“Me, Myself and I. Personal Interview. 2019.”
Fourth-year economics major Jonah Johnson was at the end of his rope last night. He had a 10-page paper due for his A History of the Paperclip class that he had put off until 9 p.m. the night before it was due.
Armed with a dangerous cocktail of Bang energy and double-shot espresso, Jonah locked himself into his room with only his hallucinations to keep him company. He read the prompt for the first time and swiftly experienced disillusionment. A string of unquotable expletives escaped his mouth.
Sources. Oh god, the sources. The paper required five different secondary sources along with the primary text, which he didn’t even own. He had only taken this class because the professor was extraordinarily hot.
He sat back and took an exhausted sip of his deadly cocktail, feeling his soul break up with its earthly container, leaving a depressed husk in its wake.
It was at this point that Jonah realized he would require access to the library’s database. Unfortunately for him, in order to access it, he needed the VPN login — that, or figure out how to somehow haul ass to Shields.
He looked out the window. It was raining. Not happening.
Jonah stood up from his chair. Now, what he reported next cannot be proven, but it also cannot be disproven. A flash of lightning struck outside his window, illuminating his body and bathing him in its bright, powerful light.
Perhaps it was the Bang coffee or a Come to Jesus moment — or maybe both — but he realized that he had three wonderful sources inside him all along. He returned to his seat and began aggressively typing.
Who cares what 20th century paper clip experts have to say about whether the Norwegian inventor, Johan Vaaler, was the true inventor of the paper clip?
Jonah f*****g Johnson thinks that Noreweigan dude sounded pretty legit, and it truly seemed like his expertise was overshadowed by that other guy… whatever his name was. The Guy that Doesn’t Really Matter All That Much Since We Learned About Him All the Way Back in Week One — yes, that was his name.
The sources were piling in, and they were high quality. He cited one source as “Me,” the other as “Myself” and the last as “I.”
Me, Myself and I never contradicted his claims, and he did not have to puzzle over the date accessed and date published times in EasyBib since that information had been inside of him all along.
He felt a bit like a god and also a bit like a philosopher. He couldn’t help but judge his peers, who were hypothetically scouring archives for disjointed information that they would probably misinterpret, given their underdeveloped minds. No, this was the correct path.
Of course, in his reverie, he had forgotten the necessity of two other sources. But, you know what they say: Ignorance is bliss. And so is Bang energy and coffee mixed together in a 21-year-old digestive system.
Written by: Kelsey Stewart – kcstewart@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
