Geek Life

Double Standards Suck

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life, HoBiscuit •   2

I am losing the domestic war.

If you’re not married, if you’re not living with someone day in and day out with nowhere else for you to go but where you and this other person share a living space, then you have no idea what I mean by domestic war. You won’t understand the daily battles fought over whose turn it is to do the dishes, or why a neat pile to one party is a mess to the other, or how important… no, vital control of the TV remote is to having a quiet and happy home. You don’t know about the thermostat skirmishes won or lost due to the availability and proximity of a blanket to the couch and you will have no understanding of how, by letting your significant other win even a small victory over something so trivial as who is going to get up from their comfortable seat and close the window, can lead to your downfall and thus to your imminent pussyfication.

And it is more and more imminent for me every day.

This became quite clear to me last night when I was sitting on the couch watching football and HoBiscuit decided to join me. And by join me, I mean that she literally crawled over me, inserted herself between me and the arm of the couch that I was sitting against, pushed, twisted and squirmed until she fit there with her head on me and her legs over the arm of the couch, and then kneaded my stomach with the back of her head until she was comfortable.

And then she began to talk.

Now guys, think back to your youth when you used to think your father was an idiot. Remember how, when your mother was talking or telling him to do something, he never seemed to actually hear what she was saying? And later on, he always asked you what your mother had said because he couldn’t remember? Well, I don’t think it was because your father was stupid, I think it was more like a survival instinct because as soon as HoBiscuit started talking to me, I couldn’t hear her anymore.

It was like magic.

One second she’s yammering away about something unimportant to me, like maybe how she hates work or how she saw this great dress on sale or something, and the next moment I can’t hear a word she’s saying but I can hear Al Michaels saying the Cowboys are kicking the Saints’ asses.

Like I said; magic.

Anywaste, at some point HoBiscuit stopped talking and started napping, on my stomach remember, and it began to get a little uncomfortable for me. Not wanting to startle her, I gently tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to go lay down somewhere else because even though this might have been a comfortable position for her it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me. Without even shifting her weight HoBiscuit said, “But I’m so comfortable and you’re such a nice pillow that I think I’ll stay right where I am.”

Which got me thinking.

You see, if she had been sitting on the couch enjoying one of her favorite TV shows and I had come along and pushed and prodded my way onto the couch as she had, and then used her body as a pillow like she had with my body, and then started talking to her about things that were not important to her like she had just done to me then I don’t think she would have been quite as understanding and complacent as I had been. And then, to top it all off, if her body felt as uncomfortable as mine was feeling at that moment with her head on my stomach, and she asked me to get off of her and I didn’t get off her, I believe she would not have been pleased and we might have even had a fight of some sort with her calling me insensitive and uncaring or something. In other words, she believed she could get away with this type of behavior while at the same time I could not.

Basically, she was perpetuating a double standard.

I believed that this was wrong. In fact, I felt so strongly about this that I even mentioned my whole reasoning to her. I explained, at great length, my position that she shouldn’t be able to get away with this type of behavior and what made her believe she could get away with it when I could not. And do you know what she did? She opened one eye, looked up at me from my very pained belly and said, “Because I’m cute and you love me.” And then she went back to sleep.

Point. Set. Match.

One Of The Heroes

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News, Geek Life, HoBiscuit •   1

I’m on TV again.

Yesterday, HoBiscuit and I were part of the live studio audience watching a taping of the Colbert Report. We were lucky enough to get seats right in the front row and I even got to give Stephen a high-five twice while he was mugging for the crowd.

Oh, happy day.

When we were shown our seats I happened to notice that a couple of rows behind us in the audience was the plush, leather chair that Stephen had been “saving” for soon-to-be ex-Senator Joe Lieberman. This discovery caused butterflies to gather in my stomach because I knew that I had a very good chance of getting on TV if they showed a wide angle audience shot of the chair during the show. Now, it wasn’t the thought of being on TV that made the butterflies swarm, but rather the knowledge that not knowing I might actually be on TV that morning I happened to have dressed for comfort instead of dressing as if I were going to a job interview.

So of course I’m in the shot.

Which means that I am now forever immortalized as “That Guy On The Colbert Report Who Dressed Like A Retarded, Color-Blind Golfer.” Let this be a lesson to you, boys and girls. If you’re going to leave the house, for any reason whatsoever, always, always dress as if you’re going to interview for a job as the new CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. In fact, today I’m going to my local Men’s Warehouse and ordering 8 fancy suits for myself. Why 8? One for every day of the week and a spare, of course!

I’m gonna like the way I look, they guarantee it.

For those who watched the Colbert Report last night, you might have seen me on the lower right-hand side of your TV set at the very beginning of the audience sweep to Lieberman’s chair. I’m looking off camera (to your right, my left) at Stephen who was very funny even off camera. He’s also taller than HoBiscuit thought he would be, which makes it easier to understand why she has such a crush on him. It might also help explain why she handed me divorce papers right after the show citing my “irrefutably inferior breeding stock,” the “obvious fact that the plaintiff should be with a real man with huge balls like Stephen Colbert instead of a pathetic, balless Geek like the defendant” and also the “impossibility of continuing the farce of pretending to be in love with someone as undeniably stupid as the defendant no matter how much he pays.” Plus, she claims my account is in arrears.

But hey, I’m on TV!

Hot Ride

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life •   2

Pain sucks.

This weekend HoBiscuit and I made the idiotic decision to ride our bikes further than we ever have before by riding from our apartment down to Coney Island. Before we left I checked the distance on not one, but three separate maps to make sure we wouldn’t be going far enough to cause us undo pain. Especially since this was going to be the furthest we’ve ever ridden since we bought these bikes two months ago. According to the maps, Coney Island wasn’t all that far away and would take only 20 minutes by car so we figured riding our bikes there would be easy.

Stupid, stupid maps.

What the maps didn’t show us was the difference between being in an air-conditioned car driving at 45MPH down the street versus pedaling a stupid bike up a fricking ginormous hill under the broiling hot noon-day sun. The maps also failed to take in to account my sensitive nuts, which were so upset with me for the punishment I was putting them through that by mile 6 they had transformed themselves into what felt like tiny, crushed glass and barbed-wire filled sacks of pain.

Did I mention the streets here are bumpy?

And my taint, the part of the body that’s ‘tween your nuts ‘n anus, was burning up like my bicycle seat was made of red-hot magma. It really felt like my shorts were made of sandpaper and my legs were covered in rough bark. I honestly believe that if I wasn’t sweating like a horny teenage boy locked in a small room with a naked Carmen Electra then the hair on my crotch would have burst into flames.

The burning. The burning. Oy, the burning.

Now, since I have a speedometer on my bike I know exactly how far we rode and let me tell you something, maps lie. You see, according to the maps we were only going to go twice the distance we normally ride on the weekends, meaning we would be going about 12 miles. But the truth was we rode over 22 miles on a day where the average temperature was 88 degrees Fahrenheit with 65% humidity! We did 10.75 miles… each way! And the worst part wasn’t even the ride to Coney Island. It’s that we went all the way down there with the thought of a delicious Nathan’s Famous Frank in mind for our lunch only to become so discouraged by the stupendously long lines there that we simply bought ourselves a couple of Powerbars and Gatorades at a nearby Duane Reade for lunch! And then we turned around and rode back home! And we both want to do it again next weekend!

OMG, we’ve turned into health nuts. Someone kill me.

Stand Up Kind Of Guy

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News, Geek Life •   3

I made my comedic debut Monday night.

For the last two months I’ve been secretly taking a class on stand-up comedy and Monday night I, along with the rest of the class, got to stand up in front of a real, live audience and do my routine. To say it was nerve wracking would be putting it mildly since I peed my pants at least 4 times before getting up on stage. Good news is people seemed to like my act and I didn’t completely suck ass.

Bad news is I think I want to do it again.

I don’t know why, but I really enjoyed doing my bit on the stage in front of an audience. Especially when the lady sitting in the front row, who had not even smiled once during anybody else’s act, suddenly laughed out loud at one of the funny parts of my act.

Made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

If you’re curious about what I did as my act I can tell you that I did something not many comics do anymore, or at least something not many famous comics do. I told a story. Without jokes. The story I told was a funny, slightly embellished account of the night I finally realized just how big of a loser I really am. If you want to have an idea of what the audience heard Monday night you can read a more detailed account of that night here.

And yes, it’s a true story.

Since I’m supposed to be getting a copy of my performance on DVD next week, I’m playing with the idea of posting it somewhere (YouTube?) just so everyone I know who wasn’t able to be there can see it and tell me how badly I sucked ass. And if I’m feeling REALLY masochistic maybe I’ll even tell all of you where to find it, too.

But only if you promise to respect me in the morning.

Probing Questions

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life •   3

Cobblestones suck.

Over the holiday weekend, for the first time in over 15 years, I rode a bike. Oh, it was fun and invigorating and wonderful to be back on a bike of course, and I fully admit that I’m very glad HoBiscuit and I bought each other bikes as birthday presents. But there is one thing that I discovered after our first ride that I did not like at all.

My balls hurt.

Well, that’s not absolutely true. They didn’t hurt exactly, they just kind of questioned what was going on. Actually, it’s far more accurate to say that my nads tingled and throbbed as I rode my way down bumpy street after bumpy street perched upon that tiny triangle of torture called a seat. I don’t know why my nether regions reacted the way they did, sending probing shocks up my spine as if to ask, “What’s going on out there? Are we under attack or are we being fondled? We don’t know whether to be excited or scared, so please someone out there let us know what we should do, ok? Hello? Hello?”

It was a confusing time for all of me.

What I do know is that by hour two of that ride I couldn’t feel them anymore. And let me tell you that for a guy who spends as much alone time with his private parts as I do, not being able to feel them was a bit more than just disconcerting. At one point, after a particularly bumpy street, I had to stop and check to make sure they hadn’t fallen off and become the newest addition to some squirrels secret stash of midwinter snacks. I can just imagine the squirrel sitting by a warm fire in his burrow, sipping a nice Chianti and sharing fried GeekNuts with his lady friend as they laugh the cold winter away.

“Oh Penthorpe, these nuts are simply divine!”
“Why thank you, Lucinda. I’m ever so glad that you enjoyed them.”
“Are they chestnuts?”
“No my dear, they’re GeekNuts.”
“Oh! How astonishing! I didn’t know they were still in season.”
“They’re not. I kept them in a pile of manure all autumn so they would stay fresh for the winter. Just for you, my sweet.”
“Penthorpe, you’re so clever!”
“And the best part is the stupid Geek probably won’t even miss them!”
“Of course he won’t, my love. He’s a Geek, afterall!”
“Hahahahaha!”
“Hehehehehe!”

Damn, I hate squirrels.

The Password Is…

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life •   1

OK, new rule.

If you ever see me walking down the street and you think I’m in a good mood because I’m whistling to myself, you would be wrong. Not because I’m always in a bad mood when I’m out walking around on a glorious spring day, quite the opposite. I’m usually in a really wonderful mood, enjoying not only the sunshine and birdsong, but it might also be possible I’ve just been told some good news, like I’m going to India and Copenhagen for work, or some other nonsense.

Which, you must admit, would be fricking cool.

So you see, it’s not my mood about which you would be mistaken. It would be something else. And should you ever think I’m whistling happily to myself as I walk about, you should immediately stop me and say, “Boris says hello.” It doesn’t matter if you know me or not, just shout it out as if you did and you had just seen Boris and he wanted me to call him immediately.

Remember, “Boris says hello.” Write it down.

It’s a code phrase, you understand. A secretive and subtle method of alerting me to danger. I am depending on you, my loyal minions, to use this code phrase in order to warn me of my imminent peril. You see, there is no Boris. Boris does not exist. He is a figment of my imagination, a convenient construct that, thanks to your whispered remark, will let me know that I need to run, not walk, to the nearest private area and take care of something vital to my social survival.

In other words, I need to groom my nose hair.

Remember back at the beginning of this post when I mentioned how if I were walking down the street whistling it didn’t mean that I was in a good mood? The reason for that statement is that I don’t whistle when I’m in a good mood. In fact, I don’t whistle. At all. Ever. But you know what? The foot-long hair sticking out of my nose does.

And the bastard loves the Macarena.

Expanding Horizons

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life •   3

My pants don’t fit me.

You might think that by saying this I’m admitting that I have perhaps put on a few pounds. Or, if you were of a more generous disposition, you might choose to believe that my pants have been washed so many times that they have shrunk down to the point where the waist-size indication label sewn in to the seem of the pants is no longer a true reflection of the actual size of the pants. However you might have thought about this statement, you would have been wrong.

So very, very wrong.

You see, I don’t actually believe that I’m getting fat or that my pants are shrinking. This stems from the indisputable fact that I have had a 32” waist for the last ten years and there is NO FRICKING WAY that I am expanding like some stupid junk food consuming human shaped balloon. I am not a balloon! I am a man! A real man, who eats steak and lifts weights and smells of strength and power!

A manly man, like a lumberjack. But without the women’s underwear.

And as a manly man, I do not get fat. I’m not a man-shaped bag of flesh that expands and contracts depending on what might be shoved down my food hole and into my energy furnace. I mean, just because I like to eat steak 5 nights a week, refuse to consume anything even remotely related to vegetables and sit on my butt for 14 hours a day doesn’t mean that I’m gaining weight. I am not getting fat, lazy and stupid. Why just yesterday I got up from my chair and turned on the TV by hand! I realize that getting off the couch and walking two steps to the TV doesn’t seem like such a big deal at first, but I’ll have you know that it’s a very deep couch. And I was lying on my side.

And I was very comfortable.

All this is evidence, evidence that can lead to only one irrefutable conclusion. And that conclusion is this; the reason my pants feel so tight on me lately is NOT due to my waist expanding. In truth, my waist has nothing to do with it at all, since it’s not at my waist that my pants feel tight. They feel tight in another place altogether and it’s in that place that I believe the expansion, or growth if you will, is occurring.

That’s right. My balls are getting bigger.

I know what you’re thinking. And yes, I am a lucky SOB. But some of you might be asking yourself, “Don’t balls stop growing after puberty?” To you I say, “Not if you’re special.” And, judging by how squashed my nads feel every time I put on my favorite jeans, I’m a very special person, indeed. So now I’ve got to go buy all new pants so that my spectacular, awe-inspiring, Nuts-O-Wonder can be comfortable as I eat my 16 oz. porterhouse steak on the couch while watching Amazing Race on TV. Yes, it’s true that being so amazingly well-endowed is a burden, but for the sake of HoBiscuit and future generations of Mighty Geeks, it’s a burden I’m willing to bear. And ladies, it’s quite natural for you to be jealous of HoBiscuit.

After all, she married me.

Grape Juice

• by GeekMan • In Childhood Memories •   4

A little story, just for you.

When I was but a young lad of 8 or so, I was sent off to sleep-away camp in upstate NY. My second year of being sent to what I lovingly called ‘kiddie-prison’ I was introduced to a special ritual that had been passed down through the years, from camper to camper, until it finally reached my good friend David. Now David, it must be pointed out, was a good friend in the same way that Hannibal Lector was a good chef.

Meaning, they both scared the bejeebies out of me.

The method by which a Neanderthal like David managed to find the brain cells necessary to recall this ritual is of such astounding scientific importance that even now, decades after the event, some of our government’s greatest minds are attempting to discover it in the hopes of it leading to a cure for Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately for the Alzheimer sufferers of the world, at present the leading theory is, and I quote;

“Sometimes, even stupid gets lucky.”

Anywaste, back to our story. One fine day, David and his cronies managed to corner me outside of the main eating establishment of the camp, which was known far and wide as the “Mess Hall”. This building was called that due to its almost supernatural ability to cause all who passed through its doorway to become violently ill within 3 hours and empty their stomachs all over its floors, tables, chairs, walls and, in at least one case that I witnessed with my own eyes the year before, the rafters in the ceiling. The truly astonishing part was that the person who hit the ceiling for some odd reason actually stood up in their chair to do it.

And it was a 10 year old girl.

On the beautiful day at camp that I have been talking about now for about an hour, David, who liked to lovingly refer to me as, “Shrimp-Nerd”, cornered me outside the mess hall and thrust a plastic cup filled with fluid into my hands. This caused me pause for two reasons; first, when a timid, shy and tiny mouse is cornered by a giant, angry and menacing cat the very last thing the mouse would expect the cat to do is hand him a drink and invite him to dinner.

Secondly, the liquid was black.

I’m not talking brown and fuzzy, like a cola or root beer. I’m talking deep, deep, dark black. Like distilled midnight, or death’s blood, or liquid evil. It was a dark color the kind of which nightmares are made of and, not to put to fine a point on it, just by the look on David’s face I deduced that drinking the contents of that plastic cup would be Bad.

“Hey, Shrimp-Nerd. See what a good friend I am? I went and got you some grape juice to drink on such a hot day like today.”
“Gee, David. You shouldn’t have.”
“But I did, Shrimp-Nerd. And since I was so nice, you wouldn’t wanna make me mad and not drink it, would you?”
“Heaven forbid.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Ain’t you going to drink it?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.” [knuckles cracking]
“Oh. Uhm, ok…”

Have you ever eaten or drunk something that you thought was tasty only to realize after it was in your mouth that it was something so horrible that Satan himself had a patent on it for use in Hell’s Kitchen? You know, like when you drink some milk only to discover that it has the texture of cottage cheese? Or when you think you’re eating a piece of delicious bread pudding only to realize afterwards that it was actually week-old mayo that had been sitting in the sun?

Oh yeah, you’re all with me now.

Well, as I brought that tiny plastic cup of demon-diarrhea to my lips I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know how bad until that viscous liquid made its initial assault on my poor, defenseless tongue. David and his crew had never laughed so hard and for the next two weeks anytime they saw me they would ask if I needed a drink. And every time they did my eyes would fill with tears and my body would convulse as I began to dry-heave for the next hour or so at just the thought of what I could only imagine was the irreparable damage I had done to my gastrointestinal tract. And what was the disgusting liquid I had been forced to ingest? A mixture of salt, soy sauce, vinegar, coffee, chocolate syrup and, of all things, ground red pepper.

And to this day, grape juice still makes me gag.

A Quick Update During My Moment Of Silence

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News, Geek Life, Home Ownership, Rants •   4

My Most Awesome of Electronic Computing Devices Ever is dead.

On Sunday evening, as I was working on my computer, the screen suddenly went dark and I heard a soft popping sound. “Hmmm, that’s odd.” I thought, and looked over at the big box that sits to my immediate right thinking that my Vunder-Machine had powered down or something. That’s when I noticed the wisp of grey smoke coming from the back of the computer and the acrid stench of melting plastic.

“Huh. I wonder what that could be…?”

It took a second, but I got there eventually. At that moment the synapses in my brain began firing the way they’re supposed to and I dove for the power cord and fire extinguisher. But I was too late. Long story short, although there was no actual fire, my motherboard, graphics card and power supply are all crispy in that “fresh from the nuclear reactor” kind of way. Luckily, I keep most of my files on an external hard drive which is fine and dandy, but there are a few things I still need to get off of the internal hard drive of the computer. You know; things like my QuickBooks files and client lists.

And my pr0n.

So, although I was hoping to be posting here again by next week, that hope has been thoroughly dashed to pieces as it now seems that I will have yet another thing added to my list of Things To Do. I’ve already decided to buy two computers, one for business use and one for home/entertainment use, which hopefully will make my life a little easier in the “networking computers is easy, like teaching theoretical astrophysics to a retarded chipmunk.” kind of way.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, that’s why.

Well, I might as well do a full update while I’m here. Wouldn’t want to disappoint my adoring fans fan. During the time that I’ve been away, HoBiscuit and I have bought another new apartment and are in the process of killing ourselves by bleeding to death from paper cuts due to all the forms we need to fill out to get a stupid mortgage for the new place. And, just in case that alone doesn’t kill us, we’re also trying to create the world’s largest ulcer, in my very own body, by attempting to sell our current place at the same time. Also, HoBiscuit and I’ve been working non-stop for months and we’re very, very tired.

Woooo, what fun.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll be back when I can. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it and remember; when life gives you lemons, kick life in the nuts and demand better service.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled silence…

GeekMan: StudMuffin Extraordinaire

• by GeekMan • In Childhood Memories, PhotoBloggery •   11

Death by embarrassment.

I don’t know what’s come over me, but for some reason I feel the need to once again publicly ridicule myself. And I can’t think of a better way than by showing all of you a picture of myself at a weak moment in my youth when I actually believed I was cool.

You might not remember, but I did write a story about the fiasco that followed this particular picture so if you feel so inclined you can read it and laugh at me. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

OMG. I just realized… I was King Dork, wasn’t I?