Herp, Vilus!

The year was 1992 and mass hysteria struck a great many otherwise sane individuals.  The cause of this anxiety?  The Michelangelo virus.

Supposedly, the virus was to strike on Michelangelo’s birthday — March 6 — and erase all the files on everyone’s computers.  The world as we know it would come to a horrible, screeching end.

Hysteria reigned and various, assorted virus pseudo-experts emerged and pontificated on the correct courses of action.

Of course, nothing happened.

All the silliness inspired me to post a message on one of their virus forums.  A few years later, in 1995, my story found its way into an obscure ragmag called Nuthouse.  They sent me a copy of it, which I still have, and from which I was able to resurrect this tale of woe.

Click here to read the story of "A Most Pecurial Day"...

Virgin Mary on a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

It has been said that you should never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

That could not have been demonstrated more clearly than when a woman auctioned off a partially eaten, ten-year old sandwich on eBay in November of 2004.  She claimed that it portrayed the image of the Virgin Mary.  How dumb was that?

But think about it for a moment — who was dumb here, the woman with her ridiculous claim or the people who bid for the thing?  The woman made $28,000 on the deal so perhaps she is not so dumb after all.

I love this story and decided to capture it for posterity as it was happening.

Click on this link to read about it and some of those who jumped on the bandwagon.

A Very Special Cheeseburger

Do you believe in coincidence?

Then would you believe that shortly after that Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich thing that I experienced my own vision of the Madonna on a grilled food substance containing cheese?  I know, it sounds incredible but it's true.

Click on this link to read about my very special cheeseburger.

Animated UK Photo Album

We did the time warp in the summer of 2004 and visited the UK.  We did the whole tourist thing like we had never been there before and took lots of photos.  Then we bought some software that lets you add animation and sounds to the photos.  I had a lot of fun with it.

  Click here to view this masterpiece (and turn up the volume on your computer!)

How to be Annoying

One day I happened upon an exceedingly useful document that described 101 ways to annoy people.  101 — imagine that!

It was a wonderful moment of discovery for me — sheer joy.

I feel that this is such a valuable contribution to society that I have reproduced it here for your edification and enjoyment.

Click here to learn valuable annoyance techniques.

Talking of annoying, in March 2004, I read an article about touching base with clichés, 24/7.  The Plain English Campaign had declared that the phrase "At the end of the day" is the most used, abused, overused, irritating and downright annoying cliché in the English language.  Who am I to argue?

The article then went on to mention some runners up.  As I read them, out of context to their normal usage, the disembodied phrases seemed to me to take on a somewhat poetic air — almost (but not quite) a haiku-like quality.  I wondered, as one would under the circumstances,  if it would be possible to write haiku verses consisting entirely of clichés.

This idea held an enormous appeal to me and, thusly inspired, I made an attempt at creating such poetry and named it Clichéku.  I believe this to be a new art form — Google at least could not find anything like it.

Click here to read my Clichéku.

If you would like to contribute to this effort, please e-mail me your stuff.  If my vast editorial staff likes it, I will add it to the page and credit you as the author.

Living Will

Early 2005 saw the end of a big legal battle concerning a woman who doctors said was in a persistent vegetative state.  Her husband wanted to bump her off but her parents wanted to keep her alive.  No one knows what the woman herself would have wanted.

This was not an isolated incident; there have been other similar but less known cases.  However, everyone was talking about this one and it did raise folks' awareness of the need to make a living will.

Click here to read the conversation I had with Fred Bloggs on the subject.

Bloody Verizon

Verizon is my Internet service provider and one fine day they decided to try to do something to stem the flow of junk e-mail.  So far, so good.  Unfortunately, the brainiacs at Verizon thought that the best way to do this was to block all e-mail that originated from outside the USA!

Brilliant!  Absolutely bloody brilliant!

We didn't know about it at first because Verizon failed to inform us of their ingenious solution.  The truth dawned on us gradually as we talked to people who had sent us e-mail that we never received.  When we researched it we found that many others were going through the same thing.

What ensued was a lengthy and painful discourse with mindless bureaucratic cretins who would spew uneducated, idiotic inanities like "This is for your own good!" and "Why would anyone want to receive e-mail from other countries?"  It took many weeks before this problem was resolved and I became so frustrated, angry and stressed out by these morons that I was moved to poetry.  This is my poem, I call it Bloody Verizon:

Bloody Verizon is no bloody good,
I'd bloody dump them if I bloody could.

No bloody e-mail 'cept bloody U.S.,
Bloody Verizon IS bloody U/S.

The bloody e-mail is so bloody broke
And the bloody help desk's a bloody joke.

The bloody tech guys as much bloody use
As bloody great boobs on a bloody goose.

I'd bloody dump them if I bloody could,
Bloody Verizon is no bloody good.

Sigma

Craig used to be in a band called Sigma and we went to see them play a gig at the Bomb Shelter.  I took some photos and created a web page to record the event for posterity.  Then the band split up and went their separate ways, which I think is a great shame because they had a great deal of talent between them, and I removed the page.

Still, it was a memory, a moment in time captured forever and I decided to resurrect the page.  Click here to see Sigma at the Bomb Shelter.

Knickers on the Line

I don't know what it was — something in the air, perhaps — but I had knickers on my mind this day.

Click here to read "Knickers on the Line".

The Gene Pool Could Use A Little Chlorine.

For no apparent good reason we set the clocks forward an hour in the spring and set them an hour backwards in the fall.  The time to do this is always 2:00 am.  Who decided that?  I certainly was not consulted on this matter.  It is such a pain having to get up at that time just to alter the clocks.

So I was very pleased when someone gave me a smart clock.  It is a very nice clock and knows when to spring forward and when to fall back again because it is always on the same days every year.  Saves me a whole lot of work.

Or at least it did until Dubya came up with his brilliant energy plan, which entails adjusting the clocks earlier in the spring and later in the fall.  Now my smart clock has become a dumb clock.

The clock is my alarm clock and does not know anything about Dubya's great plan and continues to reset itself twice a year on the wrong days and I have to change the time.  Sometimes I don't realize that clock has done that and get up an hour early or an hour late. Then when the new time change kicks in, I have to reset it again manually.  I went from no clock time changes to four clock time changes per year!

Thanks a lot Dubya.  I guess my clock is now as smart as he is.

Murphy's Laws and Other Words of Wisdom

Sometime in 1995 I released a program onto the unsuspecting world.  It was called Murphy's Laws and Other Words of Wisdom.  It offered enlightenment about that which we call reality by displaying one or more thoughts for the day.

These were not your namby-pamby inspirational type thoughts that you see everywhere but the practical, no-nonsense, reality based wisdom like the ones you can see on my main page.

This software was very popular.  I think one reason for that is because I offered it free, gratis and for nothing.  The program was featured in magazines and could be found on many CD's and websites.  Many people from all around the globe would send me their own original words of wisdom and I compiled a database of about 3,000 truisms.

I discontinued it in 1999 because of demands of work.  It was the last great hurrah for computer consultants in this country; the Y2K fiasco and the dot.com boom were both going strong, there was more work than we could handle and the rates were high.  Murphy had to take a back seat. (Unfortunately, we did not know that the bubble was about to burst in the spring of 2001. Glad I made the money when I did so that I could stay afloat in the bad times.)

However, I still have the database and I may rewrite the software and make it available again one day.

The thing that interests me about that episode is the faux history I wrote about Murphy.  It was copied by so many other people (without permission, I might add).  There were a lot of Murphy clones but there were also other sites that used the text to promote things like courses in law. Sometimes they would use the whole thing and sometimes they would use part of it to suit their needs.  Even to this day, you can still find it on many websites.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so I will take that as a compliment.  However, I wish to make it known that I wrote those words and all the others are just plagiarizing me.  Here is the original text that has proved to be so popular:

Welcome to Murphy's Laws and Other Words of Wisdom. It was Murphy who first observed that if anything can possibly go wrong, it will go wrong.

Deceptive in its simplicity, this profound insight marked a turning point in our understanding of why things happen the way they do. Indelibly etching itself into the human psyche, this revelation ensured that never again would we look at the world in quite the same way.

Not content to rest on his laurels, Murphy went on to expand on his theory and formulate the now famous laws that bear his name. Truly one of the great thinkers of our time, Murphy somehow managed to unravel the very fabric of the cosmos itself and lay bare the relentless perversity with which it is woven.

“If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.” he said.

It was a defining moment in history and Murphy’s accomplishments provided the foundation for a host of others who would follow in his giant footsteps. There will only ever be one Murphy but his successors have, nonetheless, made significant contributions to his work.

Murphy's Laws and Other Words of Wisdom is the embodiment of the collective consciousness of these intellects — a compilation of thousands of laws, corollaries, axioms, rules, maxims and other truisms.