I was an outcast as a kid. I tried to watch some of the TV shows the other kids talked about but they generally sucked. Rerun and his schtick from What's Happening got old, fast. Diff'rent Strokes? Yeah, right. Stroke this! No, I spent my time playing pinball and video games, programming or hacking on my Atari 800, or reading the most obscure shit I could find in the public library.

Looking for this was my form of protest against the horrible books the school library had and the even worse books which normally made it to our assigned reading lists. Fuck Dickens. If he were alive today he'd surely be working as a freelance technical writer, pounding out eight pages where two lines would suffice.

x-posted to the blog, sans poll.