendering a service, like technical support. In actuality that notion is false, for I am a “lab monitor” and the only person I benefit down here is myself. I take the term “work” with such painstaking seriousness that even such tasks as Gameboy Advance, messageboards, and AOL instant messenger become bastions of American Progress and Accomplishment, producing an immeasurable amount of consumable material and abstract service. Today I am writing an entry in an online journal; surely the spenders of the world yelp in orgasmic glee.

One thing I won’t do is homework. Surely it would be beneficial to get paid 6.50 an hour by the Political Science department so I can read and comment on old essays by stuffy literary critics, but I’m committed to my cause. No, there will be no homework between the hours of twelve and five today, because I am fully dedicated to only the paramount representations of accomplishment in society.

A candy bar is a worthy companion in this situation, likened maybe to the aid a Thompson auto gun would provide a solitary man surrounded by angry Haitians. The bar’s benefit is really quite unable to be quantified or qualified in many words of common lexicon, and can only be represented by a series of chewing noises and (possibly) the sounds of an all-too-excited swallow.

Sometimes I bring a sandwich in a Gladware container. That way I can eat lunch while “on the job.” No thirty-minute breaks for hastily prepared gruel for me, oh no. Today it’s a multigrain affair with chicken breast I just cooked this morning. Nobody can possibly predict what it will be Wednesday.

Sometimes when I’m down here I get ideas for stories to write. I think instead of writing lots of stories, I will write lots of stories and put them together to make a larger story. I bet nobody has ever put lots of stories together before. See how I’m breaking ground?