Earlier this week I was sitting around my apartment and trying to decide what I would buy when the fat check for my work here at The Badger Herald came in the mail. I was trying to decide what extinct animal hide would serve as the best upholstery for my solid gold hovercraft (Himalayan spotted velociraptor) when I realized I wasn't sure exactly how many figures my salary was. I called up my editor, Ryan Gauthier, to give me a ballpark estimate.

"We don't pay you anything," he said.

"When's my next raise?"

"Never."

"Then why am I doing this?"

"You like swearing in public."

"F*cking right I do, you tightfisted ass!" I shouted and slammed down the phone, or I would have slammed it if I didn't have a cell phone. Instead, I folded it really fast. Then I unfolded it and called my friend Matt.

"Matt, apparently that amazing new job I told you about where I talk sh*t for money has a major catch: No money. Let's go out and get so wasted that I forget that I have no marketable skills."

"I can't go out, I don't have any money. Let's just get a case and drink it at Jess' place."

"You don't have any — wait, I think I'm on to something big here. I'll call you back later."

I checked with a few friends and it turns out none of us have any money. We all work lousy jobs to pay for school and spend whatever's left on booze, drugs, food and cell phones which we use to call each other and complain about how we don't have any money. I returned to Matt with the results of my findings.

"From now on I'm just going to talk about free stuff anybody can check out on the Internet or in walking distance of campus — like the zoo, or the Wisconsin Historical Society headquarters or exhibitions at whatever the hell they're calling the Elvehjem now."

"That's not a bad idea. Are you still going to write publishers and record labels for free review copies of stuff that you have no intention of mentioning in print?"

"Obviously. Hey, it's been great having this fictional conversation with you. As soon as I'm done with this column, I think I'll call you for real and let you know you're in the paper!"

So here are two excellent, free ways to waste your time by enacting Machiavellian domination of virtual arenas that nobody you ever meet in real life will care about.

First off, www.sissyfight.com allows you to create an ugly, whiny pre-adolescent girl with which to dominate a virtual playground. Tease, tattle and cower your way to the head of the pack by destroying the delicate self-esteem of any schoolyard succubi foolish enough to challenge your authority in the dark purgatory that is recess. Gameplay is a series of turns in which you choose a single action from a short list, using your knowledge of human behavior to predict the likely actions of your opponents. An in-game chat feature allows you to build tenuous treaties with other girls. Be sure to be the first to break them and scratch your new sister-in-arms just as she thinks it's safe to lick her morale-restoring lollypop. She will choke on it and you will feel like a big man.

Perhaps you think that there is something pathetic about pretending to be a little girl in an imaginary power struggle. Clearly you need to pretend to be somebody much more important. How about an internationally trend-setting music executive with your own label?

The website www.projectrockstar.com not only makes that dream come true providing you are sufficiently delusional, but it does it with a lot of style and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. I say tongue-in-cheek because it is a creation of the British, and anything that is both British and funny is always tongue-in-cheek. This is because British people never stick their tongues out at anybody. They are too classy.

Setting up your label and learning the basics of how to keep your musicians happy and productive has only a moderate learning curve, and once you're past it you need only invest a couple of minutes every few days to keep things going. You can create bands ascribed to any genre of music imaginable and hire musicians with bizarre combinations of instrument proficiencies and personalities. At first, you'll be at the bottom, using the studios, sound technicians and performance arenas owned by other players. Save up diligently and you'll be able to buy your own and hire them out to other managers — or use the money to steal their best performers.

The appeal of this game is much the same as "The Sims'": you're free to customize everything from the charisma and talent of your bass player to the names and lyrics of your hit singles, creating an entirely fictional lifestyle with touches that are uniquely yours. All the while, this information is somehow part of a vast network of other managers and labels so that when your hit single makes the charts, it means you are in some way better than another nerdy would-be music mogul. Or don't compete and use your enormous music executive salary to buy gifts for other players.

This will help you forget that the only thing you can afford to buy for your actual friends is pizza, and even then only if it's a 2-for-1 special.