Bridgette left me at home alone last night with the boy and a short list of chores. Among them was to finish the laundry, and to assist me she left me a helpful note of the items that should not be placed in the dryer, lest they shrink. Certainly this was a reasonable request for any adult with a well-managed beard and Master’s Degree.

Of course, I blew it. A few hours after she left, I pulled her shrunken workout pants out of the dryer (the ones she expressly stated not to put in the dryer) and let slip a choice phrase from my college years.

So a hearty, ironic congratulations now goes out to me for destroying my wife’s pants and failing to execute her clear, concise request. I have effectively demonstrated my need for her to nag me about simple chores, so for the time being my childish bristling will go unwarranted. If there’s anything worse than being nagged, it’s acknowledging the demonstrable fact that I need to be nagged. This is just lovely.

What’s also lovely is that because of my foolish error, my wife will be spending $25 or $30 on a new pair of workout pants, money that is likely to come out of my monthly strobe light budget (I’m converting my garage into the Chamber of Epilepsy). If the next few weeks suck, I have only myself to blame.

Excuse me now, won’t you? I’m going to go sit in a bathroom stall for a while and look at my knife.

Late last night, my wife was awakened by an unnatural love.

Ben Franklin, having been denied the affections of his masters since the arrival of their son, took a firm grasp on his feminine friend Mona and attempted to take things to the next level. He did this despite the fact that his precious testes were callously tossed into a veteranarian’s dumpster several years ago.

Like the real Ben Franklin, our cat is not one to let biological futility or marriage vows stop him from seizing the rough love that he so cravenly desires.

After a swat and a scold from my wife, Ben Franklin scampered off the bed and down the hall for an extended, vigorous session of groin-licking. Mona remained still all along, as disinterested as she always in all manner of interaction that doesn’t involve birds. If she were a thoughtful companion, she would recognize that brusque, silent humping is Franklin’s love language. However, she did not reciprocate. Their relationship is a passionless arrangement, like Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Here’s wishing some one-sided cat love to all of you today!

Today is Presidents Day, where we honor Abraham Lincoln for slowly plunging a dagger between Jefferson Davis’ ribs to bring a just end to the War Between the States. Also, the other presidents are honored.

As a history teacher by trade, I would like to imagine that this blog can serve to educate as well as offend. For this reason, I offer you today this index of great presidential-themed posts from the JLP. Be they sullen, silly, or substantive, these posts highlight the history of our gloriously inerrent presidents.

Presidential Spotlights from the JLP Archives
George Washington
John Adams
Martin Van Buren
John Tyler
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln (and Lincoln’s dead body)
Rutherford B. Hayes
Chester A. Arthur
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan

As a parting gift, please enjoy this free download of These the President’s Be, easily the weakest track off our 2004 EP of goofy songs, Good Times & Pumpkin Pie!

Check out this awesome raisin, you guys!

Wow! Don’t you just want to put that fat, wrinkly son of a bitch in your mouth and suck it? It’s even better than normal since it has brown sugar all over it! It’s like slathering a delicious Wendy’s Double Stack in Miracle Whip – the best of both worlds!

One of my favorite things about raisins is how they taste vaguely like grapes. Why is that? I suppose we’ll never know. Thanks a lot, science.

All this talk of raisins reminds me of the timeless music of Big Raisin, who rocked the upstate New York region from 1990-1991.

They were, without a doubt, the voice of their generation. Their terrible, artistically bankrupt generation. Let’s lift a pail of raisins and toast Big Raisin – their song “Rock Patrol” lifted the spirits of a nation to new heights of adult contemporary refreshment, and their lead singer’s hairdo makes Art Garfunkel look like a reasonable person.

But back to the subject at hand, which is raisins. They’re awesome and I love to eat them every day. For some reason, raisins always taste best to me at 3am, right about the time my anxiety medication wears off.

Hooray, raisins!

Yesterday, a friend suggested that my blog posts have recently taken on a dark, sour overtone.

After I told my friend to shut up and mind his own business, I wondered if perhaps he had a point, so I went back and re-read my posts from the last few weeks. There was a violent Wendy’s-related entry, a misanthropic post about you being ugly, a bitter rant about the bullet hole in our garage, and so on. So while my friend’s comment may have been accurate, I would suggest that they’re really no different than usual.

What is this person expecting out of my blog, anyway? Has this blog ever been particularly warm-hearted? Blogs themselves have become passé, so I use this site to entertain myself by riffing on the dozen or so disturbing, obsessive themes I’ve always written about, interspersed with the occasional book or music review. I’d like to think the audience for this blog has weeded itself out by this point (with the exception of my animal hoarding posts, which people continue to come across and get outraged about). In short, if you’re waiting for the JLP to become edifying, then you might as well start loading up your shotgun and find a comfortable recliner.

(See, there’s an example. I don’t even know what exactly that last comment means, other than it’s off-putting and anti-social. But I like how it sounds, and I get to chose to include it in my post because this is my blog and I pay for the domain.)

Perhaps the content has turned darker lately because of the pressures of being a new dad and my career and our delicate family finances. I usually end up writing these on bleak mornings at work between a million other responsibilities. I also know that if I don’t crank at least three of these out a week, then Tom Hipps starts riding my ass in the comments section. Trust me, there’s nothing I appreciate more than some ungrateful jerk looking for me to spend my precious free time churning out blog entries for his fleeting amusement.

So to my friend, perhaps my blog has become a grim, immoral place. Perhaps that’s how I like it. Perhaps if the Godfather’s Pizza by my house hadn’t closed, everything would be okay, but we’re in a recession and everything sucks right now because Godfather’s is slowly disappearing. Seriously, what do I have left?

On an unrelated note, please enjoy this video footage of me delighting in my son.

Whose groin do I have to punch to get a Wendy’s Double Stack around here?

I know that it’s 8am, and I know there’s a snowstorm outside, but I’m about to start snapping some femurs if I don’t see a hot Wendy’s Double Stack in front of me pretty soon. I’m serious. In fact, I am totally psychotic about this.

Look, I’m a simple man. I like my pickles spicy and my tickles rough. Is it too much to ask for a delicious, mouth-watering Wendy’s Double Stack every Tuesday before school? Am I the crazy one here?

Here’s the thing about Wendy’s Double Stacks, they’re only 99 cents and they taste like a father’s love. There is nothing better than a Wendy’s Double Stack in the natural world, and that includes Dairy Queen Blizzards and the Grand Canyon.

Let’s bring it back home. If I’m not grinding a Wendy’s Double Stack into my face in the next ten minutes, I’m going to introduce my lead pipe to some skulls. It’s about to get depraved around here.

You know where to find me. As usual, I’ll be spitting obscenities in the third stall of the middle school boy’s bathroom. Be sure to announce yourself before you enter, or you’re likely to end up getting slowly strangled to death.

I love you and only you, Wendy’s Double Stack.