The Boyd Ringo Interview
Miss Nomar: Hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another knuckle-to-the-gut, elbow-to-the-butt interview with some of today’s most lopsided personalities. Regular humans, just like you, who have taken their potential to extreme levels of absurdity. Not bizarre enough for the tabloids and too confounding for the national media, only I, Miss Nomar, can bring them to you.
The length of my introduction has already annoyed today’s subject. The thinly circulated magazine, Inane Pursuit, has ranked him as America’s busiest man. Lining up this interview was harder to do than catching a cockroach on a disco floor. Please welcome the world’s busiest man, Boyd Ringo!
Ringo: (talking into cell phone with one thumb speeding along the keys of a blackberry) “…no really, you can’t cross the streams. Everyone knows that could make every soft serve machine in the tri-county region break down! Look, this woman’s ready to cram my interview in, I’ve gotta go.” (Ringo claps his cell phone shut but is still using his blackberry.) “Go babe.”
Miss Nomar: So, Inane Pursuit has named you America’s most…
Ringo (impatiently): Busiest man! I know. It’s quite an honor but we need to roll this thing along I have to watch Book Tapeworms on the Recovery Channel. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s where the producer takes thirty middle school kids to the local library and tells them there are four one hundred dollar bills hidden in the books. It’s great watching the look on those librarian’s faces as their Dewey Decimal system is fanatically transformed into a tossed salad! And then they only wind up being ten-dollar bills! It’s a riot and it starts in ten minutes!
Miss Nomar (a bit annoyed): How is it you have time for cable television when you’re so busy?
Ringo (sets the blackberry down and pops open a handheld video game system): I don’t really have a choice. In order to get my money’s worth out of ordering cable television, I need to watch it (whips a calculator from his shirt pocket) about ninety-two hours a month.
Miss Nomar (confused): That’s almost four days of solid television watching. Heck, I don’t watch anywhere close to that amount! How can you be that much busier than I am?
(It takes a few moments for Ringo to respond. He is concentrating on his video game system. Suddenly, his face sours, he throws his head back, and begins to whine.)
Ringo: Ah man! That’s garbage! Do you hear me?! Garbage! I’ve been working on this game for the last week and I can’t get my Sword of a Thousand Snows to work on the Ringworm of Wraith! What is it going to take?
Miss Nomar (greatly annoyed): How can you be America’s busiest man? I haven’t seen you do anything remotely productive yet!
Ringo: Productive? I’ll have you know that I’m the administrator for the web site OldYearBook.com. I’ve spent months and months scanning each and every yearbook page in the country from every high school from every year onto the site. People can go online and write crass notes, draw facial hair, or write in their favorite memory of that person. It’s great!
Miss Nomar: That sounds like a huge waste of time! I thought you were supposed to be busy! All I’ve seen or heard from you are video games, TV, talking to your friends, a useless website…how are you busy?!
Can’t do the dishes right
now, mom! I’m busy!
Ringo: (with an indignant air) Miss Nomar, my dear, it all depends on how you define busy. I stay busy because I’m constantly doing something. I may not be productive but I most certainly am busy. Like right now I should be working on my World of Witchcraft character.
Miss Nomar: World of Witchcraft?! Do you mean that ridiculous online world where millions of inner geeks are running around playing pretend with other useless folks?
Ringo: The one and the same!
Miss Nomar: Do you even have a job or a family?
Ringo: My website makes $54,000 dollars a year but my parents don’t know that so I still live at home. They think I’m a professional video game tester.
Miss Nomar (Enraged): You’re not busy! You’re just some useless…
Ringo (flips open his cell phone then interrupts): Look lady, this has taken up too much time already. (stands) Of course I’m busy. You don’t average eight hundred seventy five text messages a day without some serious effort. Gotta go.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Funny….