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07/23/00 Paranoid Pontificating By Eddie Nambulous Since I took the Journal this week I tried to convince Foster he should write the Paranoid Times Editorial. Cade wasn’t interested. He said pontificating in the Paranoid Times was my territory alone. So today I thought I’d pontificate on something personal to my life – my past. If you check out the journals this week you’ll read how I just attended my High School reunion. But why do we go to these things people? I mean, high school is supposed to be about good times and discovery … but lots of times it’s not. Maybe, deep down, we all want to believe we had that pop-culture version of High School – the kind starring Jennifer Love or Alicia Silverstone, when more often than not we were living the kind of movie John Cusack starred in. It’s about creating an image of the ideal. How else can we explain our obsession with returning to the place of such torture on a decade by decade basis? And somehow, whoever we were in high school seems to define how our schoolmates continue to see us for the rest of our lives. Sometimes we see ourselves that way too. Thing is, freaks and geeks can grow up to be cool ... or rich (and therefore cool to a lot of people who love money). That happened with Herman, an old buddy/rival from my computer club – The Binary Bandits. Herman was rich and cool now. I found out that the Gua were at the reunion searching for me. When I told Herman that the Binary Bandits were in danger he thought I was whacked. Then I told him the whole world was in danger and he just laughed it off and headed for the bar. Herman had decided he was too cool for danger so he’d stopped listening to the people who were his pals in H.S. Marianne (she was my high school sweetheart) wanted an explanation of everything I was talking about. For the first time I knew what it was like to be Foster, hangin’ on the front lines trying to tell people what the truth was and convincing them on the spot. I mean, I do that every week here, but Foster has to tell it to people he’s come to care about face to face. It wasn’t easy – when you talk about the Gua people think you’re downright, well, crazy. Stanley, another bud o’mine, had no clue about the aliens but he did confess to an ugly sin. Seems Herman ratted me out to the cops all those years ago when I got busted for hacking in High School. It was that incident that caused me to go on the run. Stanley was in on it, Herman promised him a piece of his future company if Stanley helped him steal the technology I was developing – my code books. Stanley told me I was right to have been paranoid – my friends had been out to get me all along. I was learning the hard way how the stuff we live in High School can bite us in the butt for the rest of our lives. I showed Marianne this site. She thought it was all so weird and figured now she knew why I was the way I was. But she was wrong. I got messed up by what happened to me in high school – the origins of my paranoia had nothing to do with extra-terrestrials. It was the plain old nastiness of every-day, pubescent humans – my fellow students. Herman thought we were just kids when he stole my code books – but what he didn’t get is that his actions made me become someone else. People shouldn’t have that much power just cause they share a homeroom with you. So the Gua were after Eddie and then they mistook Marianne for me. Not an easy mistake to make, cause she’s got, like, much better legs. And because she’s so cool and stand-up she tried to make ‘em believe she was the Web-Jockey called Nambulous. But that wasn’t gonna fly. I lured those Gua in, pulled a Foster, and planted myself as bait. After deep frying a coupla aliens it was Marianne who delivered the final blow and dissolved a clone – what can I say? The girl always had style! Marianne and I had rescued each other. Herman lent a hand too – I guess a guilt that strong can make a believer outta anyone. I got a blast from the past at my High School reunion and a crystal clear message courtesy of the Gua. I’m on the front lines with Cade Foster and they’ve got the cross hairs on me just like they’ve got their sights set on him. As for my friends, I never would’ve guessed Stanley could be involved in Herman’s theft all those years ago, or that either of them could be so brave in the face of death. By facing the pain in my past I healed old wounds and gained a better understanding of who I am, I may be paranoid but I sure ain’t crazy … in the bad way of course. In the end I got my friends back, played the hero and got the girl. Sure felt like I finally got to star in the good movie by going to my reunion after all. And there ain’t nothing wrong with playing the everyman … as long as he gets to be the hero every once in a while.
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