Following The Trend

• by GeekMan • In Home Ownership •   2

Like everyone else out there, HoBiscuit and I are buying a home.

Now, before you rush to congratulate us, let me reiterate to you non New Yorkers just what it means to be purchasing a ‘home’ in NYC. A home in NY is not what you might be used to, especially since NYC prices are so outrageous that rats have been known to migrate to New Jersey when their families got too large to fit in their rent controlled, two-tin-can rat’s nest. The truly poor rats actually move to Staten Island!

Oh, the horror.

But wait, I see you shaking your heads and chuckling to yourselves as you say, “That GeekMan, he’s so silly. I know it can’t possibly be as bad as he says it is. I mean, I know NY is expensive, but come on! It can’t be as bad as all that, now can it?”

Hell yes, it can.

For those of you who might not live in the Big Rotten Apple let me explain in a little more detail why buying a home in NY is completely different than buying a home anywhere else in the country. You see, when anyone else in the US says that they are ‘buying a home’ they mean that they are buying something with rooms and closets and possibly even stairs. If they’re real lucky, they even have some land with grass and trees on it, and all for a reasonable price. But in NY when someone says they are ‘buying a home’ it should be translated as the following;

Hello. I am an idiot New Yorker who is willing to live in a space that in any other city in the United States would hardly qualify as a walk-in closet. The apartment I am currently in the process of purchasing is a mere 300 square feet, including the kitchen and bathroom, and the down payment alone will likely cost me more than the total cost of your current residence. I will have one closet into which I can place three articles of clothing, steam heat that I cannot control, two windows (one of which will be blocked by the fire escape and the other by an air conditioner) and the tranquil sounds of fire engines and gunshots to lull me to sleep. Please express your shock and awe at my stupidity by taking this straw, sticking it into my eye and sucking the life out of me. Thankyouverymuch.

Ah, the joys of being a homeowner.

A Sad, Sad Day

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News, Experiments •   10

Today is my Blog’s anniversary.

Having a web site for as long as I have (three years with this site and seven years altogether) I’ve learned a few things about Blogging that I thought might be nice to share with those of you who are not, like me, massively popular and worshiped as gods. So, without further ado, here’s a list of the Top Ten Things You Can Do To Become A Massively Popular And Universally Loved Web Site Writer.

Top Ten Things You Can Do To Become
A Massively Popular And Universally Loved Web Site Writer
  1. Publicly insult a popular blogger who has a short fuse.
  2. Write about your sex life. Involve barnyard animals.
  3. Express an unpopular opinion on a hot political issue then back it up with fake statistics and rambling, irrational & emotional diatribes.
  4. Write about your favorite sexual positions. Involve homemade appliances.
  5. Post an angry and self righteous farewell post, wait two weeks and then return by saying you no longer care what other people think because you’re now writing only for yourself.
  6. Write about your sexual fantasies. Involve foodstuffs.
  7. Blackmail a famous Blogger for linky-love by PhotoShopping images of them dancing with the Star Wars Kid.
  8. Write about your sexually deviant tendencies. Involve leather and pony paraphernalia.
  9. Post pictures of your boobies. If you do not have boobies, post pictures of Michele’s boobies. Don’t worry; everyone’s seen them so I’m sure she won’t mind.
  10. Write about your sudden discovery and acceptance of your homosexuality. Involve disappointed family members.

There. If you do any three of these ten things you will soon be among the Blogging elite, eating caviar on saltines and sipping Champaign in a hot tub with all the other famous A-List Bloggers. Should you do all ten things then I dare say you might become a Blogging god, able to write anything and still garner 50 to 100 comments and earn over $500 a day in ad revenue and PayPal donations from your adoring fans.

Not to mention all the casual sex from your fanboys/fangirls.

One last note on becoming a popular Blogger. The kiss of death for any Blog is the writer’s insistence on trying to be funny. Never, ever attempt to humor your readership for you will fail miserably and very soon you will find yourself celebrating your Blogiversaries all alone without a single visitor to wish you a happy anniversary. Then you will spend an hour coming up with a stupid list of silly things no one will ever find humorous in the vain and ultimately futile attempt to gain even a single visitor to your pathetic and useless site.

Oh god, I’m so lonely…

Summer Camp II

• by GeekMan • In Childhood Memories •   5

“Heads up GeekMan, here comes Big Julie.”

Art, my best friend at camp, said this quite calmly as we sat on the bleachers by the baseball field pulling the legs off of daddy long leg spiders to pass the time between lunch and dinner. Usually such a pronouncement would have been met by my indifferent nonchalance, but earlier in the day I had been informed that Big Julie seemed to want to ‘talk’ to me and that caused me to raise my head in alarm and begin calculating the success probabilities of hiding vs. fleeing vs. suddenly developing psychic powers and destroying Big Julie in a ball of fire. Seeing how close she was to the bleachers, I quickly rejected the first two plans of action and desperately searched for a means of implementing the third.

Needless to say, I was unsuccessful.
Continue reading →

Tooting My Own Horn

• by GeekMan • In Experiments •   1

I am still funny.

Some people out there seem to doubt my ability to be funny anymore so, in order to prove them wrong, I’m going to attempt the infamous, and highly dangerous, Double-Warznack maneuver. As we all know, only two people have ever successfully completed the DW without dying in the attempt, but for my readership, I will do anything to make them laugh. So, without further ado, I will now attempt to fart to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” while being repeatedly hit on the head with a frying pan by twelve angry midgets.

…

Wait. That was no fart…

Sad Day

• by GeekMan • In Contests •   6

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.

A Short Explanation Of My Absence

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   5

I shall attempt to be brief.

There I was, doing my best to write something witty and comment worthy on my silly website, when what did I get for my troubles but a mid-afternoon phone call from a frantic client who needed me to fly out to New Orleans right now to save their buttinsky’s. So, after this worthy and exceptionally wealthy client agreed to throw substantially large sums of money at me to appease my monetary compensational needs, I packed an overnight bag, grabbed my computers and headed to the airport. When I landed I was met by a man holding a sign with my name on it, spelled incorrectly, of course, and he drove me to the hotel I would be spending the night in and, once checked in to said hotel, I went in search of my frantic and deep pocketed client.

Yada, yada, yada… I saved the day.

Being groveled to in public has never been my favorite means of receiving payment for services rendered, preferring as I do large sacks of coinage with immense green ‘$’ symbols emblazoned upon them, so whilst my afore-mentioned clients of largess were upon their knees in supplication to my Superman-like day saving skills, I hastily made my escape. I then went through the whole travelogue exercise I related to you above, but in reverse you understand, and have so come home yet again.

And home is now where I seem to be.

Which is all to say, in an abbreviated form, that I was unable to write yesterday not because of my own laziness, which you understand is not in question here for I am truly one of the worlds’ most lackadaisical and slovenly sloth-like lazy people, having once been so lacking in verve and, for lack of a better term, ‘gumption’, that I refused to move out of the way of a speeding automobile because doing so would be far too much like work, which will bring to mind once again that it was not my laziness that caused me to miss a day of writing, but my monetary need to be someplace else.

In other words; I didn’t write because I was busy. So bite me.
Continue reading →

Summer Camp I

• by GeekMan • In Childhood Memories •   1

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.
Continue reading →

The Re-Rising

• by GeekMan • In Childhood Memories, Experiments, PhotoBloggery •   7

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.
Continue reading →

The Minions Write To Win Contest

• by GeekMan • In Contests •   4

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!
Continue reading →

Catch Up

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   4

I’m so damn tired.

Some of you may have been wondering where I’ve been these last few weeks. Some of you have even sent me email to congratulate me for finally realizing how unfunny I am and deciding to let the world’s pain end by allowing this pathetic excuse for a vanity website die. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint all of you, but this site isn’t dead yet.

I’m not dead either, although I do feel tired enough to be one of the walking dead.

Why am I damn tired? Maybe because I haven’t slept in, oh… three months, and I’ve barely even seen HoBiscuit since our wedding in January? But other than lack of sleep, money, sweet lovin’ and sanity, I’m just ducky, thankyouverymuch. Now, a lot of you people out there have expressed interest in my married life, some even going so far as to email me to ask, and I’m always happy to tell those people who ask how wonderful married life is and how happy I am to be married to such a beautiful and amazingly perfect woman like HoBiscuit.

And when she leaves the room I tell them the truth.

What’s the truth? The truth is that I don’t know how married life is because I haven’t seen my wife for longer than 72 hours in a row before I’ve had to get back on an airplane to fly to yet another city for yet another job. In fact, we haven’t even had a honeymoon, and I don’t believe we’ll have one until our one year anniversary because of all the work that I’ve been getting. I don’t normally talk about work here, but even though having work is a VERY GOOD THING for a freelancer, it’s still damn tiring to work non-stop for three months without weekends or days off.

Which brings me back to you.

Over the last two months I’ve been trying to update here as often as time allowed, and I thank all of you for bearing with the sporadic updates and horrendously unfunny posts during this time, but I’m happy to say that your suffering is almost at an end. In fact, I should be back to my regular schedule in just a couple of weeks, and to kick off my grand return to comedic normality I think I might have another contest to celebrate. The rules will be supplied at the end of this week and the winner will receive a prize so coveted and wondrous that people usually pay me huge sums of cash-moolah to provide it to them. Huh? No, no, no! Not that you sicko! I told you I don’t do that anymore. Not since the whole ‘green rash’ incident, I don’t.

How much? Hmmm… we’ll talk later. Privately.

Anywaste, what I’m talking about here is a website designed by yours truly. Something truly spunktacular and groovy made just for you. I’ll tell you all about the contest later this week, but for now I need to get ready for my next work related aneurism, which will be inflicted upon me this Saturday by the double whammy of Solonor and The House of Mouse. Yeah that’s right; I’m going back down to Orlando for some Bad Ass.

What?! I’m talking about coffee you freak, not Solonor!