A week ago, the first snowstorm of winter hit the Twin Cities, dropping a fat, fluffy load of angel excrement across our fine metro area during the afternoon rush hour. Highway travel was rendered futile, and the pace of traffic slowed to a rhythm befitting a morbidly obese man methodically working through a Chinese buffet. It took Bridgette and I two hours to get from our workplace in Eden Prairie to our home to north Minneapolis. It was most certainly worse than the recent Mumbai terror attacks.

During yesterday’s rush hour, the heavenly hosts again adorned our region with a 3-inch layer of fine white snowfeces. Again, traffic snarled and slowed. Again, curse words were shouted into the heavens with great vigor.

But this time, we were ready.

Setting a goal to somehow make it from work to home without using any of the major freeways, Bridgette and I set off on the side streets. Armed only with a vaguely-helpful map and an increasingly ineffective set of windshield wipers, my wife and I were as one as we sped through the quiet, well-to-do neighborhoods of the wealthy southwest suburbs. She, shouting out arbitrary street names and directions at the last moment by the light of the dome light, and I, pumping the brakes and deftly avoiding collisions with bridge embankments.

Our Hyundai slipped through the darkened boulevards and alleyways as we guided it north and east with my trusty astrolabe (given to me in my childhood by a mysterious, wizened miser who I presumed to be one of my uncles). Slowly, inexorably, we made our way closer and closer to our beloved home, with its drafty windows and unintentionally slanting awnings. It was as if we could hear our cats meowing for us in the frosty night air, impatient for their filthy cat paste we set out for them nightly in disgust.

At last, at 6:31, we pulled into the familiar confines of our garage. Surrounded with crappy lawn maintenance equipment and unused recycling bins, we were home. We had done it, somehow traveling from Eden Prairie to north Minneapolis without getting on a highway. We were like Ponce De León, except for the racism.

And it only took us 1 hour and 51 minutes.

Last night, on my way home from work, I got a call on my cell phone from “UNKNOWN”. My curiosity was piqued as I wondered if it was a pollster calling to allow me to register my complaints about Minneapolis’s sidewalk-replacement division that chose to arbitrarily gut my sidewalks and leave me with a $250 bill.

Alas, while the call was indeed from a pollster, they were curiously unreceptive regarding my complaints. Instead, they seemed to be conducting a push poll for the Minnesota DFL. Without asking for any sort of demographic data, they asked if I agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “Senator Norm Coleman could have done done more to stop metheaphetamine use in Minnesota.”

I laughed out loud and said “Strongly disagree. You’re conducting a push poll here, are you?” The woman abruptly concluded the phone call at that point.

Later that night, Bridgette and I sat down to watch ABC’s broadcast of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” To my increasing amusement, every time this warm-hearted family broadcast faded out, we were treated to an entire break’s worth of belligerantly negative campaign ads. I wondered if these campaigns had bothered to consider what the tone of those ads would feel like against the grain of the Charlie Brown special.

Folks, I like politics. Among other things, I teach a class on politics and current affairs for a living. I read the A section of the newspaper with great interest and enthusiasm. Having said that, next Tuesday can’t come fast enough…

I recently spent a couple hours in my yard on a crisp October morning raking up the autumn leaves and doing a final mowing of my lawn. The air was cool and the skies were a bright blue as I worked outside in my favorite sweatshirt and favored work gloves, raking feverishly like Yosemite Sam on crack. I stuffed my giant black lawn bags to the brim with the colorful leaves, and then sealed them in tight for all eternity. I then brought the heaping bags down into my basement to be catalogued and stored for future study, as I am wont to do.

Then, that very afternoon, the unraked leaves from the Catholic church across the street blew onto my lawn, rendering useless the entireity of my life’s efforts to that point. I have suspicions that this was ordained by the Blessed Virgin herself, since she apparently has magical powers.

Thanks for nothing, wind.

Hey, you ever heard of cats?

I have. I’ve got two of them, and they each crap in a box next to my damn washing machine.

One of my cats is named Ben Franklin. That sick bastard likes to sniff my jello. That ain’t no figure of speech, either. He literally does sniff my jello.

Now Ben Franklin’s got a new idea. At 5:15 in the morning, he enters our bedroom and begins yowling for no reason whatsoever. Trust me, this is exactly as amusing as it sounds.

We try to ignore him so he doesn’t think he runs the house, but let’s face it, cats are arrogant pricks. They think they’re superior to the good Lord himself. (They’re in for a rude awakening when judgement day comes and they find themselves suffering for all eternity in the searing flames of cat hell.)

So there we are, trying to sleep through the piercing cries of our cat in the early morning hours, but he keeps pushing it. He jumps up onto the bed, and reaches over to my wife’s nightstand and starts batting at the lamp, trying to knock it over. Now something must be done, so she smacks him. Unfazed, he bats at the lamp again.

The best part of the story? He’s doing it for no particular reason. When we do wake up, he casually lopes out of the room and retires to his corner of the house to go to sleep for the next 13 hours. Ben Franklin is an ungrateful pig of a cat.

So anyway, long story short, we’ve got a free cat if anybody wants one.

Did you guys hear that Sarah Palin impregnated her 17 year-old daughter?

Did you know that she did this on orders from John McSame?

Did you know that she gave birth to a child with Downs Syndrome and then compounded the child’s existential pain by naming him Trig? Did you know that that child was used to cover up her daughter’s methpregnancy?

Have you heard that she gave birth to her 17 year-old unwed Downs Syndrome daughter on the infamous Bridge to Nowhere? Did you know that John McCain selected her as his V.P. choice in order to appeal to Hillary Clinton’s unwed daughter and all her friends with Downs Syndrome?

Everything is so sexist right now. Sarah Palin wants to make me pregnant, but I won’t let her. I am completely reasonable.

Look at me! I am an anarchist protester!

WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Question the system! Down with the fascists!

I DO NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF FASCISM!!!!

Now I am slashing tires of police and news vehicles! UNDERSTAND MY POINT!!

I am wearing a wedding dress. This somehow represents the injusice inherent in the system!

If only my college professor could see me now! He would be so proud!

SCREW YOU DAD! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!