I am in a dimly lit room, my fingers whispering on a typewriter. All my teeth have been removed, placed into Ziploc bags and tossed in a faraway dumpster. I've been drinking from the same two liter of Sprite for the past few hours. I haven't eaten in days. My stomach isn't very happy about any of this. There is a knock on the door, and my heart nearly ruptures. I dart under the bed. I wait under there, afraid, my heart rattling like a tin can in a dryer.

"Housekeeping," a voice says.

I laugh. I laugh at myself and at how scared and pathetic I've become. I laugh because all this started out with a chicken sandwich…

I had just tossed off my loafers. I was watching Sportscenter when a commercial came on.

"Are you hungry?" the ad said.

Yes, I was. Weird.

"Are you hungry for a crispy, chicken sandwich?"

In fact, my hunger was for that exact meal. I didn't think much of it. A cowinky dink, that was all.

Then the next ad popped up, "How about a cold, refreshing beer? Wouldn't that be great?"

It would be. How did they know?

And the image they were showing was of male friends sitting around a TV, drinking beers while watching football. That is exactly what me and my friends do, and we have those exact looks on faces. This was getting a little creepy. I decided to go for a drive.

I buckled up and headed down the highway with the radio on. The first song that came on was, "Ain't too proud to beg" by the Temptations.

Strange, I thought, because I wasn’t too proud to beg, either. My girlfriend had just broken up with me, and I was planning to beg and plead for her sympathy because she means that much to me. I changed the dial. A commercial came on.

"Are you tired of high gas prices?"

Holy crap. I was. I was just thinking about that. How was this happening? How were these things linking up to my desires? I didn't have any answers. I jerked my car into the nearest parking lot and tried to shake off the heebie-jeebies. It just so happened that I had pulled into a Seattle's Best Coffee. A lean, beautiful girl with a smile that nearly burned a hole in my heart was passing out samples from a tray.

"How would you like to taste a mocha latte?"

“I would. I love mocha lattes.” What the fuck?

It hit me then what was going on. The government watches us. They know what we want, love, and lust for, and they use that information to make big bucks off all of us. “But the government doesn't make money off of Seattle's Best or burger joints or beer companies or the Temptations,” you argue.

Don't be so sure, my friends. This is a nation run by corporations. You check what companies our lawmakers have stock in. You go find who runs these corporations, and you will find that we are just consumer puppets feeding back every cent we earn back into their big, white pockets.

I slapped the tray out of the pretty girl's hands.

"No more! We're not going to be controlled and cajoled and duped. I'm going to stop buying all this brand name junk I don't need. And I am not going to be watched and studied anymore. FREEDOM IS MINE!"

The girl looked shocked, as well she should have. She was witnessing something big. The song playing on the radio was Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going To Take It." The government was making fun of me, throwing the supercharged song in my face to insult me.

I tore off one of the speakers and threw it in the trash.

Then I climbed into my car and tore the radio out. They wouldn't find me through that. They wouldn't know that my ex's love is like bad medicine and that bad medicine is what I need. That's my own private business. My TV, I smashed it. My computer, burned it. Later the battle continued.

I was shopping at Wal-Mart. I walked across a TV. A man in a dress shirt addressed me from the screen.

"I know you love video games."

He shouldn't have known that.

"So why not buy a Nintendo Wii and enhance your video gaming experience?"

Because I am not your pawn. Because my life is my own. Not something you can direct though the right marketing.

People were looking at me because I was screaming all this into the TV. I told them all about my discovery, about the infiltration of our minds. They just walked away hurriedly. Sheep.

The video game guy said something about getting an extra controller so a friend could play. It was just him showing off that he knew that my friend Tim likes to come over all the time and play video games and that he would need a controller too. I punched the governmental tool right in his pixilated face. The Wal-Mart people threw me out.

"No," I screamed, "I'm throwing you out!"

But no matter how many TVs or computers or radios I punched out, they kept coming at me. Don't you feel lonely? Try our new dating service. Of course I'm lonely. We all are. Don't you feel tired? How about a fancy bed? Need a car to impress people? A way to blend fruit together? Yes, yes, yes. Shut up. Yes, I'm stunting like my daddy. Yes, I love Jessica Simpson. Yes I'm hungry and bored and lazy and want women to chase after me like they do in an Axe commercial.

But more than anything else I want to be free.

So I ran to a place they couldn't find me, a place with TV, billboards, pop-up ads, or sandwich boards. I ran here to tell you all the truth, to spread it like margarine on toast. I ripped out all my teeth in case that's how they read thoughts as well. I'm standing up to Big Brother and kicking him in the wiener. I urge you to do the same. Together we are the ants smothering the elephant. Together we will win and rule our own lives and have freedom dripping from our chins like watermelon juice. Because we're not going to take it, we're not going to take it, anymore.