And other equally vapid questions answered by yours truly and the Sexist’s Amanda Hess in this week’s Five Minutes You’ll Never Get Back. Head on over to gender land to check out our Twilight-centric podcast.

Tim Carman, our food critic, usually gives me copy. He sometimes gives me hairy Asian fruits to try. Occasionally he will bring by his dog, Coltrane Meatsack, to wag his tail in my direction. But this week Tim Carman gave me the koobface worm. I’ll be honest, I prefer the hairy fruits.

The koobface worm is a virus that spreads through Facebook and MySpace. I thought it somewhat odd that Tim, my Facebook friend, sent me a video message that said I’d been caught “making love” and that I really needed to see that video and, oh, also: “LOL.” Didn’t seem like Tim (especially that “LOL” part), but there was his little Facebook picture of the Biscuitville sign and I thought, well, maybe this is some sort of super funny joke.

The joke is that Tim had no control over this thing, it went to all or most of the people on his list and if you clicked on the video and followed some instructions on downloading the latest Flash player, you got wormed. The worm shut down my Facebook account because it sent spam to all or most of the people on my list. It also infected the Google search on my home PC so that clicking on any of the entries will redirect you to wherever the wormers want you to go.

This thing is not exactly new. Yesterday’s New York Times “Bits” column has it beginning in late July. Kaspersky lab has apparently found 27 variants of it, all of them directed toward the two most populated social networking sites. Facebook released a statement that it has “detected and contained” the worm and that “these efforts have limited the affected users to a small percentage of those on Facebook.”

Facebook also e-mailed me that my Facebook account has been restored, although when I login I’m told I’m still an evil spammer. Several messages to them have not been returned. Facebook has a phone number, which instructs you to send them e-mail.

Based on my old-person skills and some limited research, here’s how to protect yourself: Run a virus scan. According to an article on CNET, the best free one for this particular virus is Malwarebytes Anti-Maleware 1.25, which can be downloaded here. If you’ve already got the virus, my understanding is this might detect it and repair it. There is also a list of files that can be deleted if you disable system restore, which McAfee sort of explains here.

If anyone knows of other solutions, please fire away. I miss all those friends I haven’t talked to in 15 years.

On my own, moving consisted of ferrying plastic post office bins filled with vinyl LPs between the old apartment and the new apartment. Eighteen boxes with only the help of a friend with a bum shoulder and another buddy who’s strength maxed out at opening doors. By the time my precious Minutemen, Curtis and Funkadelic jams were in the new place, my knees ached, my lower back craved a fistful of pain pills, and my right arm had a nice deep bruise. Less fun: navigating a District population who didn’t care as much as I did about my Kinks, Animal Collective, and Andrew Hill LPs. No one gave up their parking spaces or moved out of the way. A handful opened a door or two. But that’s it.

Real movers have the power in this city. On Saturday, the movers were supposed to show up between 9 and 10 a.m. They didn’t. They ended up being five hours late. Nothing I could do. We’d call the movers’ dispatcher and he’d offer up some lame excuses I think about a mover not coming into work or the classic–”they’ll be there in 20 minutes.”

Twenty minutes turned into five hours! The best excuse: the movers stopped at a Quiznos. That took another 90 minutes. And there was nothing we could. We couldn’t hire another mover. And we couldn’t fit half of our stuff into my Corolla.

When the movers finally arrived and got to my stuff, I realized that they could flout the rules of the city without a care in the world. They parked their moving truck half illegally on my narrow street (1400 block of Newton Street NW) and proceeded to take apart my futon, and stack up my boxes of kitchen stuff, CDs, and books. When a woman refused to try pass the truck, fearing her car would get scraped up, she blocked traffic all the way to 14th Street.

People got mad. Drivers got out of their cars. There was a lot of yelling in Spanish.

A big Dad type threatened to call the police on my movers. The movers just smiled–they didn’t give a damn. As they carted the rest of my stuff into the truck–total move time: 20 minutes–the dude actually called 911.

The movers just started up the truck and headed toward my new place. Newton Street’s traffic began to flow again. And I followed a car ahead of the angry dad.

See that sign? Right there between the Diet Dr. Pepper and the old-school can of Canada Dry? It’s a WARNING to the effect that SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH will ensue should one ROCK OR TILT the antiquated soda machine in the meticulously labeled City Paper kitchen.

Who knew that obeying one’s thirst could have such dire consequences?

Observe the stick figure below—let’s call him Bob. Bob is trying his damnedest to wrest a free soda or two from the death machine. He looks pretty thirsty. The curvy arrows seem to indicate that Bob is both rocking and tilting the death machine. That can’t be good. Didn’t he read the sign?

“[DEATH] MACHINE WILL NOT DISPENSE FREE PRODUCT IF TIPPED”

Call me crazy, but I’ve always commiserated with these little suckers, the stick figures of the world, eternally trapped behind the red strike-through of what not to do. “Don’t become another statistic!” they seem to cry, their predicament all the more poignant because they have no facial features. Whether they’re trapped between the closing doors of the Metro or suspended over a slippery spot on the floor, the Red Circle catches them just before the moment of truth, right in the “oh, shit” moment, when all they can say is, “what have I done!?“ Hence the immediacy, the illustrative power…nay, the pathos of these little everymen.

But let’s think of Bob in happier days. Playing with his dog, perhaps:

And here, for example, he appears to be feeding his child to an alligator:

But what of the death machine? One hopes that Bob didn’t end up like his colleague here:

Select photos courtesy of the Stick Figures in Peril Flickr pool

As you can see by this sticker, which is attached to its side, the refrigerator in the employee lounge (the good one, not the one for editorial) is important to this company. If for some reason you see this refrigerator anywhere besides the employee lounge, please let us know.

It shouldn’t be hard to spot—it has had the same metal bowl on top for the whole two years I’ve worked here. There used to be a magnet shaped like a laptop that said “You’ve got mail!” when you pressed a button, but some sharp-eyed nostalgia collector snapped that up. Now there’s a smiley-face magnet and a couple Alison Bechdel strips.

After the jump, some situations in which you might find our fridge.

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