Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com Power Punctuation, Part 1
Here’s part one of the three-part podcast of my story Power Punctuation!, originally published in Starlight 3 in 2001. It’s a funny Pygmalion story about a corporate distopia, secure shredding, and conspiracy theories.
Wow, you won’t believe what happened today. First of all, I was nearly late for work because my new roommate is worried about the electrical and he pulled out all the plugs last night, even my alarm clock! His name is Tony, and I think he is either weird or crazy, or maybe both! He keeps saying that the Company uses the plugs to listen to our minds! He unplugged all the electricals and put tape over them in the middle of the night. When I woke up this morning, my room was totally black! I had my flashlight from work on the chair near my bed, and I used that to find the living room. Tony was sitting in his shorts on the sofa, in the dark, watching the plug behind the TV. Hey, I said, you watch the television, not the plug, and then he said some bad words and told me that he didn’t want me plugging in _anything_. He is skinny like Jimmy got when he had the AIDS, but he is not sick, he is hyperkinetic, like Manny was when he went to the special school. That is why he is management and I still work on a truck. If I have to be skinny and crazy to be management, I’ll take the truck all day long!