I lost a contest!

So a few months ago, my mom called me and said, “Hey, I was listening to NPR and they announced that they’re having a fiction writing contest! You should enter that! Because you’re a writer!”

I went online and looked it up. There was actually an interesting premise to the contest; every story had to be under 600 words and begin with the same sentence.

“The nurse left work at 5 o’clock.”

So against my better judgment, I entered.

I didn’t win. I didn’t even get a mention. Luckily, I’m not bitter about it.

Here’s a little description of the contest and the winning entry is at the bottom. Click here.

Anyway, without any (additional) further ado, here is my losing entry, entitled, “I am lazy and rather than write something new, I can post this story I already wrote and pass it off as new and nobody will be any wiser for it!”

The nurse left work at 5 o’clock. Every day, 5 o’clock. On the nose.

For nearly a year, I had watched her, studied her every move. Well, every move as it related to her automobile usage, anyway.

I arrived at the hospital garage a little after nine am. I put my hand on the hood. Still warm. I had just under eight hours.

I pulled the coat hanger out of my duffel bag. After spending a few minutes untwisting it and straightening it out, I moved it around, up and down, along the window, realizing too late that I had no idea how to pick a car door lock.

Seeing as how I had been planning this operation for nearly 12 months, it’s sorta unforgivable that I hadn’t thought of that.

Deciding to improvise, I threw a rock through the window, clearing my throat in a vain attempt to mask the sound of glass breaking.

Immediately, the car alarm started shrieking its deafening sound. One more thing I hadn’t counted on.

As I slid into the debris-covered driver’s seat, I deftly reached under the steering column for the familiar wires. This was one part of the job that I actually had prepared for.

Just like in the internet videos that I had watched at the library, the engine roared to life. Well, I assumed it roared, because I couldn’t actually hear anything but the siren and the ringing in my ears that it had created.

If I had been hoping to drive off, unnoticed, in a vehicle with a broken window and the car alarm going off, I sure had another thing coming.

Though many of the doctors, nurses and various support staff felt free to brazenly stare and point at me as I exited the hospital grounds, luckily, none of them seemed to think it was worth informing the police or confronting me about it.

As I am no fan of confrontation or authority figures, I was pleased with this bit of luck.

After twenty minutes on the freeway, I reached my destination, thankful that it hadn’t snowed today.

As I pulled into the driveway, I was delighted to see that, unlike last year, not only was there no huge line, my car was the only one at the window.

“I’d like one free junior taco, please!” I said, triumphantly.

“Huh?” replied the dimwitted, teenage employee.

“My free junior taco.” My request was met with a blank, pimply stare.

“That’ll be 85 cents,” he replied.

“No, it won’t. It’ll be free. Every year, you have a giveaway to mark the anniversary of the founding of your restaurant. One free junior taco, given out only at the drive thru and apparently not to anybody going through the drive thru on a bike, as I learned last year.”

“Sir, that promotion was 3 days ago.”

As I drove off, defeated, I realized that this free junior taco (the one I never even gotten) had cost me much more than its 85 cent retail value. It had cost me my job, my friends and the respect of my peers in the medieval recreation society. Worst of all, it had nearly cost me my sanity.

But I had a dream and I went for it. It didn’t work out, but at least I took a shot. That’s a lot more than most people can say.

Now it was time to get on with my life and start being responsible.

So I pushed the car into the river and faked my own death.

Li’l Squirt, but BIG pimpin’!

Well, he’s out of the bear suit and back on the street, pimpin’ hos and clockin’ a grip like his name was Dolemite!

Don’t forget to visit supercooldudeland.com for all your cartoon needs!*

* refers only to cartoon needs involving illustrated versions of me in crazy costumes or anamorphic boxes of artificially flavored cheesestuffs who help out burgers.

My boss is a dick

Right now, the astute reader is asking him or herself the question, “Wait a minute, this jobless loser doesn’t have a boss, what gives?”

You’re right, I don’t have a boss. I’m self-employed,  asshole.

Anyway, in honor of Geocities closing down this month, I thought I would re-print a few things I wrote early on in my career. Soon my first website will be gone forever, so check it out while you can! I swear to god that is my actual first webpage and not a fake first webpage I made as a goof.

This is a piece in the form of a fake ‘Letter to the Editor’-style.

My Boss Is A Dick – By Nelson Cummingham

Jerry –excuse me– “Mr. Reynolds”, had no right taking away my instant messenger like that.  I don’t care if it is official company policy that no instant messaging software of any sort is to be installed on office computers, because the fact is, everyone does it!  I was about to point this out to Mr. High and Mighty himself, but figured it wouldn’t help my popularity if I were to ruin it for everyone else.  And popularity never hurts when you’re engaged in a lengthy appeals process.  Bring up all the character witnesses you want, Jerry!  After tomorrow morning, they’ll all be singing my praises; thanks to the box of Krispy Kreme donuts I’ll be donating to the break room!  The appeals board is going to see that I’m a hardworking (not to mention POPULAR) employee who deserves the chance to take a few minutes out of every hour to talk to his buddies back east.  I’ve been with Global Systems for almost 11 months and I’ve spent the better part of a year and a half working in the technical support industry as a whole and I’ve never heard of a company that didn’t let its employees use instant messenger!  If they want to keep me around and reap the fruits of my experience and know-how, they’ll have no choice but to keep me happy and meet my REASONABLE demands.

Please Don’t Call Me A ‘Dick’ – By Jerry Reynolds

First of all, there’s no need to resort to childish name-calling over a simple matter like this.  If Nelson has a problem with my administrative decisions, he should voice his concerns with me directly.  Judging by some of the misinformation in his editorial, this issue could be resolved quickly if he would simply listen to my side of the argument.  I made it clear from the beginning that my problem was never with his installation and use of the instant messenger software.  Rather, I took the actions necessary because after several warnings, Mr. Cunningham continued to engage in conduct inappropriate for an office environment.  Namely, posing online as a minor to lure underage girls into meeting him for sexual intercourse.  Before taking the steps I did, I offered him the option of simply changing his screen name from “ClitNibbler69” to something more restrained, but Mr. Cunningham declined, instead opting to take his complaints to the appeals board.  For the record, no such board currently exists.  In addition to his previously mentioned transgressions, Mr. Cunningham insisted on using the company message board to relate the explicit details of his encounters with these young women.  He even accompanied several postings with full color pictures, the contents of which can only be deemed as ‘child pornography’.  Let me take this time to reiterate that if Mr. Cunningham agrees to cease his illegal activity on company time using company resources, I will gladly apologize and personally re-install his instant messaging software myself.  I am, of course, open to comments and criticism by any other members of the staff over my handling of this matter, and as always, my door is open to you all.

//

Tales from PBS

“Hmm, I have this job as a producer on a kids show called “Barney & Friends” that’s about a purple dinosaur, but I’m not really happy. I don’t want to quit, because then that would prevent me from getting unemployment, but if I were to somehow get fired… Oh wait, I’ve got it!”

iPhone MMS Penis Pictures Crash Servers

(San Antonio, TX) – Mere hours after it was launched, the eagerly awaited MMS (multi-media messaging) feature for Apple’s hugely popular iPhone was disabled, as AT&T’s data servers proved incapable of coping with the massive influx of wiener pic traffic.

“Within the first few minutes, our network was flooded with nearly 3.4 million MMS messages and the early data shows that almost 98% of those were pictures of our male customers’ penises,” stated Ronald MacArthur, head of data traffic for the company.

In the weeks and days up until the feature was rolled out, AT&T had been working around the clock to make improvements to its network, in order to deal with the expected spike in customers using the service. Unfortunately, their efforts appear to have been woefully inadequate.

“I guess we just weren’t prepared for how many guys would want to send other people a picture of their ding dong,” lamented MacArthur.

An informal poll of passers-by on a crowded street downtown revealed that AT&T had vastly underestimated the appeal.

“Oh, hells yeah I’m gonna send out pictures of my dick! You can do that now??” remarked a well-dressed businessman.

“I have Verizon, but really the only thing that’s been preventing me from getting an iPhone is the fact that I can’t trick my buddies into seeing a picture of my wang by saying something like, ‘Oh hey, you gotta see what this chick is wearing!’ and then sending them a picture of my boner under the pretense that it’s some slut in a miniskirt or something like that. I’m definitely gonna get one now. Especially with them adding Microsoft Exchange support. Oh and the dick pictures too,” said another man in his early 30’s who declined to give us his name, lest he tip off his friends to his planned shenanigans.

“Are you kidding? I sent like twenty already!” Enthused another young man who was actually in the process of taking yet another picture of his genitals to send out from his iPhone as we interviewed him, apparently unaware that the service had been disabled.

Female iPhone users seemed less enthusiastic about the feature. IT professional, Melanie Browning, complained that she had already received several unwelcome pictures from her male friends and co-workers.

“It’s idiotic. At this point, I realize that it’s not going to be a picture of a cute puppie. I’m not that stupid. Hold on a second, my dad just sent me a picture of his new car–Oh god!” Ms. Browning then began sobbing uncontrollably.

On their website, AT&T would not provide a solid timeline for when the service would come back online, but had this to say: “AT&T regrets further delays in rolling out the MMS service to its iPhone customers. We promise that we are hard at work, shoring up our infrastructure in order to bring you the best possible experience for tricking your friends and women you are stalking into seeing your Johnson against their will.”

13th Grade

Here is a thing I did a few years ago. It just got uploaded on the internet. Please watch and feel free to pass it on. It’s by the same guy who does “Drunk History” so if you are a fan of that, you will probably like this.

I’m a hipster!

Hey, so here’s the deal.

I made a ‘zine. I’m only using that word because to describe it as anything else would be over-selling it.

If you want to read it, send an email to efilipkowski at yahoo dot com and I’ll email you a pdf file. And if you’re so inclined, give me your snail mail address and I will send it to you like that.

You’re probably wondering why I don’t just put it up here, but it’s honestly too silly and quick to consume in any way other than having it laid out in front of you and read all at once.

And this way, if you’re taking a poop while you read it and you run out of tp, you’re still in business.

Depending how this goes over, I might do some more. So who knows.

Actor’s Corner – 9/15/2009

I’m gonna try and keep this low-key, because I could probably get in trouble if this got out, but I wanted to share a little behind-the-scenes, Hollywood stuff with you guys, out there languishing at your 9 to 5 jobs in the midwest.

It’s rare you get to see the curtain come down and reveal all the hard work that goes into making the magic, so this should be quite a treat.

Basically, back in August, some producers from Warner Bros. approached my people with an intriguing offer. Apparently, Daniel Radcliffe had been giving them some trouble with negotiations for the final two films and so they entertained the idea of casting a new actor in the role of Harry Potter.

Naturally, I was on the top of their list and so they had me come in and get all dressed up in the outfit and everything and do a screen test.

I think you’re going to be blown away. I’m normally a fairly modest person, but this is work I am really, really proud of.

Unfortunately, it turns out that they were just using me. They brought ol’ Danny Boy this footage, he shit his pants when he saw my performance and signed on the dotted line and was back in his wizard get-up before he could say, “I’ve singularly been outclassed by the greatest dramatic actor of our generation!”

Anyway, here it is, my part starts around the 20 second mark and remember, keep this under your (wizard) hats!

Awesome-o 5000

While you might just see the most awkward 34 year old in the world standing next to a remote control toy, I see a young boy fulfilling a life-long dream.

My plea on 9/11

Dear 9/11 Conspiracists:

If a caveman were to look at a modern skyscraper and see it on fire, he would think that a giant, perhaps a god, was very angry. This is what you are doing every time you talk about how steel can’t melt at 1500 degrees or whatever. You don’t know what you are talking about. Physically being inside a tall building on a few occasions isn’t enough expertise to qualify you to theorize on what would make it fall down. Please stop. You are wrong and you are causing damage and pain to the people of this country.

Thank you.