I used to date a girl who regularly won trophies for running marathons and playing in tennis tournaments. I told her the only trophy I had ever won was 4th place in a shuffleboard tournament. At the age of nine. So she said, “so of all the nine year olds who turned out that day to play shuffleboard, you were the fourth best.” I said, “Yes.” She said, “is that the same trophy I saw on your mantle today?” I said, “Yes”. She said, “Twenty seven years later and you still display the trophy?” I said, “Yes.” -Jon —Letters from Pathetic Geeks (Pathetic Geek Stories)

A great letter from the new home of Maria Schneider’s Pathetic Geek Stories, a comic strip formerly featured on The Onion (behind several layers of annoying advertisements, in a popup window that hides the URL so you can’t bookmark it directly).

I learned from this interview with Maria Schneider that she was the author of the T. Herman Zwiebel editorials for as long as I had been following them. They were strangely compelling, though the series stopped several years ago.