[fade in to a young man in a La-Z-Boy with a lap­top, in a messy house.  It looks like a stereo­typ­i­cal com­puter hacker lives there–old food and cans, dozens of open books, com­puter and elec­tronic parts strewn all around. The Future Sound of Lon­don album ISDN is play­ing in the background.]

Brian Enigma (voiceover): Why the hell am I doing this?  Writ­ing is okay, jour­nals are kind of lame, and shar­ing writ­ing and/or jour­nals with the big face­less inter­net is just plain dumb.

[Cam­era pans around to see these words on the lap­top screen]

(v.o. con­tin­ues, matched with words on screen): I have always heard that good boys write jour­nals.  Bad boys never have the time.  I don’t know what *I* am anymore. 

[ Open­ing Sequence ]

Dozens of scenes taken from the first sea­son, set to techno music, cred­its quickly slide in, flicker, and slide out.  Enigma typ­ing furi­ously at a com­puter.  Enigma hang­ing out in the back of a shady L.A. restau­rant with other hacker-types.  Com­puter screen with pass­word prompt and big red “Access Granted” text.  Enigma hav­ing fun at a party with friends.  Sneak­ing around at night, tap­ping into phone lines.  Sit­ting on a com­puter dur­ing a party, hack­ing away at some­thing, ignor­ing the sur­round­ings.  Sit­ting at a stuffy job, watch­ing the clock.  Sleep­ing in the cor­ner dur­ing a party.  Wiring some unex­plained gizmo to the dash­board of a car.  Up late at night in the easy chair, with lap­top and chi­neese food.  Sleep­ing in the easy chair.  Fade to black. 

—

Okay, so that seemed a lit­tle silly, but I’m still hang­ing onto the syn­di­ca­tion and movie rights.  I am not really sure why I am writ­ing a jour­nal entry.  I guess you can con­sider this like a TV pilot.  Maybe it will catch on, caus­ing more install­ments.  Maybe it will never be heard from again. 

Yeah, there were lots of–maybe too many–hacker ref­er­ences above.  I am not even sure I would con­sider myself a “hacker” any­more.  I do not really fit into the hacker cliques around SoCal any­more (not that I ever did very much).  Every­one I know OUTSIDE of those cliques labels me as a hacker.  Sure, I know a lot about com­put­ers, how they work, secu­rity, and elec­tron­ics.  Sure, I have an (over)active curios­ity.  Does that make me a hacker?  Some would say yes–I really can­not say that I feel it very strongly, though. 

Hack­ers are sup­posed to never come out.  They are sup­posed to spend all of their time on the com­puter.  They are sup­posed to be lon­ers.  I am happy to say that I spend a good chunk of time out­side.  I am very happy to say that I spend a good deal of time, not on the com­puter, but with my girlfriend. 

When it really comes down to it, I do not fit too ter­ri­bly great into any label or cat­e­gory.  I lis­ten to indus­trial music most of the time, but I am not as hard-core into it as many other friends.  Same with gothic music…  and “alter­na­tive”… and punk… and 80’s… and jazz… and ambi­ent… and…  A lot of the time, I do not even feel too ter­ri­bly com­fort­able at clubs that cater to any of the above musi­cal styles unless I have sev­eral friends along.  I sim­ply feel out of place, no mat­ter how I dress or act.  Music aside, I do not even feel like I fit into my age group.  I feel many years younger than 26.  Most of the peo­ple I end up spend­ing any amount of time with are either much older or much younger. 

Most of the time, I just feel like a freak of nature, liv­ing in world where every­one is much dif­fer­ent and I feel like I can relate to a very select few. 

[ Theme music fades up, sig­nal­ing end of episode.  Cred­its roll. ]

Well, that con­cludes this install­ment.  It’s 6am and I need to get to sleep.  I did not intend to stay up this late.  Dur­ing the night, I was gripped by the need to fin­ish writ­ing some soft­ware to help break encryp­tion (really, I am not a hacker) puzzles–you know, the ones you some­times find in the news­pa­per or in puz­zle mag­a­zines.  Well, that, and what­ever I ate yes­ter­day that is mak­ing my stom­ach churn and twist.  Any­way, I could not sleep for one rea­son or another and ended up writ­ing code, then writ­ing this cruft.  Now, I hope, it is time to visit slum­ber land.

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