Look out, Halloween is right around the corner!

In eager expectation of this accursed eve, lanterns have been lit, skulls have been hung, and goats have been violated in the seasonal aisles of Wal-Mart by unenthusiastic employees!

Before we know it, we’ll be inundated with legions of children dressed as hobgoblins and deep sea fishermen with Hepatitis B. Bowls of bite-sized Milky Ways will be tossed in the air to attract feeble-minded passersby as homeless men thrust their pelvises and bellow haggard barks of satisfaction. All will be made right when the clock strikes midnight and the world vomits in unison with unbridled Satanic glee. Halloween is upon us!

Draw nearer to me, my pig! Feel the hot lickspittle from my lips sting your face! Smell the stale blast of cottage cheese on my breath as I hold you down and shout Halloween-related tidings at you!

Halloween is almost here! Mount the celebration device and let us begin!

Now let us turn to the subject of oatmeal.

In the dark and forboding twilight hours of sleepless fatherhood, my precious oatmeal has been my only true companion. Alone, illuminated by the shameful blue light of my laptop and accompanied by my atonal gutteral dronings, my oatmeal has soothed my shames with its warm, creamy essence. In hiding from a fussy infant and beleaguered wife, I cravenly return time and again to my oatmeal in hopes that its hearty texture and savory oat-pleasures will bring me comfort . More often than not, the thickly aromatic oatpaste is able to burrow through my stomach into my soul and fill it with nutrition and meaning.

My oatmeal is flavored with the finest Vermont maple and sweet brown sugar from the engorged breasts of Mother Hawaii herself. In an act of sheer gluttony, I often mix raisins in with this concoction to create a alchemy of oats and dried fruit that would make a priest incontinent. I am like a dark wizard stooping over a bubbling cauldron of oaty enchantment.

Come to me now, my oatmeal lover. My bowels groan for you.

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P.S. The following illuminating conversation took place midway through the writing of this post as I was rocking Oliver to sleep.

ME: Do you want to take him?
WIFE: I’m in the middle of this.
ME: I just want to finish my blog entry.
WIFE: Well, you have a child now.

Uh…what?

There’s nothing like a Law & Order marathon to make you feel all warm and smushy inside, is there?

Law & Order has everything I love – grizzled irony, child rapists, and characters who lie. On top of that, each episode features more unexpected wrinkles than Willie Nelson’s anus. Every version of Law & Order runs like clockwork, starting with an incident of unspeakable cruelty and ending with some lucky guest star shouting in a courtroom (somewhat like Willie Nelson, though to a lesser degree). It’s twisted, televised comfort food, like maple-flavored cat excrement.

As the hours pass by during a Law & Order marathon, we the viewers begin to take on the characteristics of the show. We greet strangers with cynical suspicion, we squint our eyes skeptically, and floss our teeth with incredulity. We respond to moments of significance with narrow-eyed, incisive comments and resolve ethical dilemmas with physical force and tough words, totally unlike Willie Nelson.

Hooray for Law & Order marathons! They make us awful!

Let me understand this correctly, a Colorado man has perpetrated a hoax by which he pretended to accidentally launch a helium-filled, UFO-shaped balloon into the sky? And the balloon was supposed to somehow contain his six year old son? And the intended outcome of this stunt was to net an offer for a reality show for his family?

And wait a minute, he named his son Falcon?

Kudos to this guy and his family for the bizarrely-complex, yet utterly illogical scheme! Why not involve some sort of alibi involving the Mexican drug cartels while you’re at it? Perhaps that would be too R-rated for his presumptive show’s intended audience of suburban gossipy housewives addicted to TLC? If that’s the case, why not incorporate an advice-dispensing, flamboyantly gay man who is improbably adept at grouting ceramic tile? Maybe this guy’s failing was that he didn’t dream big enough!

On the other hand, what has our country come to when I can’t trust a man who looks me in the eye and tells me that his foolishly-named son is flying through the stratosphere in a homemade balloon? Maybe I don’t want to live in a world where reality television has forced us to question everybody’s motives. Back in my day, when Fonzie told Ralph Malph to sit on it, Ralph Malph sat on it with his honesty and integrity intact.

I just want my America back, and I want people to stop faking that their kids are floating away, and I want everybody to stop having so much sex with each other. Is that really too much to ask?

Though sleep and free time are not things I have in excess these days, I thought I’d take a moment to update the ol’ JLP with some musings on being a new dad. If these aren’t funny enough for you, then rent the hit film Weekend at Bernies and the ill-advised 1997 follow-up Weekend at Bernies III: The Ultimate Violation and guffaw till you puke.

-Turns out that the 3am offerings on television aren’t the most compelling, particularly if you don’t have cable. While I’m burping and soothing Oliver, I’m stuck choosing between infomercials on natural weight loss remedies, local news re-runs, and celebrity gossip shows. Watching these in such a loopy mental state is actually somewhat compelling. From what I’ve gathered, Lindsay Lohan is too skinny and enjoys drugs, and Jon Gosselin trapped himself in a helium balloon that flew over Colorado.

-Coffee has gone from an occasional indulgence to a flat-out necessity. I’m basically dependant on it these days to stay alert. It is like the thick, nourishing milk from a she-wolf, and I am the ravenous polar bear nursing unfeasably from her.

-Since watching my wife go through such a traumatic delivery and becoming a father, my emotions have been on overdrive to a preposterous extreme. Two days ago, while grabbing a few items at Target, I was thinking about the rollercoaster of a year Bridgette and I have been through and how incredibly blessed I felt. I hit the electronics area and saw a display of Christmas music. As I picked up the albums and started reading the song titles, tears began welling in my eyes. There I was, holding a copy of Alan Jackson’s Let it Be Christmas in a busy department store in October, weeping openly. This is no joke. I went home and told Bridgette about it and she laughed right in my face. Since Tuesday morning at 2am, she’s been the heroically determined stoic and I’ve been the emotional basket case. It’s probably time to stop drinking this Diet Pepsi with Estrogen.

-Bridgette can somehow simultaneously hold Oliver and vacuum the carpet, talk on the phone, and lovingly nurture the cats. Meanwhile, when I hold him, I feebly demand that she dip my chicken strips in BBQ sauce for me and then lift them to my eager, quivering lips. I just can’t multitask very well, and can sometimes feel a bit uncoordinated with him. The way I see it, though, as long as he doesn’t die from dysentery on my watch, I’ve done my job.

Enjoy your Sunday, everyone.

Hey guys, I have a number of ideas I hope to elaborate on for this blog, but the last 72 hours has been the most crazy, hectic, amazing time of my life. It’s hard to catch a few moments to do much other than send out pictures. Once we’ve caught up on sleep I’ll definitely be posting more. I will say that Bridgette is feeling better, and is already a really amazing, doting mom. Our cat Ben Franklin likes hanging around the baby but looks annoyed when he’s screaming, and Mona still seems scared to death. She, like Jefferson Davis, fears change.

So here are a few more pictures from Oliver’s first few days…

I particularly like this picture of him with his cousin Cole, dressed as a gnome tribal leader.

Again, jokes and thoughtlessness will soon return to this blog. Fear not. Now’s just not the moment.