This is a column by one of the authors of The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, who is at Yaddo right now by the way. Are you?

Hi! Ha! Whattaya know. You are here at The Apple Store.

Let me guess. Your iBook isn't working. Did you spill Merlot all over it like you did with your video iPod? You crazy drinking thing! Bummer!

Well the chummy, scruffy dudes here at the Genius Bar will surely be able to help you! And THIS time, maybe you shouldn't try to lie about it!

Ha ha ha ha!

No, I'm not laughing at you. I just got a really funny video email on my iPhone from my pal Tim Burners-Lee.

Me? Oh no no no no. Everything is fine with my new, efficient, flaw-free iPhone. I'm here at the Genius Bar as a consultant. I'm sort of a mentor to all these Geniuses here, to help them. It's just something that The MacArthur Foundation sets up for us after we, you know, have been globally recognized as geniuses ourselves.

Anyway let's take a look at your little iBook. Oooo. It looks bad. Ouch. Ooof. So the motherboard fritzed out late last night, around 4 a.m.

No it's just I can tell because according to your cache file, it looks like around 3.58 a.m., you were watching...let's see... GoofaceMoneyShot.com and HumiliateMyAnus.net. Am I right?

You don't have to answer that. Heh.

It's just my Genius mentor-opinion, but I think that they could repair it. It will take three months, because they need to ship it off to the special Apple iBook wine-removal facility in the Ukraine. But, it will cost you. Like about 1200 dollars. Because also according to your serial number your warranty ran out last night at midnight. Right before you started downloading "Deep Ass Chopra."

Bummer about the warranty!

Anywho, I gotta get going. I promised my agent I would finish my novel by this week.

Yes yes I have written a novel. Didn't I tell you? The deal went down last Spring. And since then I have been deeply at work. Working on my novel. And I am finishing it, my novel, this week.

It's so cool because the publisher and I have already worked out a promotional deal with several celebrities. In exchange for some of my Genius Mentoring, a handful of cultural icons have agreed to be photographed holding my novel! Posh will be carrying it around with her while she shops at Kitson, Hayden Panettiere is going to fan herself with it while walking into the Coffee Bean, and Courtney Love is going to use it as a nose oil blotter at her next secret concert (she is so irreverent!). And it isn't even finished yet! It! My Novel!

Oh! Sorry to jump. I have my iPhone on vibrate and i just got a reminder.

Ooop! Jeez I totally forgot I am supposed to meet Jonathan Safran Foer, JayKay and the Skinny Bitch girls over at the Mercer like right now! They are helping me... just advising me about how to cope with what is going to happen after my novel is published and I have to deal with the instant success and huge readership from people reading my novel.

I am just so busy! Busy writing, promoting, and thinking about my novel!

Wait, what about YOUR novel. Weren't you working on one. Oh no. Was it, um, on your hard drive?

Didn't you make a backup?

Wow. That's awful. I am so sorry.

Well. I am sure you have it in you. I know that for me, my novel is deeply woven into the very fabric of my consciousness. As I work on it, I am fusing it back INTO my very soul. It's like... I am my own backup, you know? Me. My Novel.

Well anyway, be good to yourself. And buy an external hard drive.

B-bye!