Hello again, and welcome back to everybody's (read: my) favorite show, STICK IT TO THE WORDSMITH! Yaay!

This week, we're going to take another good look at how it's possible for Mark to have a bad week. We'll start with something simple. Men need women. Not at first, mind you, but once a man has lived with a woman for a little while, there is definitely a bit of dependence there. See, when I lived with Jay, we were two men entirely responsible for ourselves. It was great. I bought myself good, healthy food, and I cooked it for myself. Eggs, veggies, various spices... Now that I live with a woman, one who tends to cook better than I do, I have relaxed a bit in the dietary department. Sometimes, I eat what's in front of me, because, Hey, look! There's food in front of me! And I didn't realise how bad off I was getting until Andrea went to Calgary for the Folk Festival. That night, I had macaroni. The next day, I woke too late to have a real breakfast or make myself lunch, so I went across the street to McDonalds. I should mention that doesn't happen infrequently. I bought some ready-to-serve Chef Boyardee stuff, and until that ran out, I had an easy alternative to McD's.

So I'm getting kind of tired of McD's. The burgers just don't satisfy me in the same way when I've had them a minimum of four times a week for a month or two. So I was a little off that day. Because of this, I got clumsy, and as I was stacking a six-foot-high pallet of produce products, I managed to have something fall on my head. It wasn't terribly heavy, but it was made of corrugated plastic. When they bend that stuff to make the boxes, they make corners. Those things are sharp! It gave me a cut down the left side of my face. Let me tell you, that stung. After that, I went home to try to wrap my head around something, anything, that would make me stop accidentally touching it, you know, like rubbing something out of my eye, or wiping the sweat off my forehead. Somehow, I couldn't bring myself to want to clean the kitchen, where I've run myself out of pots and pans. So no macaroni. I wasn't feeling like it was a terrible loss, I'd been getting sick of that too. By about 10:00pm, I realised I'd forgotten to eat anything. Wanting to get up in time for work the next morning, I just had a sandwich. You can imagine how much I dragged my ass the next day.

Back when I first went into Bell Mobility's family share plan (official slogan: Srew you! We certainly will.) I got a nice little phone, it was slim, it was sleek, it was stylish. I just found this one detail so very irritating. The phone can be made to dial without opening it.

"No problem!" the folks at Sanyo say. "You can disable all functions when the phone is closed, it's called key lock!" That's great. Except that while the phone is closed, wait for it... You can disable key lock. So my phone was just dialing up whoever the hell I'd called last. It did it about once a day. So I had to take it back, and exchange it for a phone that still did that, it just required a much more complex unlocking sequence.

Sanyo cellphone designers, I have something very important to tell you. NO REASONABLE HUMAN BEING IS THAT MORONICALLY LAZY! When I turn on key lock, here's what I want it to do: LOCK OUT ALL FUNCTIONS WHEN THE DAMN PHONE IS CLOSED! Is that really that hard to understand? When I tried to get a phone that didn't have that, the guy behind the counter said that all phones with speakerphone will do that. So I asked for a phone without speakerphone. He said they are becoming rare. (I should also mention, I wanted a phone I would get free with my plan, and that just limited my already tiny selection.)

So I exchanged phones. And I exchanged car chargers. But I'm reasonably sure the phone came with a wall charger, but we've moved since then. I can see losing the wall charger, but tell me this: How do you lose your car charger while moving? You don't pack it, it stays in the car! Nevertheless, I was pleased to find that my girlfriend's phone has the same voltage and size of adapter head. Translation: her charger works for me. But my girlfriend, as I mentioned, is in Calgary. So my phone is dead. People trying to contact me have to use email, or knock on my door.

Last night, I convinced myself to clean a pot. I was inspired to eat some pea soup I bought some time ago, before my girlfriend told me there was no way she was going to eat it. Split pea with ham. Tasty. It was a full pot-ful, and I loved every bit of it. Since I was a little low on those nutrients, or any nutrients, for that matter, I might have got a little giddy in the following hours.

Janis told me, over MSN, that Jay had gone over to Tylor's and that I was welcome to join. Well, I'd been getting kind of lonely, so I did. I enjoyed myself for a few hours, came up with some creative stuff with the guys, and left. That's when the police pulled me over.

Since I've moved twice since buying my car in '05, even though I've had mail forwarding on for six months each time, the registry failed to get any notices to me about my car's registration. The police had spotted an unregistered vehicle in a questionable part of town, and they basically circled in the area, waiting for me to come out. When they pulled me over, they looked in the window at a guy with a relatively fresh scar down the side of his face.

That's when I also realised I hadn't yet put my new insurance slip in the car. It was on my kitchen table. At 11:30pm. The broker's not likely to be at work at that hour. So they told me, "We should impound your car for this offense." Which is EPS for, "Swear at me, bitch." Then they gave me the opportunity to search my car for five minutes for something we all knew I wouldn't find, then came back to tell me that I was going to pay close to $400 in tickets, and I wasn't to drive the car again until it was registered. Some of you might think, "Dude, drive to a registry. What are they gonna do, stalk you?" To which I have two words for you my friend: Kerry Diot. The sting at the Overtime sports bar? Yeah, I believe that even if they don't have the time, they'll make the time. Especially if it would enable an officer to write a $3500 ticket and impound a car. I'm pretty sure that looks good on their records.

So I couldn't drive to work in the morning, the job at which I'm still on probation. Hey, no problem. All I have to do would be to call them and explain - oh, wait. Right. No phone.

But I'm still employed today. Why? Because Janis rocks, that's why.

By the way, for those who are interested, here's the next piece of my ongoing fraud story.