I was born in California to a really old guy named my dad, and a really nice young lady I nicknamed mom. I don’t remember much from that first year, other than crying a lot and pretending that I was too weak to change my own diaper. We lived on this street called Sunny Slope Drive and running through our backyard was the San Andreas fault. Well, it wasn’t San Andreas’s fault. It was actually my dad’s fault, because he was the one who decided to put us in mortal danger every single day by buying a house on the fault.

He didn’t even ask for a fault discount.

I survived for six years there until my dad got a job transfer to New York. This time, he decided to not buy a property on a fault line that endangered us every day. Instead, he purchased a house on Long Island that had a strip of forest running in the backyard. You know, where poison dart frogs, jaguars, orcs, and blast-ended skrewts live. Not once did my dad warn me to stay out of the forest, or warn me about the werewolves or unicorns lurking behind every tree. He also didn’t warn me about trees, the most nefarious creatures of all time. They knock down power lines, fall on your house, and are cannibals, as witnessed by their falling down onto houses that are made of wood.

I barely survived the three treacherous years living near the forbidden forest in New York, before my dad got another transfer to South Dakota. By now, it was clear he was trying to destroy us. South Dakota a barren wasteland where no one is meant to survive. The only thing that exists there is farmland, Badlands, four presidential faces carved into a mountain and Custer’s Last Stand, which they claim was in Montana. Evidence clearly shows that it was in South Dakota, because of the Custer Crossing Campground and Last Stand Cafe clearly located in Deadwood, South Dakota, not Montana.

And if you’ve never been to South Dakota, consider yourself lucky. They have this little problem that occurs between October and April every year, called winter. Winter in South Dakota is different from winter in Los Angeles, Arizona or even New York. In South Dakota, temperatures below zero are considered warm. The first year we moved to South Dakota, I was required to go to school, because I was 8 years old. One beautiful day in December, it got to -80 degrees wind chill, which set a record. Santa Claus didn’t come that year, because he said it was too cold there. The kids from Antarctica cut their Winter Break short and went home because it was much warmer where they lived.

The worst part of all of that, was I had to go to school that day. The bus driver told us if we didn’t run to the school, we would freeze to death. I’m surprised the teachers didn’t make us go outside for recess.

I think my father really was trying to kill us when he told us we needed to get a job there. Since he knew the only jobs available for 14 year old’s were delivering newspapers, he assumed that one winter morning, he would find us frozen to a porch. Somehow I avoided getting killed on the frozen tundra of South Dakota, and decided to leave South Dakota behind.

Clearly I’m a glutton for punishment, because I moved to Idaho for college, where potatoes were a constant threat to my life. If it wasn’t mashed potatoes, it was French Fries, tater tots, or baked potatoes trying to clog up my arteries. Then there was that food fight where I got assaulted by a deadly donut. I’m just glad it was a sprinkled donut, because I would have been so embarrassed to have been killed by a plain donut.

This just proves that the network running the Matrix that I’m in is unstable. The network administrator running my life is probably Beavis. Everyone else’s simulations seem to be run by competent administrators, because mine is always glitching a lot like I’m running in 3G, while everyone else is running 5G. It’s seems like I’m seeing nothing but glitches lately. For instance, I keep working all the time, and yet no money seems to appear in my bank.

The other weird thing is that when I get to work no one is there, and when I leave work, still no one is there. Why is everyone getting in to work much later than me, while simultaneously leaving much earlier than me? It seems that I’ve been assigned work bots that don’t really do anything, that have a lot of “meetings” or they pretend to type on their computers. They also have a lot of time to talk, and most of the talk is nonsense. Could the simulation at least pretend to make them work? And these “working from home” bots is just funny at this point.

The simulation is causing troubles in my family too. The father that tried to kill me with faults, forests, cold, and trees is now trying to turn me into a sandwich. As in the sandwich generation. Meaning, I’m both trying to raise my kids, while also trying to parent my parent. He’s going through his Britney Spears phase. You know, because he didn’t have a childhood, so now that he’s done working, he thinks he can ‘shave his head’, go around doing stupid stuff with his money, and throw tantrums when he doesn’t get his way.

The network is clearly unstable. I haven’t been approached by Morpheus yet, but I’m thinking of having an outburst at work today to summon him. I’m ready for that red pill. Though now that I think of it, I’m going to have one last juicy steak before I request my leave from the Matrix.

Before I leave the Matrix later tonight, I thought I would offer one last Bitter Friday Giftures for you guys that are staying…

I was born to an old guy named…

We lived on a house that was right on…

Actually it was…

Clearly he was trying to kill me…

Where danger was around…

When faults and forests didn’t work…

This time he used my paper route…

South Dakota had…

Badlands…

And Custer’s Last Stand…

But the evidence that proves it was South Dakota…

Clearly the network administrator…

Because my network is…

There has been nothing but…

Which means..

Right after…

Bitter Unstable Network Ben