Hello, I’m Ryan Coons, and I walk among the damned.

I’ve been in college for the better part of ten years, with no end in sight. I’ve stayed up all night with the artists in the small state schools, partied with the hedonists in the Public Ivys, and watched the corn grow at the Big Ten.

I’ve been a pizza delivery man, adjunct professor, autoworker, bartender, tutor, casino barback, experimental physicist, and karate instructor. Currently, I find myself as a Ph.D. student at Purdue University, studying nuclear engineering. I work in a million dollar laser laboratory trying to invent new light sources for lithography processes, the end result of which will make your computer faster by a factor of ten.

In my leisure, I read philosophy treatises and Marvel comics, study Japanese swordsmanship, and work on two major writing projects. One is a critical look at religion and the role it plays in American society, and the other can only be described as a post-modernist re-imagining of “Babes in Toyland.”

But this isn’t about me, it’s about our friends, the damned.

The damned are not those who are not awesome, I cannot say that enough. The damned are those who consciously choose not to be awesome. Allow me to show you:

Not awesome:  SUV’s.

Awesome:  Barbie Power Wheels.  No, seriously.

Not Awesome:  Bibleman.

Awesome:  Old-school Spider-Man.

It’s absurd to want to go through life being anything other than absurd. The status quo exists only to allow the mediocre not to feel bad out of the charitable notions of an outdated morality. Only those who are awesome, those who defy conventional wisdom, those who make waves, who disrupt the status quo are memorable. Only they contribute and advance out society. It’s called the Peter Principle people! It’s not rocket science! It’s not even a real science — its social science!

But I, in my bodhisattva compassion, devote my differential amounts of leisure time to you, the reader, in an attempt to help you know what awesome is so you can live while you’re alive. I would know, I was like you, but I stopped. I’m not drudging my way through life, I’m having a good time — no, strike that — I’m having a super-fun-adventure time, and there’s plenty of room on my Super Fun Adventure Bus for each and every one of you. It’s only a matter of hitching a ride.