A Punk's Tale

Once upon a time there was a punk. He was renowned amongst his friends for having staged a relatively successful strike against the local franchise of a notorious large coffee chain, a boycott only broken by an ambush of nature's call far from any public restroom which forced the purchase of one raspberry scone and a pass to the facilities. Young and energetic with a personality not totally uniformed or lacking in intelligence, he nonetheless deserved the derisive connotations that the title "punk" endued. For, in addition to his minor lack of cleanliness, he was fatally impulsive.

Having read an assortment of polemics, our punk fashioned himself something of a Luddite, lashing out against technology due to the evils which it distributed upon nature. Reader and author both should view this particular cause as noble. Those that have perused National Geographic or chanced upon a Planet Earth documentary know the plight of our natural environs to be great, a weighty addition to the already hefty load of sins that humanity has managed to shoulder upon itself. However, while sympathy for fuzzy dieing things is transitory in most, our subject's brash predisposition led him to a degree of self-flagellation that became a permanent part of his character.

He stopped at nothing in his crusade to rectify the injustices he now saw all around himself. Showering was baptismal, in that it occurred just as rarely as that seminal religious event. He converted first to vegetarianism, then to veganism, then to a diet which forbade eating anything that cast a shadow or stood on an even number of legs, then back to veganism when he tired of gardening in the dark. The heater was first set to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, then to 50, then was broken off the wall with a pick-axe (which was recycled after use). Nothing could satiate his demand for the reduction of consumption.

One day, reading in the library (by this point he had eschewed private ownership of books, lights and furniture, and was well on his way to swearing off large public libraries), he noticed the several computers in the corner for patron use. At first pass, he merely turned off their screens. Later, noticing that hardly anyone used the machines anyway, he switched off their power supplies. Finally, considering that it was his obligation to make sure these inefficient power-wells were permanently dried, he stuffed rubber cement in the electric strip's plug to prevent the connection from being made. A warm smug smile of anarchistic rebellion filling every nook of his being, the victorious rogue strode out from the library, feeling so expansive that he even considered purchasing an all-organic free-trade humanely-roasted bag of coffee beans.

Several days later on his way into the library (he required the library for heat, having by this time ceased in renting an apartment, partially for financial reasons due to an earlier pledge to abstain from gainful employment, but mostly for the moral reward) he was content to see "Out of Order" signs posted on the rows of computers. Whispering a faint prayer to Gaea in memory of the trees which supplied the paper for the signs, he passed by to continue his readings.

The following day he was again allowed a brief smile. Little rectangles of dust were all that remained of the old computers. Making sure that the "Out of Order" signs had been recycled, he continued on to check out a book titled "For Shits and Giggles: Composting Feces for Fun and Profit."

The third day began with little pomp. Walking into the entrance level of the library, he marveled at the marble flooring, considering how great an expenditure the Beaus Arts style building must have been. As his mind's eye was consumed with horrific dreams of the scars Mother Earth must have endured under the cruel engineering machine that had constructed this library, he failed to notice the delivery men carting several heavily-laden dollies past him. When he managed to break his extended revery and progress deeper into the library, he was met with a scene tantamount to genocide. Splayed out before him were piles of computer mice, cords writhing on the cold patterned marble. Keyboards, monitors, and computer upon computer lay strewn across the floor as they were slowly assembled into individual workstations. Over in the right corner, two elderly librarians had completed one of the computers. Punching her finger at the "Power" button, the taller of the two librarians spoke with concern to her partner.

"Is it on, Margaret?"

"I don't think so Denice. The lights just aren't flashing anywhere, not here on the back at least."

"Try blowing on the power cable a bit. My grandson always does that with his video games."

The shorter one, pulling daintly at the power cord as if disarming a bomb, managed to pull it out and gave it a heartfelt blow.

"Still not working? Well...shoot. That's the third set of computers that they've sent us that doesn't work! We'll just have to get another bunch. Maybe this time they'll send a technician with them."

As the two librarians continued to talk about the world these days and the confusing labyrinth of technology, our erstwhile protagonist dropped to the floor and promptly died of a sudden brain aneurysm.

The moral of the story? If at first you don't succeed...try, try, and fall dead of an aneurysm.