I was searching for my PDC plane ticket today, and couldn't find it. I knew it was on my desk, but I had no idea where in the horrible mess of garbage it might be hiding. That's when I realized that I have a problem.

I am a nerd bachelor, and I've found the warning signs that indicate whether or not you might be one, too:

1. Your desk looks like this:

This was what really tipped me off to my condition. There's trash stacked on top of trash, and trash underneath that trash which is between other trash which is next to trash. Oh, and my plane ticket was in there somewhere (found it between the copy of "Essential ASP.NET" and "The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 4th Edition," both of which were underneath my PowerBook).

2. Your refrigerator looks like this:

I don't have any food. I don't know what I'd do with it if I did. I'd probably accidentally remove myself from the gene pool if I tried to "prepare" anything.

I don't even know what that means: "prepare" food. What do you do to food to make it edible? Shouldn't it already be that way when you buy it? Am I missing something here?

3. You have a sponge that's on the EPA's Ten Most Wanted list:

I stumbled upon this sponge last night when I accidentally went into my kitchen. I don't know where it came from, and I certainly don't know what turned it black. It's probably some of that horrible "black death" fungus that you hear about on the news, where they walk into a house full of corpses that are covered in this weird black fuzz (OK - you don't hear about it on the news - you hear about it on the "X-Files," but the stuff is real, and it's growing on my sponge).

Like food in the fridge, I don't know what this sponge is for. I certainly wouldn't attempt to clean anything with it. The ironic thing is that the only thing I really want to wash with the sponge is the sponge itself, but that obviously won't work.

Yup. That's me. Just a little piggy, living alone with my beer, my trash, and my fungus sponge.