I had a brand new post written for this morning, and I was just about to post it when Kevin emailed this to me:

Simple, horrifying genius. There’s no way anything I wrote was going to top that.

Enjoy your weekends, everybody, or Brimley will come for you.

Thursdays are delightful times for friendship and cloud-time cuddles!

Let’s race each other beyond the rainbow and make our dreams come true! The only thing stopping us is the limits of our imagination! Can you see the sunbursts and peppermint skies?

Welcome back children, I’m Professor Tickles!

Did you know that the laughter of children fuels my soul’s insatiable curiosity? Of course it does! Come here, you with the red hair and eyeglasses! What’s your name? Billy? Yes, I like you the most. It’s time to sit on my knee.

I’d like all of you to gather round and listen to a fantastical tale of magic and whimsy. Yes, that’s right Billy, sit right here snug on my knee. Did you take a bath this morning? You smell like fresh tulips! Just sit still so I can get my nose into your nice red hair and sniff…

Yeah, that’s the stuff.

What’s that, Billy? Don’t be silly, of course I’m not grabbing you too hard! No, those red marks aren’t from my fingers, those are magic spots! They mean that somebody loves you! The more they love you, the longer the spots will last.

Well that’s all the time we have for today, children. I have to help Billy with his homework now, so the rest of you should go back to your homes. Be sure to come back next Thursday for another adventure with Professor Tickles!

At last, today picture day here at school. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

Unfortunately though, some of the higher-ups put the kibosh on my idea of my holding a knife for my picture. They flushed my plans down the drain after months of pre-production work involving storyboarding and blade design.

Stupid political correctness…

Yesterday my brother Brian turned 22. The occasion was little noted nor celebrated.

He and I did, however, enjoin in an intellectually provacative conversation regarding his educational pursuits. Brian is a senior this year at the University of St. Thomas, studying engineering and computer programming. He told me that he has been studying the advancements being made in the field of artificial intelligence, noting that we have been able to program robots to achieve and understand so much about our world. One of the concepts that seems beyond the grasp of robots, however, is that of humor. He told me that this idea will likely never be mastered by artificial intelligence.

Setting aside the obvious problems of assigning engineers to teach a robot humor, I believe this is a notable question for our age. If the robots do not understand humor, who will teach the gift of laughter to our children? If the comfortably expected comedic tidings of Two and a Half Men cannot bring a smile to the soulless chrome face of a robot, who will bring delight to the next generation with sly sexual innuendo and delightful zingers? Without humor in the robot-led future, our world will become a gray void of ceaseless toil and infinite Excel spreadsheets. Mirth will be replaced with calculated efficiency, and laughter replaced with tasteless, nutrient-loaded food pellets dispensed from above. Does this sound like the kind of world you want to live in? The answer, of course, is no. This sounds even worse than Mexico.

This, my friends, is why I support mayor R.T. Ryback’s proposed 8% property tax increase on a city with a crippled housing market which already has the highest tax rate in the region. Because if we can’t teach robots humor, then who will boost the precious self-esteem of our children and tell them that their choices are merely the result of factors outside their control? The answer? Evil robots, that’s who. Probably ones controlled by Wal-Mart.

Sincerely,
Slobotron Milosotron

I spent my weekend in the cozy confines of the Iron Range with my wife’s family. A weekend spent deep in the taconite-rich soil of Virginia, MN is a welcome respite from my busy city life. It gives me a moment to reflect and ponder on the important things in life. A time to be still and reflect on the passage of life.

Time to read a book like Cool Cos: The Story of Bill Cosby.

This weighty, 138-page tome was published in 1969 and remains the finest, most scholarly overview of the comedic giant’s life available to the public. It is believed by this author that this book won 11 Academy Awards in March 1970, even though no film adaptation of it was ever produced or considered.

A few nuggets of valuable gleaned from the book…

Bill Cosby was born a black child in Philadelphia.

Cosby dropped out of high school, though his IQ was high enough to gain him admission into prestigious private schools. He blamed this failure on a lack of effort on his part.

Atop a blackened mountain in 1964, Bill Cosby destroyed the Fire Queen by stabbing her with a sharpened Amulet of Avercorn. He later turned this into a beloved comedy routine where he made funny faces.

After passing an equivalency exam for his GED, Cosby was a star athelete at Temple University, where he majored in physical education.

Cosby was homeless and destitude from the years 1974-1996. During that time, it is believed that he lost most of his teeth and he earned what little money he had by fighting feral dogs to the death and starring in a family sitcom of some repute.

Cosby was cast as the co-star of the hit television series I Spy, making him the first African-American lead in a television drama series in American history.

Cosby’s mother described him as always being at the center of attention as a child because of his wacky antics.

Before going on stage to perform, Bill Cosby eats raw meat and bays at the moon.

Cosby’s early comedy material was considered very cutting edge. He eventually stopped doing a particular bit where he repeatedly put a loaded pistol in his mouth and would encourage the audience to egg him on to a gruesome public suicide. This routine regularly ended with a three-quarters empty club and Cosby passed out on the stage. Ironically, this bit landed him an appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Bill Cosby pulled himself up by his bootstraps.

Cosby’s bootstraps are now enshrined at the Smithsonian, along with one of his platinum-selling comedy albums and his severed left hand.

Last night, before a packed throng of sensitive adults, hyperventilating teens and curiously friendly men with ponytails, I did a concert with Jon Smith at my school.

This was a big deal, people. I’m serious. We were sweating bullets backstage before we went on. The tension was palpable. This photograph shows the precise moment when the pressure finally reached its breaking point and we chose to reject societal norms.

Before we knew it, the show had begun and we were nakedly laying our bitterest emotions before the audience, who soon began openly weeping and gnashing their teeth in nostalgic remorse. Shouts and wails of sharp emotion rang from the audience, but Jon and I played on remorselessly.

At this point we were in the middle of playing Jon’s song “Carolina” (here’s a free mp3 of it, if you like). It’s a song about the the depletion of the silverback gorilla population in the Amazon rainforest. At least I think that’s what it’s about. I’ll level with you - never actually bothered to listen to it.

This was during my song “Appreciater“. At this point, Jon was soloing and my mind was still in silverback gorilla mode. I’ll be honest, throughout pretty much the whole show I was obsessing about it. Maybe it’s a sin for one man to love a damn monkey-ape so bad that his guts hurt. If that’s wrong though, I don’t want to be right. Sometimes, the sweetest sins are worth the eventual regret.

I don’t want to go off on a tangent here, but wouldn’t you agree that the slaughtering of 6 million gorillas a week is more important than building a new baseball stadium for some millionaire owner? Doesn’t the grotesque beheading of apes and gluttonous feasts of festering monkey entrails make you indignant? I guess if you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the America I once knew…