The title of Mil Millington's debut novel, Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, is a carryover from his hilarious (and hilariously ugly) cult web site, but the resemblance mostly ends there. At thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com, Millington details the ludicrous, colorful fights between himself and Margret, a German woman with whom he's had a longstanding relationship and two children. His novel features a similar couple–Pel and Ursula–who have similar fights, and it employs some of the same wry, dry, despairing, quintessentially British humor, but otherwise it's a separate entity whose title just happens to trade on Millington's small share of Internet fame. Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About is an odd name for a book that's more about the clashes and cooperations between slackerdom and bureaucratic chaos than about arguments with anyone's girlfriend. But under any name, Things is a lively, giddy book that skids along on two wheels through a frenzied slalom course of shaggy-dog stories. Pel starts out as a supervisor for a library IT group at the University Of Northern England, in spite of his general lack of computer knowledge. Comfortably ensconced between a manager who handles the large problems and an IT team that handles the small ones, Pel is effectively able to kick back and do nothing but speak in acronyms, play one-upmanship verbal games with his friends, and fight with his girlfriend about everything from the vacuuming to whether they should be living in a crime-ridden neighborhood "so dire that the government was applying for a grant from the European Union to pay for it to be placed under martial law." But then Pel's manager absconds with a large wad of university money, and Pel is promoted to a position with actual responsibilities, including dealing with a predatory local press, the Hong Kong triads, a cadre of near-criminal construction workers, and a series of higher-ups who hide behind Pel as he attempts to hide behind them. Somewhat similar in flavor, theme, and progression to Neal Stephenson's recently unearthed debut novel The Big U, Millington's first book is an uneven and occasionally too-frantic farce, but it turns neatly on clever wordplay, whip-crack dialogue, and shamelessly outrageous hyperbole. A critical hit in Millington's native Britain, where it was frequently compared to Bridget Jones's Diary, Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About has a distinct edge over Helen Fielding's work: Unlike Bridget Jones, Pel is utterly accepting of his lunatic fate and his own substantial role in bringing it about.