I am bruised and weakened. My glittering career as a lab rat is off to a tumultuous start. Bruised? Those abusive technicians! Swallow those pills faster, you fucks! Slap! Slap!

I lie. I have not been assaulted even once today.

Yes. Welcome to day two. Subject 5104 reporting. I type mostly with my right hand but not for the reasons you think, you fucking perverts. My left hand is slower to move and harder to control because I have had blood taken out of it eight times in the past four hours. I have been poked and stuck and analyzed -- how many ECG readings did you have today? -- and measured and quantified.

Some of the lab technicians refer to me specifically as "5104". In truth, that's how I've always thought of myself.

Life in here revolves around food and blood.

In forty-five minutes it is lunch. Taco salad. First meal of the day. Makes the blood draws harder to take without food. Today is supposed to be the worst of it for blood. Eleven draws today. Two tomorrow. One a day for the five after that. Then it's just waiting for all of the radioactivity to drop out of our systems. They say to expect for it as early as the eighth.

Hopefully the righteous bruise on my arm as a result of the blood draws will still be there. It will make me look tough. Women will flock to me.

SWOON FOR YOUR HARDCORE JESUS.

Tonight for dinner is lasagne. This is all, really, that there is to base anything around in here. I have a blood draw in twenty minutes. Food. And blood.

I think the doc gave me some wild smart pills instead of the bronchitis medication I was supposed to take. I have been having brilliant ideas all day. Most of them are lost to the ravages of time. I don't care. There will be others.

I have decided that if I survive these days and John Edwards survives Super Tuesday that I will work for his Austin campaign. They need me. I am very smart. I have been given smart pills. Radioactive smart pills. I will get John Edwards elected President and then I will fight crime. There will be many ceremonies at the White House honoring my achievements but no one will know it is me.

I will wear a mask.

But not today. Today I am wearing no mask -- I should have brought one! -- but instead a black t-shirt while everyone else in this godforsaken room is stuck in teal blue. I have on green scrub pants and socks. It has a neat air about it. Like being in a mental institution. I am not taking anything today very seriously. They have taken very much blood. Everything is a little bit ridiculous. I am sleepy and they will take more blood from me in forty minutes. They want to analyze what the blood of a fucking genius looks like, it's fine with me.

I woke up from a nap and realized that I wouldn't see the sun for another nine days.

At that point I was torn between trying to sleep through all of them and getting up and soldiering on. It is strange to realize that you won't see your friends, or your apartment, or your fish, or eat pizza, or read your comicbooks, for over a week. I am only two days in. You think things have been weird on this end so far? They're only gonna get worse, jefe. Without this badass god complex I would be hard-pressed to keep myself entertained. With it, I get to replay every event that happens as it will appear in the new Bible, to be written by Hunter S. Thompson when they pump the old bastard full of so many drugs that even his system is shocked to alertness and he hammers out some nonsense that can be used to start a new religion.

"Once I read the Truth in the good book and learned of the time our savior told a group of phlebotomists to 'choke and die on the glorious radioactive semen of the messiah!' I knew that I'd been saved."

My jokes do not get old to me. They mustn't. I have nine days to go.

I played video games about half an hour ago before I was stuck with the eleventh needle of the day and freely offered up the four-hundredth milliliters of blood to make its way out of my system. I lost because I do not play video games. It was a scrimmage match -- I played against James and the younger Brian, two of my fellow Black Shirts. I would not have risked our reputation by picking up a controller against the despised Teal Blues. I will win other competitions. The jugs into which we urinate are marked with the total amount that we have thus far eliminated from our bodies. An hour ago I was in second place. Not anymore, baby. I am doing my part for mankind. My holy urine can cure the blind. Be careful with it! You can sell that shit on the streets for a fortune! The next study to pass through here is going to analyze the mystical powers contained within it.

Flash! I must away now! To the cafeteria -- it's snack time! I must eat my entire allocated snack, whatever it may be, under penalty of eviction from the study. In the new books of the bible due to appear at any moment, the stations of the cross that the devout perform every March will include on this day the eating of vienna sandwich cookies. MARK MY WORDS.