Don’t you just want to mutilate them?

The arrogance of those people really gums up my guts. I hate how they’re constantly disparaging others and how their moist, fleshy tongues anxiously lick the spittle from their lips. I think it’s so rude the way they never really listen to other people and the way their ill-fitting shirts hang open at the bottom, exposing a hairy bowl of corpulent belly skin.

I think it’d be terrific if we could just hang those people from a bridge overpass.

Have you ever noticed that people who are arrogant and smug are also usually the same people who smother bunnies to death with American flags? What kind of sick political statement are they trying to make, anyway? I wish those people would just give us a break from their conceited snobbery and First Amendment-protected bunnysmothering.

Wouldn’t it be great if those people were paralyzed in a snowmobiling accident?

I hate how imperious and aloof those people are around the rest of us, as if being in our presence is somehow a burden. I also hate how they huff permanent markers and experience constant hallucinations that a swarm of bees is attacking them. It’s so obnoxious the way they shriek in inexpressable horror and tear away their own skin. I wish they’d give us a rest and incinerate themselves by standing behind a jet engine.

Also, in case you couldn’t tell, I’m talking about Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton.

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!

This is my life.

Some of you readers may be rolling your eyes as if to say, “Hey Peter, snap out of it! You’ve got a loving wife and two beautiful children and a great job and a magnificent beard! You’ve got it all! Women love you and men want to be you!” Of course all these things are true, but they aren’t enough. What’s the point of having a hot wife and a sensible Hyundai Sonata if the Minnesota Vikings are 2-9?

To make matters worse, the Vikings will be facing Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos. Tebow, as you are no doubt aware, is the buzz of the NFL – a balanced blend of Johnny Unitas’s moxie and guile with St. Francis of Assisi’s piety and throwing motion. Tebow and the Broncos have shown a remarkable ability to defeat miserable, lethargic teams like the Vikings after lulling them and the entire viewing audience to sleep through the first three and a half quarters. Odds are, I and the other fans in attendance will be fed a steady diet of punts, Toby Gerhart runs and wildly errant passes for three hours amidst the dreary, unnatural ambiance of the Metrodome.

I’d rather have horrible diarrhea in a mall bathroom than do this.

However, since I’m going on the occasion of my dad’s birthday with he and my brothers, it seems only right that I should tag along, albeit sullenly. After all, my dad has given me so much over the years, and my brothers each attended my wedding, so I suppose I owe them something.

Seriously you guys, nothing matters.

Winter is coming!

Once again, the sun is giving us the seasonal silent treatment and we are left with a bracing chill and fading memories of happier times when the days were warm and swimming pools glistened like like an 8th grader’s forehead. Shunned by the earth’s source of energy, we are once again forced into the gruff embrace of winter, like taking a 4-month cabin retreat with Jerry Sandusky.

While walking into work this morning, I couldn’t help but notice the frigid prickle of the wind as it snatched through my sweater and tickled my friendship zone (as my wife refuses to do). It was no doubt unpleasant, but as a native Minnesotan, I am at peace with winter. I agree to shovel its snow and endure its windchills and it agrees to help me avoid small talk while outdoors and move on before Easter. True, I’m the Robin Givens to winter’s Mike Tyson in that relationship, but what are my options? Move to Florida? I’d rather blow up the planet than do that.

Florida is garbage. I heard that the Epcot center is teeming with alligators.

Speaking of cold, check this out!

Haunting, isn’t it? An underdressed toddler exposed to the cold, ostensibly for educational purposes. It’s like kindergarden in North Korea. Anyway, I’m glad the internet exists so I could show that to all of you and make my comments.

So anyway, winter’s coming, it’s getting colder, blah blah blah. My point is that I’m a miserable person.

(Incidentally, something about this blog post seems familiar. Very, very familiar.)

The JLP has been silent and motionless for months, nagged only by the occasional buzzing of ungrateful readers and incessant spam-bot comments. While my blogging station sat vacant, the internet has been overrun with barking, bearded barbarians and man-eating rottweilers. They have entered our walls and fondled our housecats and made untoward comments to our grandmothers. No apology on my part could ever put back what was lost or heal the subconscious of those who witnessed the savage cat-rapings.

I cannot apologize, nor will I pledge to never allow this to happen again. (In fact, it is likely to happen again relatively soon.) All I can do now is try to rebuild the walls, clean up the mess, and put the cats out of their misery.

In lieu of an apology, I will offer a series of weak explanations:

1) Recently, medical experts pulled a living human being out of my wife. It was among the most disgusting and amazing things I’ve ever seen. I have taken to the young person and will raise her in my own graven image. I am proud to report that she has already learned my ways well, passing the days sleeping, screaming, and watching others clean up her poop.

2) My professional life has recently been riddled with unfortunate unexpected developments. A number of my supervisors no longer work at the school, leaving me adrift in an infinite sea of paperwork and unsolvable crises. As you can see, I have risen to the occasion by blogging about cat molestation.

3) Abraham Lincoln told me in a dream to stop blogging. Then he and Robert E. Lee touched their beards together and spoke my name in unison.

And there we are, dear readers. The situation now is bleak and unlikely to de-bleak itself anytime soon. All I can offer is my pledge to toss out a few ragged scraps of blog-chuff like this from time to time. All I ask in return is your continued loyalty and silence in my presence. It will all be over soon, by the looks of it.

Together we will calmly walk off the blogging cliff, holding hands as we fall cleanly through the air toward oblivion.

Like a clown bearing empty cans of Pringles, this year’s spring break arrives like a cruel taunt from Old Man Winter. The words “spring break” usually bring with them images of thumping MTV beachhouses where greased-up, writhing neanderthals grope young women with oversized sunglasses and an undersized sense of their own self-worth. This year, however, spring break looks to feature space heaters and seasonal affective disorder. Now I know what the Bataan Death March must have felt like.

Some people might say that I shouldn’t complain so loudly about this. After all, most professions don’t get to enjoy a week off in the middle of March, so whining about this makes me sound crass and entitled. However, those people are wrong. My complaints are merited because it’s really dumb that it’s still cold outside.

You hadn’t thought about it that way yet, had you? Yeah, I guess that’s why you shouldn’t get into an argument with a guy who coaches debate.

In lieu of enjoying any warm, sunny weather, I will instead use my spring break to retreat further into a sullen isolation. I will reside in dank corner of my basement, comfortated solely by the cats I loathe and nourished only by the bile that fills my mouth when the anger comes. When classes resume, I will show up looking like Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas and mutter to my students about what it’s like to be in your thirties and drive a 2002 Hyundai Sonata. Then I will eat a bag of Gummi Worms for lunch and hate myself.

Spring break is a lie, everybody. Just like Santa Claus and movies where teenagers switch bodies with their parents. I’ll endure it by sleeping in, spending time with my wife and son and visiting family, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still an atrocity.

This is the story of a little 16 month old boy I am related to. Let’s call him William Howard Taft.

So William Howard Taft happens to be an early riser. Rather than waste the day away in his crib, he likes to get up and get cracking around 5:20 each morning. In a way, I admire William Howard Taft for his industriousness. But in another, more accurate way, I hate the fact that I have to trudge downstairs to lift William Howard Taft out of his crib and begin my day beleagured and blearly-eyed. Since when does living with a toddler require sacrifice? If I had known this, I’d have just started homeschooling the cats.

We know all the parenting tips about how we should put William Howard Taft to bed earlier (or later) and just let him cry (or don’t), and we’ve tried all those things. The wife and I have now to come to terms with the fact that we must wake up at the dirty anus of dawn, and there’s not much we can do about it. To compensate, we just to go to bed at 8:30pm, like a pair of lobotomy patients who got into the cough syrup.

In fact, I am writing these very words in the early hours morning after responding to the cries of William Howard Taft. Perhaps my exhaustion will help explain the flabby and unoriginal nature of what you’re reading. Or perhaps this reduced quality of output is all I’m capable of anymore, like how Kent Hrbek’s sweet swing went sluggish sometime after his 10,000th Pabst. Either way, this entire ignoble post is little more than some weak wordplay and veiled criticism of my son. This is the sort of father I am, it appears.

William Howard Taft, if you’re reading this sometime in the future, I’m sorry. I hope that you have become a better man than Kent Hrbek and I. I should never have despaired when you woke me up so early every morning. Perhaps I should have used that time more constructively: by completing schoolwork, starting my day in prayer, or making a mixtape for my boss. Instead, I wrote this.

Do not follow in my footsteps, sweet baby Taft. You are too jolly and fat and mustachioed for that.

I can’t say I’m surprised, given the marginal caliber of readers that this blog has attracted. This ain’t the Harvard Law Review. Turns out that writing posts about animal hoarding and drinking Pine-Sol attracts a readership of impatient, socially awkward misfits. The thing is, I don’t even like these people, yet I feel strangely compelled to give them more of what they want. Writing this blog is like being married to a sex-addled Medusa.

After some 1,200 posts, it’s sometimes hard to muster up the energy needed to write this stuff. I’m like the now-bald, middle aged Peter Frampton belting out “Show Me The Way” for the millionth time, except only 14 people are listening, and my version of the song is about Warren Harding and the Teapot Dome scandal.

Of course, my readers don’t care about my blogging malaise or cramped schedule, they just want more stupid stuff to read. Their strident demands for additional content are insatiable. They are the twitchy addicts, and the JLP is the meth that gives their lives purpose. Unlike meth, however, the JLP is free and causes no open sores or dental damage. Maybe that could be the site’s new slogan: Slightly better than meth.

Well, dear readers, here you are. This post may not be much, but it’s all you’re going to get out of me today. I hope you’re happy. I literally stayed up all night writing this, accompanied only the buzzing blue light of my computer monitor and the unrelenting yowls of my brain damaged cats. Sadly, this meager entry is all I have to show for the night of misery you’ve subjected me to. It isn’t even that funny, it’s just passive aggressive and profoundly sad.

Now that I loathe myself again, I’ll get back to my job of inspiring young people. A sarcastic thanks to all of my demanding, dissatisfied readers who have ruined my life. Thanks to you I am bleary-eyed and ashen, and my fingernail maintenance has hit an all-time low. I’m literally squirting blood all over the keyboard as I type.

See you again, once the hatred has built back up!

If you’ve never been to one of these things, they are truly a strange and artificial experience. Gathered together in a church basement, I sat alongside 30 or so other folks at a precisely-arranged row of tables. As we waited to begin, no eye contact was made and a punishing silence filled the air. All present seemed acutely aware of the shame that they had brought upon themselves. A Marxist might say that we had been coaxed to alienate ourselves from our very selves under the pressures of the foundational structure of capitalism. At the very least, the occasion had prompted all of us to assess the wrong turns in our lives that led us to now eat Hot Pockets for cash.

A group of middle aged ladies in hairnets proceded to set a series of Hot Pockets in front of us. Sitting on small styrofoam plates and under the green-gray fluorescent lighting, the deflated meat pouches looked limp and miserable. We were told to look at, smell, and eat at least three bites of each sample before filling out a unecessarily thorough questionaire. This pointlessly clinical precision and artificiality only heightened my despair. With every obligatory bite I took, it became more obvious that the truth was not in me.

Having said this, be thankful dear readers for the scorn that I heaped upon Sample #319. It was one of the worst things I have ever encountered. If it somehow makes it to market, it should be packaged as “Pepperoni Afterbirth.”

A day later, I have begun to come to terms with what happened. Yes, I betrayed my own human dignity for thirty pieces of silver. Yes, I still can’t get the Hot Pocket prototype taste out of my mouth. But these are the compromises we all must make. This is the life I have chosen for myself. In the wake of my stuffed sandwich shame, I have embraced the sirens of moral relativism and self-loathing.

If anybody wants to see somebody eat out of a litter box for $50, you know who to call.

Outside my window, the world writhes in pagan celebration. Champagne drips like honey from the lips of weak-chinned revelry makers and low women undulate their abdomens in jubilation at the passing of another year. 2010 was, of course, a nondescript year in which the San Francisco Giants won the World Series and the film Grown Ups grossed $162 domestically. Regardless, plebians across the planet now grind their groins into lampposts in groaning ecstacy to obligingly acknowledge the new cycle in our Gregorian calendar.

Being alone on New Year’s Eve isn’t entirely a bad thing. For starters, I get to eat whatever I want (cheese) and I can leave the door open when I’m going to the bathroom. On the downside, it’s depressing to listen to the joyous shouts echoing from neighbor’s houses, no doubt filled with glistening, nubile partiers holding their arms aloft to receive an empty benediction from Carson Daly.

In the stillness of my home, I am left to count down the minutes in silence, accompanied only by my faithful knife. It is, I suppose, a celebration of a different sort. Where others imbibe warming cocktails and engage in friendly patter, I stare silently into a mirror as I wash my hands again and again. Where others throw their heads back and laugh confidently while driving drunk from the Chili’s in Eagan, I use my Belgian waffle maker as an incredibly inefficient space heater because I’m too lazy to go get the real one.

No doubt about it, being alone on New Year’s Eve is a dispiriting and dreary thing. This seems proof that I am the most unlucky, persecuted person alive today. Compared to me, that Nobel Peace Prize winner from China looks like Justin Bieber in a middle school cafeteria.

Oh well, at least I have my reasoned logic to help keep perspective.

My wife and son are in Colorado, visiting my sister-in-law. From the sounds of it, they’re having a terrific time filled with laughter, fond embraces, and tender words of affection. Meanwhile I spent two hours yesterday after school stuck in a snowstorm trying to get to my second job on time.

In Colorado, the whole gang went off to a zoo set against the backdrop of the Rockies, waving hello to giraffes and nodding respectfully to tigers. I, on the other hand, am going to go home tonight and put all the Christmas tree ornaments in the microwave, just because I have no earthly idea what to do with myself when they’re not around.

On past occasions when Bridgette would leave me to frolic in the dandelion meadows with her sister I took the opportunity to indulge myself – Culvers leftovers for breakfast, wearing my vented-crotch jeans, drinking Clorox, etc. This time, however, my isolation will have been spent snarled in traffic, working much of the weekend, and throwing my back out while shoveling the driveway. Alone, I will hobble to my couch to watch the 4-7 Vikings battle the 2-9 Buffalo Bills and hold a gun.

Oh sure, I know a few of you are muttering to yourself about how I’m just feeling sorry for myself, and that I should count my blessings. To those people, I would say this: shut your fat, chapped mouths. I hate people like you, with your logic and level-headed insight. I wish Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation was real so he could stab you in the guts and let loose the Klingon death howl. Then I would laugh and fist bump Worf and go back to being mopey.

Or do you think Worf would want to stay and watch the Vikings-Bills game with me?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not entirely opposed to physical touch. I like a jocular backslap and the occasional two-handed handshake as much as the next guy. But what if we decide to start up with the unsolicited back-hugs? How am I supposed to deal with someone putting their hands all over my belly and chest from behind as they pull me closer as a means of expressing their firm friendship? Doesn’t that seem like just one more level of societal degradation to you? I mean, first we had AIDS and now this!?

I have no reason to believe that spontaneous hugs from behind are about to become commonplace, but I do know that if it starts happens to me, I’m going to just scream as loud as I can. I don’t care if I’m on an airplane or in a dentist’s waiting room, if anyone hugs me from behind, they’re going to hear some of the new swear words I’ve been thinking of and then they’re going to taste the back end of my industrial flashlight.

Why is this happening? Who would think it’s a good idea to start hugging people from behind in an unwelcomed manner and then caress their torso and neck while breathing hot in their ear?! It just seems screwed up to me, and frankly I’m bothered that it’s probably about to start happening any day now.

I’m not about to sit still for this. I have written numerous editorials to community newsletters detailing my views on this matter and included locks of my hair as proof of my good faith. Surely there are millions more like me who will rise up and oppose the advent of uninvited hugs from behind. We will not be silent anymore! We are spitting mad about this inevitable invasion of our personal space, and if we don’t see action, we are literally going to murder an innocent man to get the world’s attention!

Anyway, that’s my view on backhugs. I’m pretty much opposed to them. Also, I am reasonable.

Have a great day, everybody! Don’t approach me!

He looked kinda like that rabbit, except his eyes were cloudy and his skull was wide open.

No idea at this point how he ended up dead on my lawn in that state. My working theories are, A) a feral dog got hold of him, or B) Bridgette ripped its head apart with her bare hands. Both are equally plausable examples of the food chain in action.

I can’t say I enjoyed shovelling Stinkies the stiffened bunny into a garbage bag. It was pretty much the most disgusting thing I’ve done in years. I know a few who would suggest it was some sort of karmic retribution for the content of this blog over the years. I would advise those folks to shut their rotting bunny mouths.

To all those planning a similar sort of activity in the near future, my earnest advice is for you to avoid breathing in through your mouth, lest you inhale the hot, reeking essence of rabbit putridity. I would also advise against running your fingers through the dead bunny’s fur, as this is less comforting than you’d think it would be. Also there are lots of bugs in there.

Fortunately, the ordeal is over now. The rabbit no longer taunts us with its reminder of our mortality, and my shovel has been sprayed off with holy water (stolen from the garden hose of the Catholic church next door). To all my friends interested in the virtue of frugality, the rotted bunny husk can be obtained for free from the garbage bin in my driveway until Thursday, at which time it will be picked up by the City of Minneapolis sanitation department, presumably to be deposited on the desk of mayor R.T. Rybak.

Farewell, Stinkies. Your death ruined everything, just like Princess Di.

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.

There is something so pert and refreshing about the sight of a new bulletin board. Their vibrant colors and crisp corners are a reflection of the energized hopes of the teachers who summoned them into existence. They brightly convey welcoming messages of optimism and achievement through the whimsical personification of textbooks and googly-eyed owls.

Yes, these new bulletin boards assembled during teacher’s workshops are are as unblemished as the milky white skin of my upper thighs.

Of course, by late September, these same bulletin boards will be frayed and fractured by the unbridled energies of 14-year old boys on a sugar rush. Words that once embraced the new year with glad reception will feel like a cruel curse amidst a gray season of ceaseless tedium. While the notion of ripping apart the aforementioned googly-eyed owl might be fantasized over in a moment of despair, the notion of having to whip up an entirely new bulletin board will have become too painful to even consider.

In a painful twist of irony, the very googly-eyed owl that once welcomed us with fresh enthusiasm now crushes our defeated spirits with the oppressive weight of its happiness.

This is the circle of life that Elton John once sang of so eloquently. It is the grim, inexorable attrition of the school year. Today, I played my part by assembling my new bulletin boards. In only a few short months, I will hate them. I have accepted all this with stoic calm.

Welcome back to school, America!

Brookdale Mall, located just minutes from my gentle neighborhood, has followed countless Hardees franchises into the shallow unmarked grave of retail death, shot in the back of the head by consumer indifference.

What will the tender youth of my community do without the Brookdale Mall? The mall offered wide concourses filled with echoed vulgarities, as well as multiple hat shops, dollar stores, and a Taco John’s. Locals whisper about a time when Brookdale offered an American Eagle, Barnes & Noble, Macy’s, and other signals of actual retail activity. In recent years, however, the mall has been overtaken by crotch-grabbing goons aimlessly patrolling the hallways. Shocking that consumers with actual money found the experience to be unpleasant…

Like the Roman Empire, the once-mighty Brookdale Mall has fallen into disrepair and illiteracy. Today’s equivalent of visigoth barbarians now chant their rhymed foolishness outside the walls of Brookdale, demanding entrance and gumballs. Where are our centurions to keep safety and order? Where is our Sheriff Andy Taylor? Where is the America we once knew?

Goodbye, Brookdale Mall. Technically, you have served us, though not particularly well. You shall remain standing as a concrete, rectangular reminder of how stupid everything is.

When this morning’s gray gloom finally dissipated, our worst fears were realized.

The violence had touched home.

Yesterday, this was just another teddy bear, careless and free. He probably loved playing stickball and being hugged by overzealous toddlers. Now he’s dead on our sidewalk in a pool of his own stuffing. Who knows what unspeakable acts this teddy bear had to endure before he was finally put out of his misery?

North Minneapolis is a hard place to live, my friends. You learn to distrust the people on your street. You learn to keep vigil on your front step and coldy polish your shotgun in plain view of the neighborhood teens. You learn to shutter your bathroom windows after receiving multiple complaints about people having to see you naked.

I suppose seeing a dead teddy bear on my sidewalk shouldn’t have been a shock. But it was. I’m afraid I’ll remember that image for the rest of my life.

I blame Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak for this. I stuffed the dead bear in a shoebox and mailed it to his office along with an irrationally belligerent and vaguely threatening note. Hopefully that will help.

So long, dead teddy bear. Perhaps from your death, a renewal will sprout in North Minneapolis and we will see a revival of this once-proud neighborhood. Perhaps teen truancy and gang activity will diminish while property values and retail activity will rise. Perhaps we will have fewer burglaries and more firm, friendly handshakes.

Until that happens, it’s time for some Ron Gardenhire-style vigilante justice. Nobody murders a teddy bear on my sidewalk and gets away with it.

I know it isn’t customary for your average playing card to speak up, but it’s time. I’m tired of getting overlooked by those other fancy face cards and your aces and whatnot. Seriously, if you guys knew what a total a-holes the jokers are, there’s no way you’d be excited to draw them. I feel like saying, “Hey jerks, I’m still a jack! In the medieval hierarchy, I’m like a duke or something!”

Sometimes it sucks to be the Jack of Diamonds. Look at me. Do I look happy to you? No, I look like some effemenate dude in an awful jacket who spent too long brushing my hair. Anyone suppose I’m a happy Jack when I look in the mirror? Anyone care to guess how many times I’ve contemplated plunging this ceremonial sword into my guts?

I suppose I’ve said my part now. I’ll go back to being quiet, unappreciated Jack of Diamonds. I don’t care if nobody gives a crap about me. I’ll show them all what they missed out on. Someday they’ll be sorry they ignored me. I’ll get a hot girlfriend and grow a beard to cover my weak chin and drive a Ford Contour.

Then everyone will say, “Hey, when did the Jack of Diamonds get so cool? I’m going to invent a game where whoever draws the Jack of Diamonds immediately wins.” Then I’ll be happy and my hot girlfriend will agree to wear Princes Leia’s metal bikini from Return of the Jedi.

So here’s your last chance, America. It’s your last chance to buy stock in the Jack of Diamonds before I become awesome and everyboy loves me. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry.

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.

It’s a bullet hole in our garage!

Yes, that’s right! On Saturday night, the North Minneapolis Fairy fired a gun near our home and teens (presumably wearing oversized white t-shirts and black do-rags underneath their parkas and stocking caps) went scattering away from the loud party they were attending. It was zany! Then the police came with their sirens and flashing lights and shiny boots and saved the day!

Sunday morning, I saw the bullet hole in my garage! Hooray!

Sunday evening, Brett Favre put a metaphorical bullet into my guts! Everything was terrible on Sunday!

Now children, if all of you say your prayers and eat your vitamins, maybe one of the North Minneapolis Fairies will shoot a bullet into your house or garage too! Then your family will be endangered and anxiety-ridden and the resale value of your property will magically diminish! Perhaps a Hennepin County judge will be lenient on the North Minneapolis Fairy and send him back with his other friends in his enchanted community! This is called the circle of life, and it is what Elton John sang so beautifully about in the mid-90s.

Now all of you children, listen closely. I want you to run around the neighborhood and see if you can find the North Minneapolis Fairy who shot a bullet into my garage. If you spot him, come back as fast as you can and tell me where he is! Then I will run him over with my Hyundai Sonata!

Three cheers for cold-blooded vengeance!

What the hell is this all about? The first snow is a sacred moment that must be reserved for no earlier than election day! A snowfallen morning on October 10th is like a department store selling Christmas items in the heat of August – it’s against the natural laws of the universe, just as forbidden as a committed, long-term relationship between a goat and a gator.

The first snow should be a time when apple-cheeked children rub their eyes and smile in wonderment, a time when coarsened misers throw silver dollars in the air with delight, a time for dogs to hump furniture in ecstacy. When the snow falls this early in the year, none of those things are liable to occur. Instead, we are left to stare vacantly at the sight of the snow-covered ground and absentmindedly extend our middle fingers to the heavens at our plight.

Everything is awful now. Nice job, Joe Nathan.

The energy level needed to get through my days intact is such that I’ve had difficulty sleeping. Last night I straddled a fire hydrant and spit at stray dogs until collapsing at 5am. I awoke two hours later naked in my garage. My neighbors are the best.

In addition, I’m chaperoning a middle school retreat on Thursday and Friday, spending a night in a cabin with a bunch of 11 & 12 year olds. This is exactly as fun as it sounds.

On the plus side, KFC is about to release their latest abomination against the natural law, the breadless Double Down Chicken Sandwich.

I’ll see you guys out behind the KFC. I’ll be the guy collecting spare change and muttering swear words.

A glorious summer lies lifeless in my hands like a wrung-out pelican.

All my summer’s hopes, joys, and anticipations have added up to nothing more than a handful of fallow seeds, blown astray by the winds of mystery into the chafed mouth of Father Time, presumably to be digested in his Stomach of Ages. By September, my enchanted summer will be just one more mound of dried excrement on Father Time’s front porch.

Where did the time pass? It seems like only yesterday it was the middle of June and I was as merry as a child straddling his first scarecrow. Now, teacher workshops begin on Monday and I am a wizened miser gasping for air. Who is left to seal their lips over mine in a vain attempt to resuscitate me? Who will pound on my chest in melodramatic fashion? Who will mournfully zip the coroner’s bag closed over the dead face of my summer?

I think I got lost in a metaphor there somewhere…

At any rate, my summer break is done. On Monday I will dutifully return to my full-time job and spend a week sitting in meetings, hanging meaningless posters, and berating custodial staff. There will be warm hugs of welcome from my co-workers and nods of respectful recognition from imaginary bears. All will appear to be well, but this will not be the case. In my heart, I will secretly be yearning for those long days of July when I sat on my ass all day reading news on the internet and complaining to my wife.

So long, summer. Have fun in hell. Say hi to Seasons 6-11 of Happy Days for me.

Bridgette will be at work until darkness falls, leaving me with only the companionship of two lazy, overplump cat-beasts. The chance of these two creatures comforting me is roughly equal to the odds that Michael Moore will choose a salad on his next visit to Old Country Buffet.

I tried mowing the lawn, hoping that even a meager accomplishment might be enough to pull me from these summertime doldrums. Like Sisyphus with an iPod, I pushed my lawn mower in a series of concentric circles under the sun’s unblinking anus as an eternal, arbitrary curse. Seriously, it was a mildly inconvenient 45 minutes I went through.

Now I am back inside the dark, shaded hearth of my home. I ate a crappy nectarine, which did my mood no good. Everything is terrible now. The truth is not in me. This is worse than the Boer War atrocities, whatever they were.

Goodbye.

UPDATE: Nevermind all this. I just found out that Predator is on TV. That’s a pretty cool movie.

This regal beast is the property of my in-laws, the man and woman who tenderly bore and raised my beloved wife. The dog’s name is Mausi (or Mitsy, or Muffins, or something similarly inscrutable).

Anyway, my point is that I cleaned up its puke this weekend.

For those of you unacquainted with hot, yellowish-green German Shephard barf, I think it’s safe to say that it’s one of the grossest things in the universe. I watched the wretched creature spread its jaws wide and silently disgorge a massive pile of vomit on the floor. Alone with my wife, I knew that we would have to clean it up, so I went to fetch some cleaning supplies. When I had returned, I found a similarly revolting barf-mound in another corner of the room.

In all, we’re talking more than a half-gallon of thick, chunky heavings left behind for me by this bastard dog.

Bridgette was little help in cleaning up the mess. For one, she is 6 months pregnant, so bending over is not the easiest. Secondly, she got a case of the giggles when she saw the disgusting sludge-heaps, so her “help” came in the form of laughing while I was suppressing the gag reflex, scooping the warm, nauseating stomach contents of my in-laws’ German Shephard into the garbage.

Hooray for awfulness!

P.S. When Bridgette read this post, she got the giggles again.

I’ll tell you, perusing this periodical was a remorse-riddled exercise in cultural malaise. Obviously, the thing was going to be confusing – it’s in Japanese, after all, but the sheer strangeness of it all is what struck me.

Take for instance, this ad for Microsoft Windows Vista from the back page:

Yours is emotion. What in the hell does that mean? That’s probably the single most cryptic advertisement I’ve ever seen. Why not just go ahead and print up, “Microsoft Vista: The Truth is Not In You”?

Here are a few other phrases from the magazine I found, with the help of Google’s translator tool:

“Party boss is in favor of lifetime employment and active! The job is negatively – Embarrassing the boss now “

If the party boss is active and in favor of lifetime employment, why would you embarass the boss now? Doesn’t that strike you as counter-productive? Japan makes no sense to me.

Brazil No.1 best-selling author:
“Recipe for happiness in mind to become a success in the Russian. Have the kindness of heart failure even to enjoy the creativity!”

Any recipe for happiness that involves Russians is a complete and utter fraud as far as I’m concerned. Having said that, “the kindness of heart failure” is a phrase that does have its merits.

What’s important is, for now, to lament the past. Does not begin to say that they fear the future. If you concentrate on the front of the eyes they will also be able to accept?

Dear Lord, is Friedrich Neitzsche the managing editor of this thing? The closer I get to understanding this, the worse I feel…

Despite all this, have a wonderful day everybody, filled with the kindness of heart failure!

Those golden-faced, nutrient-sucking bastards…

Somehow, the dandelions in my lawn have survived more direct toxin squirts than Wilford Brimley’s toilet bowl. By now, most of them look wriggled and weak, but still they return with the sunlight and gobble up my soil’s goodness from the lush, green grass I so cravenly desire. I’ve tried everything I know – poisoning them, uprooting them, yelling the worst swear words I know at them (even the really bad ones that my cousin Steve thought of). Nothing seems to get rid of those little yellow sons of bitches.

I suppose it’s time for me to admit defeat, like the Japanese military leaders after the fiery deaths of tens of thousands of its loyal citizens. As far as I can tell, my situation exactly parallels theirs.

So, tonight I will go home and kneel in subservience to my new dandelion rulers. Unable to imagine living under the oppressive dictat of the dandelion, I will begin to eat the dandelions one by one until my internal organs start to fail. After swallowing several dozen dandelions, the one-peaceful vision of my yard will begin to spin and distort unnaturally. Still, I will continue to pop dandelion heads in my mouth like they were Werther’s Originals. Barking my despairing, disoriented final words to startled passersby, I will then collapse face down on my lawn. With my final ounce of strength, I will vomit forth a vile, milky resin that will soak into the earth and destroy the dandelions from below, like Satan pulling them back to hell.

If you’re worried about this blog, I shall hand over control of it to one of my 7th grade geography students. You likely won’t notice a difference in content or quality.

Following Sunday’s dandelion slaughter, I awoke with great pleasure on Monday to find my yard filled with the sagging ruins of a once-mighty dandelion army. It was as if the wretched dandelions were bowing in subservience to me, their toxin-squirting master. I made sure to spit in their fluffy yellow faces on my way to the garage.

But this morning, I noted with horror that the dandelions had returned, and (like the Sandpeople of Tatooine) in greater numbers! Shamelessly, they stood stoutly in my summertime sod! What sort of wretched development is this?!

Those dandelions are going to get it tonight, I can promise you. I’m going to shove open their squealing mouths and blast a blowtorch down their throats until their guts melt. The statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary outside the Catholic church across the street will turn away in revulsion when she gets a look at what goes down in my lawn tonight. My actions will make Pol Pot look like Spongebob Squarepants.

When I see you guys tomorrow, nevermind the dandelion blood I’ve got spattered all over my clothes and mouth. I’ve just been doing lawn maintenance, that’s all. It’s time for a final solution to our dandelion problem.

Why am I showing you this? Well, because yesterday, I had to push one of these sons of bitches the length of a city block by myself. The reason involves a long and mostly pointless account of dead batteries and car repair, but rest assured that the story ends with my brother behind the wheel and me pushing this 1.5 ton monstrosity down our alley and making startling new noises I’ve never made before.

14 hours later, my body still don’t feel right. My gait is shallow and uneven, like if Charlie Chaplin had shattered his femur. My back feels like it’s been tickled by the Goats of Torment. I pretty much hate you right now.

Anyway, long story short, we’ve got a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a shot battery for sale. If you want it, come over and push it yourself, you lazy bastard.

America’s childlike innocence is gone.

The thought of Phil Spector, the man who brought so much joy to untold millions with his patented “Wall of Sound” style in the 1960s putting a gun in the mouth of Lana Clarkson and pulling the trigger is like imagining Santa Claus killing Hansel and Gretel with a hammer.

How could this have happened to us? As the childlike empress Paula Cole once asked, where have all the coyboys gone?

What are we to do? Where can we go for guidance, now that this towering pillar of moral strength blew some actress’s brains out? Should we look to our schools? The stars? The novels of Clive Cussler?

It’s times like these that make me wish Al Gore was still alive.