…I’m speaking to a Mr Robot?<\/em><\/p>\n I’m back from the store. My roommates gather around as I reveal with a flourish: the four head VCR. It cost me close to $500 on special at Sears. Cheers and back slapping ensue for a solid minute. Quickly we hook it up to the TV and settle in for a marathon of movies.<\/p>\n Yes. Can you tell me that figure again?<\/em><\/p>\n I’m waiting in line at the College. I see a girl run out of the registrar’s office in tears. I’m worried that that will be me in a few minutes. After supplies and rent and a decent week’s worth of food, I’ve got enough to play a fist full of video games in the common area.<\/p>\n Certainly. After the three payments of $535, $410 and $437 made in the month of May… <\/em><\/p>\n I’m staring at my first computer in the dark cave of my living room. I’ve made my first piece of digital art on the tiny 15″ screen: a combination of a picture of myself that I’ve applied a Peter Max type filter and some warped text over my head. I found it easy to do.<\/p>\n …I guess you did your taxes in one go for three years, Mr Robot?<\/em><\/p>\n My first web page I did as a joke (much like all my web interactions). It was a hommage to Jon Erik Hexum: All the images I could find combined with a sad midi file; uncontrollably embedded into the page; animated GIFs of torches bookended a 20 second poem I had written. My teacher laughed at the tackiness of it, saying I “grokked” the Web. But he didn’t understand why Jon Erik.<\/p>\n Yes. I did. Which leaves me with…?<\/em><\/p>\n I’m standing in the student book shop, wondering if instead of paying the $10 for another pad of newsprint for life drawing class, I could flip all my drawings from the last month over and use the back, meanwhile I could eat cheap pork chops and still have enough to go to Katrinas and have at least two drinks with my friends (who all have paying jobs) this weekend.<\/p>\n Well it looks like we’re showing a balance of $411.05. I guess you’ll be paying this off within 30 days? Just add $3 for the interest.<\/em><\/p>\n And with that, the albatross that has been around my neck for the last 20 years flies away.<\/p>\n I have paid off my student loan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" …I’m speaking to a Mr Robot? I’m back from the store. My roommates gather around as I reveal with a flourish: the four head VCR. It cost me close to $500 on special at Sears. Cheers and back slapping ensue for a solid minute. Quickly we hook it up to the TV and settle in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[8,21],"tags":[362,363,2020,33,353,272,210,357,360,285,347,364,163,348,349,352,346,361,354,359,365,356,351,355,358,350],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WjY-wM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}