Top Of The Dog, Ma!

Oh, my aching head.

As I sit here in this cold, dark ballroom listening to a hack-band decimate such rock and roll classics as ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘Walk Like A Man’ it dawned upon me that my life is just not worth living. I mean, here I am wondering if I could kill myself by swallowing my computer mouse and suffocating as a group of talentless, Stomp imitating losers dance on stage like baboons warding off an encroaching lion. Oh great, now the Stomp-lite’s are doing an impromptu version of Battle of the Valkyries with broomsticks and buckets.

Now I’m thinking that I’m already dead and this is my own little corner of hell.

In case you haven’t guessed yet, I’ve been busy traveling for work. Don’t misunderstand, I love what I do and I’m working with great people, but sometimes the so called ‘talent’ hired to do something really isn’t talented. In fact, they stink worse than a Motown Boy Band reunion but no one has the heart to tell them. So, like unwanted and annoying house visitors, they believe they’re still welcome in your mind and continue to chip away at your patience and sanity with their sharp claws of asinine stupidity.

If only I had a license to kill.

My travel schedule of the past few weeks helps explain why I didn’t know until late last night that I had won a Blorgie. This is a high honor indeed, especially since I won for Stealth and Determination and Knows How To Work It.

Eat your hearts out Ninja Cheerleading Squad of Undisclosed Location A.

Now that I’ve finally won an award I’m off to rule the world with an iron fist. Quiver in fear mortals.

You too, mom.

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!”

12 Steps To Recovery

The Online Test Takers Anonymous (O.T.T.A.) 12 Step Program

The relative success of the O.T.T.A. program seems to be due to the fact that an online Tester who no longer takes tests has an exceptional faculty for “reaching out” and helping a fellow uncontrolled Tester.

In simplest form, the O.T.T.A. program operates when a recovered Online Tester passes along the story of his or her own problem Online Testing, describes the sanity he or she has found in O.T.T.A., and invites the newcomer to join the informal Fellowship.

The heart of the suggested program of personal recovery is contained in Twelve Steps describing the experience of the earliest members of the Fellowship:

  1. We admitted we were 100% powerless over Online Tests – that our lives had become 93% unmanageable and 89% similar to the careers of Milli Vanilli.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than Online Tests could restore to us a 77% healthier offline life and over 90% of our sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn 80% of our will and 97% of our lives over to the Higher Power of Online Blogging.
  4. Created our own personal Blog for the purpose of admitting to ourselves and to our Readership the exact nature of our Online Test Taking addiction.
  5. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves based on past Online Test results and posted it online for the world to read and ridicule.
  6. Were entirely ready to have our Readership shame and ridicule us in our Comments until we became absolved of all the defects of character our Online Tests had exposed.
  7. Humbly asked another Blogger for help recovering from our addiction to Online Tests, and also in helping with our Blogs redesign to remove our obvious HTML and artistic shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all Bloggers we had harmed with our Online Test Taking addiction, and became willing to make amends to them all by showing them linky-love on our Main Blog Page.
  9. Left comments on the Blogs of said people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them emotionally or adversely affect our own visitor count.
  10. Continued to write and post daily about our lives, whenever possible multiple times a day, and should we succumb to taking an Online Test we would promptly admit it and post the results.
  11. Sought through prayer, horribly inappropriate linkage and stupid one-line posts to improve our pathetic visitor count, praying only for acknowledgement by an A-Lister and just a small percentage of their daily visitors.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other Online Test addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they feel unwilling or unable to do so. But they must Blog them.

They will usually be asked to keep an open mind, to attend meetings at which recovered Online Testers describe their personal experiences in achieving 85% sobriety, and to read O.T.T.A. literature describing and interpreting the O.T.T.A. program.

They are also asked to Blog.

O.T.T.A. members will usually emphasize to newcomers that only problem Testers themselves, individually, can determine whether or not they are in fact addicts.

At the same time, it will be pointed out that all available medical testimony indicates that Online Test addiction is a progressive illness, that it cannot be cured in the ordinary sense of the term, but that it can be arrested through total abstinence from Online Tests in any form.

After completing our 12 Step program, some of our members felt the need to seek help for what they called “Blog Addiction” (B.A.). Please be aware that we, being the experts in the field of REAL addictions, do not feel excessive Blogging is a real addiction.

We repeat, there is no such illness as Obsessive/Compulsive Blogging. Do not be fooled into believing this hokey, snake-oil, made-up medical balderdash created by these lunatics who call themselves ‘Doctors’. Just because they graduated from medical school doesn’t mean they’re right. Based on several scientifically accurate Online Tests, we believe there are no adverse short- or long-term effects associated with Blogging and we feel we can stop doing it any time we wanted.

We just don’t want to, that’s all.

It’s Like Buttah

“Psssst. Hey buddy, come here I want to talk to you.”

“Who, me?” I said as I looked around my kitchen in alarm.

“Yes you, moron. Who else? There are a few things I think we need to discuss, pronto.”

The voice seemed to be coming from the vicinity of my kitchen counter. Actually, I could swear that my sandwich bread was talking to me.

“I’m sorry, I’m a little confused. Did you just say something?”

“Yeah, I did. What’s the problem?”

“No problem really, it’s just I’m not used to being addressed by a moldy loaf of bread in a plastic bag.”

“Well get used to it, bub. Letting your food sit on your shelves and in your fridge for as long as you have, it was only a matter of time before one of us became self aware.”

“Oh come on now, you haven’t been here that long. I mean, it’s only been what, a week?”

“Try six. At week four I became mobile and just last week I grew an eye. By the way, you might want to think about closing the bathroom door in the morning. You’re not to high on the good-looks scale when you’re sitting on the toilet and I think I’m growing a nose.”

“Hey, this is my apartment and I don’t need a moldy piece of bread telling me what I can and can’t do in my own home. In fact…wait a minute. I can’t believe I’m arguing with a piece of bread.”

I resisted the urge to kick this Wonder Bread reject’s ass and instead grabbed a nearby fork and stabbed myself in the forearm in the hopes of waking myself up from what was obviously some drug induced nightmare. Unfortunately, all I managed to do was draw some blood and make Bread giggle like a schoolgirl.

“Ow!”

“Damn, I can’t believe you’re that stupid. Did it hurt?”

“Hell yeah, that hurt. You want me to stab you with a fork and see how much you like it?”

“Hey, don’t get pissed off at me, bub. I’m not the one who stabbed you with a fork remember? You did that all by yourself.”

“Whatever. You wanted to discuss something?”

I figured that as long as I was stuck in this daydream, hallucination or a fever-dream brought on by bad Mexican food, I might as well listen. Who knows, maybe Salma Hayek or Jessica Alba would make an appearance later on and make stabbing myself in the arm with a fork worthwhile. With my luck though, I’d wind up with Cheech Marin in a dress.

“You’re darn tooting I want to discuss something. Do you realize you haven’t updated your web site in a week? People crave content man, and this is an election week. It’s no time to slack off.”

“How the hell does a moldy piece of crap like you know about my web site?”

“I use the computer while you’re sleeping. By the way, I think I may have accidentally signed you up to a few bread-porn mailing lists. If you start getting mail from hotbutter.com for Wundrrbun don’t delete it. It’s for me.”

“Well, I have been a little busy working you know. And I did mention in my last post that my computer is modem-less right now which tends to make it a little difficult to update a web site. And anyway, I write to keep myself entertained, not to cater to some faceless and anonymous group of people I’ve never met and will most likely never meet.”

“Oh yeah? Then why do you check your site’s logs every friggen day, huh?”

“I’m uh, just checking to make sure I don’t exceed my bandwidth allotment. Yeah, that’s it. Checking bandwidth.”

Bread’s moldy eyeball just stared at me in disbelief.

“Your pathetic, do you know that?”

“OK, you win. I’ll update on Sunday. Are you happy now?”

“Hey buddy, I’m just trying to help you out. Want to see that visitor count go up? Want to win the Bloggie for Best Article or Essay about Web Logs? Then you better give your visitors what they want.”

“And just what do my visitors want?”

“After a thoroughly scientific and unbiased poll of your readership I’ve found that what your visitors most want is pictures of hot, slightly melted butter in sexy poses and lingerie.”

Bread was practically drooling as he said this. His one eye burning with desire as he willed me to believe that my visitors wanted to see Land O’ Lakes slathered on a Victoria’s Secret bra.

“All right that’s it. I’ve had just about enough of you and your shenanigans. I think it’s high time that a famous, naked, sexy woman shows up who will do my bidding for the rest of this dream sequence. With big, perky boobies.”

“Yeah, right. Good luck on that one, bub.”

“Look, it’s not too much to ask OK? I put up with you and your butter fetish, I stabbed myself with a fork and I’ve agreed to update my site. All I ask in return is three minutes with an imaginary supermodel or movie star. Or Janet Jackson. Now that’s a mighty fine woman, and who could resist that alluring smile?”

“Of all the idiots on the planet I have to get stuck with their king. Calgon, take me away.”

An Apology

On Sunday a whole bunch of my friends came over to my place just to hangout. One of my friends brought up the fact that my computer is very, very old and thus I deserved to be ridiculed for having the audacity to call myself a mighty geek. He and some of my other friends proceeded to make fun of me for the next half hour, calling me names like The Mighty Weak and GeekMan The Meek.

Yeah, my friends are really original.

My friend then said that he happened to have a few old computer parts in his bag and would I like to have them for my computer. Of course, I asked what he had knowing full well that anything would be better than my pathetic six year old Pentium II 300. Amazingly, my friend just happened to be carrying a motherboard, 256MB of RAM, and a Pentium 3 with him for no other reason than to impress any women he might run into in a bar.

And that should tell you all you need to know about my friends.

It took less than five minutes for all the men to be in my computer room working on the computer and all the women to be in the living room watching the Golden Globe Awards on TV. Within ten minutes my computer was and pieces. Fifteen minutes later, we were all standing around trying to figure out why my computer would no longer work. It was at that moment that I remembered the last time I backed up my files was six months ago.

I got so scared I think I peed, just a little, in my pants.

It took about two hours, but we did get my computer to boot and all the software working properly except of course, the modem, which for some reason the computer didn’t recognize. We tried removing it, uninstalling the drivers, re-installing the drivers and even sacrificing a small goat at an impromptu shrine to Bill Gates, but nothing worked. We decided that the best way to tackle this puzzling conundrum was to play cards and drink heavily until one of us came up with a solution.

My friends left me at midnight and I am still modemless.

Luckily, I have this beautiful, wonderful, fully functional laptop with which to sign on the Internet and update my site. Unfortunately, it took me a while to get it set up properly, which forced me to miss my usual Monday afternoon post. I should be back to my normal posting schedule Friday.

Be afraid.

Interview #04

It’s time for another installment of Blogger Insider. Today’s questions are brought to you by Cynthia Korzekwa. She seems to be a very artistic, well traveled and intelligent woman so she’s probably very disappointed to have been paired up with me for this week’s questions. You can read my questions for her and her answers here.

  1. What’s the importance of humor in daily life?

    Humor is the most important thing in the world. No matter how bad things might seem, no matter what the world might throw at you, you have to be able to find the humor in it or you’ll lose your sanity. I believe it was Mel Brooks who said, “When I see an old lady fall down an open manhole I laugh, because that’s comedy. When I get a paper cut on my pinky I cry, because that’s tragedy.”

  2. What are the qualities in your girlfriend that you most appreciate?

    Probably that she has breasts. Oh, and sometimes she lets me touch them.

  3. What do you eat for breakfast?

    What is it with these eating questions? Do you people think I’m made of money or something? To be truthful, I’ve gotten a little tired of licking the rubber soles of my Reebok’s so I moved up to eating these tasty paint chips off the wall. I think they’re really good for me too because after every meal I come up with some wonderful ideas for new inventions, like a rug made entirely of Koosh balls. Or my computer laptop/waffle iron combo device.

  4. How would you compare Anime cartoons with Michelangelo’s cartoons for THE UNIVERSAL JUDGEMENT?

    First of all, neither good anime nor anything by Michelangelo should be called a cartoon. Anyone who believes that Pokemon is a true representation of anime needs to get themselves a copy of Akira or Ah! My Goddess as soon as possible. Now that we’ve got that clarification of the way I’ll answer your question. Anime can be beautiful, moving, inspirational and emotional. Everything that good art is supposed to be and yet, most people will still see it as only a cartoon. That is their loss because to me, the only difference between good anime and the paintings of Michelangelo is that one is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the other is framed on my wall.

  5. Do you believe that there’s a difference between the way men create as opposed to the way that women create?

    Yes. My relationship lawyer has advised me that any attempt to explain my answer any further will probably lead to a ‘No Sex Ever Again’ class action lawsuit against me. I shut up now.

  6. What are your Daily Aesthetics?

    Not really sure I understand this question. Are you asking me about my exercise regimen? Or perhaps you want to know what I see every day, what surrounds me visually. I really wish I could answer this, but unfortunately it’s dark and since I have no money and hence no electricity I can’t see enough to talk about my aesthetics. And lately, my only exercise has been clinching my sphincter in fear as I turn on my computer and pray that it won’t crash and thereby destroy my only creative outlet.

  7. Why do you have a weblog?

    Mostly to entertain myself. Being a freelance graphic designer (hire me) means that I sometimes have hours, days, and even weeks (please, hire me) of free time on my hands. And rather than using those hands to hold a knife (hire me) and run amok in my local Kmart, I thought it would be more productive (i’m hungry) to do some writing. I also have this insatiable desire (it’s dark here) to be universally loved and admired. Unfortunately, I’ve found (i’m lonely) that to be impossible so I’ve decided to take over the world. This will be done in three stages:

    Stage one – create a web log.

    Stage two – ???

    Stage three – rule the world with an iron fist.

    I’m still working on stage two, but (have pity, hire me) stage one is working like a charm.

  8. Has your enthusiasm for internet and web design ever interferred with you sex life?

    No. You have to have a sex life before something can interfere with it, don’t you? Well then, next question.

  9. What’s the Photoshop effect that you use most?

    Drop shadows. No questions about it, drop shadows are the professional designer’s best friend. Want to impress the client? Whatever it is they’re asking you to do, just add a drop shadow to it and they’ll be willing to pay you double your asking rate. For some reason drop shadows give most clients woodies and hard nipples. Go figure.

  10. As a child (or even now), what’s your favorite Halloween costume?

    About seven years ago I went to a Halloween party as Ash from the Evil Dead movies. I even had the chainsaw and the Boom Stick. Everyone loved my costume. I was damn sexy. Women swooned. Really.

  11. What’s currently sitting inside your refrigerator?

    A very large roach, a sentient mound of mold, a rodent with a ‘Death To Kittens’ tattoo, and something that looks like leftover tacos from my Monday night dinner. They appear to be playing poker. The rodent seems to be winning, but I think he’s cheating and the roach is getting angry.

  12. What do you think about Net Art? Do you follow any Net Artists?

    I haven’t really given much thought to net art. Actually, thinking about it right now I wouldn’t even know how to define net art. Does net art mean art created using only html, or would any artwork that’s posted on the web be considered net art? If it’s the former then I don’t know of any true net artists, and if it’s the latter then anything out there right now could be considered art. And there’s a lot out there that I would never, ever call art. Like dancing hamsters.

  13. In your opinion, is there a relationship between aesthetics and ethics?

    I don’t know, but if there is then ethics’ husband is going to be really pissed off.

  14. I loved your sentence: “If you’re female, try the ‘Let’s Just Be Friends’ speech. That always makes it shrivel up like a slug on a salt lick”. You like to write, take photos, create web designs….do you think that having all these interests have a tendency to make you dispersive OR that these interests work synergically and stimulate you to create more?

    Huh, huhuhuh. You said stimulate. Actually, I think that all of my interests are working together to remove the last shreds of intelligence and sanity from my mind. And the final $28.31 from my checking account.

  15. You say that your don’t drink, smoke, do drugs….well, honey, you must have at least one vice. What is it?

    I like to buy expensive toys. Really. This drives HoBiscuit crazy, especially when she thinks the item in question isn’t worth the amount requested. And let me tell you, she never thinks something I want is worth it. Ever.

Well, that was fun. Now where’s my Boom Stick?

At Least I Tried

20 random things I know but will never explain how I know that I know them.

  1. Do not get toothpaste in your eyes. It stings.
  2. Blowing on a dog’s face from a distance of 6 inches can be painful. To you.
  3. Roaches really do shrug off microwave radiation.
  4. Women cannot make a convincing machine gun noise.
  5. Standing in the rain without an umbrella is not as cool as it looks in the movies.
  6. No matter how careful you are, if you pick your nose in public someone will see you.
  7. Pimples never go away, they just migrate south.
  8. Twinkies do not need an expiration date. There’s nothing organic in them to expire.
  9. School janitors know more about you than you will ever guess.
  10. You do not want to know what happens in a Chinese food restaurant kitchen.
  11. “Does this make me look fat?” can be loosely translated into man-speak as “Hold your tongue, shield your eyes and run! For the love of Pete,RUN!
  12. If someone is giving you directions and the first word out of their mouth is “Uh”, leave. They know nothing.
  13. Eating five spicy tacos at 10pm and going to bed at 11 is bad.
  14. If a street beggar has a pet, then they don’t deserve your good will. If they are eating their pet, then they deserve your charity.
  15. Men will look under the hood whether they know anything about cars or not.
  16. If something in your fridge has grown mold, scraping off the mold doesn’t make it safe to eat.
  17. A woman can step into a strange room filled with people and tell you who’s doing what with whom in less than five minutes. A man can step into a strange room filled with people and in less than five minutes give you three alternate exits, two men they could beat up and point out at least four things that can be used as a weapon against invading ninjas.
  18. Japanese animation is cool until you find yourself hiding your recent DVD purchases from your significant other.
  19. Yes, your tongue really will stick to ice cold metal.
  20. Sugar, caffeine, chocolate, yellow dye #5, salt, dead animal flesh and MSG make up the seven food groups. Oh, and supplement your diet with some rigorous exercise, like channel surfing or sleep marathons.

It’s a slow day. Sorry.

My Favorite Car

“Come on, GeekMan! Let’s burn rubber!”

“Yeah! Let’s peel out!”

“Go GeekMan, go!”

“Just like Pole Position, man! ‘Prepare to qualify!’”

I was 20 years old and my friends and I were waiting for my teeny-tiny, four-speed, Dodge Omni to warm up as we sat in the parking lot of the mall after seeing some action-packed, thrill ride of a movie. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, and possessing far less than my fair share of college brain cells, I decided that I would grant my friends’ request because peeling out of the lot would be lots of fun. Besides, my friends wanted to do something crazy and wasn’t I the coolest and craziest sumbitch on the planet?

Damn straight I was.

I looked in front of my car and saw nothing but an empty lot as far as the eye could see. I checked out the rear view mirror and was surprised to see no one there either. I guess going to the late, late show at the theater was good for something after all.

I revved the engine like a stock car racer and gave my friends an evil grin.

It was at that moment that a little light bulb of ingenuity stupidity went off in my head. If peeling out while going forward was thrilling and exciting, I thought to myself, then wouldn’t going in reverse be an even bigger thrill? My friends would never expect me to do that so my ‘crazy-cool’ quotient would go up another notch, making me super ‘crazy-cool’ and thereby irresistible to women. A quick daydream involving myself, the redheaded beauty down the hall and the blonde twins in my theater class followed.

I had a vivid, if slightly unrealistic, imagination.

Throwing caution and common sense to the wind, I threw the car into reverse and stomped on the gas. Rubber melted, my friends screamed in delight and we took off at over 50mph

Backwards.

Let me take a moment now to reiterate that I didn’t see anyone else anywhere in the lot. As far as I could tell, the place was empty and I really did check my rearview mirror.

Twice.

However, I must have had a blind spot because I somehow didn’t notice the huge 4-door, 1984 Cutlass Supreme parked two rows behind me. I also didn’t notice the two high school teenagers, obviously on their first date, making out inside.

I hit them midway between the front and rear doors on the passenger side. Hard.

When the police arrived on the scene half an hour later, they were amazed to find the Oldsmobile nearly folded in half and completely unsalvageable and my tiny, pathetic Dodge Omni with nothing more than a slightly scuffed paintjob. That’s right, my car kicked their car’s ass. Amazingly, no one was hurt, no one was arrested and miraculously, the kids’ fathers never pressed charges against me.

I wonder if those kids ever had a second date?

Anywaste, all I got was a $200 ticket for reckless driving and a stern warning from the officers to watch out when backing up in the future. I told them how sorry I was and then tried to make light of the situation by asking them to put me out of my misery and shoot me.

The officers were not amused.

Quickly thanking them and beating a hasty retreat, my friends and I got into my Omni-potent Dodge and began the drive back to campus, slowly and safely. Because we were hungry after our exciting ordeal, we couldn’t resist stopping at a nearby Denny’s for a Grand Slam to talk about our exciting evening. It was there at Denny’s that my evening morphed from a simple bad day into a truly legendary night of torturous horror.

I got locked out of the car.

But that’s not all. Oh no, that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? You see, not only did I accidentally lock the car keys inside the car, but the same officers from my earlier accident showed up to help me get back inside. I was forced to endure 40 minutes of alcohol and drug testing right there in the parking lot of Denny’s, all the while explaining that I was just a stupid moron and not high or drunk. After they got the door open I didn’t ask them to shoot me, because I was afraid that this time they really would.

In fact, I’m sure they would have.

After that night, my friends no longer considered me ‘crazy-cool’; they just considered me a ‘psychotic-lunatic’. And after this story made the campus rounds, the twins would huddle together and whisper anytime that I dared to approach. And I never even found out the name of the cute redhead down the hall.

I really miss that car.

The Answerizer

When I was about 8 years old, I had an electronic toy similar to a Casio keyboard that made ‘computer’ noises when you pressed certain buttons. One day, my cousin and I were bored and decided to entertain ourselves by building a machine that would answer any question anyone could ask of it. Never mind that we didn’t have any tools and the only computer we’d ever seen was on TV and always shouting “Danger, Will Robinson!” We figured all we’d need was a few crayons, some paper, my toy and a big cardboard box.

Fortunately, my mother had just gotten a new TV.

We cut a hole in the top of the box just big enough for a piece of paper, put the paper and crayons inside the box and wrote The Answerizer on the outside. I took my computer noise making toy and sat inside the box ready to write the answer to any question on the paper and push it through the slot. We figured that since it would sound like a computer everyone would think it was a computer. Especially since no one would be able to see me inside. Now, all we needed was someone to test our machine on.

My cousin went to the kitchen to get my mother.

When my mother saw this cardboard box in the middle of the living room with the word Answerizer written on it in big, bold, red Crayola letters and computer noises coming out of it, I can’t believe she didn’t fall to the floor and break down with laughter. Instead, she played along and asked a question.

“Are my kids going to drive me crazy?”

A few moments later, her answer came out.

“No, you already are.”

She did not like this answer and to show her displeasure, she kicked the box. To be fair, she didn’t kick hard at all and she couldn’t have known that I was leaning up against the side of the box trying to listen to what was going on. Satisfied that she had exacted her revenge, she turned to go back to the kitchen. However, before she could leave, another piece of paper came out of the Answerizer.

“See? You are crazy.”

We were ordered to dismantle the Answerizer immediately. We never built another one.

The Mighty Beginnings

A few weeks ago I went to my mother’s house and she, being the mother that she is, pulled out some old photo albums so I could relive my shameful and pathetic youth. During this nightmare-inducing trip down memory lane, it was gleefully pointed out to me by everyone in my family (and HoBiscuit) that I had to have been one of the least cool kids ever to walk the face of the earth. In fact, by constitutional law, had I been any less cool then I was the Partridge family would have shown up at my door and beaten me to death with H. R. Puffnstuff dolls while singing the Brady Bunch’s greatest hits.

I now present Exhibit A.

Boo!  It's the Halloween Dork.Obviously, this picture was taken some time around Groundhogs Day. Or maybe it was Flag Day. Whenever it was, please allow me to draw your attention to the highly flammable, sweat inducing, choking hazard, some-kind-of-plastic-blend jump suit complete with painted on zipper that I’m wearing. And you can’t see them in this picture, but this outfit also included matching slippers that you could put over your shoes.

Just look at how happy I was to be dressed up like a big, red, six million dollar schmuck.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that my left eye has a red circle around it. This circle of cheap lipstick, lovingly brought to you by my mother, signified my Telescopic Bionic Eye. It was not a ‘shiner’ inflicted upon me by the neighborhood bully, because fortunately for me the neighborhood bully never saw me in this outfit. Somehow, my heretofore latent ‘geek alarm’ went off and I managed to use the paper dreidel hanging on the wall behind me to slit my wrists before I was forced to leave the apartment. Had I actually left the house and gone Trick-or-Treating, I would have been forced to give myself a good, old fashioned Brooklyn Beatdown just to show the other kids that I knew I was a dork.

Unfortunately, I truly believed my mother when she told me I was ‘adorable’ and posed for this picture. Sucker.

Looking lower, you’ll notice my complete lack of any form of male genitalia. I believe that my inability to get a girlfriend until the age of seventeen can be directly traced back to this outfit. I’m convinced that upon realizing just what a loser I was, my ‘nads simply threw in the towel and crawled back into my body’s gonad cavity to hibernate during the long, cold sexual winter of my teenage years.

But the torture doesn’t end there.

Exhibit B.

What's the Cool kid doing with that Geek?Taken at roughly the same age as Exhibit A. Notice my younger brother with his jean jacket and Popeye shirt. He’s hip, he’s cool, he’s got that sparkle in his eyes that seems to say, “Yeah, baby. You know you want me.” All the cool kids at school would want to hang with him because he probably gets all the fly honeys to share his mat during naptime.

Oh yeah, my brother was the pimp Mac Daddy of the schoolyard.

Now look at me. What girl would be interested in such a skinny, silly looking geek? I don’t even have a fly jacket and what’s that shirt I’ve got on? Could it be? Oh my god, it is. An original, guaranteed girl repelling, fresh from the bins at Wal-Mart “Up Your Nose With A Rubber Hose” T-shirt. The only thing less cool I could be wearing in this picture would be a bright orange, cut off T-shirt with a metallic, iron-on Fonzie with thumbs in the air saying, “Aaaaaye!”

Oh damn, I think I had one of those too.