please tell me...

...you're reading the completely, utterly brilliant blog Number One Hit Song.

Help Dana answer her question about Ben Herman, legendary adversary, glimpsed on a train platform, but not whiffed. You really must go read the whole thing, but here's a snippet to convince:

And even those two were tolerable in comparison to my greatest adversary, one Ben Herman.

Ben Herman joined our office one late spring morning. It was only 9:15 and he was already sweating profusely, and in places I didn't know one could sweat. He was a tall kid, maybe 6'2, with the dumpy pear-shaped body and carriage of a middle-aged insurance salesman. He wore his pants too high. And he had the craziest cowlick that spanned the back of his head. It was always there.

I soon discovered the reason his cowlick never went away: the guy did not bathe. He smelled like he was smeared head to toe with fromunda cheese.** Had he never attended hygiene class in junior high? Had his parents (whom he lived with, in Orange County) never told him about cleanliness? They certainly doted on him--his mother made his lunch every day, packed in a brown bag with the name BEN written on it.

(No shit.)

Anyhow, in addition to being smelly, Ben was a total drip. He enjoyed role-playing games and collecting fantasy figurines. When I told him where I'd gone to college, he asked me if I knew some friend of his who'd also attended. I didn't recognize his name. Ben told me that I'd recognize this friend if I saw him, as he always wore a cloak and carried a staff.

I grimly tolerated Ben until one day, when he got on my last fuckin' nerve (as the two ladies behind me were wont to say) when we were discussing...I don't know...places we'd lived? I had said that I lived in Georgia for a couple years. He replied, "Oh, I hate the South. They're so stupid and intolerant."

"Have you ever been to the South, Ben?"

"No, never been further than Maryland. But I can tell."

I think we've all got a Ben.