Sad Day

I’ll never be an A-Lister.

My writing contest, which I thought had some pretty cool prizes up for grabs, has yielded a whopping THREE entries. And since I just happen to be giving away not one, not two, but three prizes, I guess I don’t really need to go through the whole agonizing task of reading through thousands of entries to narrow my choices to the top three and then fend off a slew of angry emails from all the jilted hopefuls.

In a strange way that could almost be considered a plus.

Anywaste, to show my three loyal minions just how benevolent and generous I am I’m going to forego the whole first, second, third prize thing, and simply offer each of them their choice of which of the three prizes they want. Each of them can choose any of the three they want with no penalties should two, or even three of them want the same thing. So they can all choose to have an item from the TMG store, or two can get something from their Amazon wishlist, or they can all get different things.

Aren’t I a great guy?

You may be asking yourself, who are these lucky SOBs? Well, wonder no more for I shall tell you. They are;

  • Cableman for “Bird World”
  • Michelle S. (no website given) for “A Living Nightmare in Periwinkle”
  • and, Solonor for “Quack Another Day”

Congratulations winners! You have just proven that you have no lives.

Summer Camp I

Heidi was my girl.

Well, she wasn’t really my girl, especially since she was 18 and I was only 11, but still, she thought I was cute and didn’t flee my presence like all the other girls in camp. Plus, she was the counselor for Girls Bunk 5 which was the camps’ group of 15 year old girls, all of whom had boobies, so when I visited her I might get lucky and see some cute girl in her bra. However, contrary to popular camp lore, I never once witnessed one of the infamous lingerie pillow fights all the boys in camp just knew the girls had every night. I could only conclude they were controlling their base nature until I left for fear of warping my young and impressionable mind.

Damn their good intentions.
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The Re-Rising

I’m back from the dead… again.

And, as a measure of atonement for my disappearance these last few weeks, I am willing to humiliate myself to a degree not reached since the time I thought it would be cool to show up to the school dance wearing super-tight, black pleather pants, a shredded white t-shirt, a red jacket with a thousand zippers in it and one shiny, glitter covered glove. I won’t tell you any more about that night, at least not yet, so let’s just leave it alone by saying teenage girls are the cruelest, meanest and most spiteful creatures on the planet.

Even today I still want to cry when I think about it.

So, enough strolling down the land-mine infested path I call memory lane, let’s get back to my humiliation of the day. I’ve decided to share with you another picture of my youth, but unlike most of the other pictures I’ve shown you, this one is from my high school years and not from a time I could be considered ‘cute’ or ‘innocent’. I cannot blame my mode of dress on my mother or my hairstyle on some farfetched modeling school disaster.

No, for this picture I can only blame myself.
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The Minions Write To Win Contest

It’s contest time!

At about this time last year I held a fun little contest where I asked you, my loyal minions, to send me your wackiest, weirdest, wildest and funniest sentences. Choosing the ten sentences that I deemed the best of the bunch, I did my best to use them in a logical and meaningful way while writing a funny short story. I thought it would be simple. I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be easy.

It was not.

Incorporating ten disparate sentences supplied by weirdo’s like my crazy readership was a whole lot harder than I originally thought it would be. In fact, it was so hard that I don’t think I ever want to do it again. Well, at least not until I know I have a whole week free to write it so I can take my time and make it a little more coherent…

Wait. What the hell am I saying?! I’ve got to stop smoking the Crack.

Anywaste, this time around I think I’ve come up with a fun little twist on that old contest that just might interest some people out there. Not only will it be immensely more fun for me, it will also be exponentially less stressful and thus much simpler and easier, which will make me happy. And isn’t my happiness all that really matters to you?

Good minion. Have a cookie.

This time things will be different because I won’t be doing all the hard work. You see, for this contest I’ll be supplying the sentences and you’ll be supplying the story. In fact, just because I’m a lazy S.O.B., I’ll only give you the very first and the very last sentence of the story so you can be as creative as you want.

Plus, there are prizes for the winners!

So, since I can see some of you want me to stop with all my jabbering and get right to the whole contest thing, let me lay down The Rules.

The Rules
  1. Entry Application
    Your entry must be emailed to: geekman (little ‘at’ symbol) themightygeek (period) com. The email must have the subject line, “Minions Write To Win Contest” and must contain the following information in the body with each piece of info on a separate line;

    Your name and/or alias
    Your email address where you can be reached
    Your website URL (if you have a website)
    And the title of your story

    All stories must be sent as an attached Word file, or at the very least as an attached plain-text file. No WordPerfect files, HTML documents, Adobe PDFs, scanned images of typewritten pages, snail-mailed stone tablets, or any other attachment aside from Word or plain-text will be accepted. Each story must be a minimum of 500 words. There is no maximum word count.

  2. No Strong Curse Words
    This is a PG-13 site. I don’t use any words stronger than what you might hear on an American TV soap opera and you shouldn’t need to either. Entries with strong curse words will not be considered for this contest, but I will take great joy in printing them out and marking each curse word and/or phrase with a fat, red pen and then mailing the printout to your mother. With a bar of soap.
  3. No Entry Limitation
    You may enter this contest as many times as you like, but each entry must be sent in a separate email.
  4. I Own It
    Once submitted, all entries become the property of The Mighty Geek. The Mighty Geek reserves the right to use, or to not use, your entry for any reason whatsoever. The Mighty Geek also reserves the right to publish any and all entries in any format and at any time.
  5. Deadline
    All entries must be received by 11pm EST, Monday May 10th, 2004.
  6. Judging
    The three ‘winners’ will be picked by The Mighty Geek on using purely arbitrary methods of divination possibly including a ouija board, some soggy tea leaves, his own judgment, and/or the psychic hotline. These three ‘winners’ will then be publicly judged using a method to be determined by The Mighty Geek at a future date, which will most likely be a cheesy online poll. There will then be three prizes awarded.
  7. Prizes
    There will be three separate prizes;

    • Any single item from the TMG store chosen by the prize winner.
    • A single item from the winners Amazon wishlist worth $25 USD or less.
    • A PERSONAL website designed, or an existing PERSONAL website redesigned, for the winner by The Mighty Geek.

    The entry dubbed the best by the public judging will choose one of the three prizes. The second place winner will then choose from the two remaining prizes, and the third place winner will receive the castoff leftovers, because let’s be honest here, third place is just a polite way of saying that you’re the loser of the winners. The website prize is subject to the following qualifications;

    • Winner will receive two to three jpeg images of design concepts for the website which will be created by The Mighty Geek.
    • The winner will choose one design of the three.
    • Using only HTML and CSS, The Mighty Geek will create a website template for the winner.
      The Mighty Geek will not do any back-end programming, flash creation, database implementation, troubleshooting or anything else other than design a website. The Mighty Geek is not responsible, nor can be held accountable, for any damages, losses, snafus, maladies, data corruption or harm that may be incurred to the winner due in whole or in part to the design supplied by The Mighty Geek.

    Basically, I’ll design and code a really nice site for you and give it to you free of charge, but I won’t be responsible if something goes wrong when you’re uploading it to your server. If you use Movable Type for a Blog then I might help set that up with the new design I give you, but if something goes haywire don’t blame me. I’m a designer, not a code monkey.

For those who couldn’t make it through all that, let me sum up;

If you send me an email by May 10th with your story of more than 500 words that’s written in Word and containing the two sentences below, you could win one of three fabulous prizes. Should you lose, you can’t blame me. If you win and don’t like your prize, you can’t blame me. If your prize causes you problems of any kind and you want to beat the heck out of someone or sue them until even their children’s, children’s, children’s paychecks are being direct-deposited into your bank account, you can’t come after me.

Basically, write a story, win a prize and don’t blame me.

Got it? Good. Because now’s the time for what you’ve been waiting for; The Minions Write To Win contest is about to begin. Below are the two sentences that MUST be used in the story you submit. The first sentence below MUST be the very first sentence of your story, and the second sentence MUST be the last sentence of your story. Remember, this is supposed to be fun, so try to enjoy yourself. OK, everyone ready? Great! Here we go!
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St. Geekwhere

“Doctor, you have to come quickly, there’s a patient in dire need of medical attention!”

“Pardon me for a moment Mr. Davidson while I deal with this interruption.”

[Doctor turns from his patient to face Intern]

“You’re a first year intern, right?”

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but yes, I am.”

“Right. So intern, tell me what’s wrong with this patient you’re so worried about.”

“I don’t really know, doctor. He was wheeled in on a hand-truck by his wife.”

“Wait. He was admitted on a hand-truck?”

“Yes, doctor. By his wife.”

“That’s new. Must be a clever woman. Well, go on.”
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An Army Of Dumb

I blame my father.

You see, when a young boy asks his father what a soldier is, he takes his father’s words as gospel. He doesn’t understand how his father might see his questioning as a means to alleviate his boring afternoon of housebound babysitting. The boy wouldn’t see the gleam of mischief in his father’s eye as anything other than eagerness to answer his question. He wouldn’t even begin to comprehend the cruelty of his father’s seemingly innocent inquiry as to whether the boy’s younger brother might also like to know.

The two boys aren’t stupid, they’re just naïve.

And when the father of these two impressionable children decided that mere words might not be enough, that perhaps they would better understand what it meant to be a soldier if they were to dress up like real army men, these two angelic children might simply laugh and exclaim at what a wonderful idea that was.

And then the horror would begin.

The two boys were dressed helmets, belts, pouches and canteens. When they told their father that they wanted to have medals like a real soldier they were given “purple hearts” made from red Valentine’s Day stickers. Then they were taught the proper way to salute by their supposedly loving father. The very same father who, holding back what at the time seemed to the young boys to be tears of joy, ran to the bedroom to grab his camera and take a picture of “his little soldiers” for posterity’s sake.

Sigh; at least I’m not the one who looks like Mini-Benny Hill.
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Passover Geek Style

Aunt Vodka’s grandson is reading the four questions.

Grandson:
“Why is this night different from all other nights?”

Granddaughter:
“I know! I know! It’s different because grandma Vodka isn’t drunk yet!”

Uncle Cigar:
“Granddaughter! That’s not nice. You should apologize to your grandmother right now.”

Granddaughter:
“You’re right, grandpa. I’m sorry you’re not drunk, grandma Vodka.”

Aunt Vodka:
“Not nearly as sorry as I am.”

Many spit takes and coughing fits ensued.

One Day

One day I will find time.

One day I will find time hidden away in the darkest corner under my bed like an old action figure I used to love only to discard when it lost its kung-fu grip hands in an unfortunate sky-diving incident. One day time will be there when I need it and not cavorting like a carefree bachelor with space at the continuum dance party while I sit at home alone wondering if time will ever call. One day I will find time and, like old friends meeting by accident at the bus station, we will embrace and talk of time’s past over a cup of hot chocolate. One day time will look upon me from across the room and smile at me and grant me enough of itself to do everything that must be done. One day I will find time and time will let me work, play, write, read, eat, sleep and single-handedly save the world from mutant alien llamas without disappearing when I need time most like morning mist on a warm summer’s day. One day I will keep time in my pocket like spare change and doll it out judiciously in order to do that which I so dearly love to do. One day time will allow me a tiny portion of itself so that I may write more than a stupid tribute to time I wish I had but do not.

One day, but not today.

Wandering Fool

Or; The GeekMan Cometh.

I’m headed down to Orlando Florida this Sunday where I will hopefully have time to once again cause great destruction and mayhem throughout the city with my Blogging cohort Solonor The Moderately Dangerous Man-Ferret.

He’s got a utility belt and everything.

So, should you live in or near the home of a certain anal retentive mouse with a high-pitched voice, you are cordially invited to have dinner with the Geek and the… uh, Solonor which should make for an entertaining evening since Solonor truly does take after his name. And, as everyone knows, Solonor is Lilliputian for “Not of the Sun” which of course is the exact wording used by Nostradingus to describe Satan.

Anywaste, I’ll be back Wednesday. If Solonor doesn’t kill me, that is.

Going Post-Nasal

I have post-nasal drip.

Do you know what that is? Post-nasal drip is when snot drips down your throat due to leakage from the back of your nose. I know what you’re thinking, but get past the disgust factor and you know what? You’ve got an open phlegm-faucet in your throat that’s constantly pouring a fresh supply of wannabe-snot down your breathing and eating tubes.

Basically, you’re constantly eating your own snot.

Do you know how fricking annoying it is to be constantly eating your own snot? It’s not as if I enjoy it, you know. Snot is not at the top of my list of favorite foods, it doesn’t even make the top 100. I mean, when’s the last time you heard of anyone entering a fast food restaurant and saying, “I’ll have the Big Phlegm Happy Meal with a side order of Coagulated Blood-fries and a coke, please. Oh, and that order’s to go.”

Mmm-mmmm. Now that’s good eating.

Even worse than eating it though, is feeling it constantly dripping down my throat. It both tickles and repulses me every time I swallow. I find myself constantly clearing my throat in the hopes of dislodging the mucus, but no matter how obnoxiously I make the “Heh-HEGH!” noise, nothing ever comes up.

And if you think that’s bad, it’s even worse at night.

That’s because when I go to bed the slow drip becomes a fricking flood. I find myself swallowing twice as much as normal for fear of drowning on my own snot while I’m asleep. Then, just when I think I might have the whole breath/swallow ratio figured out well enough to actually sleep, the stupid snot begins drying out in my throat! That makes even breathing painful plus I start coughing as if I had swallowed a duck with bronchitis! Right now I’m so frustrated with my nasal passages that I hate them. In fact, I hate every thing today. I hate my nose, I hate tissues with aloe, I hate daytime TV, I hate people, I hate you, I hate life, but most of all I hate, HATE, HATE post-nasal drip!

Aaargh! I’m out of fricking tissues again! Damn you, poetic irony!