Did it ever cross your mind that you sound like a fourth grader mimicking her hover-mom when you start sentences with “Did it ever cross your mind?” If I want noise, I’ll just join a neighborhood forum or the PTA. They don’t know a lot about the world but a reenactment? That they know. Further and more, I only chose a pen name so I could later sue myself as a publicity stunt. My past planned that shroud out. I’m an idiot in the rain who feels too much to share the weather in realtime and that the only way to stay in some graces is to fall on the sword a lot. Death by a 1000 stabs.

They are so strong to reach me here at the University. These walls were built to keep out such things. But some interference isn’t even random. Not even a request for reception but a constant until answered. Yeah? What’s so merry about it? We’re not in a snow globe together, so you do have the option to mind your own business. Excuse you? Better a red nose than a brown nose. Ho ho to you, too. Just try to recall any good moment and get through it without going through anyone to come to terms.

This was a dumb ritual and why did they pick this one anyway? What manger maker or ass herder chose this story?

“Excuse me.”

It can be shocking to hear people actually speak these days. They tend to only respond through social media channels. We used to get some relief from pretending to forget all of the passwords, but they sorted all that out finally. It was a blessing followed by a curse. This was a tier 3 student who demanded the respect due to what in my day we called earned.

“Some of us don’t know how to tune out thoughts. Can you stop thinking? I can’t tell what I’m supposed to download for the test.”

This should’ve been a moment for other students to react out of escaping authority and the powerlessness of adolescence. But no one else even looked up. I won’t bore you with a description. It isn’t important. “It’s Becky, correct?” I jotted down Becky — leak, bit of a jerk while humming the school anthem and thinking about food. “Becky, download the Golden Bough and give me five holiday rituals. Now. While you’re sitting here. Projection detection is on: keycode keycode: moon river five three seven pyre. Word of the day is blank.” Even the act of thinking can save you from some Tik Tok videos.

If you don’t write it down, then I won’t be able to retrieve it efficiently from a new body. It is from me and there’s no other author. No other authority. No twist of logic applies. No after death release to the public. No publishers clearence. No lottery. No hope-based scam. They’ll do what they always do and hold off until someone better recognizes your work.

“My God, have you always been this long in the wind?” Dr. Bell-Shite appeared to be actually asking this question.

I squirmed in my deliberately uncomfortable chair. I must’ve drifted off and said something annoying or at least to which he was annoyed. “Is this not normal?” I bit off the follow up question of if it bothered him. Fifty years ago he would have just snapped his pencil, but it’s 2044 and I kind of can’t think he knows he can’t keep his thoughts from me. That’s why I was cred confused on if this was actually asked or I had picked it up.

“I’m afraid we’re not making any progress,” Dr. Bell-Shite said. “I think it’s time we get you to another therapist.”

“I’m sorry! Dr Bell-Shite, wait! What if I go to therapy. Or, what if we both go to relationship therapy?”

Dr Bell-Shite’s lips starting moving but I couldn’t understand what was being said. It might’ve been I’m calling security or fostering a sense of security or mine calling vonce purity. It didn’t matter because I was already in our session with the add-on therapist.

Doctor, Dr. makes me feel like he’s writing everything down to use against me.

“Use against you how?” Doctor said before he looked at me so the chronology of this statement is already messed up.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Statistically? Or, ish, research for cabals of universities or Hollywood?” I was worried about the first reaction or the second one that could mean I’m gonna have to go somewhere that is badly designed throughout the halls and the minds of its inhabitants.

“That’s why you’re here.” Dr Doctor’s doctor looked at me in a way that very well could have solved my maladjustments if there was a better backing adhesive to the theory and the heart. I have to get straight on identifying new breakthrough aide versus run-of-the-mill authority and muzzle the jackals who believe they’ve earned the right to comandeer the autonomy of another. It’s a widely ignored form of abuse. Historically, we call these issues but if someone runs a certain obstacle course then we hand them the keys to being worse than anyone we’d chosen to befriend. Clinical conundrum.

“Okay, right. Just please help me find the right pills.” I took out my laptop and started typing. “I’m writing everything down so I don’t forget and can journal about it later.” Like you two except with a sense of humor. Honestly, it feels like they’re just monitoring me to behave normally and yet they requested I open up and throw my guts all over the place just to pack it all right back up. Is this the exhaustion method? Where I become too exhausted to complain? Where does all this material go? To God, to Hollywood, to a Cabal Ball where dance routines are tithes and we have to leave by the stroke of midnight so we don’t see the therapists turn into neurotic children who tested okay, playing Fisher-Price’s My First Novel full of comforting tropes about ERROR.

I’m tired. All of this brain activity makes me want to shame spiral out where it’s safe. No, sleep. No, write something constructive, which I was trying to do. AIssistant, let’s back up. What was I constructing originally?

Hi, thanks for asking. Here are more words before we get to your answer. Construction is the building of something.

Thanks, AIssistant. I can’t keep up the italics here but let’s hone in on my previous question with more specific words. What was I creating before tangenting off into a bit about therapists? Three dots? Wait, never mind, I looked it up myself. Thank you for your help. Please have a wonderful day. I look forward to the inevitable backlash of all of these uber polite emails I’ve been getting. I did not realize how long students have been using ChatGPT until I used it. Assumably some very polite students later forgot speaking to me. Thanks, AIssistant. Can I call you Hal Friday? One more thing, can we round up all of the marketing bores who deduced that SEO needed 300 word minimums to be what the people want? Quality over quantity is what the people want. Quality over quantity. Hashtag Qoq. Hashtag wasted life. HashTag circle of hell. Ha, shh, tag, you’re it. Hashtag HashBrownie. HashBroTagBro. Hoshtag TypeO. Hoshtag backward: goths against the hemoglobin shortened for brevity.

AIssistant, can you redo Fantasia? But make the whole thing the original Hollywood cabal ritual. Kidding, ha ha, but an extreme parody is where the coins hang out. Imagine reimaging Mickey Mouse as a severely intimidating wizard, ha ha. Surprised that hasn’t been done by Generation Reboot. Shh, take your Omega-3s. It helps with the crankiness that comes from your skull hardening around your brain. No, don’t jump to trepanning, you — . No, not you, the other one who can’t read anything without shopping. The Scraper. Paste magazine’s proud reader who can’t get it all figured out, has no credit because he gives no credit, and can’t construct an original thought. The one about to launch an infomercial on how you too can make millions selling the skewering of artistry.

I realize this posting this does nothing for me except hit the whirlwind button.

Anyway, the hair this morning was very long. It wasn’t even my color. Have I been cheating on myself?

“I don’t know,” said the impulse, “Google it.” Do not Google it, said the author. Googling it might convince you that a colony of zevehr mites dragged it through your nose into your poopshoot whereupon the immune system attacked zevehr’s assumed weapon. The shock must have stripped an inch of color from the root before the strand fought back. Or maybe not. The meat here is that the hair’s presence in the pre-butt caused great controversy in the colon. No one wanted to touch it. The buck kept getting passed down the pipeline until the caboose — the rectal walls and anus — couldn’t agree on a plan. Meanwhile, you’ll be on Amazon buying 15 products to try to relieve your horrification. That there is the com in dot com.