Pick Me A Winner

Since I’ve been so busy over the last few months, it wasn’t until today that I finally found the time to go to the gym. It was the first time since March that I’ve exercised, and before long my muscles were letting me know just how unhappy they were. They creaked, groaned and burned. They screamed in agony and hemorrhaged under the stress of lifting 5lb. dumbbells.

I am Geek. Hear me whimper.

As I was doing my requisite “Oh Dear Lord Please Kill Me Now” stomach crunches, I noticed a fabulously beautiful woman sitting on a stationary bike across from me. She was staring straight ahead with such a look of intense concentration on her pretty face that I thought she was going to bend a spoon or spontaneously combust or something. I can’t be sure, but for a second I thought I saw a potted plant across the room move all by itself.

Of course, that could also have been my vision blurring as I completed my second stomach crunch.

At first, since I was attempting to do my third stomach crunch in a row without vomiting my liver onto the floor of the gym, I didn’t quite understand what she was doing, just sitting there with such an intense look of concentration on her face. Granted, I could barely see her face because one hand was covering it from the nose down while her other hand was underneath the first doing some strange dance. The ‘hand-jive’ seemed to involve lots of vigorous side to side movements and she seemed to be concentrating awfully hard on doing it right. Looking closer, it actually didn’t seem like a dance at all. In fact, it looked more like she was scraping, or digging, or…

Oh. Eeeewwwww!

After several minutes, yes minutes, of digging, she apparently found what she was looking for and removed the offensive clump of mucus from her nasal passageway. It’s a shame that I was so far away because after watching in fascination during her entire performance, my curiosity was piqued and I really wanted to know what it was that could cause such an otherwise attractive person to do something so unattractive in public.

Like a 7 car pileup on the interstate, I wanted to see the bodies.

Like most humans who have removed something weird and/or disgusting from their own body, she took a moment to inspected her prize. She held it up to the light and scrutinized the exorcised object with an almost scientific eye. I can’t say for certain, but she may have even sniffed it.

If she had tried to taste it, I would have puked.

Then, after what I can only assume was some great internal struggle weighing the pros and cons of actually keeping the gelatinous gob of mucus as a pet, she casually reached under the bike seat and wiped her finger clean! She then got up, grabbed her bottle of water from the floor and, without once making eye contact with anyone who had seen her heinous act, left the gym. I’ve never seen her before and I hope to god I never see her again.

Needless to say, I will never use that particular stationary bike again. Ever.

Dear Mr. Dvorak

I can’t Blog a lie

I’m not that naive

I’m just out to write

The Geeky part of me

I’m more than a blurb

I’m more than a link

I’m more than some pretty face upon the screen

It’s not easy to be Geek

Wish that I could type

All my memories

Find a way to write

About a world you’ll never see

It may sound absurd

But don’t you believe

Even Bloggers have the right to speak?

They may be unheard

Or site of the week

Even Bloggers have the right to dream

It’s not easy to be Geek

Up ahead a man he comes for me

But it’s alright

You can all surf safe tonight

I’m not leaving

Or anything

I can’t Blog a lie

I’m not that naive

Men, women should write

With words that fit their needs

I’m only a man

A silly web Geek

Digging for dynamite in my memories

Only a man

A funny web Geek

Looking to expose things inside of me

Inside of me

Inside of me

Inside of me

Inside of me

I’m only a man

A funny web Geek

I’m only a man

With my freedom of speech

I’m only a man

A funny web Geek

It’s not easy

It’s not easy to be Geek

This is a parody of Five for Fighting’s song Superman (It’s Not Easy). Don’t know the song? Listen to it here.

An Open Letter To The Phone Company

To Whom It May Concern:

Salutations _________, you heartless, incompetent, unfathomably vast, leviathan of a phone company. I am a customer who has become so angry at your entire organization, and your laughingly incompetent customer service in particular, that I’m now forced to give you the written equivalent of a Tonya Harding baseball bat to the knees.

My name is ___________ and I hate you.

I’m fully aware that you are such a colossally monstrous entity that, in all likelihood, you have no idea who I am or why I hate you. Please bear with me a little longer and I will try my best to explain using small words so that even your CEO will comprehend my meaning.

Should he come across a word he doesn’t understand I’m sure he can look it up on his Speak-N-Spell.

Being the cynic that I am, I really don’t believe that this letter will ever be read by an actual human being. However, should a living, breathing person within your company somehow find this letter in their hands, I can only pray that they will have the intelligence and insight to bring it to the attention of someone with the power to actually do something about it.

However, seeing as how most of your employees have the intelligence of a parakeet with a brain tumor, my hopes are not high.

Let me state now for the record that if someone does read this and decides that the answer to the problem is to send me an automated response of the “We’re sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for bringing your problem(s) to our attention” variety, then please don’t bother wasting your stamp or my time. Such a form letter will only serve to further incite me and someone might get hurt.

And no one wants that, now do we?

First, let’s start with the extra phone line I had installed in my home office over 4 years ago, which is used solely for connecting to the internet. If you were to say my internet connection was sub-par in performance that would be an understatement of massive proportions. I am running a home business which relies on a solid, fast and clean connection to the internet at all times and yet, my phone line is so weak, slow and dirty that it performs like an 80 year old street walker with osteoporosis.

You want some proof? I’m glad you asked.

Here is a screen shot of the absolute BEST performing internet connection I have been able to receive in my four and a half years of living with this phone line. Keep in mind that my usual connection is HALF this.

Can you believe this?

The above connection speeds are regardless of computer, modem type or time of day the connection is attempted. Now, I grant you a 26k connection was fast in its day, that day being sometime in the internets Mesozoic era, but in today’s world such speeds are simply unacceptable. Surfing the web under these conditions is the equivalent of watching a Hollywood blockbuster movie using a tiny, 12” diagonal, black and white TV.

Suggestion #1: Take your heads out of your collective asses and embrace the 21st century.

When I call customer services to seek a remedy for my anemic internet connection, I am told that as long as I can make a connection of any kind your company has fulfilled its contractual obligation to me. I am further informed, in the manner of a frustrated owner scolding a mentally handicapped puppy, that if I wish to have a faster connection I should speak with the DSL division and stop tying up the phone lines with my petty complaints.

Suggestion #2: All customer service reps who fail to treat your customers with courteously and respect should be publicly flogged with a fiber optic lash and then fed to starving, rabid llamas.

After being transferred to the DSL division and waiting on hold for no less than 40 minutes, I am told that I cannot possibly have a DSL connection. When I ask why, I am shocked to be given an answer that defies comprehension. Apparently, someone has a T1 connection further up the pipe from me and your ‘technicians’ are unable and/or unwilling to work around it. Therefore, my entire neighborhood is out of luck when it comes to DSL.

Suggestion #3: Teach your ‘technicians’ how to do technical things, like splice wires and create crossover patches.

My home phone, which is the one I use to actually make phone calls with, is just as bad. Whenever I use my cordless phone to make or receive a call I am assaulted to the point of bleeding from my ears by a cacophony of pops, whistles, shrieks and clicks. This aural beat-down can also be heard by the caller on incoming calls and most of the time they get so frustrated that they simply hang up.

I don’t know how much business I may have lost due to my inability to simply answer my phone.

I have had the pleasure of demonstrating this behavior to several of your reps on many different occasions. After confirming the effect their solution was both simple and awe inspiring. In every case they suggested I discontinue use of my cordless phone and buy a ‘regular’ corded handset.

Suggestion #4: If the customer has a valid complaint of sub par performance on your part, fix the goddamn problem. Do not shift the blame to someone or something else simply because it’s easier than doing something constructive.

I could continue, but why bother? I doubt that you will ever change, except for the worse, because you are a local monopoly and have become drunk with your power and influence. Being a ‘little guy’ I have no other phone company to which to turn and find comfort. And even should I switch local carriers, the physical lines are still yours and therefore subject to your control. I am thus forced to remain in the deathlike grip of your organizations fat, callous, coldhearted and unsympathetic hands while my bank account withers on the vine and my business slowly dies.

I hope you’re happy.

For all the above reasons and many more besides I feel that I cannot possibly understate my displeasure in your organization’s service and support. Other than this letter, I don’t know of a better way to inform you of just how bitter, angry, frustrated and upset I am with a corporate structure which allows for such an utter lack of anything resembling customer satisfaction. If you were a schoolyard bully I would wish a pox upon you and your entire, extended family.

My name is ___________ and I hate you.

Sincerely,

It Means Nothing Until I Win One

Thank you everyone.

I am honored and privileged to be here today, standing on this stage and accepting this Award. This Bloggie means more to me than I think I’ll ever be able to fully express with words, but I’ll try because I won and you didn’t. And I’m up here anyway, so you have to listen to me whether you want to or not you tiny minded, little people.

What’s that Dave? You want some of this? No? I didn’t think so, beyatch.

Anywaste, I’d like to thank the Academy, whoever you losers are, for my nomination and placing me in such fine and respected company as my fellow nominees. Rebecca Mead, Rebecca Blood, J.D. and of course, Joe Clark. You’re all good, but it was obvious from the start that you weren’t nearly as good as me.

Let’s face it, I’m the best and I deserved to win.

My sparkling wit, purfekt speling and coy phrase of turns of phrase put me head and shoulders above you other has-been hacks. My ability to use large, silly sounding words like, ‘flummox’ and ‘masticate’ in my posts must have confounded you at every turn. I bet you all fell asleep last night sweating bullets and crying like wounded animals as you waited in fear for the results to be posted.

Well, fear no more Poopie-heads cause my triumph was pre-ordained and inevitable.

This award is just the first step in my evil scheme of world domination through Web Logging. First, I create a website, then I win an award and then I take over the World! When I am High Commander I will rule with an iron fist, people shall fear as I…

Huh? What do you mean I didn’t win? Rebecca Blood won?!? But her essay wasn’t even written this year! Damnit, how could she win?

Who the hell did she sleep with?

Ok, ok. That’s fine. Just fine. Forget I mentioned it. It’s really not important because I’m sure I won for Best American, right? Not nominated? What? Wil who? Well, what about Most Humorous? Best New Web Log? Web Log of the Year? None of them? Who the hell is this Wil guy, anyway? Star Trek? Star Trek?!? That’s crazy. You’ve got to be kidding me, right? I mean, Miss Cleo explicitly said that I would ‘come into something special’ in the next few days, so I just assumed…

What’s that hand signal mean? Get off the stage? But… but, I wore a tuxedo! I washed and shaved and everything for this. I cut my nose hairs for Pete’s sake! I demand…

*Evan, Wil, Rebecca, and Ernie forcibly remove the patheticly sputtering GeekMan from the stage.*

Nikolai: “Sorry for the interruption folks, let’s get back to the show. And the winner for ‘Best Human Being to Walk the Face of the Earth, Ever’ goes to… Wil Wheaton!”

Wild applause. Wil is showered with spooge and ladies undies as he saunters to the stage. GeekMan cries softly to himself as he drifts off to sleep in the dumpster out back. The last thing he hears is Wil’s voice shouting, “…And a special thank you to William ‘Fucking’ Shatner!”

A Day Late And A Dollar Short

I had a lovely New Years Eve because people came to my apartment. This may not seem so big a deal to you, but since I live all the way out in ‘Friggen Brooklyn’ most of my friends won’t visit me unless they’re assured of having a ride home afterwards.

Ah, I see some of you don’t understand. Let me explain.

Unlike the rest of the country, in New York City owning a car is considered a liability. We can get by without a car because we have great methods of public transportation such as trains, taxis and buses. Most people who live in NY don’t own a car and if they do, they only use it for getting out of the city. For example, when visiting the wild Serengeti of New Jersey Strip Malls. As hard as it might be for some of you to understand, there are some people in NY who go their entire lives without ever getting a driver’s license.

[collective gasp of horror]

Add to this the fact that I live about 45 minutes away from the city by train or over $50 each way by taxi and you can see why very few of my friends visit my apartment. But this year a few friends actually came over to my place for a nice quiet New Year celebration. Some drinks, some silly board games and a lot of great conversation made this year a lot less hectic and insane as the last five. In fact, this was the first year in a long, long time where I didn’t spend New Years Day cleaning up the mess a few hundred people made after a wild party on New Years Eve.

It was a welcome change of pace.

Now, although I don’t normally make resolutions I figured that this year I would give it a try. I hope I can keep at least some of these, but if I don’t that will only help to reaffirm my third grade teacher’s belief that I’m nothing but a slacker and will never amount to anything.

  1. Lurn to spel.
  2. Watch more television. TLC, History and Discovery don’t count.
  3. Get older.
  4. Stop covering women’s public bathroom toilets with Seran Wrap.
  5. Buy something.
  6. Read something.
  7. Try to acquire the telephone number 1-900-MYT-GEEK.
  8. Be funny. Even if just once.
  9. Tell HoBiscuit how much she means to me.
  10. Visit every site on the web. Twice.
  11. Stop speaking to my family in the third person.
  12. Call someone.
  13. Complain about money.
  14. Get sick.
  15. Start a project and don’t finish.
  16. Become someones idol and then crush their hopes, dreams and aspirations when they meet me by turning out to be nothing more than a bitter, angry and slightly insane bastard.

So, what are some of your resolutions?

The Perfect Solution

Today I am going to try something new. Actually, it’s something very old that I just decided to a put onto my machine today. Instead of typing in everything that you see here, today I am dictating it to my computer with the help of Lernout and Hauspie’s speech recognition program. Of course, L&H have filed for bankruptcy and are currently auctioning off all of their assets, so if you see any spelling or grammar mistakes it’s not my fault.

This is sooo cool.

I’ve tried these type of programs in the past and they’ve never really done what I wanted them to do. I always seemed to be spending more time correcting what I wrote instead of simply writing it. However, after only fifteen minutes of setting up this program it’s running like a charm, and my hands don’t even hurt. One of the reasons that I don’t write as often as other Bloggers out there is that I have the beginning stages of carpal tunnel syndrome, and that makes it difficult for me to write as much as I would like to.

Not that you’d notice.

I can’t tell you enough how cool this is. I’m just talking, not even looking at the screen and everything I say is being typed as I say it. It’s really saving my hands.

I was really hoping that this would work as well as it seems to be working because that will make it very easy for me to write everything that I want to write about. Since my Christmas story is such a long and involved piece, I was actually afraid that I would ruin my hands trying to write it. But now thanks to this wonderful program I’ll be able to say everything I want and bore you all to death with my meaningless rambling. Of course, doing such things as links, bold text, or italic text will be a little bit more involved than what I’m used to, but I think I can manage.

Only five mistakes so far! Not too bad. Not too bad at all.

Well then, now that I have this brand new toy these posts of mine might get a little bit longer. In fact, whenever you come to visit you might need to be sitting in a comfy chair and have plenty of time, because if you think I used to type a lot before, imagine how much more I can say when I’m not even typing.

Oh, I bet you’re scared now.

It might take a while for me to input all of the made up words that I use on a daily basis. Words like GeekMan, anywaste, and the names of any web sites I might go to will have to be input as they come along. But man, this has really gotten my Geek juices flowing.

My nipples are hard.

I think that’s all for today, I’ll be back tomorrow or Friday with something a little more substantial. Right now I’m just a little too… uh, excited by my new toy. That’s right, I’m a big geek and proud of it. And I know you wish you had this program, but you don’t. I do, and that makes me the coolest Geek around.

Or the most pathetic loser to ever walk the face of the earth. Whatever.

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.

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.

Lost In The Mail

Well, isn’t this just perfect?

I got a call this morning from my landlord asking me when they could expect my rent for the month of October. I think that’s pretty doggon hilarious, because I sent it to them late last month just to make sure that they would get it on time. Since I was online at the time of their call, I immediately surfed over to my bank and checked my account info. Sure enough, a check had been sent to them and cashed as of October 4th.

I pounced like a feral kitten.

They continued to insist that it had never arrived, so I told them I would make the huge investment of time and effort to call my bank and see if something had happened on their end. Momentarily appeased, my landlord asked me to call back as soon as I could. I agreed, hung up and promptly forgot the entire conversation.

Hey, it’s not easy pretending to have a life when, for all intents and purposes your just an out of work bum sitting on the Comfy-Couch of Super-Sleep watching Automan reruns on Sci-fi while eating bean-paste-and-lard sandwiches.

About twenty minutes ago, I remembered that I had something important to do and called the bank. After going through the expected, “Please hold, your call is important to us.” hell, I finally reached a live person. Yes, the check was sent. Yes, it was cashed as of the 4th. No, it didn’t bounce. Yes, your account shows the withdrawal for the proper amount. Yes, your account was credited with the proper deposit amount. Can I help you with anything else, sir?

No, you see I was just a little worried… waitasec. Did you just say that my rent check was deposited into my own account?

After a few rounds of “Please hold, I’m going to need to talk to my supervisor.” shuffling, it was discovered that the check was returned to the bank due to an invalid address. I don’t understand how this could be true because I’ve been using the automatic internet payment feature from my bank and my landlords address hasn’t changed in over four years. We also checked the address on the envelope, and it was correct so this entire mess-up is completely unfathomable to me.

What, did the building decide to play hide and seek with the mailman?

So now I’m forced to call the landlord back and apologize on behalf of myself, my bank, the US postal service, the deforestation of the Amazonian jungle, and the generally poor state of the worldwide economy. Since I’ve been here over four years with absolutely no problems in the past, and the rent is half a month overdue, I guess that a representative of the landlord will want to come to my apartment and pick up the check in person. That’s no big deal except that it makes me feel like I’m not trustworthy. I mean, none of this was my fault, but it must not look good from my landlords perspective since my rent was due to increase this month. Substantially.

If you’re not from NY let me give you the proper NY-to-the-rest-of-the-world rental equation. Let’s say that ‘R’ represents your rent/mortgage and ‘L’ represents your current square footage of living space. Take whatever you pay in rent/mortgage each month and triple it. Then, take whatever the square footage of your apartment/house is and divide that by 3. That will give you a pretty good approximation of what the rent is like in NY. This can be represented by the following mathematical equation;

(R*3)+(L/3)=Are you on crack?

So now I’m sitting here wondering if I should clean the apartment in anticipation of their arrival, or just let them come in and revel in my personal Pit of Despair. Maybe, just maybe, I should dust and vacuum.

If they’re real lucky, I might even shower.

An Open Letter To Dubya

Hey George, it’s GeekMan here and I’ve got this whole “Find Bin Laden” thing figured out. You’re going about it all wrong. You don’t need to spend billions on cruise missiles or covert operations. You don’t even need to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on spy intelligence. All you need to do is make one phone call and all your prayers will be answered. You’ll know where Bin Laden is, you’ll know the names and locations of all his constituents and, more importantly, you’ll know if his office romance will work out or not.

You need to call Miss Cleo.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You don’t believe the world is ready for that kind of power. Well, I think you’re wrong. The world is ready and just like Obi Wan, she’s our only hope. She knows things that no one else does, how else do you explain why she called you Mr. President before you said your name when you called her last week?

Don’t be fooled Dubya, her horrible clothes and fake Jamaican accent are just an elaborate front to hide her real power from the easily frightened masses. She is like a goddess who has taken pity on humanity and decided to walk among us in disguise. Even so, she cannot help but offer her assistance when called upon in times of need.

Why else would she have a toll-free number?

Dubya, the first three minutes are free, so you wouldn’t even have to spend a dime to get her help. Can’t you see that she’s reaching out to you? She so desperately wants to help, but it’s up to you to make the first move. All you need to do George, is pick up the White House’s Super Secret Bright Orange Cleo Hotline Phone (it’s the one next to the Bat-Phone) and speak! Didn’t she help you when you needed to know if you won the election? I know most people think you called your brother in Florida, but I know you really called her. And didn’t she help you then? Didn’t she tell you to be cool because it was in the bag and you would be President and that no-good Gore-sissy wouldn’t taunt you with math questions anymore? Wasn’t she right?

Yeah, you know she was.

You and I know that her TV ‘commercials’ are nothing less than a cleverly disguised plea for you to pick up the phone and call her. I can only guess at what is going on in that amazingly clever and intelligent genius-mind of yours, but I think you’ve just been so busy lately that you haven’t had the time to make the call. Well, as your good friend and fellow American I feel it is my duty to remind you of the near limitless power at your disposal. I know you don’t want the general public to know how smart you really are, and I must admit the constant word flubbing, ‘lost’ looks and forehead crinkling during your public appearances is mighty clever, but the time for secrecy is past. You have a duty to end terrorism for the American people and the world at large. And yes, that includes Canada.

Pick up the phone Dubya, the world needs you and Miss Cleo, now more than ever.