The good news is I'm not sick. The bad news is, it cost me $40 to find out.

During a routine checkup, which has only become routine now that I can afford health insurance, a doctor saw I had a small mole on my upper back. She asked me how long I had it. I couldn't tell her, since I don't typically hold a mirror to my upper back. And my neck doesn't stretch that way, since I'm not a member of the Fantastic Four.

I also couldn't tell her because freckled people don't notice moles. It's easier to count how many places I have without freckles than with. Maybe I could be in the Fantastic Four. I'd be The Human Pointillist.

I went to a dermatologist this week to see if the mole was anything to worry about. Very thankfully, it was not. But it took them longer to run my credit card than it did for the doctor to tell me I was fine. The doctor checked to see if the mole was discolored or misshapen - nope. I could have told her that from my original checkup, where I actually did hold a mirror to my upper back. The dermatologist assured me I was fine, told me to come back in a year, and gave me a pamphlet with icky pictures to make sure I couldn't eat lunch.

The first doctor was just being careful; it is better to get a second opinion than leave something undiagnosed. And I don't regret getting the mole checked just in case. But that first doctor would have saved us all a lot of time if she had just read the pamphlet with the icky pictures.

My favorite part of the day was the form I had to fill out once I arrived at the office. There was a questionnaire that included of every symptom of every illness ever. If I was supposed to fill out what I currently had, that'd make sense. But the form asked me to fill out what I'd ever had.

Stuffy Nose?

Check.

Fever?

Check.

Nausea?

After looking at that brochure? Chee-eeck.

Cough?

What?

Why ask me if I've ever coughed? I've coughed BECAUSE doctors have told me to. Show me someone who has yet to cough and I'll show you someone choked by their own umbilical cord.

I thought about not checking "cough." Then the doctor could come out and diagnose me.

"The good news is that the mole is just a mole. The bad news is you're a robot. Here's a brochure with pictures of rust."

I asked the woman at the desk if I'd filled out the form correctly, since I wasn't currently experiencing any of those symptoms. The only symptom I was experiencing was worrying if I'd get a parking ticket, which is a symptom of only having an hour on the meter and realizing how long this may take. She said that my form was fine, and they just wanted my medical history. Which I can understand, but anything curable by a nap and a pack of Halls shouldn't qualify as medical history.

I got more good news - I got back to my car in time to avoid the parking ticket so I wouldn't be out another $70. The drive home was easy - I felt good, I was happy about being healthy. I turned on my music, opened my window, and took in a giant breath of fresh air.

And then, suddenly, I coughed. Sweet - my robotism was cured, too.

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

Thomas Jackson, you left your credit card in the check-in machine at the United counter of the Los Angeles airport. Sorry Mr. Jackson, I am for real. Unfortunately, so is the clerks' incompetence.

Thanksgiving brings many things to each of us, but chief among them is air travel. I am not flying home - I'm flying to Oregon for the night to perform at a show that many people will probably miss so they can fly home. But I still get to experience all the fun that comes with holiday travel. So does Mr. Jackson.

I found the credit card about 30 seconds after Mr. Jackson left the machine. I faced the gentleman behind the counter and said, "excuse me." He snapped back from his unnecessarily tall platform, "not now, I'm with someone." I politely told him that I understood, but a man left his credit card and the poor guy should be paged before he goes through security. Airport security is enough a nightmare once, no one needs to do it twice.

Ticket-boy snapped at me again. "I am with someone!" Which is probably not the description of his Thanksgiving plans, because I can't imagine the household that would welcome this embittered creature.

The people he was helping joined in and asked him to page Mr. Jackson. They said they could wait a few extra seconds to prevent a stranger from possibly missing his flight. But the fool on the hill refused. "I can only do one thing at a time!," he said, which was ironically exactly what we were asking him to do. Finally, I explained the situation to my clerk and said, "please do this before you check me in." She assured me they were doing everything they could. Which apparently included letting the card sit on the counter while Mr. Jackson went through security.

I didn't have to help Mr. Jackson. I could have kept his card and had some fun on an air phone, pillaged SkyMall, and ordered all the room service in Portland. I really did want to help. But airline customer service has gotten so bad, they don't even let other people be nice to their customers.

The clerks finally paged the guy - I heard it, while sitting at my gate.

My Thanksgiving travel got progressively worse. Already reeling from the airport traffic, the $30 parking fee, and the ticket clerks who were only United in being inconsiderate, the only electrical outlet at my gate was next to a grown man playing a song flute. Yes, the very same instrument I played in second grade. It's boring to wait for a flight, but buy a magazine! The US Weekly crossword is a lot less intrusive than a song flute. And a second grader could do that, too.

United boarded us all at once, so we had lots of time to wait in line for people to squish baggage into places where baggage doesn't fit. I was especially eager to get to my middle seat so that I could ring my call button and wait for the flight attendant to ignore it. That's a little game we have. I call it "What's the Point of These Buttons?"

I tried to sleep. But the guy to my right had a techno-filled IPod turned up so loud that I could feel every oocha oocha oocha. Which was perfect, since he fell asleep two minutes into the flight. He should give thanks I didn't dip the thing in my four ounce soda. I bet headphone man's relatives will be thrilled to see him. He'll walk in the door, and they'll shower him with presents of glow sticks and pacifiers.

Even if the guy to my right wasn't playing Rave Hits 19, the gentleman to my left decided that my stomach was an extension of his arm rest. After I gave him a result-less fourth dirty look, I finally said, "could you please stop elbowing me?" And he looked at me like I was the jerk. I wonder if the United ticket clerk will enjoy Thanksgiving at this guy's house, because they must be related.

Upon landing, the woman across from me took my bag out of the overhead and started going through it. After the second time I asked her to stop because it was not her bag, she said, "it looks a lot like my bag!" Which would make sense if it had any of the same stuff in it, or if the two bags were the same color.

There really is room on the market for a good airline. One that, for just $15 more per ticket, gives you food, and customer service, and the ability to sit more that two inches from a complete jerk. Billionaires, if you're reading this (and I know you are), I give you rights to the idea. You can call it "What Air Travel Was Until Pretty Recently Airlines."

The reason I'm staying in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving is not because I'm avoiding my family. It's because I'm avoiding the travel. The one positive moment of my Oregon trip came when my connecting flight left out of the same gate as my incoming flight. For the first time in my life (and probably the last). I was happy that one thing worked out, and I'd have a few minutes to eat a seven dollar burrito before I waited in line to play a spirited game of "What's the Point of These Buttons?"

Mr. Jackson, you probably did miss your flight. And in a way, I envy you.

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

It's finally happened. I've been banned from the internet. Which is amazing, considering some of the creeps on there.

I'm exaggerating, of course. It's what I do. All the time. See?

Here's the real story. For those of you who are new to this column and who don't like reading archives, I launched a quest last Christmas Eve for 10,000 friends on facebook.com. For those of you who are older than I am, facebook.com is a community website where college students try to hook up with other college students and send each other chain mail. Sometimes an occasional comedian drops by to create a biting social commentary and get a ton of publicity. And chain mail.

By mid January, I had 15,000 friends. I expanded the quest, and sought 100,000 friends. I got that a few months later. Did I stop there? If you think I did, you must really be new to this column.

I kept adding friends and friends kept adding me, totaling up to about 200,000. And then, the crash came.

Facebook's programmers were not expecting to run into someone quite as obsessive as Steve Hofstetter. So with more than 1% of every college student in the world on my friends list, the site started slowing down.

That's understandable. Before I came around, facebook's biggest concern was girls who displayed their cleavage and phone numbers and then wondered why people would call them. I, on the other hand, wondered which strip club will eventually hire them. You may think I'm mean, but anyone who can't figure out that removing a phone number from a website will prevent random phone calls isn't suited for a day job. Or at least a job I can write about in a family newspaper.

But then came my friend quest. My quest amounted to millions of extra page-views, especially once people started copying me. There are several hundred friend questers now, though none of them ever broke 100,000. Just call me Wilt Chamberlain, because my record will stand. His points record, you pervert.

When facebook emailed me this weekend, I understood the situation was tense. My page was simply too big, and was slowing the site down for everyone. I never wanted that to happen - how could I live with myself if I was the reason there were fewer college hookups? That'd put me in the same category as herpes and RAs.

So I made a suggestion. I never thought I would say this, but it seemed the only possible solution.

"Reset me."

And they did.

Gone was my mammoth friend list. Gone was my two degrees of separation from almost every college student in the world. But most importantly, gone was my chain mail. Hello, silver lining.

The facebook people were nice enough to accommodate me all this time, and nice enough not to boot me once I was starting to, well, ruin their site. Instead of deleting my profile, they simply rolled back my odometer. The funniest part is that they did it overnight, and by the time I woke up I had 22 new friend requests. I have a feeling that by next year they'll have to roll it back again, or I may have to get a new car entirely.

I have experienced some very cool things through the quest - new friends, a documentary made about me, and an eerie window into just how dumb people can be.

"I know your profile explains everything, and so does your picture, and you just told me, but who are you?"

The chain mail may have stopped, but I still get those dumb "who are you" messages. And I probably always will.

"I just saw you doing standup at a club. Are you a comedian?"

Facebook will always have a special place in my heart and if it is every written, my biography. I thank the staff for not hating me for slowing their site, and I thank the 200,000 people who went with me on my ridiculous journey. Though I feel like a chapter of my life has been closed, I know it's only a matter of time before boredom and obsessiveness lead me to write a new one.

There's always MySpace.

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

Two years ago, I was in State College for Halloween. That was the year of my "Every Freakin Girl on Campus" costume, when I walked around Penn State with angel wings, cat ears, and a pitch fork. Not to mention the t-shirt that read, "Every freaking girl on campus."

Last year, I ended up in a motel in Louisiana. You know, the kind of motel where killers get rooms. Which is great, because the limited cable always seems to have a movie where someone gets killed in a motel. But when I heard a loud knock at my door, it was not a murderer. Just a kid in a costume and a woman on a campaign for the worst mother of the year award. No one unwilling to spend $10 extra to stay in a place without cigarette stains in the tub keeps their broken bureau drawer stocked with candy. Spring for a cab and take the kid somewhere he won't get killed. And somewhere people distributing treats are more prevalent than those turning tricks.

This Halloween, I was in Los Angeles, and I intended to stock my apartment with chocolate. Of course I forgot to buy any, which didn't turn out so bad since I didn't get a single trick-or-treater. I live in West Hollywood, an area that is a fusion of out-of-work actors, flamboyantly gay men, and flamboyantly gay out of work actors. I'm not sure if I had no visitors because my neighborhood doesn't have many kids or because parents knew none of us were likely to have candy. Or because everyone was busy trick-or-treating in Shreveport.

It was also the first Halloween night that I performed. I did stand-up at a bar in Universal Studios, where tons of people came in costume and it was coincidentally Halloween. People play dress-up daily in LA, so Halloween is just an excuse to get a little fancier. It's like wearing a tux to work in a nice office. Sure, it's a little out of place. But it doesn't stand out as much when the rest of the world is wearing tuxes to Walmart.

Some of the costumes were good, but most were downright ridiculous. So I'd like to start what could be an annual thing - reviewing the costumes of people much more into Halloween than I am.

Sexy Mundane Job Girl:
Take a Home Depot smock or a McDonalds shirt, make a few cuts, and poof - you have a great way to tell your parents that they should be expecting a grandkid in a few months. You know, a few days after the wedding.

Guy Dressed as The Crow:
Oh, you're so dark and disturbed that you came dressed as a character from a movie that most people forgot about. You dress as The Crow on November 15th, I'll give you dark and disturbed. On Halloween, you're just a guy who owns black pants.

Girl Who Just Wears a Bra:
You couldn't come up with a way to be Sexy Mundane Job Girl, so you're just Sexy Mundane Girl. Good for you, you have a flat stomach. It must make up for your complete lack of personality.

Guy Who Shows Up With Girl Who Just Wears a Bra:
I have to hand it to you, you have guts. Going to a party or a bar with your girlfriend dressed like that is like driving a Mercedes into Compton, tossing the keys on the hood, and standing around to see what happens. "Go ahead, man, take it. See what I do."

Girl Who Doesn't Dress Up, and Then Wishes She Did To Fit In
So you decided to be bold this year and buck the costume trend, until you saw how much fun your friends were having. And then you buckled and made one up as if you planned it the whole time. "I'm dressed as a, um, uh, um, sad sad girl with no conviction of character." Yes. Yes you are.

Guy Who No One Knows What the Heck He Is:
You throw on a bathrobe and penny loafers and you get upset when no one can figure out your costume. I saw a guy dressed like this and the only guess I had was that he came as a (language edited to allow column to run in family newspapers) head.

Girl Who Buys a Pre-Made Costume:
It's not creative to come as Rainbow Brite if you thought of it at a costume sale. You bought the outfit, so what are the odds that you're the only one? If you think showing up in the same dress to a party is bad, try having it be blue satin and accompanied with a red wig. "No, of course I'm not Rainbow Brite, too. I'm, um, Hooker Annie."

Guy Who Takes Delight in Mocking Others Instead of Dressing Up:
That guy is awesome.

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