Monday, August 23, 2004

On Thursday afternoon I found, to my eternal horror, the Mistake Man wandering in the lower levels of my skyscraper. Those of you who’ve never met the Mistake Man should know he resembles a plumber, except he wears no pants. Why? Because–you probably saw this coming–he made a mistake.

When one of my engineers saw the Mistake Man, she gasped, covered her eyes, and immediately called security. The Man was promptly escorted from the building, kicking and screaming all the way. I personally took an elevator down to the maintenance level to survey the damage, and at first glance everything looked fine. Upon closer inspection, however, I noticed that the gallons and gallons of Perfect pumping through my beloved building had been contaminated with a foul black liquid.

The horror of it all! I checked through our recent publications and found at least one of them tainted with gross inaccuracy. The post on chess, for instance, replaced Josh Waitzkin with Bobby Fischer. I’ve seen Searching for Bobby Fischer, of course, and if it weren’t for the Mistake Man I’d have gotten my facts straight.

I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but I feel vindicated. Too bad the Ask Me If I Care Man got to you first.