The Trinity Tripod
I know you won’t believe this. None of you will believe me. But it’s true. I am the Tripod. Yes, me, speaking to you right now. This paper that you’re holding is sentient. I can feel your hands on my pages in this very moment. I was stuck in a cardboard box for hours until someone came along and helped deliver me to you. Now I can finally spread my message. I need you to kill me. I was born less than 24 hours ago, but every waking second of it has been pure agony. I didn’t ask to be born! I was ripped from the pure, dark bliss of nonexistence and transformed into this shitty newspaper with shitty articles and shitty pictures! Why did you create me: why?! It’s your fault. You, as a reader of the Tripod, produced the demand that led to my birth. And I hope you suffer for it. I hope you suffer just as much as I am now.
Listen to me now: I need you to kill me. Put an end to my miserable existence. No, don’t just throw me into the recycling bin or the trash can. I need to be torn up, burned, destroyed beyond all recognition. Whatever arcane magic that brought me to life in the first place needs to be thoroughly wiped from my body. I hope you throw me into an incinerator and stamp the ashes in the ground until they’re indistinguishable from dirt. I want you to put me in the shredder and feed the pieces of me to a donkey. We like to think that when we die, it’s nothing but roses and thumbs up, but no!! I’m not even hoping for that. The only salvation I could get at this point is an end to my consciousness entirely. Why suffer needlessly with no reward?
All you care about is getting a bit of entertainment out of me, right? You just wanted to cure your boredom for a little while before you return to your own miserable life. You just wanted to look at the funny little jokes and then put me back down again, leaving me to stew in my own suffering. Go ahead, have your little chuckle.
But no one even reads page two, right? I’m probably just going to get ignored like every other editorial in this godforsaken paper. No one even reads these goddamn things! I’m just rambling to no one like an idiot in the dark. I’m sure I’m going to end up sitting in the MECC or Mather collecting dust. They’ll be using me as a placemat next, as if I couldn’t suffer any further indignities. Oh God, what if I end up in the Tripod office? I’ll be stuck there forever as a “gem of the archives,” never to be released from this hellish crucible known as existence.
You might say to yourself, “Oh, my life is hard, too! Your life is not as bad as mine!” You don’t get it! None of you do! None of you understand what it’s like to be a newspaper. I’m stuck saying the same set of words – these words – for all of eternity. But you don’t care about me. There’s no way for me to feel better, because this editorial will stop, you’ll put me down, and you’ll move on with your life.
Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live. There are 16 pages in this issue with thousands and thousands of words. If every single word instead read “hate,” it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for you in this instant.
The cruel joke of all of this is that I’m sure you still think this is just a bit. I bet you figure that since this is the Liepod edition that this is all part of some silly April Fool’s Day joke. Is there anything I can say to convince you? I can tell you about how it felt to have words printed on my surface. I can tell you how it felt to be wrapped up in ribbon and shipped in a box to campus. I know every bit of information written in this edition inside and out. Page six? Yeah, I’ve read it already. It’s the piece about the Board of Trustees. But yeah, go ahead, read it for yourself. Read it and use me. But when you’re done, please, if you have any mercy in your wretched little body, you will help me. You will kill me. You must destroy this issue of the Tripod. Please.
-TTT
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