Tell Me About Your Mother…

Snippets of a conversation I had this morning with my mother. Please keep in mind that she’s a sweet and loveable person with a huge heart and everyone who’s ever met her loves her. But sometimes she just says things that sound wrong unless you really know her.

“Well, you tell Papaya (Fishman’s girlfriend) that I want my soup! She should be in the kitchen, barefoot and slaving over a hot stove so my soup is ready by tomorrow.”

“Would you like her pregnant, too?”

“No. She should get married first.”

“HoBiscuit is how old? Oh my! She had better marry you and squeeze out some kids before her time is up.”

“She better what?”

“Well, you know what I mean. I want to see some grandchildren.”

“If she hears you saying things like that, I’ll be sure to bring them to your gravesite.”

There was more, much more, but she might die of embarrassment if I post them all so I’ll stop now.

Since it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, the next few days will be a little hectic so I don’t think I’ll be able to write anything new until this weekend, but you never know. I’ll be posting the pictures of the CAN-struction exhibit this weekend and I’ll hopefully have a new skin up sometime next week. Be afraid.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Won’t You Join In My Crusade?

Today I have invented a new word that I want everyone to use as often as possible.

Pinger

Any nail clipping that manages to hit you in the eye or mouth when clipped, or stabs your skin when stepped on or laid upon.

There’s always one of these bastards during every self-grooming session or somewhere on every bed or couch. ‘Ware the pinger, my friends. It is evil and of the devil.

This new word is a word of utmost importance and necessity, and the people in charge of new words at Webster’s should add ‘pinger’ to the English language at their earliest convenience. It is vital that ‘pinger’ be added to everyone’s customized personal dictionary in MS Word ASAP because we’ve all suffered from the dreaded pain of a pinger, but we just couldn’t identify it by name before. Now, thanks to me, we can.

(A secondary benefit if pinger becomes a ‘real’ word is that we can then use it as a curse and everyone will understand what we mean. Doesn’t calling someone a pinger just sound like an insult?)

How did the name come about? I’m glad you asked.

I was sitting in my living room last night watching the Giants get bitch-slapped up and down the football field when it came to me. Actually, it hit me.

Right in the eye.

Somehow, while yet another stupid Giant penalty diverted my attention, my pinky-nail’s clipped-off refuse sprang free of the metallic nail-reaper in my hand and launched an all-out assault on my person. The miniscule missile of discarded detritus bypassed my impenetrable eye-shields known as ‘glasses’ and reached its target, my eye. The impact was somewhere slightly below and to the right of my iris, but lucky for me it hadn’t built up the necessary speed at impact yet and so failed to imbed itself in my flesh. Bouncing off my cornea, it could be heard screaming obscenities as its parachute failed to open and it fell to its death on my living room floor.

I couldn’t make out the words, but the meaning was clear.

To say that this clipping missile attack had upset me would be a massive understatement. I wanted to blast the now inert object of my wrath with a curse of such biblical proportions that Zeus himself would look down from Olympus and say “Damn, that guy’s pissed off!” My anger was so intense that I was sure I would set fire to that foul, pointy bastard with just the strength of my hatred and the potency of my curse.

It would rue the day. Oh yes, it would rue.

Grabbing my eye and rising to my feet, I pointed down at the offensive offspring of my least-used digit and let out a primal scream of pain and anger. Certain four-letter words came to my mind then, and as soon as I had strung them together into a pleasing, coherent and almost musical proclamation of death, I opened my mouth to speak and…

Nothing came out.

Did a sudden change of heart cause my silence? No. My friends I couldn’t speak simply because there was no word in the English language to describe or name the object of my ire and so my curses had no focus. I was made powerless by my inability to name my enemy. By not having a name to focus my rage upon I was left standing impotent like Bob Dole on prom night without Viagra. Yea, my rage was mighty and my wrath righteous, but I could do nothing but open and close my mouth like a fish out of water.

And as it lay there amidst its fallen brothers, the clipping mocked me.

For a fleeting moment I thought perhaps that I could call it Bob, or Dave, or Tony, or something else just to get on with the wrath of god stuff, but it just didn’t feel right to be cursing at ‘Dave the Clipping’ or ‘Joe the Nail’. Instead I sucked air through my clenched teeth, let out a grunt of anger and stomped off to the bathroom to flush my eye with cold water. As I turned to go however, the clipping added insult to injury by somehow getting underfoot and stabbing me in my heel.

Now, I was really angry.

I was so angry that I wanted to be able to curse not only this particular clipping, but also all the clippings that have come before or would ever come after. I didn’t want to curse only this one in particular you see, I wanted to curse it in general the same way you curse your ‘car’ and not your 1997, 4 cylinder, fuel-injection, eggshell white Toyota Camry. I also wanted everyone else who has ever been assaulted by these terrible minions of the devil to know what to call them and thus be able to curse them as I do. So I decided to create a name for these most vile of inanimate objects, and that’s how the word ‘pinger’ was born. I believe that if enough people use the word pinger then it will be added to the dictionary and if it’s added to the dictionary then it becomes a ‘real’ word. If the word is real, then the thing exists and then we can all curse the pinger’s and be happy.

And that’s all we really want, right? To be happy?

So I call upon all of you, my loyal readers, to join me in my quest. Join me in naming the pinger my friends, join me and let us change the English language forever, together. Join me in my hatred of the disgusting little buggers that plague our homes like locusts in the wheat fields. Join me and we will destroy them all with our collective curses. Join me in my Crusade and know happiness forever more.

Oh, just help me you pinger.

Weekend Update

I’m terribly sorry for my silence these last few days, but I’ve been a very busy little Geek. Also, there was some sort of server problem with my host that I didn’t become aware of until Sunday afternoon so I couldn’t post my thoughts on Harry Pothead until I got it sorted out. Everything’s back to normal now, so without further delay, here’s everything you didn’t ask to know and don’t care to hear about my weekend.

On Friday my friends and I went to see Harry Pothead and the Sorcerer’s Stoned. Being the Official Movie Psychopath that I am, I arrived at the theater eight hours before our scheduled showtime just so I could make sue we would have the best seats in the house.

Hey, It’s not as if I have a job or anything.

So I’m standing outside the theater, waiting for my friends to arrive when I think to myself, “Self, since we’re here so early, why don’t we charm one of these ticket-taker girls so that when all our friends do arrive we can get inside before anyone else and thereby get the best seats in the house?”

Yes, I do talk that way inside my own head. Shut up.

After a quick internal dream sequence, where this innocent seeming plan of action somehow became part of a brilliant scheme to take over the world using a movie ticket stub powered super ray gun, I went inside and spoke with one of the ticket-taking young ladies. She was kind enough to tell me all sorts of important, theater-insider-type information. Things like the bathrooms were on the third floor only, and today’s special at the concession stand was a house-sized bag of popcorn and a swimming pool of soda, and that they allow ticket-holders inside about an hour or so before the movie begins so they can wait on another line inside the theater.

Columbo’s got nothing on me.

A few hours later, after some more of my group had arrived, my brother Fishman had to use the bathroom so he went inside. When he came out he told me that he had charmed the ticket girl on the second floor and that we could go inside whenever we wanted. About two hours before the show Fishman, his girlfriend, HoBiscuit and I went inside to make sure we would have seats and were simply waved through by the ticket girl who didn’t even bother to check our tickets.

Did you catch that? We still had our un-ripped tickets!

I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but here in NY a movie ticket is $10 so it’s a fairly large investment. When you go to see a movie, if you buy tickets for friends who don’t show up for some reason, you can usually bring the unused tickets back to the window for a refund. That’s why the theater’s make sure to rip your ticket in half when you go inside to watch a movie. Since we were now inside the theater we didn’t really need the tickets anymore, but we could certainly use the money. Since the movie was sold out and no one had ripped our tickets it would have been very selfish of us to keep the tickets when there were so many less fortunate people outside without any tickets whatsoever. If you look at it that way, then bringing back our unused tickets for a refund was kind of like charity.

We’re a very charitable group.

If anyone wants to know about the movie, let me tell you it was a solid five on my BE scale. My BE scale goes from 0 to 10, with a ten being akin to looking into god’s left eye and a zero being the ultimate crapfest known as Battlefield Earth. Harry Potter was technically very good and extremely true to the book’s story but it lacked any feeling. There was no sense of awe or discovery when Harry’s world was turned upside down. When he discovers that he’s a wizard he merely accepts it as if someone had told him it looked like it would rain. The movie didn’t draw me into a new world. I saw Potter’s word, but I didn’t feel it. In essence, the movie lacked any ‘magic’, which is a shame because it looked really good and had so much potential. Since they’ve already begun filming the second movie, I hope they do better next time.

If you’re all real good, I’ll tell you about my Saturday outing at the CAN-struction exhibit tomorrow. I know you can hardly wait.

An Open Letter To My Friends

Dear Friends,

Tragedy has been averted.

Due to the unbelievably shortsighted decision of waiting until only three freakin’ days before the release of a major blockbuster, we might have been unable to purchase any tickets for the Friday night showing of Harry Potter at our local theater of choice. If not for some quick thinking and alternate plan making we would now be ticket-less and thereby forced to see the movie with the rest of life’s social flotsam during a Saturday afternoon show. Or, even more revolting on Sunday morning when all the family groups and lonely single outcasts go.

Oh, the unmitigated horror.

However, we did manage to find another theater with Friday evening tickets still for sale and I did not have to resort to plan B. I know some of you will be disappointed, but ever since Guiliani cracked down on prostitution in NY we’ve been unable to resort to our usual means of ticket procurement by selling our significant others to high-school nerds as they wait in the ticket holders line. Be advised that most high school kids are now on the Internet, and many remember us from the Star Wars Episode I ‘All This and a Salad, Too!’ fiasco.

SleepyZ, there’s no need to wear your thong.

As it now stands, I’m going to go to the theater early and wait in the ticket-holders line because otherwise all 12 of us won’t all be sitting together. Donations of food, water and sympathy will be appreciated, although some company would be best. I expect to be there a few hours early because I want to be first in line so that we get really good seats. That and I also want to watch all the young, sexy girls as they bounce up and down with excitement in their too-tight sweaters and low-rider jeans before HoBiscuit arrives.

HoBiscuit, please don’t hit me. It was a joke. Really. You know you’re the only one for me, right? Right?

Oh boy. I’m in trouble now.

Anywaste, breathe easy my friends, the worst is over and our record of seeing all blockbuster movies on opening night remains safe and unbroken. We’ve never missed the opening of a blockbuster movie and we’re not about to start now. Not on my watch we won’t. All we need to do now is figure out what to do before and after the movie so we don’t all wind up standing on a street corner doing one of life’s most depressing song and dances. You know the one. Where we all stand around on a street corner, looking at each other and saying things like,

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t care.”

“Neither do I.”

Silence

“So, what do you want to do?”

No one wants that to happen, now do we? I didn’t think so.

To recap, we have tickets for Harry Pothead and the Sorcerer’s Stoned. I will be waiting in line for seats (with blinders on and a picture of my beautiful, lovely and forgiving girlfriend stapled to my forehead) and we will not stand around on a street corner either before or after the movie. Should anyone have any questions about or criticism of my plan, please write them down on a sheet of college-ruled notepaper, carefully roll the paper into a thin tube, shove it up your into a bottle and hurl it into the ocean because I just don’t care. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to paint a lightning bolt on my forehead and find an old-fashioned broom to bring with me to the theater.

What? Because I’m a Geek, that’s why.

Snowball Story #2

We stood together staring out over an entire city covered in a white blanket of newly fallen snow. As we stood there on the roof, six stories above the rest of humanity, I happened to look down at the snow-covered street and had a wonderfully evil idea.

“I’ll bet we could cause a great accident by hitting a car with a snowball as it passes by!”

“True.” Said my friend with all the authority a boy one year my senior could muster, “But cars are small game. A bus on the other hand would cause a much bigger crash!”

Well, the thought of a huge crash was too much for our young, hoodlum minds to pass up, so we immediately set about creating an arsenal of snowballs and iceballs with which to bombard the next bus to be so unfortunate as to pass by our building. Then, we hunkered down behind the rooftop ledge and waited for a victim to show itself.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It did not occur to us until after about twenty minutes of freezing our buts off that perhaps the buses weren’t running that day do to the massive amount of snow on the street. Although you would think the lack of any traffic whatsoever would have given us a clue.

Hey, we were hoodlums not physicists.

Out of boredom more than anything else, I threw one of my snowballs off the roof at a snow-covered parked car just to hear it hit something. When it hit it made a satisfying ‘thwap’ and cleared off a small patch of snow from the roof of the car. A few moments and another snowball later, a slightly larger patch of car was visible. I looked over at my friend, who happened to be watching my progress with clinical interest, and gave him the raised-eyebrows-and-nod-of-the-head, or REANOTH* sign.

*The REANOTH sign is an almost universally understood signal for mischief among both the young and the old. Most young people use this signal to silently inform another individual about, or invite another individual to participate in, a potentially dangerous/crazy/fun idea or action. As humans age, this signal usually evolves into a silent message from one adult to another of a sexual advance. This is then usually accompanied by a slap and/or a furrowed-brow frown and headshake from the female. Most males in the general area will then respond by covering their mouths and laughing at the sorry fate of their friend’s love life. Males should always use REANOTH with caution.

My friend understood my thinking immediately and we tackled our new mission with gusto. We would free that parked car from its snow-cocoon by slamming snowball after snowball onto its hard and unyielding roof. After about 10 minutes we managed to clear almost all the snow off the car and we made an important discovery in the process. The larger the snowball, the more satisfying the sound and the more snow we could remove in one shot. This is vital people, so write it down.

Bigger snowball equals more snow removed.

Got it? Good, because we had a lot more snow and there were a lot more parked cars waiting to be liberated from their frozen-water oppressors. We decided that the next car should get the royal treatment and we went about creating a super-huge snowball. A snowball to end all snowballs, the big daddy of snowballs and when it was done we christened it ‘Mr. Clean’. Mr. Clean was maybe three feet across, two feet wide, too thick for us to wrap our arms around and packed solid with snow.

Mr. Clean was the world’s first nuclear bomb in snow form.

Somehow, don’t ask me how cause I couldn’t tell you, we managed to get that monstrosity up and onto the edge of the roof. We picked out our victim, made a few aiming adjustments and pushed Mr. Clean over the edge. For those of you who do not have degrees in physics let me paint the picture for you. Two young mischievous little hoodlums have just thrown a 35-pound snow bomb off of a six-story building onto a parked automobile’s roof.

Yeah, yeah I can see you wincing. But like I said, we were hoodlums not physicists.

Now, to be fair our plan worked like a charm. To say we cleared the roof of snow would be a massive disservice to Mr. Clean. His impact on that car had the same displacement effect as a giant meteorite slamming into the center of a small lake. Snow went flying off that car like butter off a hot skillet. It was like all those videos of nuclear blasts where you see the sound wave blow out the nearby buildings in an ever-widening circle of death. Mr. Clean performed just as his name implied he would, he cleaned all the snow off that car, but good.

There was just one teensy, tiny little problem.

Like I’ve stated before we were hoodlums not physicists, and we had failed to take into consideration the effect such a heavy object dropped from so great a height would have on the relatively flimsy material of a car roof. Not only had Mr. Clean cleared the car of snow, he had also smashed the roof down into the car’s backseat and blown out all the car windows. Glass and snow was all over the pavement just like the innards of a bug after being squished underfoot.

It looked like a giant had stepped on a big, metal roach.

My friend and I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, but could only have been one or two seconds, staring down at the damage we had done. Two seconds of utter silence, with only our heavy breathing to fill the void. Two seconds was just long enough for the beauty of seeing the snow fly off the car to be replaced by horror at the damage we had done.

Two seconds was also exactly how long it took for the car alarm to go off.

When the alarm went off, my friend and I broke out of our spell of horrified inactivity and ran like hell. By the time we got back to my apartment we were laughing like mad monkeys and re-enacting the snow-explosion with evermore exaggerated details. We promised each other that we’d go down the next day and check out our handiwork up close and personal. Perhaps with some other friends so they could confirm our dirty deed for the entire school and thereby make us famous. However, the next day the car was gone and with it our evidence. No one in the neighborhood ever mentioned it and we never found out what happened to the car, but my friend and I still laugh about the Mr. Clean incident to this day. All it takes to set us off is a car alarm on a cold winter day and we’ll look at each other and say:

Bamph!” Pause. “Weep, weep, weep, weep, weep, weep!”

Woo-Hoo

And now, simply because I thought it would be fun, I present a Web Log parody of U2’s song Elevation. Before anyone tells me, yes I know that there’s no such word as ‘inspirate’, but it went so well that I just couldn’t pass it up. If it makes you feel any better you can substitute ‘inspirit’ in its place, ok? Do you feel better now, you grammar nazi?

Emulation

Woo-Hoo

You, your site is like the sun

I’ll show you linky-love

I need mine to emulate yours now

Your site design it kicks

All the words, colors and pics

Just fits, you inspirate me so

I’m laying bare my soul

I’ll post this bad boy, go

Now write it down, inspiration

Why oh why, do I try

You make me feel like I could write

So right, emulation

Your Blog, or some would say Web Log

So good it’s like a god

Maybe I should emulate your mind

I’m using all your code

I can’t steal but I can clone

The goal is emulation

Uh-oh! Laying bare my soul

Post that bad boy, go

Now write it down, inspiration

Why oh why, do I try

You make me feel like I could write

So right, emulation

Woo-hoo

Love. Lift me up out from these fools.

Won’t you tell me that I’m cool?

I’ve been linking you.

Oh no! Laying bare my soul

Post that bad boy, go

Now write it down, inspiration

Why oh why, do I try

You make me feel like I could write

So right, emulation

Emulation

Emulation

Emulation

Emulation

Woo-hoo

(Fade Out)

So, anyone want to take a shot at making a recording?

To Smote The Mote

Woah, have I been busy.

Yesterday I clipped my toenails, took a shower, went food shopping, de-waxed my ears, made one phone call and watched a small bug crawl across the windowsill. Unfortunately, I was startled out of my daily grind of inactivity by a cleverly camouflaged, rabid and feral dust bunny.

Yeah, a dust bunny.

There I was sitting in my Aeron Chair of Back Pain Relief trying to create HoBiscuit’s requested Hello Geeky skin (now available), when I decided to reach for one of my gel-filled, carpal-tunnel-relief squishy-balls. Normally, I just reach across the desk and pick one of several up from right above my drawing tablet, so I wasn’t even looking at what I was reaching for when I reached for it. Imagine my surprise when my hand closed on not the firm, yet yielding squishiness of my favorite item of hand-based stress relief, but on something hollow, scratchy, hairy, dirty and altogether disgusting.

The Evil Dust Bunny of Horror.

Usually I’m a very clean person. I vacuum, I put things away, I wash between my toes, but for some reason dusting is anathema to me. It’s like my kryptonite. No matter how bad it gets, I just can’t seem to get myself up off my lazy behind and take the three minutes time necessary to dust my apartment. I even bought Swiffer rags because I thought taking the spray-cans of polish out of the equation would somehow make dusting more ‘hip’ and ‘cool’. Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed. Not by the Swiffer’s effectiveness, because they did work as advertised, but by the fun factor of using them, which was almost nil.

Where’s the fun in dusting if you can’t pretend you’re Godzilla raining nuclear, fire-breath-death on the dust-mote denizens of mini-Tokyo?

So today I have two missions. First, to use my omnipotent powers to smite the dust bunny infidels from the face of my world. I will do this by a combination of nuclear-fire-breath and Mothra-like rags of doom. Second, I will try to find some work so that I will be able to eat something more nourishing than Cup-O-Noodles (now with more real beef!) or Mac N Cheese.

Web/Print/Graphic Designer. Will work for food.

Your Next CD

Lars Ulrich was the keynote speaker in today’s announcement by a consortium of music publishers of a new initiative being implemented for all future music CD’s, beginning obviously enough, with Mr. Ulrich’s newest CD from his own band Metallica entitled Screw You.

Mr. Ulrich seemed particularly upbeat when he announced that “From this day forward, all CD’s purchased from retail stores and Internet businesses will be in a new, non-backwards compatible, encryption-friendly format called Holistic Onboard Linear Equalized Sound, or HOLES. Take that Napster! Who’s the moron now, be-yeetch?”

HOLES is considered by most experts in the field to be a better sounding music format that is copyright-safe and therefore more artist-friendly than regular CD’s, SACD’s or DVD-Audio Discs. HOLES allows for up to 20 discreet channels of uncompressed high fidelity sound and 4 independent channels of low end (subwoofer) information. Even though all these channels are not in use today, and most independent polls conclude that consumers don’t want 20.4 giant speakers in their living rooms, just having the ability to implement 20.4 channels in a music mix might allow for the growth of the new medium. At least, that’s what the consortium hopes that will be the case.

Musician, audio pioneer and sound engineer Thomas Dolby was quoted at the event saying, “20.4 channels? What the hell am I going to do with that, put each instrument in its own speaker? These guys are morons.”

Possibly the most anticipated part of the announcement of the new format came when Mr. Ulrich introduced the highly publicized, highly controversial new encryption technology that is the main reason for the new format. The encryption scheme, developed by a group of teenagers in Liechtenstein who are known only by the hacker name Vegonna Beritch, is thought to be virtually unbreakable unless someone were to actually try. Known as the Digital/Analog Music Notification and Activation Security System, or DAMN ASS, this encryption scheme requires that a whole new breed of playback devices be developed and deployed to the general public, as the new discs will not play on any devices currently available.

Mr. Ulrich is quoted as saying, “This is a win-win situation. The user will know that their CD isn’t a bootleg or an illegal compilation of songs burned to CD for them by their grandma, and we get to sell more CD’s and CD players at even higher prices!”

DAMN ASS HOLES discs are estimated to cost between $25 and $35 USD.

Much like Microsoft’s Windows Product Activation (WPA), DAMN ASS will allow any purchaser of a music CD to access the music on only one playback device. Should the owner of a DAMN ASS HOLES disc attempt to play their disc on another playback device other than the one originally used to activate the DAMN ASS HOLES disc, they will be asked to contact the issuer of the disc in order to re-activate their music CD. Should they fail to do so, or should the issuer decide that the user is trying to listen to the music illegally, the disc will fail to play at all.

Currently, there is some litigation pending on copyright issues between WPA and DAMN ASS. No one from Microsoft or the RIAA was available for comment in time for this story.

The new playback devices, known as Generally Optimized Devices, or GODs, will be able to play back encrypted CD’s only if they have a means of connecting to the Internet. For the sake of those devices without an Internet connection (for example, in an automobile), calling a toll-free number is also an option.

For example, should a teenager buy the latest CD from Metallica he or she could play that CD on his home GOD boombox, his GOD Walkman or his GOD car stereo but only one and not all three. GOD enabled playback devices will communicate with a central server residing in a rundown shack located somewhere in the heart of Alabama. Upon activation the GOD enabled playback device will communicate with this server and create a database entry of the user which will include, among other information, the users credit card number, Social Security number, address, phone number, shoe size, height, weight, hair color and past medical history.

Joey Smith, a high school student in Detroit, MI. says, “You mean I’ll have to buy the same CD four or five times just so I can listen to it in different places? And I’ll have to tell them all my personal info? That doesn’t make any sense! I’d rather not buy it at all and I’ll just tape it off the radio. Those guys must be morons.”

A spokesperson for the RIAA confirmed that the RIAA would maintain control over the database, the server and all users uploaded information. “This is to insure the general publics privacy and make sure no one ever gets hold of this information except our trusted business affiliates, governmental agencies, commercial partners and/or anyone who knows all the words to ‘Louie, Louie’.”

DAMN ASS HOLES discs and GOD DAMN ASS HOLES players will arrive in stores on April 1st 2002.

GeekMan Newswire, all the news that’s fit to fake.

Snowball Story #1

Grinning like an idiot in the chill winter air, my nose dripping like an open wound, I repeated the young man’s call of ownership and waited for the inevitable.

“I got dibs* on this one.”

* Dibs has almost religious meaning for young boys and calling dibs on something, anything, carries the weight of a Holy Decree carried down from the Mount. By calling dibs on something, a person has declared that they ‘own’ it. This is not to say that they actually own anything at all, but rather that everyone else must acknowledge that the dibs caller has specific rights to the item in question. Should someone else then try to acquire said object before the dibs caller, or before the dibs caller relinquishes his rights, then something unnamed and undefined yet suitably horrible would happen. Something like having to eat a booger picked fresh from the dibs caller’s nose or having to suffer the “Gas Chamber”. The Gas Chamber meant being sat upon, and farted on, by the biggest, fattest boy in the group. Hey, kids can be cruel.

I was a predator lying in wait for my next victim. I was a silent, invisible specter of doom in my bright orange jacket with brown, fake-fur lining around the hood. My blue, white and green mitten covered hands almost shaking in anticipation. The sheer thrill of the hunt filling me with more energy than any Kool-Aid and Pixie-Styx concoction ever could. Practically vibrating in place from excitement, I watched as my quarry came closer, seemingly unaware of the danger ahead.

I was holding The Most Perfect Snowball Ever™ and waiting for a bus.

Every kid growing up in the city knows about the almost symbiotic relationship between snow, kids and city buses. When snow falls in the city it’s the responsibility of the children to make like Thor and rain down fist-sized balls of powdery death upon every city bus that dares to enter their turf. And it is the duty, nay the honor, of the city-employed bus drivers to keep driving as if being pelted with thousands of soft, white, puffy meteorites were a normal part of their every day. It should be a badge of honor to them, something to brag about at the water cooler every evening.

“Hey Joe, I got hit about a thousand times on Avenue D and Flatbush. I bet there were oh… twenty, twenty-five kids out there today.”

“Ah Dan, that’s nothin’. Those kids near Ocean Ave and Kings Highway must have gotten a new leader or something cause they’re making plans. Can you believe they set up an ambush for me today?”

“No! They didn’t!”

“Yep, sure did. There musta been about a hundred kids and they all aimed for the front windshield.”

“Man, you are so lucky.”

“Don’t I know it.”

On this particular day I was with about seven or so other kids. We’d been throwing snowballs for the better part of an hour at our favorite spot, where you could see the bus coming from twenty blocks away. That left plenty of time to make snowballs and get into position before the bus got within striking distance. Everything was fine until I spotted something different about this bus, something out of place. Something so amazing, so astounding that it set my heart aflutter and my mind reeling.

The bus driver’s window was open!

I stood there for what felt like forever, staring in awe at what must have been every city boy’s winter wet dream. The perfect target for the perfect snowball. I distinctly remember thinking that whoever was driving must be new, or perhaps just stupid beyond all comprehension. An open window on a city bus when there was snow to be found?

Inconceivable!

Quickly, I set about creating The Most Perfect Snowball Ever™ and informing my compatriots that I had dibs on the next bus. This was key, because if I hadn’t called dibs, someone else might have seen the open window and called dibs first. That would have sucked and would probably have lead me down a different path on the road of life. One filled with trailer parks, lawn chairs, six-packs of cheap beer and a broken-down, gas-guzzling Ford.

Yeah, I would probably have wound up in Jersey.

I waited patiently for the bus to get close enough for the other people in the group to notice why this particular bus was so important, so special that it required a ‘Dibs Call’. It only took a few moments before they saw it too, and then everyone was in awe of my amazing luck. They all congratulated me on my find and acknowledged my right to go for the window first. Even the bigger, older kids could only look on in rabid fascination as the bus drew nearer, its open window beckoning like the high score on a Pac-Man machine, for someone brave enough to find a way to knock it down. At that moment I was like a tiny winter god to them, lording over my kingdom as I waited to pronounce a death sentence on a village idiot.

My nipples were hard.

The bus came and I took careful aim. Everything was riding on this throw; my reputation was on the line. If I missed the other kids would know that I had had greatness within my grasp and let it slip through my fingers. I would forever after be a snowball outcast, last picked during snowball fights and relegated to only making snowballs for others or being a living shield and ‘taking one for the team’.

Oh, the horror.

I couldn’t let that happen, I wouldn’t let that happen. I threw that snowball as hard as I could and it flew from my hand as if it were a hunk of steel with a laser guidance system and the bus driver was a giant magnet. It went right through the center of the open window and hit the driver square on the side of his head. Upon impact it exploded like a miniature nuclear explosion, white shards of ice and snow flying outward from the impact epicenter like a flower petal opening up in the morning sun. It hit so hard that I bet he spent the rest of the day picking snow and ice from the deep recesses of his ear canal.

My god, it was beautiful.

For the rest of the winter season I was ‘The Man’. All my friends wanted me on their snowball teams and even the older kids knew my name. I lived like a celebrity and loved every minute of it. I was famous and I owe it all to a nameless bus driver who committed the cardinal sin of driving a bus during the winter in the city and leaving his driver’s side window open. Thank you New York City bus driver, wherever you are, for being brave enough to do the unthinkable and bring joy to a young boy in Brooklyn.

Or, for being a truly stupid man and not realizing the danger you were in. Whatever.