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   Headmaster Tim Tweedy ran his school like he thought a stern taskmaster should -- his spanking paddle always kept within reach, the large biceps bulbously bulging with barely bridled belligerence, the sneer of cold command frozen into his facial structure, and the ominous presence of several misshapen meat bundles in his refrigerator serving as a constant reminder of how misbehaved students would be treated. If someone would put one foot wrong in any way, Mr. Tweedy would pluck out his liver or even someone else's -- just to set an example. In view of this, it was an achievement to make it as far as the sophomore year of his reign over State School of Higher Education, Beverly Hills before SWAT struck down with all the destructive power of a nuclear missile. In fact, that was their weapon of choice, and though many condemned the strategy out of sheer contempt for such extreme measures, others applauded and even started a fan club (complete with a newsletter, an annual meeting and a rather inspiring cheerleading squad) that soon had made itself indispensable in the local community. This is the story of how Tim Tweedy forever altered the meaning of the words "back to school." God help us all. Here he comes now, clad in plutonium plate mail, with his battle axe polished to a high sheen and his ferocious army of small zombies likewise gleaming in the morning sun.

Anyway, I didn't really fit in with my classmates from the State School. Green hair and black fingernails was the fashionable outfit, so my purple ponny-tail and glitter-brushed cheekbones stuck out. Numerous were my perils when our teachers turned away all my suggestions for improved curricula. It was like hitting your head repeatedly with a gold brick, just to realise that what hurt the most was that your left foot had suddenly started to decompose. Very much like that. I speak out of experience and unbridled disappointment in the most horrible way you could possibly imagine.

Where was I? At the dawn of the third Wednesday in April, 1973, my uncle Theodor Wanderbildt unintentionally landed a $100 million government contract and immediately started to spend them all on gambling and illegal drugs. Already infamous since the days of thunder in '69, Theodor soon became something of a legend in his never-ceasing pursuit of the perfect absinthe trip. On a good day, he looked like a young James II of Aragon (1267-1327), though he also had his bad days, when nobody could tell him apart from the remains of a flat Egyptian relief painting of Nyarlathotep IV (?-1734 B.C.) or his outright unfathomable days that left him literally gasping for nitrogen in Michael Wolanski's expensive and outright flamboyant four-post bed. Gold and drugs, fast cars and alluring women, that was uncle Theodor's credo. The horror he endured in-between his flamboyant ultra-partying was not something he wanted to talk about, but we tried to force him by putting microphones in his breakfast, with meagre results however. We still don't know why he came up with this Tim Tweedy-nonsense, but if you ask me, I think it's one of the greatest travesties to be found around here.

Nevertheless, Tim was the name of this character of his lonely crime-fighting nights. Clad in tweed, a glass of cognac in his left hand and an almost invisible but still palpable air of cosmopolitan sophistication around him, uncle Theodor used to slowly but unrelentingly uncover every act of this imaginative character of his, while the rest of his household with never-ceasing patience cooked dinner and cleaned his room. Since everyone could picture themselves as Tim's next victim in gruesome detail, most of us gradually came to treat him with suspicious tenderness . Also, the question of uncle Theodor's secret alter egos was never really anything that was openly discussed, especially in higher social circles, and we liked to think of him as the "official village idiot", though in secret and without the million-dollar marketing campaign and its many different perks. He knew nothing about all this, in case nosy reporters would ask about it, and he would always deny every last bit of knowledge about anything that anybody wanted to know something about, even if those persons had video of him knowing it. To get to the core of the issue, you would have to dig deeper than you really wanted to. It was not really what we wanted though, so let's move on to bigger things. I won't waste your time anymore.