That’s not all, folks. I received a grant for school. Not a loan, mind you. A grant. It covers almost all of my tuition for my final semester. I am very pleased.

My plants are also so tall and bushy that I needed to buy 15-foot-tall nets and 100 feet of rope to protect them from blowing over in a storm. I really didn’t want to advertise to the neighbors, but they are taller than my house. At this point, I want to see how much bigger they get. The jig is already up. Fuck it. One positive is that they provide great shade. There is also an entire ecosystem inside of the bushes. Mostly, they’re cool spiders.

I’m excited, and this excitement has bled into my personal life. I have some extra jam lately, and I have been getting things done. To reward myself, I have been playing a lot of PlayStation 2, late into the night.

I love video games. As a media-hoarding Millennial, I have literally hundreds of them. I also own many consoles, from the Atari 2600 to the PS2. I am now back in love with the PS2 and OG Xbox. I have been hitting online marketplaces and buying cheap games. There are some absolute classics out there for $10 or less.

I could gush about the console. I could say that it was the peak of gamey aesthetics before hyper-realism became important. I could talk about the PS2’s vast library, and how it sets the standard for consoles with large libraries. I won’t, though.

I also play games at my computer a lot. I am at my desk often doing other things, so it is simple to click an icon and screw around in a game for a few minutes. The problem is that level of accessibility exists for the internet and social media as well. One second, I am playing, and next thing you know, I am scrolling social media and getting depressed. For some reason, I just wander to my browser without even noticing. I have been using an offline word processor lately to minimize this weird habit.

I meander onto the internet when writing or doing schoolwork far more than is healthy. I just have to make it harder for myself. As an example, I stay logged out of my social media now with the exception of less than 30 minutes in the morning. In doing so, when my algo-addled brain makes its move, I am hit with the login screen. It snaps me out of my trance.

This isn’t a problem with old consoles. It’s just you, a controller, the glow of the screen, and quiet. That quietness tends to get me out of my head, and I am able to actually be engrossed in my activity for once. There is something warm and comforting about being in a form of pleasant solitude. I think I might be at my happiest in these situations. These positive vibes have caused me to finally unplug for large portions of my day. It’s been nice.

I am not anti-connectivity, mind you. I just understand my lack of focus combined with an algorithm that hypnotizes me and access to all of Earth’s information is a bad combination.

I never had a computer until I lived on my own in the early 2000s. The one I bought was $50 out of some dude’s shed. It played Sid Meier’s Colonization, though. Before that, my only experience online was playing Phantasy Star: Online with my work friends through a Sega Dreamcast. I paid $9.99 a month for Net Zero dial-up just for this game. Honestly, playing that game was some of the most fun I have ever had with friends. My aunt that I was staying with was paranoid that I was online, and she was sure that she was missing calls no matter how many times I reassured her that I only used the Dreamcast from like 2-4 am. My aunt and uncle had wild fantasies of who I was and what I was doing.

I only had access to the internet one other time before then, and that was when my brother bought a WebTV. For the kids who may not know, it was a box that connected to the TV and could connect to dial-up internet. While it was pretty limited, it had its own chat-rooms, which had a lot of traffic. I was able to do an excellent report on Simon Bolivar for school without leaving my house, which was also pretty sweet.

While Russ got it for himself, I loved the WebTV. I found ways to reflect my personality and made friends at a time when I needed it. My parents had passed away before Russ came home to take care of me. I was in a weird head-space, and it was nice to have people to talk to. I also had a profile that had a GIF of Beavis as Cornholio and the NOFX song Five Feet Under playing. I was the coolest teenager in the ‘90s. I loved the punk chat-rooms a lot, and I made some nice connections with other fucked-up kids.

Even though I used it a lot, as I said, Russ bought it for himself.

Strap in. This is going to be a long one.

Russ could be a huge cock. This is doubly true for when he is doing something. At the time, my friend Jack, who lost his father two weeks before my mom died, was living with us. It was fucking awesome. I lived with my best friend in the world. Jack loved busting Russell’s balls, and as I was the child who owned the majority of the property, Russ couldn’t throw him out. The control that I exerted over who came and went would lead to significant chaos, but Russ deserved it.

No matter how pissy Russ got, he was cursed with us. We fucked with him a lot. One of our biggest pranks was logging into his WebTV account.

The WebTV was the worst thing that could’ve happened to my brother during this time. He would get into bitchy online arguments all the time. He also threw huge parties with the Palmer, Massachusetts, WebTV group, which were wild affairs. While this sounds awesome, these parties led to Russ meeting his first wife. It didn’t work out.

We did get a long-term friendship with Nasty Nate out of the thing, though, which was good. Nasty would always barge into my room when he came over to chill with my brother. He would ask how I was doing, drop some wisdom on me, and then tell me about how steroids amplified all of his senses. He was a good guy. He did accidentally almost choke me to death when he ran in with a mask on during Halloween.

There were a few of my brother’s friends who I was tight with, but Nate is the man.

He also used it to try and get girls. Russ is incapable of being single, and he was on the TV for hours on end trying to secure a lifetime commitment. There was one girl that he invited over during a party. She was plain, I guess. Either way, my brother didn’t feel she was up to his lofty standards, and he ignored her. Jack and I let her hang out in my room to cry before she left.

My brother thinks that he is very handsome. This is pretty funny, considering I was there when he sent some girl a photo only for him to be called a “scrub.” He pouted for days after this. Couldn’t happen to a better guy.

Jack and I would sit behind him in the living room. Sometimes we would riff on him; other times we just did our own thing. He hated it. Even when we weren’t roasting him, he would complain like we were crying babies.

For Jack, Russ’ behavior was unacceptable. I am passive, and Russ scared me. Jack, though? He never has and never will be afraid of shit. No insult goes unpunished with him.

One time, Russ was bitching at us, while on WebTV, of course. Jack and I were probably making immature jokes, but I don’t remember. Anyway, he loudly asked, “Do all you guys talk about is turds and masturbation and stuff!?” Those words would never be forgotten for the rest of our time living together.

From the kitchen came a quick shuffle, followed by Jack popping around the corner with half a sandwich in his hands. He looked at Russ excitedly. With absolute poise and confidence, Jack loudly addressed my brother.

“Hey, Russ? Turds and masturbation and stuff!”

This became a recurring gag. My brother regretted saying it for months. Everything Russ tried to do, Jack got turned around on him. Everything.

Once, Russ forcefully asked Jack to refill his iced tea while he chatted online with some ladies. I was already in the kitchen farting around when Jack came around the corner with the glass Russ handed him. He then pulled out his balls and ran them around the rim of the glass. Russ received his iced tea in that same glass about 5 minutes later.

Jack was the type of guy who swiped my sister-in-law’s Walmart badge between his ass-cheeks, brushed his taint with his enemies’ toothbrushes, put his dick in my brother’s bong, and did all sorts of other vile shit. I shudder to think about it. With how often I saw him do it to others, I am pretty sure I have also been one of his victims.

To my former sister-in-law, if you are reading this, I let him swipe that card in his ass because I hate you. You have probably shared a lot with Jack, as he hates you too. We all know what comes with his ire. Taint brushing.

As I said, Russ met his future ex-wife via WebTV. He organized massive parties at my parents’ house after they were gone, sometimes with live music by using the internet. All of his in-real-life friends were using their own WebTVs for the same reasons as Russ. Meeting girls and partying. Everyone except this one guy who would print out weird pornography to show people as a “joke.” I got my first dog from that guy, though, so he’s cool.

My brother was part of a massive ecosystem of local late 20s and early 30s bar-flies, drug addicts, and all-around party animals. Jack and I didn’t understand just how intertwined my brother’s life was with this stupid set-top box until we logged into his profile.

After snooping around a little, we hit the chat-rooms where Russ hangs out and began pretending to be him. We talked a bunch of shit. I can barely remember what was said. Jack and I tried to keep character, and being around Russ’ gloomy ass all the time made it surprisingly easy. Too easy.

Initially, we assumed that Russ had some degree of anonymity. This wasn’t the situation, however, as we quickly discovered. We were really fucking with this one guy, C0NAN_THE_DESTROYER or whatever his name was, when he said something that really killed the vibe.

“I know where you fucking live RUSS, and I’m about to come down there and drive my Harley up your ass!”

Conan was pissed. Worse, Russ wasn’t home. He was actually out at the same bars that the Destroyer frequented. Thankfully, they didn’t run into each other. Jack and I were completely prepared to tell Conan that my brother tucked tail and ran in fear, but he never showed up to ride his Harley into people’s orifices.

The glow of the CRT still has me. Memories keep hitting while it hums.

WebTV was a beautiful experiment for our house. It really exposed the positives and negatives of the internet in a unique way.

For Russ, the machine was everything in the first couple years after our parents died. He built a whole personality on there, and it made him feel good.

Was it good for him? That isn’t for me to decide. I will say, getting offline these last few days and just kicking back in my lair has been an amazing experience. My batteries are getting charged just in time for my almost free final semester.

Do drugs, give hugs,

JTC