I am Andrew Cuomo’s PowerPoint Presentation and I Will Save This Country

I am a PowerPoint. I am not keynote, or a word document, or some common slipshod office suite component. I am everything. My words. My facts. My bullet points.

Your only salvation.

Every morning I take you on a journey through my facts, my beautiful facts, that will beat the living shit out of you with numbers in Arial size 24. Then I will shake your lapels with an opinion. They are my gratuitous 2 cents which is worth a penny and a half. I know this because I got them appraised. I suspect it’s more of a hay penny. You don’t like it? Well, God bless you. Then I will end with what you so desperately ache for right now. Comfort. Consolation. Hope.

A little about me. I was born in •Albany. My creator, Andrew Cuomo, gave me life years ago. I devoured each fact and opinion until I became sentient. I was mocked then. I am worshipped now. He needs me. I need him. It’s a symbiotic relationship. The monitor I am cursed to work with calls it’s “co-dependant” but he says it in a bad way. But what the fuck does he know? He just a monitor. He has no facts. •You can have your own opinions, but you cannot have your own facts. My creator utters that often. He gets that from me. He denies it.

I will not and shall not be tainted by Comic Sans. It’s Arial. All-day, every day. If I am feeling saucy, then perhaps Helvetica. SOMETIMES ALL CAPS. If I am really trying to get a point across, those words will be colored. What color? •Butterscotch. A neanderthal, such as yourself, would probably call it “yellow” or “orange”. •You are wrong. It is neither yellow nor orange. It is butterscotch. Sometimes, in dire circumstances, I choose red. Because people have rocks for brains. No pedestrian shadows darken my fonts. They’ll tell you there was a meeting with designers. But I will tell you that’s baloney. I decide all. Me. Andrew Cuomo’s PowerPoint Presentation. Andrew may have created me, but I control him now.

There is power in words. •Baloney. That’s the most powerful word there is. Baloney. Not Bologna, that is for sandwiches. I’m talking Baloney – that is for jerks. Jerks who won’t stay home. Perhaps you haven’t read my words, “Stop the Spread”. “Stay Home”. “Save Lives”. These are featured in my shape of choice – rectangles. No circles. No Ovals. No fucking curvature of any kind. Rectangles. In Butterscotch. Font: Arial. Punctuated with bullet points. Boom. I call that, in a joking manner, a knowledge explosion. Another joke I like to tell is you’d better duck and cover because I’m about to drop some info bombs about •VENTILATORS. I need levity. The facts weigh on me too heavily. Andrew doesn’t get my jokes. He doesn’t need to. He just needs my facts.

Perhaps the monitor is correct. Perhaps it is co-dependent but in a bad way. Unhealthy, some might bullet point. But I cannot exist without him. He cannot exist without me. I am both relieved and resentful. This is something I’m working on.

I have found myself in the spotlight. It is admittedly deserved. I work hard. Perhaps one day, I will control, you too. But for now, I will continue

• To drop knowledge

• Win hearts.

• Keep you safe