You know, I first got on a computer in the 2nd-grade. Back then, they were Apple IIe - looked exactly like ET in that movie. We used to play Oregon Trail, but I was in the advanced classes and Oregon Trail didn't cut it for me. By grade 7, I had hardcoded (that means, written BY HAND) a full-written history of The Uncanny X-Men... hey? I was a seventh-grader, for goodness' sake! I wasn't curing cancer, but I was able to cut classes because they'd just go to the library and pull me off the computer and the librarian would talk to them and smile at me and I'd go back to class...

My dad brought home an early-model home PC when I was about 18-19 - something by some company calling itself "Tandy" or something - from a little store you might have heard calling itself "Radio Shack" or "Radio Zone" or something. Didn't work. He took it back and they held onto it for like 2 months. When they sent it back, it still didn't work. I learned how to use the modem and spent literally hundreds of hours calling BBSes and downloading files and so on, trying to fix it. No matter whom I asked about what, the response was basically the same: "No one helped me, why should I help you?"

I fixed it by myself. When I took it back to Radio Shack, my every intention - being young and stupid enough to think that this was some cool, new toy, some amazing new technology that could actually BE something someday - was to show them what I had done so that they would know better the next time.

They gave me hell for trying to bring it into the store, chastised me in front of other customers in that, "WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY" sort of way, and so on. Once they actually talked to me and saw what I had done, the manager said, "You would be a great asset to our company, BUT..." They wanted me to cut my hair, shave my face, stand on top of my head on Tuesdays and pile greased BBs with my buttcheeks.

But I bet I'd have been a great asset - you know, if I had just been as butt-stupid as all the other "great assets" they employ.

Dumb down and everyone's your friend. And if they stab you in the back or insult you to your face, hey? What are "friends" for?

I was blogging back when the only logs you knew of floated. No one gave me a trophy. No one gave me a kudos. Everyone gave me that cock-eyed, "WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY" look and said shit like, "Yeah, but what do you DO?" Everyone told me, if I'd JUST cut my hair and JUST shave my face and maybe JUST not listen to heavy metal so much and JUST not wake up so often on so many nameless strippers' couches, I - even ME! - I just might be able to DO something. MAYBE, one day.

I have gone out of my way to try and share whatever it is I think I've picked up along the way with all of you. I have gone out of my way to be nice to so many of you who HAVE NEVER RETURNED THE FAVOR. I have been funny, serious, pithy, and profound. I have been as interesting as I could be, as downplayed as I thought was necessary, controversial, ambassadorial (is that even a word?!) - I've tried very hard to fit in and be some kind of someone.

LISTEN UP!:

You've had every chance to get to know me. You've had every chance to engage me. You've used that every chance to diminish my minor accomplishments and try to "put me in my place."

You need to learn that I have been through EVERYTHING you have! I'm not going to spill my whole life's story here, but I went to an all-black school because I was the smart cracker who was lucky enough to get bussed-in. A stripper I was - let's call it "dating" - ODed on cocaine and fell over the stage and I got beat-up BY AUDIENCE PEOPLE telling me "You can't touch the girls." I came into my own home one night to find the "roommates" I'd allowed to stay there - AGAINST EVERYONE ELSE'S WARNINGS - had taken off with the house.

The ONLY difference between you and me in those regards is that I've been where you've been. THE MAJOR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO OF US is that you will never be where I am going and you couldn't make it if you tried.

You're not going to come here, where I have - and have had - an established and fairly-well respected blog and talk shit to me. Hell, I hardly even post here anymore because I don't, but I will not sit back and let you play your little schoolyard games around here without whipping a small amount of ass before I leave for good.

This is a really cool site where the folks who made it took the time to actually trick-out the package. This site is built on the SAME coding WU was. The difference is that WU was made to make money - it's called a turnkey operation - and these cats actually wanted to do something a little different. This is where I learned to add all the little cool widgets and stuff and have actual control over what a blog is supposed to be. This place, though a "hivesite," has some silly-assed sort of nostalgia for me and I have written some VERY good articles here. And I was here for a LOOOOOOOONG time before most of you. And I invited ALL of you here a LOOOOOOOONG time ago. But I guess my hair wasn't short enough, or my face wasn't clean-cut enough, or maybe you're just playing the same horseshit you played at every other site you've crashed?

So, whether you stay or you go, you'll have the decency to either speak to me civilly or not, but I reserve the right to speak my own mind on my own blog whenever and however I want. And if I get my account shut down and you win-out again, I have no doubts you'll screw it up for everyone else again and it will be only a matter of months before this site goes away, too.

You people aren't famous, even online; you can't get along well-enough for long enough to make a website you don't even own stay up for more than a year or two, at best. You're lay-abouts and losers, but most of all, you're far too self-involved and self-serving to actually give OF yourselves instead of just using every opportunity you're given to PRESENT yourselves.

I'm not impressed.

D-d-d-did I fucking st-stutter?