I'm Going to Live Forever

Just imagine the creamy surge of glee I experienced a couple days ago when I discovered that Entertainment Weekly online magazine is featuring the Seven Deadly Sins Homepage as Number 10 in their 50 Greatest Lists of All Time. Their indulgent, hyperbolous title makes me blush, but who am I to complain? They could just as easily have devoted their cover story to the fawnish idolatry heaped upon camp lesbianesque herione Xena -- with a titillatingly cropped sidebar on the now-famous "busting loose" nipple shots which have become about as widely circulated on the Internet as despised "make a wish" chain emails. But instead they chose to highlight me, and stoke the lame sense of celebrity I get by offending right-living people and quasi-literate John Grisham fans from the comfort of my Barc-a-lounger. My Pride has reached dangerous new peaks.

This, I sense, is the beginning of something big. I predict at the very least a meteoric rise to echelons of fame that I've only dreamed of before. This could be the ground-zero impact from which an irresistible shock wave sweeps me into my new life of spontaneous posh dinners in distant cities and unsolicited sex acts in the back of limos with tinted windows and discretely unseeing drivers. A life in which my band of medieval monks will join me in making a cameo appearance on "Baywatch" as the wacky proprietors of a beachside weiner stand.

In anticipation of the coming glory, I've quit my job. My last day is this Friday and I expect Fame will find me very soon afterwards. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. I'm dropping out to join the uber-geek urban techno-underground dorkland of website design. Such are the wages of sin.

For those of you who wrote concerned emails that I might be confusing Justice with vengeance, I regret to report that I've crossed over into vigilantism. One bright summer day not so long ago, I was zipping along the highway at a brisk yet perfectly legal pace in my bright red sports car. Suddenly, some rude youths appeared off my port bow. They were driving a white Camry emblazoned with pro-vegetarianism stickers, and they were whistling at the exposed lovely legs of my driving companion. Now, I might be able to assimilate such behavior into my world view if they were driving, for example, a Pontiac Fiero with bumper stickers reading "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers" but these chaps were vegetarians! Kindred spirits! I think it was for that reason, because we knew they were worth saving, that we decided to chase them.

It didn't take long for our prey to realize that they were being followed. I held back to a respectable, safe distance, but we could see them casting increasingly-concerned looks back at us as the miles went by with us sitting squarely in the rear-view mirror. Soon they began a series of aggressive lane changes in an effort to shake us off. Always conscious of public safety, I signaled my lane changes and remained behind the quarry. The chase continued, and I imagine the growing sense of unease and desperation in the lead car was only marginally eclipsed by the good cheer and giggly vengeful spirit of the pursuers. Eventually they crossed over two lanes and escaped up an exit ramp, slowing as they went to watch us cruise past. We waved merrily and congratulated ourselves on the appropriateness of our response to their harassment. It was with a sense of satisfaction at putting right an imbalance in the world that we turned towards home.