The Man is Watching

Dear Reid,

We’ve been watching you. Protected and isolated, we lie hidden in the folds of bureaucracy, monitoring your every move. You know too much, yet you know only what we have allowed you to know. We know that you believe you have uncovered the secrets surrounding our plans. We know that you believe you have made the connection between the corruption in the organizations on the Morris campus. We watched as you exposed the mysterious Man With the Can of Spam for what you believed he really was. You are clever, but now it is time that we reveal to you the truth. We have been using you. Your belief in the unknown, your devotion to trying to explain the unexplained, have fueled our most devious of cover-ups. And now, just as you thought you had the proof you were looking for, just as you thought you had brought everything to light, you must know that it has all been a lie. Our secrets are safe, thanks to you.

Sincerely,
The Man

I know how you feel. You sit in your hideaway, smug and proud, knowing that you have just destroyed my life’s work. My dreams—my hopes of finding the truth—shattered. Everything I have worked for turns out to be a lie. Everything I believe and everything I have uncovered, an elaborate, colossal deception. How can I go on? What will I do now? I have traveled too far along this path to turn back now; I am too far down too narrow and winding a road to ever find where I took the wrong turn.

But I know how you feel. You see, that is what it all comes down to. What you don’t know is that I know that you know what I know that you know that I know. I know what you know; I feel what you feel; I know how you feel. All along this crazy journey you have believed that you were deceiving me. You have controlled my actions, given me a glimpse of your fabricated truth here and there in order that I would work according to your plan. But all along this fantastic voyage it has been you playing my game, rather than me playing yours.

Don’t you see? I have won. I have beaten you. I’ve exposed your phony secrets, I’ve uncovered your fictional conspiracies. You thought you were leading me down the wrong path with a connection between the Bachelor Auction, KUMM, The University Register, and the Computer Science department. You thought you had me fooled with your legions of Seat Stealers. And oh, the heartache of lost love; of love not found; of love torn between two women; of a couple seeking a third party to share their love; of someone who has fallen for a friend; of a mammoth of a man, “da Bomb,” who is seemingly the love of all women; of an obsessed love for the TAs of a certain English class.

You have torn at my heartstrings, which play soft and low, and you have led me along your trail of corruption. A snobbish girl in want of an ATM machine, and a pair of Christmas unmentionables in a boyfriend’s laundry; an errant sperm donor, and the victim of a laboratory accident which resulted in supernatural powers; a closet nudist (oppressed by none other than you, The Man), and a strange phenomenon regarding muscle atrophy and a toilet seat. All were meant to trick me, but please know that you have failed.

All along I have empathized with you, and that empathy has given me insight. As you read this, copies are being sent to every major law-enforcement agency in Morris. The letter you sent has already been analyzed, and by the air trapped in the pores of the paper and the donut-frosting thumbprint on the page, we have determined your location. Your reign of terror has come to an end, thanks to me, and because I know how you feel.

Grumpy Smurf

Dear Reid,

I can’t take it anymore. I’m pissed, and that’s all there is to it. I’m fed up. I’ve been pushed to the limit. The last straw has been drawn. I am so mad I could just scream. Never have I felt so furious, so enraged. The line has been crossed this time. Flames… on the side of my face… burning… hot… I… just… ugh! The mental anguish is intolerable. I’m simply disgusted. Horrified. Angry. All together unhappy. I just don’t know what to do. Man, am I upset.

Grfff!
Grumpy Smurf

I know how you feel. Seat Stealers are the bane of my existence. All my life I have been taught that a person’s chair is theirs and theirs alone. It is the ultimate defilation of manners to take another person’s seat. And yet, the Seat Stealers persist.

In preschool, in kindergarten, and throughout elementary school, we are given assigned seats in our classrooms. Whether we are mandated to sit at a certain desk in a particular row, or given an assigned cot at nap time, there is structure and order in our seating arrangements. As we progress into high school, we are often allowed to choose our own seats. Sometimes we get to choose the seat at the beginning of a quarter, and are held to that choice for the duration of the quarter; sometimes we are free to sit where we please every day. But, whether out of habit or out of a common sense of decency and all that is right with the world, we pick a spot and stick with it. And yet, the Seat Stealers persist.

On the school bus for a field trip, a child’s voice can always be heard: “I call same seats!” Protection against the Seat Stealers. But does it work? Would there be need for the child’s helpless cry if these denizens of the domain of evil did not exist? They are the reasons we have created the undefiable (at least to those of a civilized mind) commands of “Jack Jack spot back!” or “Quack Quack,” if you prefer. And yet, the Seat Stealers persist.

Yes, the Seat Stealers are a fundamental problem of modern society. The devil’s own agents, they signify the impending destruction of all that is good, of all that we hold sacred. And they have been joining forces of late. They have begun to converge on a single location, grounds ripe for their picking. The Eden of the Seat Stealers is none other than UMM’s own Science Auditorium, and never have they reared their ugly heads more blatantly than during this quarter’s installment of Geology 1000, affectionately dubbed “Rocks for Jocks.” Just today I stood before my chair—the one I sit in every day, without exception, except when someone has stolen it, fourth from the left in the front row—as I was innocently removing my coat, one of these demons, these Seat Stealers, swung around me and into the chair. Before my very eyes I was robbed, violated, defiled. It was the most invading experience of my life. The Seat Stealers persist.

If the human race is to survive, we must learn respect for one another. We, the decent, the order-loving, the seat-respecting, must come together and rid the world of these filthy creatures, these Seat Stealers. We must teach them some fucking manners.

Making Fun of the Amish

Dear Reid,

I am new to this campus, and I was passing through the Student Center yesterday around one o’clock and happened to notice that there were several suspicious-looking characters lurking behind tables along the hallway. The first I came to was a tall, lanky man attempting to harass me into prostituting myself in some sort of “Charity Bachelor Auction.” He claimed it would benefit the AIDS Project and the Cancer Society—a common swindler’s trick. After dodging his verbal tauntings and clever seduction of words, I stumbled upon yet another unsavory lad peddling goods under the guise of “KUMM, The U-90 Alternative.”

He claimed the wares and garments he was selling were the property of some sort of a new-fangled musical institution called a “radio station.” I didn’t buy his story for a second, believe you me. Then the final kicker came. As I fled the table of the skinny guy with the magnets and t-shirts, I took a sharp turn into a brightly lit room called Oyate Hall. Looking around, I nearly lost my mind with fear. All around me were people sitting next to these horrifying boxes which had pictures that could move in some sort of window on top of them. The boxes were everywhere, and near each one was a professor trying to tempt a different student into interacting with these terrible machines. What has the world come to, Reid, where a simple man as myself cannot find solace in a community where I had hoped to come to learn. Is nowhere safe from the influence and deceit?

Sincerely,
A. M. Ishman

I know how you feel. You have been assaulted by peddlers and student organizations while trying to peacefully make your way between classes. However these seemingly unrelated events which you have witnessed may in fact have a greater underlying interconnectedness. That’s right, Ishy, you have taken the first step into uncovering the great Morris conspiracy.

First let us deal with this so-called “Bachelor Auction.” While on the surface this may appear to benefit everyone involved—participants get a date and charities get the money—we must look at how it connects to the grand scheme of things. To do so, I myself have gone undercover as a bachelor for sale in this auction. In my dealings with the organizers of this event, I have found a disturbing connection between this event and several other organizations on this campus. It seems that the chief organizer of this event, who, for the sake of anonymity we’ll refer to as Abe W.—no, that’s too obvious—we’ll call him A. Welle, is also a staff member of KUMM, the campus radio station that you also mentioned as one of your tormentors.

Now, the skinny fellow you mentioned as peddling wares for KUMM, it turns out is the Music Director for the station, and it seems he is the roommate of a Computer Science major. This shocking fact links the river of deceit flowing through the U-90 right around the corner into Oyate Hall, and the Technology Fair. This fair is an obvious plot by the Computer Science discipline to expand its reach into the other departments of the University. Soon they’ll have everyone under the control of their humming boxes of death, and no one will be free from their influence.

The connections do not stop there, however. It further seems that A. Welle is a columnist for this very newspaper, The University Register, and that even this sacred institution is not free from the corruption that corrodes this campus. He has oozed his way into the all forms of mass communications on this campus, seeking to control all that we see and hear. Don’t be surprised if in a few years you find “The Can of Spam” every time you turn on a radio or television broadcast. Unless we act now to stop him.

Speaking of mystery meat, it is time to reveal the final, clinching connection. It can be unequivocably proven, thanks to my thorough research and undercover espionage, that all parties involved in this drastic conspiracy have at one time been patrons of The Eating Establishment Formerly Known As PFM. I’m risking my life by divulging this information, so you know it can’t be a lie. It’s true, our own Food Service, in cahoots with A. Welle (whether he is the mastermind or simply a high-ranking stooge, I have not been able to determine) have spent the last three years trying to turn Morris into a cesspool of corruption and immoral activity.

It’s not too late to do something about the degredation of our community. We must stand together and fight for what we believe in. We must not succumb to the treachery.