You Can't Stop The Signal

Oh I'm sorry.  Were you looking for Chris's Fahrenheit 451 essay?  Yeah he tried to publish it just a minute ago.  I piggy-backed off the signal and hacked into the mainframe.  Which sounds a lot cooler than what I really did, which was to just take down his post and put up my own because he hasn't thought to change any of his passwords yet.  He'll figure it out eventually.  He's pretty smart.  Well, as smart as I am, anyway.

Evil?  No...just upset.
You would be too if you had these curtains.  

He calls me his evil clone.  Do I look evil to you?

Yeah, okay, maybe I'm a little cranky.  You'd be cranky too if you were a clone created to be killed for the entertainment of others.  It blows...and not in the good way.

Before you judge me too harshly for everything I've done.....and for what is yet to come, I want you to imagine something.  I want you to imagine waking up one day, starting to go about your business, and then finding out that you're not really you.  That real you already exists, and you are a clone.  Your life is a lie.  All your memories belong to someone else.

I'm not like Chris.  I don't just look like him and have some of his mannerisms.  I am Chris.  I have his personality.  I have his memories.  I have his...pizza-loving body.  Until two weeks ago Thursday, we don't have even a single divergent experience.  So he's out there running a blog I've spent nearly a year building up.  He's out there banging the woman I've loved for seven years.  He's out there hanging out with all my friends and sleeping in my bed.  He gets to go home at night and love my fricken cat!  Can you imagine this?  Wouldn't this make you cranky?

This isn't pure malevolence.
I just heard someone dis Virginia Woolf. 

And what's worse is that my friends just sort of accepted his version.  He told them about me and they just kind of took his version of it.  People I've known for years never even bothered to come ask me my version of events or how I felt about things.  Kind of reminds me of my divorce, actually.  Er...our divorce.  Did these friends--MY friends--have to take sides?  Can't they just like us both?  Is there one version of the story that has to be right and the other wrong, or am I really so unlikable that my friends all pick sides.  And if they do, can they at least have a serious conversation with me beforehand?

But that's not the worst part.  The worst part is, I can't even really blame the guy.  Can you imagine being in the moral situation of knowing that if your roles were reversed you literally would do exactly the same thing?  Can you imagine knowing that that person is effectively you?  Can you imagine knowing someone--someone who isn't yourself--that you can't decide whether to love or to hate?  You know them so intimately that their every eye twitch tells you exactly what they're thinking.  I can't hate Chris.  He's me.

Demonstrating my double shocker maneuver,
which I have dubbed the "shock both of hers."   

That's why I did what I did.  I can't try to be Chris.  I can't muscle into his world.  I don't want to compete with him.  He is me.  It would be too much like self destruction.  Like killing one's own child or a twin brother...only even worse.  It would just end up going badly for both of us, and I kind of like the guy.  That's why I gave myself the overlay from the Pretentitron.  I wanted something that was my own--something he couldn't have rights to.  I didn't even know what it was, I just knew it would add something that wasn't him.  I can't be Chris Brecheen--there already is one of them.  I have to learn to be my own person.  I have to have my own identity.  I have to start over from scratch. I just wanted something that was my own.  But if he thinks taking advantage of such a wonderful opportunity to try to find the writing core within you and participate in an event as wonderful as NaNoWriMo is evil....

Then I'm gonna be evil.

I'm going to be the most evil, NaNo writing, pretentious motherfucker he ever did see.  In fact, I'm going to hack the W.A.W. signal and give you guys a regular update on how it's going.  And I'm going to finish.  And when I'm done...I'm going to get that motherfucker published even if it takes me the next two years to do it, and I'm laugh in Chris's stupid goodie-two shoes face.

If he wants evil, I'll give him evil.

Oh hai, Chris.   Just sitting here...being evil.  Why yes, I AM signing up for NaNoWriMo.
See you when I'm a novelist, bitch!

The Phantom of Writing About Writing

And we thought CHRIS was pretentious.
At least Chris doesn't have a cape.

Back in Fall of 2012, Chris was cloned. Not merely cloned at the physical DNA level, but his clone was also given a memory overlay so that until that exact moment of its creation they were the same person. Even now, their main differences tend to have to do with hair dye and liking NaNoWriMo. His clone lives deep within the basement in a subterranean kingdom, and terrorizes the staff of Writing About Writing, occasionally kidnapping young divas (especially if they're named Erika).   He also occasionally hacks into the Writing About Writing mainframe and posts his own articles. He keeps the archive down in the basement where Chris can't get to them.

You Can't Stop the Signal--Evil Chris introduces Himself
15 Things to Remember About NaNoWriMo if You Do It Despite the Advice Not To
Liberating Erika from the Pretentitron
Why Failure is Awesome but Quitting is for Losers
NaNoWriMo Warm Up (Best if done before NaNo)
7 Bits of Advice to Get You Through Week Three NaNoWriMo
Alea Iacta Est (10 Item Final Prep Checklist for NaNoWriMo)