Novice educators often make the mistake of thinking that the process is simple and put together some alphabetical monstrosity that torpedoes any chance at learning. A good teacher building a seating chart is like an iditarod racer selecting a hearty team of dogs for their grueling cross-country journey. They must make choices that maximize their team’s strengths, minimize their weaknesses, and forestall violent, cannibalistic insurrection.

Look at this classroom’s seating chart, for instance.

This is the mark of a master teacher – a work of rigid, fearsome, symmetrical beauty. It is impossible to tell whether these children are waiting to receive mathematics instruction or to witness a public execution. The classroom environment is spartan, the pedagogy is severe, and the technology is nonexistant. In other words, educational paradise.

In constructing their seating chart, a good teacher must first know their students. Who are the alpha males? Who’s the queen bee? Who smells like old popcorn all the time? Once assessed, the mixing and matching begins. In a way, it’s like being secretary general of the United Nations. Do you think Israel and Iran are seated next to each other? Do you suppose the Serbs and Croats are allowed to mingle freely? Hardly. A good teacher places obnoxious delinquents like Sudan in the front corner to minimize their distration while chatty butterflies like Italy are seated next to quiet, serious South Korea. Canada is a teacher’s dream – they’re responsible, pleasant, and can help defuse trenchcoat-wearing weirdos like Russia.

Properly placed, the classroom becomes a harmonious, symbiotic whole. Mishandled, the classroom becomes a flaming heap of overturned desks and desecrated bulletin boards. This is the difference between being a highly qualified educator and being a Taco Bell shift manager or combing the bears at the zoo or something else dumb.

Educators of America, you’re welcome.

Unless you’ve lapsed into a egg nog-induced coma (henceforth to be referred to as “nogbrain”) you’re no doubt aware that the Christmas season is here. This is a glorious time of year in which children become ulcerous with anticipation and adults hazily reminisce about the disappointments of Christmases past.

Also, aunts are briefly spoken with.

Sadly, in recent years I have noted a general absence of tinsel. Once upon a time, tinsel was synonymous with Christmas. Its shiny brilliance signaled the splendor of the savior of the world coming to Earth and its cheap artificiality made it available to everyone from the portly plutocrat to the lowliest Irishman. Today, however, trees are rarely draped with tinsel. Instead they are debased with a smorgasbord of crafty knick-knacks and pop cultural twaddle. Our Christmas trees now look as if a Hallmark store vomited all over a Balsam Fir. We have traded the nobility of tinsel for fickle tchotchkes, like a man trading his Buick Regal for a single night with a Cambodian street woman.

Like all things true and pure, tinsel came from Germany. Emerging in the 1600s from the black forests of Bavaria, tinsel found favor as a simple, shiny distraction from the Thirty Years’ War and unspeakable Hessian godlessness. Much later, a single strand of tinsel was then brought to America by a doe-eyed orphan boy. The tinsel-bearing urchin was received at port by the corpulent President Grover Cleveland, who rewarded him with mustache-tickles and a pony. Newspaper accounts of this memorable encounter delighted Americans and popularized tinsel itself. All of this information and more is available in my new book, This is My Truth: The History of Tinsel & Everything Else.

I guess we’re left to try to somehow enjoy a Christmas without tinsel, which is like an Independence Day without hot dogs or a Columbus Day without scolding editorials. I’d say we’d all be better off nogbraining ourselves.

See you in my coma dreams!

My summer has been most wonderful, filled with lingering naps and indulgent glasses of rich, warm milk. I spend my evenings enjoying the cool breeze that passes through my sunroom and reading books about men from long ago with beards of finest grooming. When strangers pass down the sidewalk outside, they greet me with a friendly wave, and I reciprocate by telling them my name and warning them not to read my mind.

On Wednesdays I am visited by Colten, a young man with flaxen hair and slender knuckles. He helps me to balance my checkbook and shop for groceries. He is a functional conversationalist, and, I suspect, a skilled masseuse, though to this point he has refused to touch me, even on my neutral area. We have a private joke where he admonishes me to treat him with basic human dignity after I dip his shoes into containers filled with my own urine. I do not believe he has read my mind yet.

Wednesdays with Colten aside, the days pass aimlessly. I awaken with the imagined sound of a cat saying my full name with perfect enunciation. Sometimes in the evenings I drink more milk and make anonymous threatening phone calls to area businesses. Though my words are obscene and hateful, I assume that the targets of my harassment receive my calls with good humor. I think that having a sense of community spirit is very important.

I received the canister of your hair, and have placed it upon my mantle where it will remain until it is removed. Thank you for shearing yourself.

I hope that this humble note finds you in bright spirits. I will call on you when the weather cools and the world dons its collective sweater with an airbrushed wolf on it. Until then, I hope you enjoy the enclosed jar of mouse preserves.

Sincerely,
Rembrandt

At this point, I have a love-hate relationship with my readers. On my off days, I grumpily toss off a rehashed passive-aggressive post in hopes of quieting down their incessesant whining, treating them as common housecats. On happier occasions, however, they reward my diligent efforts with careful readings and cracking retorts.

Despite the JLP’s depressing, inexorable decline in vitality, certain readers have proven their worth through their sheer obsequiousness. Their servile attentiveness to even my laziest posts manages to bring a fleeting smile to my lips before my sorrows return. I am like bloated Elvis, sloppily churning my way through some overproduced wreck of a song, and they slap me on the back and tell me I’ve still got it. Of course, I know deep down that the magic is gone, but these sycophantic hangers-on help make the countdown to death a bit more bearable.

Whereas Elvis’ Memphis Mafia fetched him pills in exchange for leftover women, my readers fawn over this blog’s lukewarm swill and fight proxy battles in the flamewars with animal rights folks that occasionally flare up deep in the JLP archives. This relationship is pathetic, of course, but it’s easy, and I (like late-period Elvis) no longer have the energy to alter course. Together, we will float aimlessly into oblivion.

And after this blog is dead, my readers will inevitably write tell-all books to cash in and make a living by signing autographs at JLP conventions.

And yes, the hellish, dystopian future we are headed to will feature JLP conventions. They will take place in Best Western conference rooms, and will culminate in my posts being read aloud by John Goodman. It will be awful.

When I was a younger man, the world was my oyster (or Wendy’s Value Meal, as it were). Life was flush with opportunity, a blank page ready to be filled with the finest Korean calligraphy. I was strapping and headstrong, like an untethered stallion with a bazooka mounted to it. Cocksure, I brayed a hearty laugh at fate and dispensed the finest varieties of chewing gum to multiracial children. I defied social norms by popping wheelies and wearing white after Labor Day. I was Fonzie flying the Millenium Falcon.

Now in the gray days of my nearly-mid-30s, I am surrounded with the shattered fragments of my unfulfulled potential. My face has been pockmarked by failure and my hips shattered with malaise. Like a mentally ill drifter who smears his face into a dog’s anus, I have tasted the bitter tang of life and come away smellier and more insane. It didn’t need to end this way, but this is where I am.

Besides my wife and son and career and friends and cats, I have nothing. Every day I wake up to a Hyundai Sonata and death and the moral vacuum in between.

Don’t weep for me, dear readers. My disappointing decline into undistinguished anonymity doesn’t really hurt. Once upon a time I had the potential to be something special, but instead I spent too many years wearing turtlenecks, changing toner cartridges and not eating Thai food. Now I can’t remember what I lost and instead I drift in circles aimlessly, like Neil Young, post-1992.

If you think of me again, someday, remember me as I was: hale and robust, snatching rainbow trout out of a mountain stream with my bare hands and a mighty shout. Maybe that way, my withered soul can be reborn.

Your product is terrible and it does not work. I did this workout four times and I am still really fat.

It is blatant false advertising for you to suggest that regular exercise and a sensible diet will result in weight loss. This is patently untrue. Just yesterday I jogged briefly before wrenching over in agony and then ate five Stouffer’s French Bread Pizzas to celebrate my half birthday. This morning, my weight remains unchanged, thanks to the ineffectiveness of your DVD.

Did you ever pause to consider the effect your empty promises might have on the innocent masses? Call me naive, but I’m still trusting enough to believe a soulless corporation when their DVD tells me that my body needs to reach and maintain its target heart rate for 25 minutes in order to get a good workout. Looks like I learned my lesson.

Who’s going to protect us from shysters like you now that Teen Wolf has Parkinson’s?

Thanks for nothing, The Biggest Loser Workout DVD. I was going to return the disk, but my DVD player is stuck shut after I accidentally smeared strawberry jelly all over it.

I say thumbs down for this video. A thumb straight down into a turtle’s butthole.

I’ve eaten a lot of apples in my day – probably about 200 – but I don’t know if I’ve ever tasted one this crisp, tangy, and handsome. It’s a Honeycrisp, grown by the hot-blooded migrant laborers working the fertile fields of Chile. Chile, if you don’t know, is man’s country. For instance, if you pull out a container of yogurt for a snack in Chile, you’re liable to get your neck snapped by a cross-eyed pitfighter. If don’t go 110% every day in Chile, you might as well just mutilate your own genitals and cut your losses.

But back to my topic, this apple. I’m seriously loving this apple. Each bite is a flavor explosion all over my oily face. Other apples, if you haven’t noticed, are terrible. I don’t what type they are – Red Delicious, Granny Smith, or Satan’s Knuckle – my experiences with apples are usually dread-ridden, Kubrickian nightmares ending with cold sweats and me hugging the toilet.

Until this apple. This apple made me a believer in apples.

Now I understand why people love apples so much. They’re all crunchy and sweet and silent. They’re obviously so much better than pears. Apples make pears taste like gross apples. Each time I blast this apple into my mouth, I love it more. Then I chew it up a bunch and swallow it, just like I do for other foods, but it’s better with this apple because it is mighty and pure, like America.

Whenever I used to hear people mention apples, I would get so mad inside that blood vessels in my eyes would burst. Not anymore though. Now I only get mad at cops.

Thanks for being so awesome, apple. Hope you didn’t mind getting torn apart by my teeth until flecks of apple spittle cover my beard, because it happened. It is probably immoral what I just did to you. I’m like R. Kelly, but with apples.

The JLP’s Spectrum of Beards

The Rasputin

Rasputin’s beard was undeniably the greatest of all time. The man was a mentally unstable, mind-controlling nympomaniac who was seemingly impervious to death. These powers can only be attributed to his beard – a virile, tangled, oily testament for human beauty.

The ‘That Dude from the Oak Ridge Boys’

Otherwise known as ‘The Gandalf’, this beard is the pointless end result of years of patience and grooming. This is possible when you have a really low voice and can collect royalties from ‘Elvira’. An ill-advised novelty.

The Rutherford B. Hayes

I have already commented at length about our our 19th president’s beard, but I will add that it combines the power of Rasputin with the grooming of That Dude from the Oak Ridge Boys into one statesmanlike package. A fondly-remembered relic of the Gilded Age.

The Dan Haggerty

Perhaps the most famous beard of the 1970s, a decade notable for for its beardery. The look that made Grizzly Adams so distinctive is notable for its dramatic, swooping coif outward and sun-bleached tones. It exudes a rugged tenderness toward nature, bears, and you. Highly recommended.

The Ringo

Though neatly-trimmed in recent years, Ringo Starr sported an infamously scuzzy neckbeard for most of the 70s and 80s. While his face remained milky clean, his neck was obscured by a unkempt thatch of coarse unpleasantness. Sometimes fame has its downsides – few people are willing to pull an ex-Beatle aside and tell them they look like a hairy imbecile. On an unrelated note, he was cast as the lead in the 1981 flop Caveman.

The Ron Burgundy

At his unemployed nadir, legendary anchorman Ron Burgundy sported perhaps my personal favorite look – a wiry, bedraggled beard bourne of depression and surrender. Not advised for a first date, but a solid option if seriously considering suicide.

The Late-Era Beach Boys

This underrated look initially appears to be your standard mellow 1970s stylings, but beneath the obscured half-smiles lie an ocean of familial tension and mental illness. More subtle than the Ron Burgundy, but equally troubled.

The Rick Aguilera

In the early 1990s, all-star Twins closer Rick Aguilera sported a trimmed, tidy beard that distracted hitters with its respectability while he was blasting his upper-90s heat past their face. A timeless classic, I have sought to approximate it in recent years to great approval from my wife. It frames my otherwise common face with professorial refinement. Recommended for beard beginners.

Closely related to the Rick Aguilera is The Bert Blyleven

The Blyleven is an auxiliary model for the red-bearded man. It shares many of the characteristics of the Aguilera, although with distinctively rural, plebian undertones.

The Fatone

This flaccid excuse for a beard combines high maintenance times with a heavy douchebag factor. It is sure to be studied centuries from now by puzzled anthropologists. To be avoided.

That’s right, I turned 32 today! Now I’m old enough to rent a car and drive it through a window at a bank! Take that, G-8 bastards! How do you like me now that I’m 32?

As you can infer from my crazed non-sequiturs, I’ve had a wonderful day. My wife took us out to Key’s Cafe for breakfast where I feasted on toast (French style) and jellied sourdough muffins while loudly announcing the various thoughts that entered my head. After consuming four times my recommended daily caloric intake, we went out to a children’s swimming area to teach Oliver about the miracle of chlorine. Chlorine takes the germs and our sadness away, I told him. Specifically, it takes them to the hinterlands of Manitoba, Canada to be stored deep underground for future generations to study.

After the sunshine splashes, we returned to our warm cottage in north Minneapolis where neighbors greet each other by eyeing one another warily and littering on each other’s yards. I sat back in my sunroom, strummed my guitar, and sang a song of thanks for my beautiful wife, my adorable son, and my sensible Hyundai Sonata. Later my brother Brian visited, and we celebrated my birthday as well as his recent acceptance into law school. I thanked him for also agreeing to financially support me and my family in perpetuity upon becoming a lawyer, to which he offered a strained, silent smile. The bonds of brotherhood are strong, probably!

All in all, I’d say it was probably the best birthday experienced by humankind since the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Bald celebrated his 50th birthday in 873 by personally beheading a dozen Saracens as nubile maidens writhed to the rhythms of a frenzied lyre.

Also, I scored some BOGO DQ Blizzard action.

As you are no doubt unaware, mint is otherwise known around these parts as “what God’s tongue tastes like.”

I take my hat off to the inventor of mint. Whoever it was that decided to put a few drops of oil from the mentha piperita herb into a Dairy Queen Blizzard deserves a rugged slap on the back and an Applebees gift card from us all. That man has given the world its greatest gift since Alexander Graham Bell invented the fart rag.

Sometimes when I am eating mint things I have to just slow down, take a deep breath and barf into a drinking fountain. I barf because the mint tastes so good and because I’ve eaten too much of it too quickly. As you have gathered, I am, in most respects, like an overeager dog. Sometimes a nice lady will put her hand on my back and ask me if I’m okay. I will goodnaturedly clutch her face and scream, “MINT!” with my minty, vomity breath.

What can I say? I’m a nut for mint!

I also like Girl Scout Thin Mints, mint juleps, and loudly offering Girl Scouts a mint julep as they pass outside my house.

Sometimes I overdo it on the mint, and I have to take a break from it. I’ll try other flavors for a while like grape and whatever’s in Werther’s Originals, but I always come back to mint. Mint is like my first love, except it never dumped me the week before Homecoming. Also, mint would never defriend me on Facebook.

So here’s to you, mint. You taste awesome and you are green, like lettuce on crack.

A 72 ounce bag of chocolate chips.

The bag was a monstrosity – literally an affront to God himself – yet it was also more beautiful than a newborn child. Though inanimate, it nonetheless greeted me with an open expression, as if to say, “Come, friend, and ravish me.” Were the chocolate chips not reserved for Saturday’s breakfast, I would most certainly have torn open the bag and had my way with it. However, level-headed discretion is the name of my game, and so I just took a picture of it so I could blog about it later.

A lesser man might have opened the bag that night and snuck a few chips while everybody was asleep. However, an illicit chip-nibble by moonlight holds little appeal to me. If I can’t fully indulge my base cravings in a groaning chocolate orgy, then I want nothing at all.

So on Saturday morning, after sitting up all night staring at the enormous forbidden bag, I made chocolate chip pancakes. Everybody seemed to enjoy their breakfast, despite the fact that I was muttering petulant obscenities the entire time. All my chocolate chip fantasies had been snuffed out, like a wriggling rabbit held underwater for too long.

Alas, though the enormous bag of chocolate may not be mine, I will always carry the memories of it with me. I mean that literally – I have already printed out a wallet-sized photo of the bag so I can have it on me at all times. It will sit comfortably next to my treasured images of my son Oliver and debauched Russian mystic Rasputin.

Goodbye, 72 ounce bag of chocolate chips. I’ll likely never see the likes of you again. I hope you’re happier where you are now. If I call out to you during the dark times, please answer me. I have nothing else.

A fourteen course meal indulging every perverse, insatiable lusting of your craven flesh has been prepared! Seat yourselves around my table and prepare yourselves. Make certain that the waistbands of your pants are fashioned from the finest elastic, because the gratification we are about to partake in will be an affront to the natural order!

My servants, dressed uniformily in indigo silk gilded with pearls and shoes of the pointy-toed variety will now parade before us the dishes of our imminent feast. Salted cod! Wild boar slowly roasted over a flaming spit! Iberian peacock boiled in cherry preserves and stuffed with rose petals! Cheese quesadillas!

Now my dancers will gyrate about us as we lift high our goblets of reasonably-priced red wine! Imbibe deeply, my readers! See how my dancers are plumpened slightly, according to midcentury fashion. See how they undulate their hips toward you in a sensuous manner while maintaining a professionally provacative eye contact. All this according to my instruction, and aimed toward your pleasure!

Let us conclude our evening by watching the Detroit Pistons battle the Orlando Magic in a relatively meaningless Eastern Conference matchup! My team of technically-proficient eunuchs will prepare the home theater system! 5.1 Surround Sound for all!

Lean back, my supplicants, and savor the pleasures I have brought you tonight. I have lavished you with the luxurious indulgences of the Orient at great personal expense. No doubt these fleeting moments are the greatest you will ever experience. Never forget that it was I who brought them to you. Without my generosity, you would be desperately sucking the marrow from the bones of stray dogs.

Now, who will accompany me and the cats to my silken-pillowed bedchamber for dessert?

My assigned challenge was to name all 44 U.S. presidents from memory. I accepted the task with a messy clearing of my throat and a gutteral summoning of my knowledge from the most depraved recesses of my mind. I was called upon to name the 44 men who have led this country, from the brave (Washington) to the bumbling (Ford), from the dandies (Buchanon) to the slobs (Taylor), from the great (T.R.) to the “like Hitler if you think about it” (Bush 43/Obama/Whoever Is President Next).

Like a machine, I began rattling off names like an patriotic auctioneer on speedballs. “Lincoln, both Johnsons, Pierce, Adams…” The names of perhaps 35 came to me as easily the secret code for infinite lives in Contra. After a minute or two, my pace began to slow as I labored through the obscure, ineffectual presidents like gray Ben Harrison and fat Chet Arthur. In the end, when the buzzer went off, I had named 43 of our 44 presidents. A valient effort indeed, but ultimately a failure, like Woodrow Wilson’s attempt to smile once in 1917.

The president I missed – none other than the spectacularly mutton-chopped Martin Van Buren.

How could I have forgotten poor Martin? He, of course, was cursed to follow Andrew Jackson, in that his lukewarm personality paled next to Jackson’s, and more significantly the fact that Jackson’s economic policies (namely dismantling the Bank of the U.S.) led to economic ruin in the Panic of 1837, thus crippling his successor’s presidency. It’s as obvious and relevant as the pulsating, oily blemishes that cover my fat face! I can’t believe I forgot Van Buren’s loveless marriage with his cousin, predating FDR’s more famous loveless marriage with his cousin by over a century! How could this have happened? Only a drooling imbecile wouldn’t immediately recall the presidency of Martin Van Buren!

Long story short, I’ve written a lengthy letter to the procurators of the Van Buren estate explaining the situation to them and extending my profuse, profane apologies. It is my hope that they will respond by sending me a lock of his hair and a t-shirt.

Sorry, dear Martin Van Buren. If you’re reading this from your cage in hell, please forgive me.

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!

Since I believe in the free exchange of inaccurate information, I will now use the forum of my blog to impart my newfound wisdom to you, the gape-mouthed masses.

PARENTING AND YOU
A Journey Into The Infinite

Senior Prom is undoubtedly an exciting time in a young person’s life. If one isn’t careful, however, the prom experience might end with the greatest awkwardness of all – the birth of a human child. Take preventative steps by limiting yourself to one slow dance.

The 5-minute wait for the results from your pregnancy test can be a real drag. Try passing the time with a handheld Yahtzee game or by pinpointing the precise moment your life went awry.

Pregnant? Congratulations, you have preserved a trace of your genetic seed! As a man, the next 9 months will represent a challenging balancing act for you. Your partner will be suffering tremendously as your squirmy little offspring gestates inside her. Your role is to encourage her, support her, and tell her that she must immediately continue respackling the nursery ceiling if it’s going to get finished in time for the baby.

The birth of a child is a mostly unremarkable event of which little is known. However, once you and your partner have been discharged from the hospital, it is traditional for the new mother to give a horsey back ride to a sister or close female friend.

Ready or not, you’re a new parent! Understandably, there will be a period of adjustment as you and your partner figure out how to fill your taxing new roles. As such, be ready to be patient with your wife if you return home from work to find your pot roast not yet fully prepared.

*blink* It’s over! Your children are raised and have moved out of your house! Now all that remains is for you and your partner to hobble through the remainder of your days paying for their college education until your life functions are terminated by the state. Who says empty nesters can’t have fun?

I named him Mr. Pinches, after the way he somehow managed to trap himself between the two panes of our kitchen window. That’s where we found him on Saturday, wriggling away like a tiny, leathery-winged bum in withdrawl.

I have absolutely no idea how Mr. Pinches got trapped between the two panes of our kitchen window, but trust me, I found it thoroughly amusing.

My sister-in-law (she of the animal-loving, being-bitten-by-monkeys ilk) continued to exercise her death wish by opening the inside half of window in an attempt to coax Mr. Pinches out of his glass captivity. Fortunately, she was quickly shouted down by her sister and I, as we were somewhat less eager to welcome Mr. Pinches into the comfortable confines of our home.

Mr. Pinches made his escape sometime Sunday evening, presumably to be devoured whole by a bald eagle. Our kitchen window is a lot less evil looking today, being that there’s no longer a writhing bat right in the middle of it. A part of me misses Mr. Pinches. However, another part of me spent 40 minutes smearing Purell across our window and cursing him.

Anyway, my point is that finding a bat caught in your window is like getting a fresh pumpkin pie from Satan.

Goiters, otherwise known as a massive, disgusting enlargement of the thyroid gland, have long been a source of horror and amusement to all non-goiter sufferers. Thick and lumpy, goiters make it look as though the afflicted got drunk and decided to swallow a softball or two. In fact, this is not what causes goiter. According to the Mayo Clinic, goiter is most often caused by an iodine deficiency or Grave’s Disease. I will simply disregard this information and continue to believe my softball-swallowing theory.

In the 1890s, goiters were often lanced and re-sold as squeezable stress balls. That is an indisputable fact.

Check out this gentleman:

Man, that guy’s got beoucoups goiters! I bet he’s playing a song he wrote called “Neckties Don’t Fit Me No More”. I note with some suprise the fact that he is married. His wife must be a special gal if she’s able to look past his appearance. Compared to this softball-swallowing bastard, George Lucas’s neck actually looks human. You know how it goes though – guys who play guitar get all the chicks.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another installment of the JLP’s Humorous Disease Week!

You know, everybody likes to remember me for my saying, “the buck stops here”. Well, there’s a lot more to me than just that. I remember when I was escalating the Korean Conflict by invading North Korea in 1950, I said to mysel-

No! NO!

Unhand me! WHY?! ARRGGHGAHGGAHGHHHHHH

*gurgle*

I, Genghis Khan, have beheaded your beloved Tru-Man!

Behold! I hold aloft the dripping head of Tru-Man! All who do not show proper reverence and pay tribute to me shall meet a similar fate! The John Larroquette Project is my dominion! I am Universal Ruler!

I have thrown the Tru-Man’s head upon the pile of my enemies that I shall now urinate on!

Yesssssssssssss! My urine is splashing all over their dead faces! I delight in this atrocity!

Check back later on, guys. I’m going to blog about how much I love coffee.

I firstly contend that Starburst are appropriately named. The “burst” is from the blast of succulent fruit juices blasting all over my mouth, covering my tongue in craven delights and rotting my molars back to hell. The “star” references the crazy pattern of lights that become visible to me after eating 150 of them in a row.

Put those together, and you’ve described the Starburst experience: a jaw-tiring buildup to a savage, sugary climax of unnatural fruit essences.

After such a Starburst binge, one is left exhausted and complete, glistening with dewy-sweet beads of perspiration across their tanned, lithe abdomen. I ask you this, could a Kit Kat leave you this satisfied? I think not.

Come over to my house tonight and eat some Starburst with me. My wife will be gone.

February – still the month of the damned.

Across the world, as darkness enshouds us, the ravenous, mouth-breathing hell-beasts howl as they prepare to feed upon the innocent for the duration of these next 28 gruesome days. Listen to their call! They shriek for our blood, and will be sated only when our soft, virgin necks have been shredded like common paystubs.

All through the year, I hoped against hope that this February would be different. Perhaps this February would be free from the gleefully Satanic ululating from their black, intestine-spattered lips. Might our feeble overtures of peace to the Dark King himself somehow convince the Shadow Army of the Goat-Beasts to spare humanity?

I received my answered this morning when I looked out the window to see the liquified carcass of my neighbor’s dog burst forth across my snowy yard from the engorged anus of a 10-foot tall troll centurion.

Now I’m going to have to wait until spring to clean that up.

All we can do now is to find nestle down fearfully in our basements and wait patiently for the anarchic succubi horde to tire themselves and melt alive in the heat of the March sun. Those among us too weak to survive the month must be thrown out as an unholy offering to the demonswarm, along with any raw meat and cats we might have. It is too late for many of us. Soon we pass into the netherworld.

Where’s your economic stimulus now, Barack Obama?

I liked the sailboat part better.

Lots of helpful swear words sprang to mind as I read the letter. As my hands began to tremble and my skin turned purple with rage, it became clear that only one profanity was truly appropriate. Only one word was vile and objectionable enough to the accursed Minneapolis assessor that perhaps his heart might burst open the moment I shouted it.

FARKLE!

FARKLE is the risk-taking, dice rolling game that in no way resembles YAHTZEE! Dating back to the Renaissance, FARKLE was probably enjoyed by Galileo, and likely inspired his advanced theories on inertia and proof of a heliocentric universe. Shortly afterwards, FARKLE was ruled an abomination against the Blessed Virgin by the Catholic church.

FARKLE is fun for children, too!

Say FARKLE out loud! It will make the rainclouds run for cover and the Home Depreciation Trolls die of dysentery! Their diseased, bloody, mucus-riddled feces will slop down from the treetops in my neighborhood where they live! FARKLE, FARKLE, FARKLE!

Hey, housing market collapse! FARKLE you, right in your FARKLING face!

Man, look at that feral dog! He’s gone and killed another dog! He’s done gonna eat some other dog! Look out though, or he’s gonna gitcha! Go on, you feral dog! Scoot!

Man, check out that feral cat! That cat ain’t happy! She’s about to scrape you up with her unclipped claws! That cat ain’t got no home, that cat’s feral!

Man, check out that feral child! That child was raised in the wild! That feral child ain’t gonna wear no trousers! He’s gonna rub his exposed anus on the social scientist’s sleeve! That feral child don’t look you in the eye! That feral child was likely an autistic baby abandonded by its parents! That feral child’s gonna gitcha!

Look out! Everything’s feral now!

That’s right, I’m communicating with you via Peter’s blog despite the fact that I died of cancer back in ’91. Those were heady days, before the twist ending of The Sixth Sense, before Michael Richards’ racist meltdown, back when the world made sense.

I’ve been watching all of you since I left, and I have a few words:

Firstly, they aren’t kidding about how a 2-pack-a-day cigarrette habit is bad for your health. I kicked the bucket at age 54 from lung cancer, in a development that absolutely nobody could see coming.

Second, who’s programming your television network these days? In 30 years we’ve gone from the saccharine, Emmy-baiting episodes of Little House where I would hug my daughters tightly as tears welled up in my eyes to Wipeout, a reality show where people have to jump across huge rubber balls to avoid falling into a mud pit? Is that correct? If I were still alive, I’d sit some of those programming execs down and say, “Listen jerko, I’m Michael Landon. I starred in Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven. I think I know a thing or two about television. Now, here’s your next hit show – it’s a one-hour drama about a crusty-but-benign ex-Supreme Court justice who lives with his divorced daughter. Together, they solve crimes and heal their fractured relationship. Toward the end of the first season, the daughter will go blind, and the actor playing the ex-Supreme Court justice (yours truly) wins another Emmy by thrashing wildly and chewing the scenery like nobody’s business. Then in season three, she’ll get her vision back for some vague reason. Also, the show will also co-star Extreme Home Makeover‘s Ty Pennington as an angel-in-training with ADD that only my character can see.”

And finally, who is responsible for this?

I can’t make heads or tails of it. Is that supposed to be me? Does this symbolize something? Why would there be a squid in a river? Can there be any possible explaination for this? Looking at it makes me glad I’m dead.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Graeters Ice Cream.

Churned from the breastmilk of angels (so as to not be defiled by the curdled toxins of free will), Graeters Ice Cream is Ohio’s greatest gift to our blessed Union since the venerable Rutherford B. Hayes. Creamy, supple, and sentient, this is ice cream’s version of the Declaration of Independence.

While at the Groom’s Dinner, I tried many of the finer Graeters flavors that were made available to us by the beneficent hand of Allen – pumpkin pie, coconut chip, and Buckeye Blitz (chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cookie dough and chocolate chips). They were so good that diarrhea exploded uncontrollably out of my reddened anus, metaphorically speaking.

Graeters Ice Cream: the culmination of all human yearning and endeavor throughout the ages.

Really though, you should try some if you want. It’s no big deal to me.

Right now, as you read this, ghouls are racing through the internet to torment you! There they go, slipping out your computer’s USB port, through the folds of your clothing, and into your clenched anus!

It is too late now to stop them!

By now, the banshees that ravaged your anal pore have entered your stomach and are gulping down warm stomach acids like it was Dr. Pepper. Feeding off your body’s juices, they soon will creep onward to suck the life-giving oxygen out of your lungs and replace it with pure, toxic radon. Your body will soon belong to the phantoms and will be processed into a canned feast for their hell-beasts.

This is all part of the fun of the witching season that we celebrate as November nears each year. The leaves have fallen from the trees, the sun is slipping further away, and Satan’s shadow-trolls have emerged to terrify your children into a lifetime of brittle emotional detachment.

That’s what you get for visiting the John Larroquette Project. Now, go back to your precious baby-blogs, never to return!

The black, tingling chill of the night air pierces my nostrils and tickles my groin as I exit my car. I am alone in a void of empty, frosted air and keenly observant hoot-owls sounding their call of the damned. Enshrouded in my fall jacket and bulky spectacles, I pull my arms close to my body to preserve my body’s precious heat and defend myself from the attacks of Steven, a local homeless man of some physical stature.

Now I sit alone in a dimly-lit teacher’s workroom. By the light of my computer monitor, I silently consume a McDonalds Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit and think of happier times long past. Once I was a man. Now, I am but an egg-consuming shadow. Perhaps time will redeem my squandered years, perhaps not.

On this chilled, shady morning, I now realize that this blog is all I have left…

Remember me.

Apparently Keith brightened up immediately when told that Todd acting as ambassador for the John Larroquette Project. Grabbing a promotional photo, he started muttering excitedly about how he hadn’t visited the site in a few months while vehemently scratching his pen across the faces of his co-workers. See for yourself…

Fine work, Keith Marler. Your gracious spirit and secret weirdness are a blessing to our otherwise oppressively chirpy morning airwaves. I’m glad you ruthlessly censured M.A. Roscoe with your Sharpie the way you did. Somebody seriously needed to shut her up. Tom Butler doesn’t seem so bad, but I figure he was just caught in the crossfire.

Maybe this is off-topic, but what do you suppose it would be like to be roommates with Keith Marler? Does he seem like the kind of guy who would leave a sink full of dirty dishes for a couple days? Does he snore? Worse, does he have sleep apnea? Does he have a CPAP machine for his sleep apnea? Can he afford one?

What say all of us pitch in for Keith Marler’s CPAP machine? The guy needs his sleep, and it’s the least we could do, given all that he’s done for the community here at the John Larroquette Project.

Hurry up, the pool will be closing soon! Together we can laugh and shout in the splish-splashing sunshine!

If we get there soon, you can sit atop my shoulders as we glide through the pool and delight in the summertime sensations! Then we can all come crashing down into the cool, renewing water. Our frowns will be washed away down the rivers of chlorinated eternity!

Come, slather my torso with suntan lotion that I might avoid the sun’s forbidden rays. Be sure to use a lot, because my upper body is substantial, and I don’t want any part of my skin to escape your lotion-soaked palms.

Hold my hand as I jump into the pool! We will enter the 9-foot oasis together! I don’t ever want you to leave me, do you understand? Never leave me.

The pool is fun!

Now slip below the surface with me and shout out underwater secrets that you would otherwise not tell a soul! It will be a slippery tickle-treat! Ready? Here goes!

Could you understand me? You could? Really? What did you hear me say?

Uh, no, that’s not what I said. I would never say that – that’s really gross! What I actually said was “lollipops can come true.”

Yeah, I know that doesn’t make any actual sense. I guess I was just surfing on the emotion of the moment.

I love the pool!

Here are several photographs he shared with me. I will now show them to you, using the internet.

This is fire, one of the most powerful elements in the natural universe. Terrorizing wildlife, and destroying habitats, fire has long been used by man to establish his just dominion over the earth. Also, fire is hot and makes things smaller and black. At any rate, my point is that this fire is George Bush’s fault.

Here is Patrick, after having faced the terrible menace of fire. Note the sturdy courage in his eyes and the soiled qualities of his undershirt. Behind him lies a path cleared out of the brush, as well as another man, believed to be actor Tom Berenger.

The brush in question was anywhere from 8 to 15 feet high, and teeming with poison oak. As a result, Patrick, along with all the other members of his crew were covered with red rashes and sores that were irritated by the heavy duty clothing and heat. On the other hand, my job involves occasional meetings that run long, so we’re both no stranger to hardship.

In the midst of working 18 consecutive 16-hour days, moments of rest were cherished by Patrick’s crew. He can be seen in the foreground, the back of his shirt blackened with sweaty iniquity, while two of his comrades relax in bizarrely identical repose.

Fine work, Patrick. I’m proud of you, mostly!

It’s been a great four-and-a-half years for the John Larroquette Project. I’ve lived for the challenge of getting up in the morning and coming up with an idea to write about. The creative writing process is one that I’ve always found rewarding. I can honestly say that I’ve loved every minute of it.

Unfortunately, as I sit here this morning, I’ve come to the realization that while I know I still can blog, I just don’t have the desire to anymore. I’m just burnt out. While I know I’ll miss the daily challenge, I won’t miss those mornings where I’m going through the motions, or the feeling of posting drivel just because I spent 20 minutes writing it. I’m just going to take some time off, and spend more quality time with my wife or with a good book.

It’s been fun, and thanks for reading.

…

You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I’m not retiring. I want to come back.

You see, I didn’t really want to retire in the first place. Adam pressured me into it. If you go back and re-read my retirement address, you’ll see that every word of it was honest, except for the parts that Adam forced me into.

What’s that? You’ve already moved on? First of all, that seems improbable, given that I retired only a few moments ago. Secondly, who are you going to replace me with? Ben? Ben’s a nice guy and all, but he’s not ready for prime-time – he still needs more seasoning and tutelage under the master (i.e. me).

Let me put it to you this way, who gives the John Larroquette Project the best chance to succeed on a daily basis? Me, right? So let me back. If you won’t let me back, I demand that you release me from any affiliation with the John Larroquette Project, and let me blog elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I’ve been having a few behind-the-scenes conversations with Kevin’s blog, and they seem very interested in bringing me on board.

What do you mean, “blog tampering”? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Look, I don’t want to get into some bitter squabble with all of you. All I ask is that you allow me to retire and unretire in peace, and bend over backwards to meet my increasingly fickle demands.

I just wish all of you hadn’t put me in this position.