The only thing worse than having a job is not having one, Jake decides. Nevertheless, he has taken a week off to take it easy and enjoy himself before going back to work looking for work, by which he means he'll be spending forty hours a week trying to find a job. This will be the worst job he ever has because not only is it work, but he won't be getting paid for doing it. If he's lucky though, he will succeed in finding a job and then he can go back to the garden variety misery of the American worker. In the meantime though, he's been able to use his free time in order to spruce up his blog a bit with a new design and some new articles, including an interview with one of his favorite wrestlers, Gordy "Computer Science" Guinness, who used to dress up like a nerd complete with a pocket protector and glasses with tape in the middle and who always carried a small calculator by which he would measure the probability of things. For example, when he faced the nearly seven feet tall B.O. Johnson in a match, the wrestler of smaller stature told Johnson, "I've calculated all the factors with my computer model and there's a 75% chance of you getting pinned tonight by me, which would be embarrassing because of all your braggadocio beforehand, so why don't you forfeit the match to me and I'll buy you an ice cream cone?" (Johnson's response was to depants Computer Science before pinning him in a rout of a match).
Jake: I really enjoyed your work, but your career was so brief. What have you been doing since you retired from wrestling?
Computer Science: I've been working as a software developer. In fact, I've helped create a wrestling video game or two in my time, so in that way I've kept my hand in the business.
Jake: How did you get into wrestling in the first place?
Computer Science: I was an idiot.
Jake: Uh . . .
Computer Science: No, I'm ribbing you, brother. I enjoyed my time in wrestling, but I'm glad I got out when I did. I actually was a computer science major in college, but I was looking for a weekend job. This was when the territories were on their last legs before the business went national. I wrestled in college so a couple of us from the college team would also wrestle occasionally on the sly for Chuck Kerouac in New England. After college, well, it was a way to keep wrestling and get paid, so I did it full time. Then the WWWWWW came calling so I had my big run there.
Jake: That's where I know most of your work from. I'm too young to know most of your work firsthand . . .
Computer Science: You're killing me, brother!
Jake: Sorry! But when I saw you in a couple matches on the WWWWWW Classics DVDs, I enjoyed them so much that I started tracking down more of your work. I think my favorite was your feud with Clyde The Librarian. You were a heel for most of your career, but you actually were a face in that feud. That one match in the library is a classic. I loved it when you stamped the due date on Clyde's forehead about fifty times. How did that storyline develop?
Computer Science: Oh, God, I'm trying to remember. I think it had something to do with libraries phasing out the old card catalogs. Do you remember those?
Jake: No, but I know what they were. They were a bunch of cards in drawers that let people know where books in the library were.
Computer Science: Right, and then all the libraries went to computer catalog systems. So we were playing off the tension of that transition, but eventually it escalated into some wrestling version of the Battle Of The Books.
Jake: That's the Quarrel Of The Ancients And Moderns?
Computer Science: Yes. You know your stuff!
Jake: History major.
Computer Science: I see. Well, we turned it into the battle between the new and the old. Clyde played the old fuddy duddy who didn't want things to change and I represented change and the youth and all. It was pretty fun. Clyde was great to work with.
Jake: He still wrestles, you know.
Computer Science: You have to be kidding me. He's what? Like sixty now?
Jake: Yep! I saw him at an indie show last year. He doesn't do much, but he still gets in the ring. How come you never returned to the WWWWWW or took to the indie circuit?
Computer Science: Concussions, brother. Wrestling's fun, but it's a rough business. A lot of guys I worked with are dead now, and at a far too early age. I took a couple hard bumps and had trouble thinking, and I decided to call it a day when my contract ran out. A fan might enjoy me getting a chair shot to the head for five seconds in an arena, but I have to use that head for the rest of my life, which wouldn't have been long if I kept getting hit in the head nightly like that. It wasn't worth it so I called it a day while I still had my health. Now I use my head for more than just getting whacked with a folding chair. Best decision I ever made.
Jake: Well, the wrestling world still misses you.
Computer Science: That's nice, but I calculate there's a 0% chance of me of putting on some tights in the future. Plunk that in your Mickey Mouse calculator!
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.
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