YOUR STUPID MINDS!STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!

I do a lot of things. Some of those things are just plain stupid. Not irresponsible-stupid but is-there-a-fucking-brain-in-your-head-stupid. Based on some of the things I've done in the past the past week, I'm pretty sure an objective observer would conclude, "Yep. No doubt about it. This one's one of them stupid ones." Most of this week's errors were social in nature. So let me issue a general apology to all of those who are paying now in one way or another for my recent mental deficiencies. I'll get to you individually in person.

This all came to mind this morning when I realized that I had congratulated someone on a milestone which was actually reached probably back in July. Altogether now..."D'oh!"

Other great brain cramps from my past include:

• My big English paper at the end of senior year of high school, the culmination of my achievement, proof that I was a learned scholar properly prepared for the challenges of higher education was entitled "Loneliness in the Works of Tennessee Williams" – a fine analysis indeed except that "loneliness" was misspelled throughout all twenty pages.

• Working as a prep cook at a restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., I needed a place to put a clean cookie sheet. The cookie sheet rack seemed like just the place so I shoved it in one of the slots, inadvertently shoving another tray full of delicate pastries out the other side. Forty ex-desserts lay shattered on the floor. The baker who got there every day at 3:30 AM had spent about three hours making them. In shame, I handed in my chef's knife days later.

• As an online production editor at a magazine I once deleted a year's worth of back issues from the network. Gone, as in no backup. Realizing what I had done, I went for a two hour walk hoping that when I got back the files would have miraculously reappeared. No such luck.

Sometimes I wonder how I even get through life.