Happy New Year To You

December 31, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Breaking News, Geek Life, Traveling • 4

And happy trails to me.

As is usual for me this time of year I am going to be doing a lot of traveling for work. So, over the next few months updates here will be a little sparse as I flitter hither and yon to grant graphics wishes to my unrelentingly demanding clients all over the world. To show their gratitude for my services, at the end of each project my clients are always happy to use their final wish to wish me free of the iron yoke of my lamp so that I may once again return home to my sweet and loving HoBiscuit. Who will promptly whore me out to another client so I can make her more money so she can buy more shoes.

Ah, marital bliss. Shoot me now.

To make this particular excursion even more excruciating, I happen to be leaving on January 2nd, which just happens to be our one year wedding anniversary. Oh, did I forget to mention that I’ll be headed to sunny San Diego for a week? And that I’ll also be going to San Francisco and New Orleans all in the next three weeks? And HoBiscuit won’t? She’ll be stuck here in New York, unpacking all of our belongings into our new closets, which are being conveniently installed during my absence. And for those of you who may have lost track of certain facts during the last year, let me remind you that HoBiscuit and I have still not gone on a honeymoon!

Oh yeah, I’m a dead man.

Anywaste, since I’m going to be fairly hectic with work and/or funeral arrangements for myself over the next month or so, I hope you’ll be a tad forgiving should updates here at The Mighty Geek become a bit sporadic. I’ll do my best to post whenever I can, but I make no promises. In the meantime, I wish all of you a happy new year and please try not to make New Years Resolutions because we all know you’ll never keep them. Unless of course, your resolution is to visit this site more often and shower me with love.

That one I’d make you keep.

Worst Of

December 30, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Experiments • 1

Yeah, I know it’s lame, but I don’t care.

I figured that if everyone else could get away with a stupid list of all the posts that they liked best on their own site, I could too. So, here are the entries I posted in the last year that I think are so bad that everyone should be subjected to them once again just to remind themselves as to how awful this site truly is. I tried to keep it to one entry per month, but sometimes the horror could not be contained to just one post. I’ve also broken them down by month so you can follow my southward, spiraling suckiness through the year and wince in pain as you realize that even though scientists have theorized that these levels of suckiness have existed, no one has actually proven it until now.

May god have mercy on us all.

January
You May Think It’s Funny, But It’s Not

February
Writing Without Thinking

March
Medically Induced Epiphany #79834
The Purple Putz

April
An Army Of Dumb

May
A Sad, Sad Day

June
Grandfather’s Big Day
Where’s My Cane?

July
Oh Boy
Fat Bastard

August
Aneurisms Are Hard

September
September was a bad month. It has been removed from my calendar. Let us never speak of it again.

October
Bad Medicine
Emasculation Proclamation

November
The Mighty Kitchen
Dear Diary
New Arrival
Mind Over Matters

December
Undercover Fears
All I Want For Christmas Is Views

QOTD

December 29, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Quickie • 7

If I changed the look of this site, would anyone care?

Chocolaty Goodness

December 28, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Breaking News • 1

I love Cocoa Pebbles.

I’m not kidding. If Cocoa Pebbles was a woman I’d have pictures of her all over my bedroom and a ‘special’ magazine in the bathroom comprised of sexy shots of her in lingerie, thongs and bikinis. Mmmm… bikinis… Ahem, as I was saying, I just can’t get enough of my Cocoa Pebbles. I’d say I’m addicted except that the word ‘addict’ doesn’t do this level of compulsive need justice.

Cocoa Pebbles, oh how I love thee.

To help you understand my feelings for this cereal, let me tell you what I did for breakfast this morning. Knowing that I was going to eat a delicious bowl of heaven in the form of crunchy, flakey, chocolaty goodness, I went to the cabinet in search of a bowl. Not just any bowl would do, you understand. What I searched for was a Mighty Bowl, a bowl large enough to contain roughly half of an entire box of Cocoa Pebbles cereal and the quarter gallon of milk necessary to make my breakfast complete. Oh, and I also needed a small glass for my orange juice, of course.

Hey, everyone needs vitamins. Even Cocoa Pebbles freaks like me.

So, I searched and searched until I came to the oversized mixing bowls in the bottom of the hardest to reach kitchen cabinet because we never have need of bowls that large unless we’re serving salad to the entire population of Brazil. I stared at them for a few seconds trying to understand what in the world we had them for. I mean, honestly. Who in the world would ever need mixing bowls that could double as baby baths? Throw in an oversized salad spoon and you could probably row some of the bowls across the Hudson River as makeshift rafts! These bowls were huge! They must have been made as soup bowls for giants, or maybe as contact lenses for whales. Any way you looked at it, they were much too large for normal person use.

But they were perfect for my Cocoa Pebbles.

I filled the bowl with half a box of Pebbles and some milk, plopped myself in front of the TV and then spent 20 minutes working my way through it while watching Spike TV’s 007 Days of Bond. It was heaven. And the best part? HoBiscuit was nowhere in sight to admonish me for eating that much crap for breakfast.

Mmmm… admonishment-free sugar high. [drool]

Public Shame

December 27, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Quickie • 1

I talk too much.

I’ve got to learn when to keep my big mouth shut. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to hold my tongue when not speaking is the right thing to do, but more often than not I wind up yapping away about the wrong subject and at the worst possible moment in a conversation. This usually leads to public ridicule and derisive laughter, or worse yet, uncomfortable silences. VERY uncomfortable silences.

I’ll give you a quick example;

Coworker #1
“I really hate these clients. No matter what we do, they just keep coming back with more changes. They’re never happy.”

Coworker #2
“Yeah. They’re like roaches. No matter what you try they keep coming back to annoy you.”

Coworker #3
“Or like a fungus.”

GeekMan
“Yeah! Yeah! They’re like dingleberries!”

Coworkers #1, 2 & 3
“…”

GeekMan
“You know? Dingleberries? The little balls of lint-like fuzz that… ah, get stuck… in your… uhm, butt hair?”

[crickets]

GeekMan [hanging head in shame]
“Can I get a do-over? Please?”

Coworkers #1, 2 & 3
“Idiot.”

I need a Control-Z for real life, dammit.

All I Want For Christmas Is Views

December 24, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Contests • 5

Merry fricking Christmas.

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m getting ready to go out for dinner with some friends so I’m going to be quick about this. But before I start handing out the prizes to the winners, let’s take a moment to acknowledge all of those who entered but lost. In other words;

Let’s talk LOSERS!

The Biggest Loser Award, of course, goes to my lifelong friend Mr. Hentai. Not only is he a loser for knowing me in real life for over 25 years, but he also can’t seem to follow simple contest instructions like my rule number three which clearly states that he needed to leave “a link to my award on your site.” By simply leaving a link to his site in general, poor Mr. Hentai gets nothing but coal in his stocking this Christmas. Schmuck.

The Runner-Up Loser Award is… a tie!

NeverSwallows, a curious moniker which I’ve been told means that she gets all her nourishment through an IV, didn’t win for the same reason Mr. Hentai didn’t. You see, just like Mr. Hentai, she can’t seem to follow directions. Awwww, poor baby.
FatDude, or FatGuy, or whatever he calls himself nowadays, is a Runner-Up Loser because he tried to enter the contest after the end of the submission time period. By email. With sad-faced emoticons, puppy-eyed begging and everything. For being too lazy to actually submit to my whims and pump my ego by giving me an award in time for my contest, I bequeath unto FatDude the Runner-Up Loser Award and a swift kick to his immense and grotesque arse. And this time I’m leaving my galoshes in there, too. Maybe it’ll teach him a lesson. Then again, maybe not.

Next we have the… uhhhh, the uhmm…

The Nominated But Still Not A Winner Awards!

This award goes to everyone who, ahhh… entered but didn’t win. Any resemblance to a pity link in the hopes of not actually alienating those who took the time to enter this contest is purely coincidental. This is an actual award and should not be looked upon as a last minute addition to appease my readers who may or may not be mentally unstable lifetime members of the NRA and able to find Brooklyn on a map.

I’m not kidding. Stop rolling your eyes.

Anywaste, the Nominated But Still Not a Winner Award goes to the following Bloggers, all of whom aren’t only non-winners, they’re non-losers, too!

But enough about the ~~losers~~ non-winners, let’s get to the meat and potatoes. Speaking of which, I’m damn hungry, so without further ado, let’s talk winners!

The Miss Congeniality Award is a wonderful award to win. Usually, nobody wants to be Miss Congeniality because all it means is that you lost the real prize, but not this time. No, in my stupid Christmas contest the Miss Congeniality winner will receive any item they choose from The Mighty Shop!

Oh yeah, I can smell the jealousy.

May I have the envelope, please? And The Mighty Geek Miss Congeniality Award goes to…

It’s a TIE!

JadedJu and SpreeGirl!

Well, the judges are obviously on crack or have been bribed in some way because we all know that those two didn’t deserve this award. But, rules are rules, so JadedJu and SpreeGirl, if you’ll be so kind as to email me accepting your reward for giving me an award, I’ll send you your award reward.

Did that make sense? Ah, who cares? Let’s get to the next Award!

The Runner-Up Suck-Up Award winner will receive $25 in PayPal money OR any item off of their Amazon wishlist worth $25 or less. This is a nice prize and it should be going to a worthy person who has done something truly wonderful… but instead it will go to…

Jen of Random Gestures!

Jen, send me an email accepting your reward and we’ll set up the awarding of the reward. It’s a pity that we’ll have to do some sort of currency exchange in order for you to get your prize, but I’m sure you’ll find a way to use the ¤2,847,902.11 Drachma you’ll receive after the exchanger takes his 95% cut. Maybe you’ll buy a piece of Canadian candy or whatever it is you foreign people like to eat. Damn Canadians.

But enough about those rotten foreigners, let’s get to the true main event!

The 2004 Mighty Geek Super-Ultra Brown-Nosing Suck-Up Award winner is…

Solonor!

Not only did he give me an award on his site, he gave me EVERY award on his site! That level of brown nosing for a cash reward is rare indeed and all of you would be suck-up’s should go grovel at Solonors feet and devote your entire life to emulating his brown-nosing expertise. As the winner of The 2004 Mighty Geek Super-Ultra Brown-Nosing Suck-Up Award, Solonor will receive $40 in PayPal money OR any item off of his Amazon wishlist worth $40 or less. Sol, send me an email telling me how much you love me and I’ll make you $40 richer.

I hope you’re all happy. Now, if you’re reading this on Christmas, I have a special message just for you;

Get a life!

Merry Christmas. Every won.

Wanted: Awards

December 22, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Contests, Experiments, Rants • 10

Jumpin’ Jiminy Christmas, people!

Here I am, giving away FREE MONEY and I’ve only gotten FOUR entries in my little contest?! What the heck does a guy have to do to get his readership to grovel at his feet? Beg? OK, if that’s what it takes then I’m just the Geek to do it! Here I am on my knees begging you to lower your standards, swallow your pride and pretend to actually like me for ONE STINKING POST on your Blog so you can win my money.

There, are you happy now?

You do realize that the $25 is in American money and not worthless Canadian Drachma, or whatever those heathens use, right? I realize that the dollar isn’t as strong as it used to be, but come on people, it’s still free money! It’s not as if you might have something better to do with your time, because you don’t. You’re probably just a lonely, social outcast with a monitor-induced tan, a made-up life and no friends, so stop pretending you have better things to do than shamelessly groveling at my feet in the hopes of winning money and get with the awarding already! It’s a well documented fact that if you’re running a Blog all you care about is yourself and how many other people in the world are willing to visit a site devoted to you thus proving once and for all that you truly are the center of the known universe.

You know I’m right, stop lying to yourself.

So, in order to get more of you to enter my stupid little contest, I have decided to increase the reward from $25 to a whopping $40! That’s right, I’m giving away EVEN MORE MONEY!!! Because I know that deep down you’re all greedy, little bastards and more money is just the incentive you need to get off your lazy butts and enter this contest.

But wait, there’s more.

I’m also going to be giving away a prize to the runner-up AND a prize to someone I will designate as Miss Congeniality, even if they’re a guy. Because I’m mean that way. These prizes will be determined based on my mood on Christmas Eve, but rest assured they will be good prizes. I’m not talking about a simple link and a hearty “Thank You”. I’m talking physical objects or maybe even more cash. So if $25 wasn’t enough to get you off your anus and up mine, then I hope to heaven above that $40 and more chances to win is.

Now get cracking, because I want my damn awards already!

Award Reward

December 21, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Contests • 13

I’m feeling the spirit.

Well, not really. But I figured that maybe since everyone else was busy spreading this “Holiday Cheer” stuff all over each other in a desperate orgy of last-minute yuletide bribery in the hopes of making up for the past years’ sins and finally receiving that tickle-me-turrets Elmo that they’ve been begging for, that I might as well join in with some “good intentions” and get my rocks off at the same time. So, while I was in the shower this morning I dreamed up a little contest. Hopefully some of you will actually enter this time because it has a cash prize.

The Long Weekend

December 20, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Home Ownership • 3

Busy, busy, busy.

As most of you know, and as some of you don’t, HoBiscuit and I moved into our new apartment in mid August. Now, as some of you might know, and most of you don’t, since we moved in we’ve been living out of boxes and suitcases. This is not because of our busy schedules or our innate laziness, but because we have actually been physically detained from unpacking our belongings into our apartment thus making it our home. I can see you scratching your heads in puzzlement at that bit of knowledge so allow me to elaborate with a single sentence of clarity that will enlighten you as to our predicament.

We have no closets.

Well, that’s not entirely true. You see, we do have closets but only if your definition of “closet” is ‘a small, virtually unusable space sectioned off behind cheap, hollow doors but without any actual shelves or bars upon which to place or hang items you wish to put away.’ But, should you define “closet” as ‘a cabinet or enclosed recess for linens, household supplies, or clothing’, then we are well and truly screwed.

As you can imagine, this hampers the unpacking part of moving in to a new home.

Well, you may now be making faces at the monitor as you attempt to convey your disbelief at our misfortune. “Why,” you may be ~~shouting at~~ asking the screen, “didn’t you just have the guys who remodeled your kitchen build you some closets?” Good question! Let’s explore that, shall we? But first, because you obviously don’t recall how much we absolutely loved our kitchen contractors, allow me to refresh your memory by supplying you with this fine tidbit of information about them; they SUCKED! The fine and upstanding people who built us our kitchen did everything absolutely, totally and 100% WRONG. Need proof? Go ahead and read this and then come back here. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Back? Good.

Perhaps now you’ll understand why we were a tad reluctant to ask our kitchen contractors to do anything beyond the scope of what we had originally hired them to do. I mean, it took them a total of SIX attempts to install the cabinets properly. And they had to redo the doors more times than that because every time they took them down to stain them they kept messing them up!

Idiots.

And thus, Keystone Kops Construction was crossed off our short list of closet makers. Last week we finally found a closet company who we felt was offering a good price for making our closets and we signed them up. Of course, it dawned on us that now that all the construction was done and we would finally be getting our closets, it might be a really good idea to paint the fricking house and then unpack everything that wasn’t going into the closets. As we surveyed our unpainted apartment and did some quick mental math, we came to the conclusion that if we attempted to paint it ourselves we would wind up in divorce court, the hospital or jail.

Or, much more likely, I’d be dead and HoBiscuit would be happy.

Not wanting HoBiscuit to ever be happy, especially when her happiness so depends upon my untimely death, we hired painters. Now, I must say that these guys did one hell of a great painting job. They painted everything we wanted painted and absolutely nothing that we didn’t. Even better, when they realized that some of the paint we had was of a different shade than we had originally asked for, they not only informed us before they painted with it, but they also had one of their guys come with us to the paint store to make sure we didn’t pay for the new paint.

Now that’s service.

However, being that I’m a neurotic, anal retentive bastard, I didn’t want them to move my computer stuff or my home theater equipment when they painted. So, Friday morning I woke up at 6am and began moving boxes. And kept moving boxes all day. By midnight I had moved everything I could out of every room in the house and piled them all into the living room. When the painters arrived they were amazed that I had gone through such lengths to keep them from touching my stuff, and laughed at the little “Painter Guys, Do Not Touch” signs I had put on several boxes. After watching how careful they were while they painted the house, I felt comfortable enough with them that when they were ready to paint the living room I let them move most of the stuff while I nervously watched from afar.

And I do mean nervously. I was even wringing my hands and sweating.

Anywaste, now the apartment is painted and I’m actually in the process of unpacking things into their proper places (except for closet stuff, of course). It’s a great feeling; unpacking into a new home. And even though we’ve been living here for almost six months it’s never felt like home because we’ve never really unpacked. But all that’s going to change, this will be our home. We’re very excited and once we’re all settled we’ll finally have ourselves our first home.

But first, does anyone know how to get rid of that nauseating ‘new paint’ smell?

Law And Disorder

December 16, 2004 • by GeekMan • In Bread • 2

“Hey Bub,” said Bread, “We need to talk.”

He said this as he planted himself in front of my chair, thus blocking my view of the TV, and gave me the hairy eyeball. And in his case, his eyeball actually is hairy, making this particular stare all the more effective as a method of conveying curious anger to others. Startled out from the mesmerizing view on the screen, it took me a moment or two to refocus on who was talking to me.

This did not improve Bread’s mood.

“Bub, what the frick is wrong with you lately?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“I mean your fricking site, ya moron.”
“What’s wrong with my site? Did I get comment spammed to death again?”
“No. But at least that would be fricking interesting!”
“Hey! Are you trying to say I’m not interesting anymore?”
“Bub, you’re so far from interesting I can’t believe you’re able to convince your fricking heart to fricking beat without bribery!”
“That… That’s… That…”
“Yeah?!”
“That’s the dumbest analogy I’ve ever heard!”
“Oh yeah?! Then try this one on for size; Your Blog is about as interesting and funny as the turd I left in your box of Apple Jacks! How you like ‘dem apples?!”

I was flabbergasted.

“I don’t believe it.”
“Well, believe it Bub! It was a nice smelly one, too. And even though it might look it, I know for a fact I didn’t eat any corn in the last few days…”
“No, no, no. Not that. I knew about that already. I’m talking about the other thing. You really don’t think I’m funny anymore? Really?”
“Bub, last time I looked, no one thought writing ‘lunchity-lunch-lunch’ was funny. Not even a little bit.”

That hit too close to home for my taste.

“That was just an off day. I’ll get better real soon, you’ll see.”
“Oh yeah, sure. NOT!”
“How can you be so cruel?”
“Get off the can and face the music, Bub. Your writing’s gotten so bad lately it reminds me of the time you were so obsessed with that fricking game I kept beating you at that you stopped doing anything else but playing it for a week.”
“Heh. Funny you should bring that up…”
“I mean, if I didn’t know better I’d swear you wuz playing Halo 2 even though you swore to your friends that you wouldn’t open your copy of the game until such time as they could all come to your house and play with you.”
“Ah… Bread…”
“And looking up there at the shelf I can see that your copy of Halo 2 is still in its shiny wrapper.”
“Uh, right. But…”
“So, what the frick is wrong with you that your writing has taken long walk off a short pier?”

Sighing, I pointed at the TV.

“Holy Juan Valdez on a greased up pogo stick! Is that what I think it is?”
“Yeah, Bread. It is.”
“You’re playing Halo 2?! Without your friends?! More importantly, without me?!”
“Well, I thought a month and a half head start was good enough for everyone else, so I just…”
“Wait a second here, Bub. Don’t tell me you bought a second copy of Halo 2 just so you could play it.”
“Not exactly.”

Bread looked about ready to kill me, so I hastily wiped the condescending smile from my face and explained.

“You know how Mr. ModChip came with all those games pre-installed?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, it turns out that I can actually add games to his hard drive! So I went out and borrowed a friends copy and then copied it to the hard drive and…”

A look passed across Bread’s face so quickly that I nearly missed it. Something that I hadn’t seen on his face in all the years that I’ve known him, a look that I was hard pressed to describe until I recalled the look on my mothers face the day when I finally managed to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Bread was impressed.

“Bub, that’s pretty slick of you.”
“Thanks Bread.”
“But what about your friends? Won’t they be pissed that you’re playing the game without them?”
“I don’t know, Bread. I mean, technically I’m still following the rules, you know?”

By this time Bread had managed to dig out another controller from a box and was plugging it into Mr. ModChip.

“Bub, I’m not following you.”
“I never said I wouldn’t play Halo 2 without them. I just said I wouldn’t open my copy of the game. And since my copy is right there on the shelf still wrapped in its wrapper…”

Bread smiled.

“Bub, you would make one hell of a sleazy lawyer.”
“Wow. You really think so?”
“Yeah Bub, I do.”
“Thanks.”
“Welcome. Now shut up and check your six, ‘cause I think you’re about to receive your first rocket enema of the day!”

And so I did.