I Gots Me A New Skin!

I was feeling a bit creative today, so I decided to create a new skin for the site. It’s called Aztec Rug and you can find it there on the right under ‘Geek Skins’. It’s modeled after a rug I own and I think the skin looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself.

And since I’m writing this, I do say so. Myself.

I also added the Christmas Story and the Little Blogger Boy to my Essay area so they wouldn’t get lost in the black hole-like depths of my archives. You can find those two pieces of mundane and self-aggrandizing writing (and more) under the Media button at the top of your screen. No one ever looks through my archives except me anyway, and I didn’t want these stories to disappear into the ether like my motivation and sense of adventure. Oh, and if anyone sees my courage please don’t provoke it. Just call the Wizard and wait patiently for him to arrive. Should my courage attempt to approach you, poke it in the eye with a sharp, pointed stick and scream obscenities at it in Ancient Gaelic.

If you’re female, try the ‘Let’s Just Be Friends’ speech. That always makes it shrivel up like a slug on a salt lick.

Anywaste, just in case you’re too busy partying to check back here later, let me take the time to wish you a Happy New Year now. Be responsible, party hard but play it safe. Remember, always wear clean underwear, call your mother at least once a week and it’s lick, drink and then suck. Also, no matter how drunk you might get or how many times your friends ‘double-dog dare’ you, it is never, ever a good idea to try and make sweet love to a bear in the zoo to ring in the New Year.

Trust me on that last one. Voice of experience talking, ok?

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Story Part III

If you missed the first two parts of this series, they are here and here.

In the morning, I awoke to the wonderful smells of my uncle Kermit’s Famous Perfectly Round Silver Dollar Pancakes being made in the kitchen. No one else in the house appeared to be awake yet so an idea formed in my head. Since I was a young man with an unhealthy addiction to Dungeons & Dragons, I thought I could begin my training as a master thief (elfish, of course) by sneaking into the kitchen and stealing a delicious pancake without my uncle ever knowing. I decided that this was the perfect opportunity for me to work on my Hiding in Shadows and Move Silently skills. Both were at a meager 30%.

Hopefully, I wouldn’t get caught and need to make a Saving Throw vs. Punishment. I always failed those.

Ninja-like, I crept from the living room sofa bed where my cousins, brother and I were sleeping. By slowly sliding off the bed instead of bouncing off, I avoided waking them or making any squeaking noises that would give away my position to my uncle. My uncle, blissfully unaware of the silent death in Aquaman Underoos sneaking up on him, continued with his pancake ministrations.

I smiled in anticipation of fluffy, pancakey goodness.

Making my way slowly to the kitchen, I stalked my pray as the wolves on the open plains. I moved like a cloud on a windless night, making no sound save my own beating heart. I approached the kitchen door like a wraith, he would never even know I was there. Look at that fool, happily making pancakes. Perhaps I should backstab him with my aqua-slipper while I’m at it. He won’t even suspect…

“Good morning GeekMan! While you’re up why don’t you set the table?”

What?!? He must be a 10th level wizard to detect my stealthy approach. No mortal man could possibly have heard me. Am I not GeekMan, Master Thief of Upper Elronadom? How was this possible?

“Sure, Uncle Kermit. No problem.”

I’ll get you, uncle. Oh, yes. And you shall rue the day you defied me. Do you hear me? Rue! BwahahahaHAHAHAhahaha!

I began setting the table.

A little later my Aunt Miss Piggy joined my Uncle in the kitchen. After a few moments, I heard something that sounded a lot like laughter. Listening a little harder as I set the table in the dining room, I thought I heard my uncle say, “Well, how was I to know? They look the same and what in the world would anyone use that for, anyway?”

My Aunt just laughed harder.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my Uncle had made a mistake that was going to come back and haunt everyone in the house. Especially him and his reputation as the families master chef. A half-hour later, everyone was awake and sitting at the table eagerly awaiting some Christmas morning pancakes. My aunt and uncle brought out the plates piled high with sausage, bacon, eggs, potatoes and pancakes and we attacked the food like Amazonian red army ants on a dead monkey’s corpse.

In my family it’s serve yourself, and quickly, or go hungry.

Usually, when we eat my uncle’s pancakes, we all ooh and ah in admiration of his culinary skills. But this time, as I bit into a pancake, I noticed something peculiar. It didn’t taste the way I remembered it tasting. In fact, it didn’t taste much like a pancake at all. Looking around the table, I saw a look of consternation on almost everyone’s face. We were all still chewing, but no one was swallowing. Looking across the table at my Aunt Miss Piggy, I noticed that she hadn’t touched her pancakes and was just sitting there watching all of us with an almost constipated look on her face. Uncle Kermit’s face turned beet-red as he saw us, one by one stop eating and look at him.

“It’s really not my fault.” He said. “What the hell is Aunt SuLu doing with a whole bottle of Orange Extract in her cabinet?”

My Aunt Miss Piggy laughed so hard that she accidentally knocked over her plate of food onto the floor.

It seems my uncle forgot to read the labels and poured a half bottle of orange extract into the pancake mix instead of vanilla extract. Let me tell you, orange extract and pancakes don’t mix well at all. In fact, mixing orange extract with milk in pancake batter is so god-awful that I think it was used as a method of torture in the Middle Ages. At the very least it’s on par with mixing OJ and toothpaste. My uncle has never lived that one episode down and every time he’s gone into the kitchen since, someone will almost always warn him to read the labels.

He really hates that.

Thank you for taking the time to read about one of my favorite Christmas memories. In the years to come, may your memories be as heartwarming and vibrant to you as this memory has been, and still is, for me.

Here’s to happy memories for everyone. Cheers.

‘Twas The Night Before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas, and all cross the web

Not a Blogger was posting, not even EvHead.

The Corpses were hung by the ‘puter with care,

In the hopes inspiration soon would be there.

The Blogger Insiders all snug in their beds,

While visions of hit counts danced in their heads.

My computer in sleep mode, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,

When cool though it was I started to sweat,

I forgot to go read all my friends on the net!

I booted up windows I prayed not to crash,

My dial-up connection was never so fast.

The light from the screen set the room all aglow

As I clicked on a link and away I would go.

When, what to my content starved eyes should appear,

But a dearth of new postings, no Web Logs to cheer.

With the shakes from withdrawal and the need for a fix,

I‘ve stolen this poem away from St. Nick.

I know you expect my own writing to follow,

But this is important, I’ll post mine tomorrow.

Write David! Write Peter! Write Wilson and Cootie!

Blog Jessy! Blog Arvid! Blog Gordon and Billie!

I know that it’s Christmas, but Blogging’s your call,

So write today, write today, write today all!

On Cooties there’s nary a comment to see,

Mike’s spending his time with his wife and kitty.

David, who’s known as the BulletProofPunk,

Is gone for a while cause he’s dead, or some junk.

Jessica’s in mourning for the ‘death’ of her friend,

At least that is true till he rises again.

Arvid, dear Arvid, of Bar Food dot org,

I miss your rants, and your raves, and your troubles galore.

Mecawilson is spending the next week away,

So we’ll live without humor on this damn holiday.

I don’t think AntiGordon has disappeared,

But he might be too busy with trimming his beard.

Peter is feeling a bit out of sort,

So he’s drinking with friends at the pub called The Port.

Billie is shopping and make no mistake,

Cause she is a woman and her presents are late!

Natalie is missing or maybe asleep,

She’s been gone since her lunch on Thursday last week!

Davezilla and Ernie continue to write,

But there are just so many times I can refresh their site.

Marcia posts strange links at her site every day,

Not that I’m complaining, I’m just saying, OK?

Myopic, my sweet, who was my very first link,

Has ‘poof’ disappeared, and no note from her shrink.

I write this in jest with no harm in my head,

I just felt this was needed and had to be said.

You’re all such great writers, each in your own way,

And I wish you the best on this fine Holiday.

I read each of you and many more that I’ve missed

So if you’re not mentioned and before you get pissed,

You should hear me exclaim, ere you click off this site,

Happy Blogging to all and to all a good write!

Happy Holidays Everyone.

Christmas Story Part II

The first part of this story can be found here.

After the monopoly incident we decided that we wouldn’t play any more board games. Instead, we got ready for dinner and sat down at the table to eat. After dinner we had a few hours to kill before midnight so we decided to watch a movie.

Then it was time to open presents.

We’re a very giving family, so everyone had lots and lots of presents both to give out and receive. We had a lot of fun ripping open presents and throwing the wrapping paper all over the living room. Sometimes I think my family loves unwrapping the presents almost as much as the actual presents themselves.

One thing I know for sure is that we love practical jokes.

Now keep in mind that I was about sixteen years old and like anyone that age with a drivers license, the only thing I wanted for Christmas was a car. Due to my many slick, suave and subtle teenage hints earlier in the year, my entire family was fully aware of my desire for a personal form of locomotion.

Especially my favorite aunt, Aunt SuLu.

After all of the presents had been given out and opened, and I had made it known to everyone just how disappointed I was that there was no car for me under the tree, my aunt SuLu handed me an envelope. By the way she looked at me when she handed me the envelope I knew this was something special. I ripped into that envelope like a starving hyena into a week-old buffalo carcass. Inside was a single white piece of paper with the words, “look in the garage” written on it in big, bold, black letters.

My heart skipped a beat and my mouth dropped open.

I screamed like a little girl invited to her first sleepover, dropped the card and took off like a shot for the garage. When I got to the garage I opened the door and ran inside fully expecting to see a brand new car waiting for me. Instead, the garage was bare to the walls with no new car in sight.

But there was something on the floor in the middle of the garage.

With my family standing in the doorway trying in vain to hold back their laughter, I walked over to the item in the middle of the floor. What I found was a nightmare. Resting on top of another white card was a teeny, tiny and very ugly matchbox car. Picking up the car I was able to read what was inscribed on the card.

Gotcha.

For a moment I couldn’t believe it. It just seemed so improbable that my favorite aunt would do something so horrible to me. I mean, wasn’t I her favorite nephew? Weren’t she and I always the ones who played practical jokes on everyone else in the family? Why would she betray me like this?

Then I smiled.

The beauty of this amazing practical joke hit me like a baseball bat to the brain. It was sheer genius. It was simple, practical and funny as hell. I had newfound respect for my aunt SuLu and I knew that she and the rest of my family were waiting for me to give them a reaction worthy of such a great joke. So, with my face red from embarrassment and shame, I looked over to my family and gave them what they wanted.

“Damn,” I said, “that was good.”

Then everyone laughed and made fun of me for the next few hours until we went to sleep. To this day everyone in my family still talks about my special ‘Christmas car’. My mother especially enjoys telling this story because more often than not, she was the butt of my aunt SuLu and my jokes. She’s very happy that I got my comeuppance and that she was there to witness it.

I’m just happy I didn’t break down and cry in the garage.

Now, although my family never did buy me a car when I was a teenager, a few years ago I bought one for my mother. A nice, brand new Infinity QX4. She loves her car very much and I’m really glad I bought it for her, since she’s a wonderful mother and deserves nothing but the best. However, nowadays when she gets me upset, nothing makes me happier than telling her I’m going to take away her toy until she apologizes.

Revenge can be so sweet.

~~Next time, Breakfast.

Christmas Story Part I

Everyone has a favorite Christmas memory and I’m no exception. The Christmas I’m going to tell you about is one that happened long ago in my youth and has since become part of the GeekMan family legend. It’s much funnier when I tell it in person, but you’ll just have to imagine for yourselves some of my facial expressions and intonations because… well, I’m not there to tell it, am I? I’ll introduce my family members as they come along in this story, but for right now let’s just dive right in and start off right after my arrival at my aunts house in Upstate New York.

This all takes place when I am roughly 16 years old.

We arrived in the early evening, about five or so, so it wasn’t yet time for dinner. My aunt and uncle, Miss Piggy and Kermit, we’re still in the kitchen cooking, so we had a couple of hours to kill before we ate. Since everyone in my family is a geek, we had a number of games to choose from to keep ourselves occupied. We didn’t have that long before dinner, so we decided that we would play a quick game of Pictionary.

Yessir, we’re a wild bunch alright.

In my family it’s a well known fact that my mother is the absolute worst Pictionary player in history of the world. She can’t draw, is horrible at giving clues and wouldn’t know how to cheat if her life depended on it.

Sweet, loveable, and utterly hopeless at board games pretty much sums up my mom.

No one wanted to have her on their team, so we would always go out of our way to try and convince her not to play. We’d tell her she looked tired, or that she should help out in the kitchen and sometimes we would even threaten to take away her presents if she didn’t stay away from the game.

It never worked, but we kept trying anyway.

For this particular game on this Christmas Eve the teams were split up like this;

Team 1

LuSu (mother of DeeDee and Princess)

Princess (my cousin, six months older than Fishman)

Fishman (my younger brother)

Zappy (my aunt SuLu’s ‘partner’)

Team 2

SuLu (my favorite aunt)

DeeDee (my other cousin, six months older than me)

Mom (my mother)

GeekMan (me)

There were other people there, but in their infinite wisdom, they decided not to play. Mr. Volkswagen, my mother’s boyfriend at the time, had already managed to have four gin & tonic’s in the 20 minutes between our arrival and the beginning of the game, so he was passed out in the basement couch. And Miss Piggy and Kermit were still cooking so they couldn’t play either.

As an aside, it must be noted that my aunt Miss Piggy made the absolute best Spanish rice in the history of the world. In fact, it was so good that during the entire night my mother and I stole all the little green olives from the pot. My aunt knew that my mother and I loved the olives, so she would always make the rice with extra olives just for us to pick out. Of course, that didn’t really help because my mother and I would eat all of them anyway, and there wouldn’t be any olives in the rice by the time dinner rolled around.

Wow, I’m drooling right now.

Anywaste, back to the game. My aunt, cousin and I knew that we were going to lose the game, so we decided to just have fun and let the inevitable happen. During the course of the game we all did the usual shtick people do during Pictionary. We drew stick figures, dollar signs, houses and a whole bunch of other things to help get our points across to our teammates. We all tried to cheat by making grunting noises or gesturing wildly at our teammates, and even with my mother on our team we were doing pretty well. So well in fact, that we were winning the game.

Then mom stepped up to the plate, looked at her card and frowned.

Now, we all knew she couldn’t draw but we still weren’t prepared for what we saw her doing to the drawing board. I’m sure that after her turn the board felt violated. Soiled. Raped. Strange shapes, symbols and wacky patterns appeared on the white paper as if my mother were vomiting black ink like the little girl in The Exorcist. One shape that caught everyone’s attention as soon as she drew it was something that could only be described as a large symbol of male genitalia.

And it was erect.

Basically, that brought the game to an end faster than if my grandmother had suddenly popped out of a cake, stripped naked and danced a jig on the kitchen table. No one knew what to say or do, so we all just looked at the board in an uncomfortable silence. Thankfully, god took pity on us and time ran out. When we all looked at my mother for an explanation, she gestured emphatically at the phallic symbol and said, ”It’s a bird!”

We snickered.

“Well, it is!”

Some giggling.

She pointed at some circles with little squiggles in them, “That’s a happy face!”

We laughed.

“Well, how the hell would you draw ‘The Bluebird of Happiness’?”

Eggnog was spewed from mouths and noses as we collapsed in gales of laughter.

After this we decided that Pictionary was probably not the best game to play. We then decided to try our hands at Monopoly. We set up the board and began playing. After about an hour, something caught my attention.

*sniff sniff*

GeekMan: “Anyone smell that?”

Zappy: “Smell what?”

DeeDee and Princess: “OH MY GOD!”

Mom: “Wow. Ugh. Ewww.”

Aunt SuLu: “Damn! That is foul!”

FishMan: “It smells like ass.”

GeekMan: “Like wide open ass.”

Fishman: “It smells like Mr. Volkswagon after eating burritos!”

SuLu: “But he’s downstairs.”

GeekMan: “Holy crap, it’s coming up through the floorboards!”

We then spent ten minutes screaming out as many rude and disgusting fart jokes at Mr. Volkswagon’s expense as we could. It was only then that we realized that my Aunt LuSu had been unnaturally quiet.

Too quiet.

Almost as one, we stopped laughing and looked in her direction. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and trying so hard to hold back her laughter that her face was redder than a baboons butt. She was shaking with suppressed giggles like a human-shaped Jello mold and tears were streaming down her face like tiny rivers of shame. When she realized that we knew, she opened up her mouth and managed to stutter four words.

“It juh… just puh… puh… popped out.”

Then she laughed so hard that she fell over backwards with her hands on her ankles and her legs still crossed. As her back hit the floor she let loose one of the loudest farts in the history of modern man. The smell traveled at the speed of light and hit us like an atomic bomb. Paint fell from the walls and small woodland animals outside dropped dead in their tracks. We all gagged and ran for the exits in the type of panic usually reserved for life-threatening emergencies involving sinking ships or re-runs of Alf or Punky Brewster.

I will never play board games with my family again. Ever.

~~ Next time, opening presents…

Little Blogger Boy

OK everyone, once again with feeling.

Write They told me (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

Our favorite Blog you’ll be (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

Your finest memories (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

Exposed for all to read

So to amuse Them (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

Here’s my Blog

Fellow Blogger (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

I am a writer too (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

I have so much to say (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

That’s fit to post today

Shall I write for you? (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

In my Blog

Then They nodded (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

Keyboard and mouse kept time (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

I wrote my Blog for Them (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

I wrote my best for Them

Then They commented (blah-blah blah blah Blog)

Me and my Blog

And next time, my very special Christmas memories.

Toothpick. Don’t Leave Home Without One.

After spending Saturday evening at a family function, Fishman, Papaya, HoBiscuit and I were driving home when my tongue detected the intruder. I don’t know where it came from or how I missed it during the evening, but it suddenly became all too obvious as I sat there in the backseat of the car that I had a major problem. My mouth was under attack by an alien force and I had been caught unawares.

There was something stuck in my teeth.

This wasn’t your average piece of dinner tooth-spackle, either. In fact, I think it was such a spectacular piece of dental destruction that it deserves a name and henceforth, I shall call it ‘Fred’. Fred was an evil invader declaring war on my molars and waging psychological warfare on my mind. He was taunting me from a safe position between my teeth like videotape of Osama bin Laden laughing at Dubya from his cave in Afghanistan.

I don’t have any strong proof, but Fred might be connected to Al Quada.

Fred was one of those stringy, dangling things that are just long enough to rub against your tongue, but too short for you to easily grasp and remove. I sat there in consternation, trying in vain to remove Fred from the death grip he had on my molars, but to no avail. I tried using my fingernail to scrape him out, but my nail wasn’t long enough. I tried swishing spit through my teeth in an effort to wash him out, but the Fred was like a red wine stain on a white T-shirt and refused to come out. I tried to grasp his slippery body in my fingers and pull him loose and I even tried sucking on my own teeth as if I were the high-school whore after a long summer break, but the little bastard wouldn’t let go.

At this point, I would have sold my mother into slavery for a toothpick.

It wasn’t too long before HoBiscuit became aware of my discomfort and asked me what was wrong. When I told her, she laughed at me and said I should leave it alone for now and floss when we got home. I don’t think she grasped the severity of the situation. She didn’t understand that this unwanted molar intruder and I were locked in a battle to the death. A battle that would only end when I had forcibly pried Fred loose from my mouth, thrown his slimy, bloated, spit-covered body to the ground and stomped on him like a frightened three-year-old on a cockroach.

I would even point and scream hysterically.

HoBiscuit took pity on me and offered up the only thing she had handy that might have been some help to me, an old business card. I took this meager offering from my loving woman as if it were my last hope. I figured that a card has edges and I’d be able to win the war raging in my mouth if I could just pry Fred loose from his enamel bunker cavity of safety. Choosing the sharpest edge of the card, I located Fred with my tongue and launched my personal Cruise Missile of Dental Salvation. I was dead-on accurate and shoved that card deep into the recesses of my teeth. I was so close that I saw golden lights and heard harps and a choir.

And then the corner of the card tore off and got stuck in there with Fred.

For the rest of the trip home I had food and paper stuck between my teeth and there was nothing I could do. Fred and his new friend mocked my discomfort and HoBiscuit laughed at my stupidity. She never said it, but I just know she was thinking, “I told you so.” the whole way home.

Damn you Fred. Damn you to hell.

Interview #02

Here’s the second installment of Blogger Insider. My Interviewer/Interviewee this week is the talented Dave Hill of Dave Does the Blog. Check out his site to see his answers to my questions.

  1. What book do you really think you *should* read, but haven’t yet? Why haven’t you? Will you, ever?

    The Kama Sutra. I haven’t read it yet because I feel inadequate enough in bed as it is and I don’t need to have my lack of manhood confirmed by a 1,700 year-old book. HoBiscuits nightly laughter and finger pointing is quite enough to demoralize my amorous moods and deflate my need to procreate, thank you very much. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go to my room and cry.

  2. If you could draw or paint like any single artist, past or present, who would you choose?

    That’s a tough one. I guess it all depends on your idea of ‘artist’. Since I’m a big anime fan, I’d have to go with one of the great anime artists like Fujishima Kosuke (creator of the amazing Oh! My Goddess) or Rumiko Takahashi (creator of my favorite series ever Ranma ½). If you meant an acclaimed artist of museum-type artwork like Picasso or Rembrandt, then I might go with Leonardo da Vinci, because not only was he a great artist, but he was also an inventor, sculptor, writer, philosopher and genius. Everything I’m not.

  3. What music being composed today, if any, do you think will still be listened to in 100 years?

    Polka. No matter how many times we think we’ve killed it, that damn music never seems to die.

  4. If you were unable to answer these questions, whom would you choose to do so for you?

    Mr. Hentai. And if he ever gets up off his lazy behind and starts his own Web Log, then you’ll all understand why. Hear that, Numbnuts? I’m calling you out, bee-yatch. Get to work before I slap you upside the head with a week-old dead fish and lock you in a kitty-kennel with 1,000 starving, rabid cats.

  5. Sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing. Which one would you least want to lose?

    Sight. I like to watch. Heh, heh, heh.

  6. Predestination or free will? Use both sides of the paper, if necessary.

    Free will. If my life was preordained then someone would have a lot to answer for. You hear me up there? That’s right, I’m talkin’ to you mister!

  7. You’ve been banished by the Time Police to a different era in history, no later than 1901 BCE? When and where would you want them to set you down, with only the clothes on your back?

    Silicon Valley California, 1876. I’d do everything I could to buy as much land as possible and make sure my future self would inherit it all after my 18th birthday. I’d also copyright and/or patent words and things like processor, dot com, hyperlink, internet, compact disc, computer, operating system, telephone and the paper clip. Hah! I’d be so rich that I could buy my way out of getting sent back in time the first time and then spend the rest of my life spending money! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you Time Police pansies. Oh, and I’d also make a little trip to Washington State and buy up all the land that Bill Gates’ house will one day occupy. Windows XP my left nut. Want a new XPerience? Try eviction.

  8. What’s your favorite comic strip?

    Don’t know. I don’t read comic strips. The Far Side, maybe? Sometimes I like Dilbert, but that’s only because I’m a Geek and I enjoy identifying with another complete loser. If you really meant comic book, then I’d have to say the Spider-Man titles from the early 90’s. You know, before the idiocy of Venom?

  9. Coffee, tea, or milk?

    Milk. I don’t drink coffee and to me tea always smelled like wet tree bark. And if you must be technical, then I choose hot chocolate milk. Hot chocolate is like god’s hot, sweet tears of joy in a cup made especially for me. Oh man, now I need a cup of hot chocolate. See what you did?

  10. Why “Blogger Insider”?

    It sounded interesting and I thought it would be fun. I also hoped that it would help me find interesting people out there that I might never have stumbled across otherwise. So far everything’s going to plan and I’m happy I joined up. I can’t think of anything funny to say right now, so add your own witty remark about Bloggers and Blogging here.

The Ghost Of 9/11’s Past

Sometimes, the worst day of your life turns out to be one of the best stories for you to tell your friends & family later on in life. One of my personal favorite stories to tell revolves around my very first day as a college senior. The day was so bad in fact, that I bought myself a journal and began writing down my thoughts just so that I would remember how miserable I was at the time.

And boy, was I miserable.

Looking back, everything that happened to me that day was probably very funny to those around me. At the time however, I was so distraught I probably wouldn’t have minded if I had accidentally chewed off my own arm and fallen into a huge vat of lemon juice, salt and battery acid. Today, for the sake of learning to look back and laugh at myself, I thought I’d tell the world all about the day I like to call The Day Of Ultimate Suckiness. The following is the complete text from my journal.

I’m living in hell. My life is in ruins and everything I touch is turning around the bite me. Don’t believe me? Well, let me just tell you about my day and maybe you’ll do me the favor of putting me out of my misery.

My girlfriend, who I’ve been going out with for eight months, has just broken my heart. She says she needs ‘space’, but I found out the truth and broke up with her. You see, I found out that during the summer break she was sleeping with my roommate. Isn’t that special?

I am poor. So poor that I can’t afford to buy food and have been boiling basil leaves in water in the hopes that it will make a good soup. So far it’s not working and no, I’m not kidding.

I’m also so poor that I can’t afford to pay for my college classes. If I don’t get a job, and soon, I’m going to get thrown out of college.

I received a letter from college today telling me that I need a measles shot or I am not allowed to attend classes. I hope the shots free or I’m, well… shot.

My car has just died and I don’t have the money to get her fixed, so I might have to junk her. As if that isn’t bad enough, due to that little ‘accident’ last week my license has been suspended.

My one and only credit card is overdrawn. A lot.

I know it didn’t happen today, but yesterday my mother made me go to a family outing where I was put in charge of the nine small children and three dogs. I still have the migraine.

My other roommate, not to cheating bastard, brought a couch to the house today that stinks like mildew. He refuses to get rid of until we find a replacement couch, which we can’t do because we’re all very poor. So, because of this stinking, stupid couch, none of my friends will visit me at all. Stupid bastard.

The answering machine that my brother bought me as a house warming gift doesn’t work.

My plant is dying and nothing I do seems to be helping.

I’m a theater major.

And lastly, as I was walking down the street this evening a little girl pointed out to me that the pants I’ve been wearing all day have a hole in the crotch.

I want to cry. Somebody please kill me. I won’t even struggle.

Coincidentally, the date this all took place was 9/11. Funny, huh?

It’s strange, but even while all of this was going on I still managed to keep my sense of humor. My ability to laugh at myself, and to get other people to laugh at themselves, has served me well throughout the years. It’s gotten me out of fights, into jobs, through hard times and yes, even laid.

I’m especially proud of that last one.

When I tell the story about this day in my life it becomes a comedy, not an odyssey. Looking back, it all seems so trivial that I can’t help but laugh. Nothing that happened on that day changed my life forever or gave me new insight into my inner self. I took no journey, I learned no lesson.

I just took notes and moved on.

I really enjoy telling this story and most of the time my audience enjoys hearing it. It makes me feel good that I can look back on what at the time felt like the worst day of my life and laugh along with my audience as I relive it.

I’m positive that everyone out there has at least one of these stories to tell. Tell me, what’s your story?

HoBiscuits Revenge

I really hate being sick.

Whatever illness HoBiscuit had she managed to give it to me and now I am completely and totally unable to speak. Really, it’s true. When I open my mouth I can only manage to create this pathetic, high-pitched, squeaking noise not unlike a small rodent being violently folded in half. Backwards. And the amount of mucus congregating in my lungs and around my vocal cords would choke a starving, tapeworm-infested miniature goat.

And everyone knows how much they can eat.

HoBiscuit, bless her evil, cold-as-a-stone heart, has been doing her best to nurture me back to health while simultaneously exacting revenge for all the evil jokes and no-longer-quite-so-funny pranks that I subjected her to all last week. She loves to ask me if there’s anything I want or need and then, when I try to talk, she cups her ear and says, “What? I can’t hear you. Could you speak up please?”

Asking for a glass of water is completely out of the question.

On Thursday evening I did something I’ve never done before. I met Luke, who’s a Web Log Writer just like me, in the flesh for the very first time. I never knew of him before and he never knew me, but we had a common bond that drew us together, even across a crowded bar. Actually, he knew HoBiscuit and since we were all hanging out at a bar we got to talking about our web sites. The reason we were at a bar was because a mutual friend of his and HoBiscuit’s needed ‘Emergency Relationship Breakup Support’, but that’s not something I’m allowed to write about.

And that’s a shame because it’s a real good story. Damn.

Anywaste, it came out that we both maintained Web Logs and we started to talk about web sites and other technical stuff. We were quickly cut off from discussing such important matters as click-through rates and visitor counts when the ladies began rolling their eyes in apparent boredom. It didn’t help that we were the only males in a group of six (that later became a group of 12) and all the females were doing the ‘support the girl, guy-bashing’ type of stuff. I was surrounded and felt threatened and scared all evening.

I consoled myself by watching Charlie’s Angels on the bar TV screen.

Right now I’m trying to recover my health and I hope to be better in a couple of days. My diet consists of soup, Earl Grey Tea (hot), salty crackers and a healthy helping of Humble Pie served daily by my loving girlfriend. But don’t worry, I still get to watch TV all day on the Comfy-Couch of Super Sleep while the rest of the world goes to work.

Hey, just because I’m sick doesn’t mean I have to change my lifestyle, right?