Bryan Joiner

I was born in rural Massachusetts in 1978. The town’s name was Boston; I’m not sure if it still is. Upon learning of my birth, the townspeople began to shun my family and two years later, we fled to Maryland, where my parents worked the land away from the prying eyes of the residents of “Rock-Ville.” The family would grow by two before the Unpleasantness of 1985, which would resonate for years to come.

My daddy had grown up mining iron ore in the Rocky Mountains; my mom’s grandfather  was none other than President Rutherford B. Hayes’ Technology adviser. Ruffian and blueblood, and they lived in peace with their love until the great Doritos surplus of ’85. Dad didn’t want the spoils to go to our head, but Mom insisted, “They can crunch all they want, and they will make more.” They split. Four years later, ostracized by the community, mother secured us a home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, far enough from my birthplace that scarcely a soul would know we were ever there. Except for, you know, the Red Sox hat.

At this point I was beginning to come of age, and I tried to slip into class unnoticed on the first day. In fact, I was neither seen nor heard by my peers for the first three years of school. When I entered ninth grade, I finally introduced myself to my classmates, who could understand little of what they considered my foreign tongue. I gradually won them over by becoming the captain of the chess team and, by default, the most popular kid in school.

I left the island for Chicago to study at college, relying on family connections to grease palms at the admissions office (they were provided free steaks for a year). No sooner had I arrived than I began leading student revolts against all manner of injustices: war, famine, Friends. Some days we rioted against nothing at all, just to feel alive. It was this spirit which led me to be elected President for Life (in Absentia) of Queens, New York, despite never having set foot in the borough. Humbled, I moved to Queens after graduation in disguise as a newspaper reporter. I wanted to see my kingdom from the inside; to see my subjects up close, without special treatment. After four years my employers finally discovered my secret, and I was forced to work elsewhere, as it is against the law for a Queens business to have the President under its employ, and they feared the rather heinous punishment as outlined in the Queens Criminal Code, which is literally untranslatable from the original Flemish/Laotian in its viciousness.

Securing a promise that they would never reveal my secret, I took a job in Manhattan editing a small business magazine. I am not at liberty to divulge the name, only because the many subjects of Queens have already made it their life’s work to find me, and I fear that I would be overrun and wouldn’t be able to complete my sacred duties of writing a blog devoted mostly to children’s toys on a semi-hourly basis. It’s like the button in Lost; if the blog is not published, the world will end. That’s right: this humble son of farmers, a head of state in exile, saves the world every day simply by using WordPress. This blog is a completely separate endeavor. This blog is my moneymaker. I get $10,000 per post, which is the second-most for a sitting head of state, but I’m coming for you, Kim Jong-Il.