editor's note: This was written several years ago in order to mock Bryan, which should be a national pasttime. Share and enjoy.

Hi, my name is
My name is
My name is
My name is
(tikka tikka) Thin Brainy.

Excuse me, could I have the attention of the geeks for one second?

Hi kids, do you like Linux? "Yeah yeah yeah!"
Wanna see me stare at my screen till I can't blink my eyelids?
Wanna burn CDs and do exactly what I did?
Try Litestep and get fucked up worse than my life is?

Windows is dead weight, I'm trying to get my hard drive straight
But I can't figure out which distro I want to operate
kitten said, "Bryan, you're a spacehead."
Uh-uhh! "Then why you got Spears mp3s? Your drive space is wasted."
Well, ever since I got Debian, I stopped using DOSshell
And I put a heatsink in my box so my chip won't melt
Got pissed off and ripped Bill Gates off
And hacked him so hard I knocked his OS backwards like old-school DOS.
I run lots of killer apps while I sit on my ass
When my truck actually runs, it don't go too fast.
Get off me! "Bryan, wait a minute, that's just Scott!"
I don't give a fuck, he's drunk and pissing me off.

I went to ITT after graduating Cibola high.
Dropped out and now I'm working the 9 to 5.
I blast my foes in StarCraft with a laser
Chase them with a phaser
And blast their nuts cause they're a bunch of lamers
Walked into Best Buy with my best friend Ryry
Flashed the salesperson and ran out with a Palm 5.
Extracurriculars, never do those again
I drink Citrus Drop and girls tell me they just wanna be friends.
99% of my hard drive is gay porn.
I just found out my mom is a big fan of Korn.
I told her I'd grow up to be a famous hacker
Make a Linux distro and name it after her. "What, BitchX?"
You know you're a dork when you try to scan your hands
And cool your room off with ten CPU fans.
This guy in Pizza hut took my order and he had to laugh
I said to him, "Hey, Dave... gimme extra cheese, ASSHOLE!"

Stop the tape! This kid needs to get some play!
Don't just stand there.. someone get him a date!
I'm not ready to leave, Yuma's hot and I'll fry
I have to install RedHat 6 and mount this drive.
Mandrake or Slackware? I can barely decide.
I just drank a fifth of Citrus Drop.. should I defrag my drive?
All my life I was very deprived.
I ain't had a woman in years, my porn is too scary to hide.
I buy black T-shirts and blue jeans in bulk
I slouch when I walk, I'd rather type than even talk. "LOL!"
Without my extra cheese I whine and throw fits
I hang out on slashdot and submit stuff like this.
I lay awake cause Sarah strapped me into bed
With black lingere she spanks me till I'm red.
My box is rad -- and by the way, when you see my dad?
Tell him I haven't eaten since the last pizza I had.

Don't you realize what it does to me, on gray rainy mornings, when I see couples - him, her - sharing an umbrella together? I can see them, and I know you've seen them. They're the ones standing on the subzero sidewalk without shivering, wrapped up in the warmth of each other. Somewhere, can't you feel the wrenching within me, across spanning miles and stretches of ocean, when I see them, and long for the embrace they share?

Don't you realize how I feel at 10am on another nameless, endless and forgettable day, cold dusty sunlight slanting through the windowblinds on your side of the bed, which remains as empty as my eyes? Like a puzzle broken into its constituant one thousand and one pieces, in a dazzling display of thermodynamics in operation, I need directed energy to be put together. And in those morning hours, sunlit and cruel, I reach for your hands, which must be close by because I can feel them, and ask you to be the one to assemble and repair the fragmented image that was my own.

And don't you know how I clutch at your talisman, a single silk scarf with the color of a starless memory, each night? Your scent lingers upon it, frayed on the edges, and how I can taste your perfume in the back of my throat, taking it with me into the tautology of sleep.

A sea of timeless desire: your picture, imploring and hopeful gaze fixed on my still form caught in sleep. Can't you see, from that vantage point, how days drag on ever dreary without you?

Whiskers and sharp claws remind me to awaken each day and rejoin the land of the living, but still missing you, the part that made the waking worthwhile. Fourteen dreams and eight hours later, wondering what you think of me - if you ever needed to know what hope is, it's an ebony scarf laced between my fingers and eyes full of static staring at your visage, drowning..

..forever.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great remorse that I announce the death of one of the greatest musical talents I've known. Maurice Gibb, one of the three Gibb brothers that made up the band Bee Gees, died today at the age of 53.

I realize that when people hear "Bee Gees" they think disco, and it is true that the Bee Gees spearheaded the disco movement of the mid- and late-1970s. Their influence on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is part of what made it the best-selling soundtrack of all time.

But the Bee Gees did much more than disco and dance music. I remember in high school, blasting some of their (relatively speaking) earlier stuff, from the 1960s, from my car. People usually thought it was the Beatles - stuff like "New York Mining Disaster" and "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" is not what most expect from the Bee Gees, and for those of you who can't stand disco but like the Beatles, you may want to give it a try.

But either way, there can be no denying the vast and powerful influence they exerted on a decade, from music to fashion. Grab your CD or LP or MP3 of Saturday Night Fever, take a moment to listen, and thank Maurice for being a part of it all.

So I suppose I should say something about this by now, since many people seem to know already.

I lost my job.

Now to be fair, for once in my life I wasn't outright fired. I was simply laid off, due to financial considerations. But the practical upshot of it all is the same - I am now without work.

I do find it mildly amusing that I was let go for financial reasons, though. What I was originally hired for was the position of "office manager", which equates to shoving papers across my desk twice a month, and taking care of some other little things. A (small) step above your basic secretary, is what I was hired for. However, little by little and by small degrees, I was taking on other, more technical duties. The network is down? I can fix that. The website needs updating? I can do that. An entirely new website needs to be designed for the client? I can do that. Graphics editing? I can do that. Virus removal? I can do that. Hardware installation? I can do that. Software configuration? I can do that. Firewall installation and tweaking? I can do that. Security issues? I'll take care of them. So on and so forth.

My point is that I basically took care of each and every technical need at the office, no job too small or large, and I did so for my base pay. Heh. To outsource all these things - which is what they'll need to do now that I'm not here - is going to cost a fortune. I think some of you will remember the e-corks site, which is quite possibly the ugliest site on the Interworldwebnet and uses a ridiculously overblown backend and was impossible to navigate, for which the company paid a college kid three thousand dollars to create. Would have taken me a week or two, not counting content, and it would have looked a fuckload better, and I'd have done it for my base pay. You get the idea.

On the other hand, it's not really my problem anymore.

The other day I did something I swore I'd never do, and that is apply for unemployment. I felt like a complete bum sauntering into this government building and asking for a handout, but it looks like I have no choice at the moment.

On the other hand, this place was such a slavering pit of hell-bound mediocrity that it improved my spirits - slightly. The morons infesting that place were of such a low-calibre intelligence that it is frankly no wonder most of them are without jobs. In the past I've bitched a lot about people who are just completely clueless when it comes to computers - in this day and age, it is not an option, if you want to be part of the economy, to giggle and think your lack of ability with these devices is funny. It isn't funny. And nowhere else was this evidenced as well as the unemployment office, where they have net-connected 2k boxes so people can look for jobs online. While I was waiting for my name to be called, I observed one clown inserting a floppy disk upside down and wondering why it wouldn't go in. Now, we've all done that from time to time, but most of us look at the disk, smack ourselves and quickly turn it over. This guy just kept trying, over and over, to put the disk in, and not once did it occur to him to flip the damn thing over.

Another idiot, a woman this time, was loudly announcing to the room at large that the computer was "broken" because when she moved the cursor over a link, it changed into a hand. No, I am not making this up. Someone eventually told her that it's okay, and the woman proceeded to right-click instead of left-click, which of course brings up a menu. This was apparently cause to raise the DEFCON level, as the woman nearly went into hysterics.

I really hate people.

At any rate. I estimate I've spammed out about 30 or 40 resumes in the past few days, all carefully targetted (as opposed to the scatter-gun approach). Come this Sunday, I'll rifle the want ads in the local paper, and maybe tomorrow I'll start hitting up the (shudder) headhunters, as much as I despise them.

But I despise not having a job even more.