I know I am late for this particular bandwagon. Thousands of inches of column space have already been devoted to this topic, and countless letters have been written to various government agencies, but nothing has been done. So it's my turn to say it - America, we need your help. We need to declare war on Ashlee Simpson.

I don't mean that figuratively. I mean we should attack at dusk.

Every year, some new artist comes into the mainstream that aggravates me until they're forced to go away by the impending puberty of their fans. New Kids on the Block, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys - these are all examples of frustratingly popular artificially manufactured garbage put forth into this world to confound those of us with taste. But we've gone too far this time. We've created a monster, and then gave a career to her even less talented sister.

Jessica Simpson is annoying. She's overly poppy, sings about nothing original, and whether it is staged or not, comes off with the IQ of gardening equipment. So when she was given her own, "look how stupid I am!" show on MTV, I was even more annoyed. I had no idea the fate that would befall us thereafter.

Due to America's craze with scripted reality, we were introduced to Simpson's whole family. Most notable are Jessica's creepy father who seems to want to sleep with her, and her talentless hack sister Ashlee, who seems to want to be her. Okay, maybe I'm being too harsh. I don't know if Ashlee wants to be Jessica.

Ashlee Simpson is not a good singer. She's not even a passable singer. She's so bad she'd be cut from the third best a capella group on campus, which was only formed when people weren't good enough singers to make it into the second best a capella group.

Ashlee isn't particularly hot, either. Without makeup and money, Ashlee would be the checkout girl at Walmart that you only think is cute when you're there buying nachos after a long night of drinking. Actually, that's probably who she'll be in a few years when we forget about her.

Bob Dylan had a terrible voice and was on the ugly side of ugly, and is one of the greatest recording artists of all time. But that's because Bob Dylan was a poet who spoke for a generation. I'm betting the only poetry Ashlee Simpson is familiar with profiles a particular gentleman from Nantucket.

But, somehow, Ashlee has an album. Somehow, Ashlee has a career. Somehow, Ashlee had top billing at one of the biggest sporting events of the year. (By the way, Miami, I am so proud of you for how you handled that one).

I wonder if we are okay with Ashlee because we don't want to upset the family, since they've been through so much hardship already. Sure, they're millionaires, but having a slow child can put a strain on you.

Wouldn't it be great if Ashlee and Jessica Simpson rode a short bus to concerts? It'd have all the amenities of a regular tour bus, just be about half the size and have "caution" signs on it in case the Simpsons decide to run out into the street without their helmets. This is why I need to have money - because if I were rich, I'd have designed one and sent it to them.

But I digress.

Geffen Records must know how bad she is, but they put out her CD anyway because she's marketable. They tricked us. They knew that people would buy the CD out of pure curiosity, and by then it'd be too late. Now I'm hesitant to buy anything that Geffen tells me is good again. Because the Geffen name is now associated with 70,000 people booing in unison (which was more melodic than "Pieces of Me").

I don't fault Ashlee for wanting to be a star - many of us have that same desire. I do fault her for pursuing her dream to the detriment of the American earlobe. If she came forward and was honest about her career, even I'd buy her album.

"Look," she could say, "I'm not the best singer in the world. In fact, I'm not even in the top half. But I have fun when I perform and I enjoy doing this, so I hope I'll be able to for a living. And please keep patronizing my sister, because she's not bright enough to know the difference."

Instead, Ashlee's excuse for an entire stadium of boos was that she was rooting for the wrong team. In a game with no home team. Riiiight. If the FCC thought the half time show in last year's Superbowl was vulgar, I'm surprised they didn't fine the bejesus out of anyone involved in this year's Orange Bowl. Rumor has it that USC was able to play so much better than Oklahoma because of the earplug defense.

We attack at dusk, my friends. Dusk.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.

When I was in 8th grade, I thought both chain letters and the people who sent them were exceedingly annoying. Now that I'm older, I realize I was wrong. The letters aren't that bad.

Chain mail wouldn't do anyone any harm if no one sent it. Except maybe James Peterson, a man with an Anglo-Saxon name living in a non-specific location in Asia, who broke the chain in 1682. He was poked to death by his Aunt Bea.

Chain letters are where frivolity and superstition meet to form "frivostition," better known to the rest of the world as "my god, why do people keep sending these stupid things?" And that was before the world had email. Now it's only gotten worse.

Chain letters have no purpose. Chain letters take up space. Chain letters need to be stopped. Wow, I never realized how similar chain letters are to Regis Philbin.

I'm writing about chain letters now because I get several dozen every day. I understood why everyone sent them when the internet first became popular - there was a novelty in the newfound ability to annoy all your friends at once. But I've been online for the last ten years, and my god why do people keep sending these stupid things?

There are many types of chain letters. The most easily dismissed is the death letter. This is the letter that tells you a scary story and that you'll die unless you quickly send it to your friends, who then get the opportunity to face death, too. But I'm a better friend than that. If I had a choice between taking a bullet and wishing the same fate on 10 of my buddies, I'd take the bullet. Except if my buddies were people who sent chain letters. Then I'd let em have it.

There's also the scheme letter, like the one about Bill Gates tracking your email or the American Cancer Society donating three cents every time you forward it. Aside from the obvious point of ACS being the ones to ACCEPT donations, wouldn't something like that make the news if it were actually happening? What? Check if it's true before sending out a letter to several dozen people? Why would anyone do that?

The worst are the attempted heart-wrenching letters. These letters are supposed to be about something important, but are so childishly written that you end up getting more upset that your time was wasted reading it than at the actual story. Usually it's about a phony encounter in a night club or a made up DUI, or some sort of debilitating disease that doesn't really exist. These come in all forms, but usually involve a poorly rhyming poem with haphazard meter.

A recent letter that's been going around like this is the "ribbon" for the soldiers. That letter fits into this category for one main reason - the opening line physically threatens people who don't forward it. Your support for the troops is great, but isn't intimidating people into helping spread peace a bit ironic? And instead of writing a letter about the troops, why don't you write a letter TO the troops instead? Oh, because that would take time and effort. My fault.

There are two other strains of chain letters that have appeared more recently. One is the anti-chain letter chain letter, which is when someone hits "reply-to-all" with a message that contains a variation of "yo, stop sending me this crap." The other is the anti-chain letter chain letter apology chain letter, which is a bit more complex. After someone sends out a variation of "yo, stop sending me this crap," a few people who never sent chain mail will reply complaining that they did nothing wrong. So these people are smart enough to avoid sending chain mail, but not smart enough to know the difference between a personal reply and a form letter. The "yo, stop sending me this crap" guy then replies with another mass e-mail apologizing and explaining who they were talking to. In other words, the guy complaining about chain mail just sent out two more pieces of chain mail.

When I first started getting chain letters on the web, I sent ten copies of the letter back to whoever sent it to me. That prevented them from ever sending me another piece of chain mail. A mail bomb, sure, but no chain mail. I recommend you try that sometime. Sure, you'll have to deal with the impending loss of friendship, but do you really want to stay friends with someone who keeps sending you tweety birds? Just think of it as e-mail address book Darwinism.

I hope you enjoyed my take on these nuisances. Now send this column to 14 of your friends in the next eight seconds or Aunt Bea is coming to dinner.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.

It is not Valentine's Day yet. Stop telling me it is. Remove your displays, put away your candy, and take down the naked baby with the crossbow. It's January. Mid-January. Which, so you know, is a month before mid-February.

Now that I've vented, let me explain in a slightly less abrasive manner.

Go into a store at any given time in America, and it will be one of six holidays. From January First to February 14th, it's Valentine's Day. For the next three months, it's Mother's Day. In mid March it miraculously becomes July 4th, even though that's clearly intended to take place in July. The actual month of July brings us Halloween, which holds until November 1st when it becomes Thanksgiving. Four weeks later we get Christmas, which ends a month after that in time for hey, look at that, Valentine's Day.

There are other holidays, technically. But there are no specials on flag day candy, and I've never seen an eight-day Hannukah sale. As a consumer culture, we're guided by what is in our stores, and those six holidays are the only things that make the cut.

Maybe it'd be easier if we combined them into one year-long holiday called Valmochrismaweenygiving. We can celebrate by having our patriotic mothers date a pumpkin, eat a turkey leg, and give birth to the baby Jesus.

This weekend is Martin Luther King Day. A day to celebrate one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century. And I'll be honest, I forgot about it. Maybe that's because I don't have a day job and I'm not in school, so I couldn't get the day off to remind me. And there was no snazzy display in CVS.

I could be off base here, but I think celebrating a guy who helped end segregation is more important than thanking our mothers. I know my mother is reading this, and she'd be happier if the world cared more about equality and togetherness than if I made a call to 1-800-Flowers in mid May.

And Martin Luther King's birthday isn't the only MLK day we should be celebrating. Especially since his birthday doesn't often fall on the third Monday of every January (Who decided that?). We should be celebrating the day the Civil Rights Act passed. And the day that schools were desegregated. And the day that racism in America ended. Whenever it is that last one happens, we'll celebrate it.

There's still a LOT of racism in America. I got an e-mail yesterday that was signed, "eat a wing for the King!" Maybe she was referring to Elvis' infamous love of poultry, but I'm pretty sure it was a very misguided attempt at being culturally sensitive. On the flip side, I passed a man selling shirts that said, "First OJ, Now Kobe. Stay away from white girls!" Because if there's one thing that makes a rape and double homicide joke funnier, it's racism.

We've obviously still got a long way to go.

I wish we celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday with the same fervor we celebrate the Big Six. Though not with the imposed guilt of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. Or the forced enthusiasm of July 4th and Thanksgiving. Or the gross misinterpretation of the original meanings of Halloween and Christmas. Okay, maybe it's better this way. But I propose this - next Valentine's Day, next Mother's Day, next July 4th, next Halloween, next Thanksgiving, and next Christmas, while you're shopping for candy, for flowers, for turkey, or for fireworks, take a minute to remember the third Monday in January. Take a minute to remember what kind of country we say it is we live in. And take a break from your one day sale to think about what you can do to make it that much more possible.

I know I'm going to get a flood of e-mails telling me that this is supposed to a humor column and I shouldn't be talking about actual issues. To you, I say happy July 4th.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.

There is a difference between being a neat person and a clean person. A neat person has orderly places for everything, and knows where all of their stuff belongs. A clean person has orderly places for everything, knows where all of their stuff belongs, and none of the places are covered in barbecue sauce.

I, am a neat person.

I didn't used to be a neat person, including in the manner of, "hey, look at that lanky kid with the pale skin! Neat, huh?" I grew up very messy - I left my stuff wherever it ended up, because that's where my stuff decided it wanted to live. You try telling a GI Joe he has to spend his nights in a shoebox with no air holes. He was much more comfortable between the cushions of my parents' couch. And really, who wouldn't be?

I was also not clean as a kid. I HATED doing dishes, especially cleaning the sink. I hated the smell of Comet (they didn't pay me to say that, either), and so I would do loads of dishes without ever washing the sink. I remember the day we got one of those spray nozzles on our faucet and I could just spray the sucker down. That was a good day.

As I got older, I realized the benefit of being neat: actually finding things. I got a planner in college, which begat a palm pilot which begat a desk organizer which begat a to-do list which begat the discovery of my low grade OCD. Don't give someone who methodically checks his watch every five minutes and can't go to sleep without answering his email a to-do list. Speaking of which, I ought to make sure that I shut off the water all the way.

I began being neat. I am more efficient, I am happier, and I haven't ever had to apologize for the way my apartment looks. I'm not perfectly neat, but for a 25-year-old comedian who lives alone, I keep the place tidy.

Clean is a different story. A story that I still haven't read. Mainly because I heard it's a really boring story, and makes your hands smell kind of funky. I messed up the analogy just then, but you still understand that I hate cleaning.

I wash the dishes before they pile up too high and I wash my clothes whenever I need to, but that's it. I know I should wipe down the counters when I cook. I know I should vacuum more or ever, and I know that no soap scum is good soap scum. But often I just don't bother. I know I should. I know it's a problem. But it's not one I'm willing to face quite yet.

I move often. OFTEN. I haven't lived in the same place for more than a year since 1994. When something got dirty it never mattered because I was moving anyway. But I like the apartment I have now, so today I got the desire to get it clean. Not to clean it myself, because that would be ridiculous.

I'm willing to work - I am a bit of a workaholic sometimes. (See OCD, symptoms of). But I am not willing to clean, ever. I will tidy up. I will not clean.

So the question became how to clean my apartment without cleaning. I tried checking my email and looking at my watch a whole bunch, but that didn't do much. So I thought of the obvious answer - get someone else to do it.

Since no one will ever do something like that for free, I looked up some cleaning services. I found one that looked good, but they were $160 dollars. And so, a new question arose - how to clean my apartment without cleaning or paying someone $160.

To help me answer it, I checked my email and shut off the water a few times. And then it hit me. I spent the last few hours promoting my book more in order to raise the extra money. That way I could work to clean my apartment without having to do any of the work I didn't like. Not to mention I was contributing to our economy by keeping money circulating.

Neat, huh?

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.

If you don't have a Facebook profile, you're missing out. If you don't know what Facebook is, you're missing out and you're over 25.

TheFacebook.com is a website, and from what I hear, the internet is becoming very popular. Ever since Al Gore invented it a few years ago, people have been purchasing home computing devices intended for use on said internet, where they are interacting with other owners of computing devices. Almost as popular as the internet is this new thing called "sarcasm."

The most common way for young people to express their love for the internet is by signing up for profiles on a billion different community websites. The sites are predicated on networking - Friendster was the big one, then Orkut hit, and now MySpace seems to be taking over. The sites are fun ways to track down old friends, find new ones, or post revealing pictures of yourself in hopes of making up for the attention your parents didn't give you as a child.

TheFacebook.com is like all these, but college-based. And it's more than a fad - the vast majority of students on my old campus have Facebook profiles. I have even been to bars where people exchanged Facebook information instead of phone numbers. I'm kidding - they exchanged Facebook information instead of screen names.

Even though I'm an old gross alumni ("Ew! He's, like, older than my TA!"), I have a Facebook profile. The site is great for me - I make most of my living performing at colleges, so I use it to keep in touch with bookers, fans, and people who I conned into letting me use their web connection to check my email and update my Facebook profile.

Last week, I was on Facebook when I got a message asking me when I was performing at a particular campus. I wrote back with the details, and it dawned on me - what a great way to let people know when I'm in town.

I started adding people I didn't even know as friends. At first I searched for fans of standup, then people on programming boards, then the newspaper, then the radio station, then anyone with a cool last name. It grew - I was adding hundreds of friends, and they were adding me back.

I decided to see if I could get 10,000 friends on the site. The number was fairly arbitrary - I picked it because it was attainable, but impressive. Kind of like my prom date. I then changed my profile to talk about my quest, and even put a caption on my picture to explain why I was adding random people. Then I sent a message to my entire list asking for help.

Word started spreading that there was a crazy comedian adding people on Facebook. And suddenly, I didn't have to ask anymore. I spent hours adding all the people who were asking ME to be THEIR friend. Here's where it stopped feeling like my prom. There must be something about a zany request combined with the boredom of winter break to mobilize the masses: in a week, I'm already over 5,000.

I've gotten several dozen encouraging messages - most a variation on "you're crazy, but I'll help." I've also gotten four pieces of hate mail. One was from someone who hates all comedians, and two more were from people who thought I was bastardizing the purity of Facebook - as if there's some inherent purity in adding the girl you've never spoken to in your Lit class because you want her to read your profile and fall in love with your boyish online charm. The fourth message came from someone named Kyle Hofstetter, who accused me of ruining the Hofstetter name. He's not related to me - but I Googled him and found a website that accuses him of twice sodomizing billy goats. Of course, that's my website. Thanks for writing, Kyle.

I also get several messages a day from people asking me who I am and why I added them. If you read my profile, you'll see why I find that funny - that's like asking someone wearing a restaurant nametag what he's doing disturbing you during dinner.

The funniest message I got was from a student asking me if I was going to make fun of her in my act or in my column. I told her that I am linked to 5,000 people on the site, and if I made fun of all of them individually, it'd be a very boring column. So, no, I will not make fun of her in my column. At all. Not even in this paragraph.

Overall, the quest has been fun - I've made a few new friends and a few new fans, and found something to do over the holidays while the rest of the world seems to be closed. I'm not sure where this will take me, but I'm enjoying myself. And when I hit 10,000, I will probably keep going. Maybe 25,000 is next. Maybe 50,000. Maybe even 100,000. The only one who can be truly sure about the limit of all this is Al Gore.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take care of this Kyle Hofstetter fellow. Anyone know where I can get a feather pillow, some super glue, and a mousetrap at this hour?

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.