I want to be a Web Log Writer.
I will create an ugly website using warez software and ad-infested free web hosts.
I will write something every other day about my boring and uninteresting life.
I will write in “Hackerese” and forego the use of initial caps, for caps are for the weak and non-l337.
I will become an avid reader, loyal fan and devout worshipper of the most popular ‘A-List’ Web Log Writers.
I will learn how to do what they do, only not as well.
I will purchase gifts for them via PayPal and their Amazon Wish Lists.
I will frequent their CafePress stores.
I will submit my site for review by any Internet critic with a website.
I will not become discouraged when they fail to reply to my emails or notice my website or me.
I will never give up in my quest.I will become a Web Log Writer.
I will buy my own domain and create a new website of depth and beauty.
I will write something every day about my boring yet somehow compellingly interesting life.
I will reacquaint myself with the ‘shift’ button and stop spelling words in ‘Hackerese”, for that is for the young and immature.
I will create links to ‘A-Listers’ in the hopes of being noticed.
I will do what they do, only better.
I will create my own PayPal account and Amazon Wish List.
I will open a CafePress store.
I will forego sleep and my weekends because I value my small, yet growing, readership.
I will get average reviews from minor website critics.
I will work hard and garner a loyal following whose ranks will grow larger every day.I will become an ‘A-List’ Web Log Writer.
I will be featured in a book or magazine.
I will write something every few days about my exciting and interesting life, and my words will be as gospel to the unwashed masses.
I will write poetry and buy a webcam.
I will only link to other ‘A-List’ Web Log Writers and ignore wannabe’s who link to me.
Other Web Log Writers will do what I do, only worse.
I will ignore or quit my real job since my loyal readership will support me via PayPal and my Amazon Wish List.
CafePress will make me a ‘Featured Store’.
I will be on every critic’s favorites list.
I will ignore my readership and become involved in an Internet romance or attend live meetings with other ‘A-List’ Web Log Writers.
I will stop caring about my visitors because they’re not worth my time.I will be a ‘Has-Been’ Web Log Writer.
I will become disillusioned by Web Log Writing and the Internet in general.
I will write a poignant, sarcastic, mean-spirited farewell entry to alienate any visitors I might have left.
I will let my site rot and my links die.
Other Web Log Writers will do what I used to do, only better.
I will find a new job because my Internet romance will die and the other ‘A-List’ Web Log Writers will stop calling me.
I will be forced to close my CafePress store due to inactivity.
I will not be on anyone’s favorites list, not even my own.
I will come to the realization that I miss the life of a Web Log Writer.
I will create a new pseudonym and persona to shield myself from recognition.
I will begin my quest anew.For I want to be a Web Log Writer.
Author: GeekMan
All Hallows Eve
My brother is a fishtank maintenance guy. What does a fishtank maintenance guy do, you ask? It is his job to go to the homes of trust fund babies and people who fit the ‘I’m so rich I can’t be bothered to even feed my fish’ description and feed their fish. He also cleans the tanks and recommends new and exotic fish to them in the hopes that they’ll buy what amounts to a $2,000 goldfish.
Henceforth, I shall call him Fishman.
Well, Fishman and his girlfriend threw a Halloween party on Saturday that rocked. To be fair, their parties are almost legendary, with lots of inventive touches like last years’ Barbie’s House of Horror. This year they had ‘artwork’ consisting of close-up photographs of roaches, a working slide that lead to a queen sized bed, two dance floors, a Dollhouse of Horror and many store-dummies in various poses of death and decay.
It was a blast!
Since it was a Halloween party, everyone went in costume. Fishman and his girlfriend went as ninja warriors. HoBiscuit went as the most adorable Strawberry Shortcake I’ve ever seen, she even carried around strawberry air-fresheners so she would smell the part. I went as Steve Irwin, complete with giant stuffed crocodile, giant snake and a host of lizards, frogs, snakes and spiders.
Yeah, I did a lot of “Crickey!” this and “Danger!” that.
We danced, laughed and generally had a blast all night. It wasn’t until after 4am when we got home and we were considered losers for leaving so early. Oh, one thing that scared me and my friends more than anyone’s costume was the open clam bar. I don’t know what my brother was thinking when he dreamed up that little gem, but having an open clam bar at a Halloween party with only one working bathroom is never a good idea.
Especially not when it clogs up. Ewwww.
The Mighty Air Drummer
Remember that U2 concert I told you about last week? It rocked!
U2 was great, the stage was really cool and they played more of their old stuff than I thought they would. I got to hear so many of my old favorites that I actually got up and air-drummed a few times.
Uh-huh. Air-drummed.
I really enjoyed the show and I’m glad I went although I do have a problem with the seats. Now, don’t get me wrong, I actually liked where we sat and we had a nice view of the stage. We were in the seats usually designated to the press. We had our own table! And outlets and phone jacks too! Had I known about all that in advance, I would have brought my computer and blogged from the concert. How cool would that have been?
My Geek Quotient just went from ‘mighty’ to ‘complete loser’, didn’t it?
Anywaste, I’m just wondering why our tickets cost more than my friend SleepZ’s when he was so close to the stage that he actually got splattered with Bono-sweat. Wouldn’t you think that the best tickets in the house, meaning that you can reach out and touch the performers on the stage, would sell for the highest price? I don’t get it. To help illustrate my confusion here’s a schematic of the seating plan with some helpful comments on where I sat versus SleepyZ and some other people.
As you can see I was pretty high up in the clouds. In fact, once or twice I had to ask god to sit down because he was blocking my view of the stage. He was cool about it though, even offered me a bite of his $7 hotdog.
That’s right. Not even god gets a discount at the Garden.
As a side note, for some reason my archives stopped working sometime yesterday afternoon. After long minutes of cursing like a sailor with genital warts on shore leave, I rebuilt the archives and everything appears to be back to normal. If anyone trying to look through my archives runs into a problem, please write me a note explaining what’s wrong and I’ll get right on it. I’m not saying I’ll do anything about it, but it’s always nice to hear from people other than my family.
And yes grandma, I’m wearing warm socks.
Pet Nostalgia
When I was a young boy growing up in Brooklyn I had a dog named Samantha. We called her Sam though, because that had fewer syllables and Sam, like a young child, knew almost instinctively that hearing her full name meant she was in some sort of trouble. Whenever she heard “sa-MAN-tha!” she would look up at whoever was calling her with big, sad, brown eyes and duck her head as if to say, “I don’t know what I did, but I’m so very sorry. Please don’t be angry with me, I love you.”
Damn, she was good.
Of course, calling her Sam meant that most visitors to the house would get her gender confused and think she was a he. This would upset me to no end and I would spend the better part of an hour explaining, with all the knowledgeable, grave authority that a boy of 8 could muster, that Sam was a girl-dog, not a boy-dog and only poopy-heads would think otherwise.
If necessary, I would draw pictures.
Sam was, and to my mind still is, the best dog ever. She would sit with quiet dignity, as I would dress her in a hat, scarf and sunglasses. She would never, ever bite anyone, no matter how hard her tail was pulled or how long you blew on her face. She was smart, too. She knew that when the family was eating she wasn’t allowed in the kitchen, but she also knew that if my brother and I didn’t like the food she had a very good chance of getting some. What was a dog to do?
A true doggy conundrum.
Well, she figured out that the refrigerator was next to the kitchen entrance and that it was inevitable that someone would need something from it during the meal. When that someone got what they needed and headed back to the table she would try to tiptoe in behind that person!
I can just imagine what was going through her genius doggy-mind.
Food in kitchen.
Go inside? Not allowed. Get yelled at. Bad dog.
How get food?
Humans go to fridge-thing.
Fridge-thing near me.
Sneak in!
Humans not see. No yell. Good dog.
I genius!
If it weren’t for her nails going clickity-clack on the linoleum floor she would have made it, too. Every night it was always the same, someone would get a soda from the fridge and ‘click-clack, click-clack’ Sam would try to sneak in behind him or her. It was very funny to watch her face as she got caught in the act. Each and every time, without fail, she would stop dead in her tracks with this look of complete surprise on her face. It was as if she couldn’t quite understand how we had caught her when she was being so careful and stealthy. Sometimes she would sit down right where she was, tilt her head and stare at us for a moment as if she was going over her plan in her head to find out where she went wrong.
I don’t think she ever figured it out.
We had lots of good times, Sam and I. Long walks around the block. Games of “catch me if you can” in the apartment. Days of playing with friends in the park or the street and nights in front of the TV. She didn’t care because to her, as long as my brother or me was around, it was all good.
Except the time I tried to hog-tie her like the cowboys on TV. Sorry about that Sam.
As she got older, her health deteriorated and she found it harder and harder to move around. She would spend most of the day and night trying to sleep at the foot of the front door where I think she liked the light breeze from the gap between it and floor. Sometimes, when she was deep in the throes of a nightmare and crying in her sleep, I would get up from my bed and join her on the floor.
My mother would find me there in the morning, my arm around Sam and a Flintstones pillow under my head.
Sam passed away a very long time ago. I look back on the times we had together as some of the best times of my life. I don’t believe that Sam was better than anyone else’s pet, but I can say with absolute certainty that Sam was greatest dog I’ve ever known. I’m sure a lot of you would argue that your dog/cat/bird or other animal is or was the greatest pet anyone could ever want and how dare I compare my raggedy mutt to [insert pet name here] who’s obviously superior in every way, and you’d all be right.
You just wouldn’t be right for me.
While there have been other dogs in my life since Sam, none have ever been as… well, Samantha-ish. And none have ever measured up to the impossibly high dog-standards she set in my mind. I don’t think any dog ever will.
Here’s to you Sam, the best friend a boy could have.
Powers Magical
It is late or very early and I’m very, very tired. For some reason I got it into my head that I would redesign my site while simultaneously watching football on TV. Of course I decided that it would be really cool to have a skinnable site, so I had to recreate my entire site from scratch. Aren’t I just the big ol’ schmuck?
If it doesn’t look different to you, then I did a good job.
The main difference is the skins. If you look over to your right you’ll see a new menu called amazingly enough, Geek Skins. If you click on one of the links the entire look and feel of the site will change. And let me apologize in advance for there being only two. I had bigger plans but I’m just too tired to make more right now.
Also, look at the new and improved site navigation. It took me a long time to figure out how to make the navigation work the way it does while still being skinnable, so I’m rather proud of it.
I’m l337, yo.
Anywaste, my arm is starting to spasm and I really need to get some sleep so I’m sorry for the lack of actual humor. Right now I’m so deliriously happy that I managed to make this work, I actually think I’m all that and a bag of extra-crispy chips. If you find a problem, bug or anything else wrong with the site, please let me know by writing a comment or emailing me and I’ll make a note about it for the next “What Up With Dat, Yo?” meeting.
I sleep now.
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.
Old Man At A Concert
I think I’m turning into an old man.
HoBiscuit my girlfriend and I are going to a concert next week. Not just any concert mind you, but a U2 concert. I’m not a big fan of U2 anymore, they went out of my life at about the same time as the Pet Shop Boys and OMD, but HoBiscuit my girlfriend loves them so I guess I’ll just have to suffer in silence. Most likely U2 won’t even play any of their classic stuff, like ‘Sunday, Bloody Sunday’ or ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’, so I’ll be forced to sit in my seat like a chaperone at a high school dance while HoBiscuit my girlfriend jumps around like a bunny rabbit on speed getting electro-shock therapy.
That’s a fun mental image.
I suspect we’ll be surrounded on all sides by young girls in teeny, tiny, this-is-my-naval shirts screaming, “This is my favorite song! EVER!” to each other while they hug and dance in place during the entire concert. Should Bono look their way, they’ll scream as only young girls can and begin crying tears of pure rapture.
“Did you see that? He looked right at me! Oh god, I love him!”
There’s nothing wrong with that, except I’m too old to enjoy watching these sweet young things anymore. When I was younger I used to love concerts. Especially rock concerts, where you were almost guaranteed a look at some really hot girls boobies as she flashed the stage. When I went to these concerts I usually spent my time looking at the audience and not the stage. I remember this one time when a girl decided flashing the stage wasn’t going to be good enough so she proceeded to throw her underwear up on stage.
Of course, she had to get them off first.
Anyway, I’ve reached the stage in my life where all I want to do is wrap my jacket around these girls’ shoulders and chastise them for ever leaving the house wearing such outlandish getups. I mean, do these girls’ parents know that their daughters are out and about in the big city wearing nothing more than a tube-top, a handkerchief and a pair of go-go boots?
By the way, the tube-top and handkerchief are interchangeable.
Sigh, I’m going to be the weirdo. You know, the guy who’s not actually old, but just a little too old to be at a concert? Yeah, that guy. HoBiscuit my girlfriend will fit right in. She’s still young enough to fit right in at these events and she even looks a lot younger than she is, too. She’ll probably be singing and dancing and having a great time. She’ll be mesmerized by the light show and put in a trance by the heavy base pumping out from the two-story tall speakers. She’ll add her voice to the thousands of screaming fans and she probably won’t even sit down the entire time U2’s on stage.
And me? I’ll be the guy trying to get her to put on a sweater.
I’m A Star!
Well, it looks like HoBiscuit my girlfriend and I made the final cut on Inside the Actors Studio. If anyone out there actually watched the show Sunday night, then you probably saw us in the audience shot during the Will Ferrell piece. HoBiscuit my girlfriend is in the audience close-up shot, and as they pan to the right my ugly mug comes into view. Good thing I’m almost completely hidden behind the goofy tall guy with a backwards baseball cap, or the camera might have destroyed itself in an effort to spare the rest of humanity from my horrible countenance.
No, really.
If you saw me and think you can identify me in a police lineup then keep in mind that my alibi is rock-solid. I was sleeping at home and nowhere near the grassy knoll, but if you’ll look into this little flashy thing cleverly disguised as a pen while I put on my sunglasses I’ll be happy to answer any other questions you might have.
*FLASH*
…and the monkey said, “These aren’t my pants but they sure beat Dockers!”
Hahahahaha! Heheheheh. Ha-ha. He-he. Hoooboy. Heh. Whew. Funny.
Tomorrow night is Monday Night Football but my friends and I won’t be watching because we’ll be too busy chasing chanting Yankees cheers to stop and watch football. Yeah, that’s right, even though I don’t like baseball, the Yankees are in a do or die situation and I feel it’s my duty as a lifelong New Yorker to jump on the bandwagon and root for them.
And yeah, I’ll make sure to watch my step so’s not to break my ankle when I jump on board.
Remember
9-11-01
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.