Ask Me a Question, Dammit! (Cigar Smoke 11-1-2007)

Now even my headlines are getting hostile. I’m sorry. I’ll try to calm down.

Here’s the deal. I don’t really consider myself a geek. I may be a kook, a psycho, a clueless person, a queueless person. I could be a dweeb, a flake, maybe even a nerd. But I am not a geek. But I am on the cusp of being a geek. I seek geekdom. I seek to know what cusp means.

In the early ’80s I did haul a Compaq portable computer that weighed 60 pounds back and forth from the office. My right arm is still three inches longer than my left arm, and I still walk tilted to the right, which kind of works with my political leanings. Also, I can run in circles really fast. But does hauling a Compaq make me a geek? I doubt it.

What is turning me into a semi-geek is simple: I bought a Palm Pilot and an iPhone. I bought the Palm Pilot about three months ago to help me with my feeble Scrabble game. But I did not know it would open up a new world of having fascinating, useless information at my fingertips. Then last week I was able to get an iPhone with my American Express premium points reward goodie. I just couldn’t resist. It was either that or six toasters.

So now I have complete Palm Pilot and iPhone access to everything I ever wanted to know and most things you wanted
to know. I have dictionaries, almanacs, programs on this, on that, utilities, special stuff I can’t tell you about or I’d have to marry you. I now have this information and I want to share it with you, my sometimes loyal audience. I not only want to share it, I need to share it. So ask me something. Ask me anything? Ask me a question, dammit!

For example, don’t you want to know what time it is in, say, Santiago? Well, it is 4:51 p.m. — depending on what time you asked me the question, of course. You want to know the population of Aruba? Well, do you? I’m telling you anyway. It’s 71,218. And do you want to know what the double hey hey a Burkina Faso is? I know you do. Don’t play coy-ass with me. It’s a freaking country, that’s what Burkina Faso is. If you had asked me what Burkina Faso was on “Jeopardy” I would have said, “What is a rash, Alex?” And it’s larger than Colorado! No, not the rash, the country.

Pretty impressive, huh? Damn straight. We’re not done yet. You want to ask me what the zip code of Mesquite, Texas, is. Ask me. Uh, wait one nano-second while I whip out my stylus … it’s 75181. That was tough. Mesquite, Nev. — 89024. Mesquite, NM — 88048. Oh, you want the area codes, too. 846, 345, 910. They don’t correspond to Mesquites, but you didn’t make that clear when you asked me. Shape up, huh.

Hey, this is the most fun I’ve had with my palm since I was in high school. Ask and you shall receive. Who said that? Jesus. I think it was him. And me. Ask me what the birthstone for January is. It’s garnet. What is the median price for a home in Akron, Ohio? It’s $116,900. Ask me what we’re paying professors to turn our kids into little commie parrots. $129,237. And they get summers off! No, not the parrots.

I think you can see what I have to offer in the question-answering game. It is just frosting my frijoles that nobody is asking me anything. I’m retired. I spend all day doing Palm Pilot/iPhone research for you slackers and you still don’t ask me anything. By the way, did you know that Apple stock is now worth $186 a share? How could you? You didn’t ask me. You know, I could have bought Apple at $17 a share. I am not kidding. And why didn’t I? Go ahead and ask me. Why didn’t you buy Apple at $17, Jim? Because Jim is a weak-assed, sniveling coward suckface who has shit for brains and never stands up for anything he believes in and deserves to die or, at least, be laughed at. That’s why. (Wow, I didn’t realize this would get so heavy. Do you know how many psychiatrists there are in California? I don’t either.)

I have to tell you one last story. I was out eating dinner at Cameron’s the other night with the little woman. (I hope Marge doesn’t find out.) And we just happened to overhear a large group of people eating next to us. There were eight people and they had just finished dinner and were looking at their check. And they were kind of fumbling around trying to figure out how much each person should pay.

Well, I was pretty damn happy. I whipped out my Palm T/X and I got into this little utility program that figures out restaurant bills. It figures in the taxes and calculates the tips at 10, 15, or 20 percent. It gives exactly what each person should pay. It’s beautiful.

So I said, “Uh, excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear you guys discussing your check. And I took the liberty of using my little hand-held wizard here, (and I chuckled good naturedly) and I have figured out that each of you owes exactly $26.78 if you leave a 15 percent tip. How does that sound?”

And the big guy in the corduroy coat said, “It sounds as if you better mind your own frigging-ass business if you want to still stutter out of that yapping yap of yours, freak-face.” Well, he kind of pissed me off, so I didn’t give him the alternative figures for 10 or 20 percent. Screw him.

I just looked up the word geek on my Palm Pilot and I cross-referenced it with a dictionary on my iPhone and it says that there are two definitions. One is a circus guy who eats the heads off small animals and the other is a bore. I don’t eat the heads off anything. Hmm.