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?

I was a huge fan of Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, & Steel; it has influenced my world history and geography classes significantly (I like to have my students consider to what degree societies are bound to environmental determinism). Collapse, on the other hand, sometimes left me cold. By the end, I felt like I was taking my medicine, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop reading a book once I’m 400 pages in.

The best stretches of the book are detailed historical accounts of the collapse of ancient societies like the Maya, the Greenland Norse, and the inhabitants of Easter Island. I was totally engrossed in these sections and haunted by his accounts of their demise. However, I felt that the constructs Diamond used to analyze these collapses were usually too complex to be very insightful – a 12-part inventory here, a 9-catagory breakdown there, etc. Somewhat less interesting, but still worthwhile were sections devoted to contemporary failings in Rwanda (overpopulation leading to genocide), China (overpopulation leading to environmental crises) and Australia and Haiti (deforestation and alien species leading to near ecological collapse). In the end, the most compelling issue to me was that those societies failed to recognize the limitations of their circumstances and adjust their lifestyles and values accordingly. Diamond concludes by attempting to connect the (overly complex) lessons of these collapses and crises with the environmental and demographic issues across the planet today with varying degrees of success.

Here are some other noteworthy tidbits about and from the book:

-One of the things I appreciate about Diamond’s work is that he is an environmental and philosophical realist (unlike the insufferable true-believer, environmental idealists suckling at Al Gore’s bloated paunch). His breakdown of the environmental issues surrounding the logging, mining, and oil drilling industries was refreshing in that he understood that businesses exist in order to create a profit for their shareholders. What’s more, he didn’t write as if to do so is somehow immoral. Diamond laid out how future of the logging, mining, and fishing industries must rely on models that allow sustainable use of natural resources while maintaining or increasing business profits. These rely in large part on the mechanism of an environmentally-engaged buying public.

-Prior to their society’s collapse, the Mayas built enormous pyramids, developed a written language and some fairly sophisticated mathematics. They also predicted, with eerie accuracy, the arrival of a truly terrible disaster film in the fall of 2009. They even carved the name “Danny Glover” onto one of their human sacrifice altars.

-It was Diamond’s contention that much of the logging and oil drilling in the modern first world in the last several decades has been done responsibly (this contention has angered many of his admirers on the left) but pointed to various reasons why companies operating in the third world continue to take a short-sighted, destructive approach. Particularly facinating to me was his analysis about why the convoluted business and distribution model of the mining industry tends to prevent market pressure for responsible practices from reaching the companies. Think about it, do you have any idea where the copper in your car or cell phone came from? Do you have any reasonable way of sending a message to that supplier with your money?

-Do you remember that movie “The Postman” starring Kevin Costner, about a reluctant mail carrier in a post-apocalyptic society who brings salvation to a desperate band of refugees? Well, turns out it will soon prove to be 100% accurate, right down to Kevin Costner’s hair plugs.

-Diamond’s section on the collapse of Greenland’s Norse colony around the year 1400 after over 500 years of existence is wonderful and haunting. He paints a vivid, grim picture of Norse life in Greenland, as they did their best to transpose their European style of life onto their frozen, tenuous environment. Here’s a photo I reflected on for along time of the largest building on their colony – the Hvalsey stone church:

-The Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035, unless they don’t. Either way, anthropogenic global warming is irrefutable, and every weather phenomenon of any sort proves this. On an unrelated note, this Kool-Aid is green flavored!

-There were numerous reasons for the collapse of the Norse Greenland society. One of them is the fact that they were unable or unwilling to adjust their European values and lifestyles to suit a vastly different set of circumstances. Whereas the values and hierarchy of the Catholic church and European society served them well in Scandanavia, they proved destructive on Greenland. Large areas of premium (and scarce) land, crops and resources were collected as tithes and sent back to the archbishop on the European mainland. They immediately seem to have had an antagonistic relationship with the pagan Inuit (whom the Norse referred to as “skraelings”, or wretches). Either out of a desire to separate themselves from the Inuit or to cling to their Europeanness, they did not adjust their diet to what was sustainably available (i.e. fish, seal, and walrus), and continued to graze sheep and other livestock. This grazing eventually led to catastrophic soil erosion as the vegetation was eaten away. In the end, the Inuit outlasted the Norse on Greenland, mostly thanks to the fact that their lifestyle matched their environment.

-The Norse settlement on Iceland proved far more successful than their Greenland counterparts. This was the result of Iceland’s less severe environment, the lack of an outside enemy to compete for resources, and Icelanders greater willingness to drop economic activities and values that didn’t prove tenable. Not to be discounted are the sweet, sustaining refrains of Sororicide, Iceland’s favorite Satanic black metal band.

-The mysterious collapse of the Easter Island society is another facinating section of the book. Diamond traces how the inhabitants of the island gradually deforested the entire island until their own survival was doomed. Their society was divided into warring clans led by chiefs and priests who practiced a primitive form of conspicuous consumption. The famous stone heads found on the island are one result of this gaudy competition, as enormous amounts of energy and resources were put into the carving and transportation of these heads, believed to represent an appeal to the gods to save them. Slowly but surely, as the trees were removed, their ecosystem collapsed to the point where the island was nearly uninhabitable. When they were discovered by Europeans in the 1770s, the inhabitants were a lean, miserable people relying on fish that could be caught from shoreand cannibalism to stay alive.

-In an attempt to make their unfamiliar surroundings resemble home, short-sighted British colonists actually tried and failed to introduce rabbits to Australia’s ecosystem 5 times before finally succeeding with a different breed of hare from Spain. These rabbits then proceeded to overpopulate and infest the Australian countryside and remain a menace. Australians have since attempted to exact revenge by stealthily introducing kangaroos to the British Isles, but the wretched beasts are invariably trampled to death by mobs of soccer hooligans.

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 hope I finally see a werewolf! I’ve always wondered what it would be like to see a werewolf in person. I bet it would be like the time I shook Kirby Puckett’s hand when I was 14, except the werewolf would be taller and I would have less acne.

Maybe the werewolf will approach me tentatively, and I would have to coax him toward me by offering him food – some bread crumbs, or a severed rooster head perhaps. Once the werewolf got near, I would offer him my hand so he could sniff it and make sure I’m friendly. Then he could give me a backrub. I bet his coarse, hairy knuckles would tickle the sensitive skin along the sides of my rib cage. With all due respect to my wife and son, the day I get a werewolf backrub will be the best day of my life by a mile.

Werewolves are sometimes misunderstood by the media. They want us to believe that all werewolves only want to rip their swarthy snouts into the steaming entrails of newly dead children, or slam dunk basketballs. I know that werewolves are a lot more than that. They have feelings too. Sure, they’re tormented by hot-blooded, animalistic impulses to down warm human blood like it was Snapple, but they also like friendship and dancing and holding hands. I have spent countless hours doing research in my dream journal about this.

Once I’ve lured the werewolf toward me, and the werewolf is giving me a backrub, then we can be free to open up to each other. We will have a deep and meaningful conversation, filled with poignant silences and unbroken eye contact. I can tell the werewolf about me hopes and disappointments, and he can tell me what a human spleen tastes like.

See you soon, my new werewolf friend! I can’t wait to meet you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hooray, raisins!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Even better news! Ian Ziering is alive!

Our old rapscallious friend Steve Sanders is finally tying the knot after years of being recognized as a vaguely familiar wisp of our collective memories! Way to go, Ian!

You might have recognized an bronzed, hairplugged brute claiming to be Ian Ziering in a recent season of Dancing With the Stars, but I remain skeptical. How could Ian Ziering have more hair and whiter teeth today than he did when he started portraying the salacious Steve at the tender young age of 35?

Do you remember the episode when Steve was jocular and flashed a winning smile? That was probably my favorite.

Anyway, good work, Ian Ziering. Someday, when your bride has come of age, you’ll have to sit her down and show her a few episodes of 90210, and tell her about the 1990s. Then you could lean in and tenderly kiss her, all while Jason Priestly watches from the closed-circut camera feed you had installed for him.

Cheers!

Come over here, ’cause we got a message for you!

That’s right. You are ugly.

Listen up, we should know ugly. After all, we’re a cow and a pig. You ever seen either of us eating from up close? Trust us, we know ugly when we see it, and you are ugly.

Even the fact that we’re simplified childrens drawings isn’t enough to mask the sheer misanthropy of the insult we just sent your way. Check out the look at the pig’s face. It’s called sheer disgust. Seriously, friend, have you showered lately? Your greasy hair and swollen neck-zits suggest you’ve been neglecting your grooming in favor of more quality time with the dumpster behind the Hostess bakery.

So take it from us, a pair of filth-encrusted barnyard animals, you are ugly. You should go away from everybody for a while to regroup and take a bleach-soaked rag to your armpits and crotch. It would do the world a favor. Better yet, ask Farmer Troy if you can borrow his shotgun. He uses it to put animals out of their misery. I bet it would fit pretty good in your mouth.

Seriously. Kill yourself.

Hope you enjoyed your visit to my blog today, folks!

Blast, it’s cold outside! It’s colder than a witch’s mammary gland! When that frigid air hits your lungs, it feels like Reggie Jackson taking his 35oz. Louisville Slugger to your ribs! It ain’t natural!

It’s so cold out, it makes me want to curl up under a blanket and watch CBS’s crime procedural Cold Case, starring that ashen-faced lady from my nightmares.

Because of the frozen temps here, my car was running at perhaps 60% efficiency this morning. It was like at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, when the Enterprise is trying to get away from the Genesis project explosion but they don’t have warp power until Spock sacrifices his life for the good of the crew. That’s exactly what it was like as I drove through Brooklyn Center.

I hate these Minnesota Januaries. Everything is cold and depressing and my sullen misery only grows deeper with each drunken pelvic thrust from New Orleans Saints fans.

Something’s got to be done about this! Who’s up for a suicide pact culminating in a blazing bloodbath in a Culvers parking lot?

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!

In 2008, I took more digs after it appeared that another foolish interception in a Packers loss in overtime of the NFC Championship game would be his last throw as an NFL quarterback.

Then tonight, with 19 seconds to play in a tie game and the ball on the Saints 38 yard line. Favre rolled out to the right, and instead of taking the 5 or 6 yards of open field, he threw a stupid pass back into the middle of the field to hand the ball and the momentum back to the Saints. On a night when the Vikings had dominated every statistical category except the all-important turnovers, their two biggest players couldn’t carry their water, and all my years of mockery washed back over me like a tidal wave of urine from drunken Wisconsinites.

Now I lay prone, soaked in bitter irony and long-prophecied sorrow. I will fight my way through this unhappy night and arise tomorrow a new, stronger man. Though this blog’s bad karma hath wrought a severe punishment upon Vikings fans, I will continue to carry on writing distasteful blog entries that nobody enjoys reading. I am oblivious to the lessons of defeat, much like the liberal wing of the Democratic party.

So tonight, I say, “See you in hell, Brett Favre. I no longer hate you, but neither shall I ever again snuggle into your whiskery affections.”

Here’s a favorite that I read to him three times in a row because I couldn’t quite get over what I was reading:

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady’s chamber.

There I met an old man
Who wouldn’t say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.

Yes. Justice.

Certainly all of us agree that the protagonist in this tale took the proper, prudent course of action. He came upon an elderly man and ordered him to pray. The man refused. The old man was then tossed down the stairs to his death. John Calvin himself couldn’t have done any better.

I did a bit of research about this and it turns out it dates back to the days when Oliver Cromwell and his boys were driving the Catholics out of England (the old man in question didn’t say his prayers in English, he said them in Latin like a common, cross-eyed papist).

No matter. The fact that this story is printed in children’s books in 2010 without context is amusing enough for me. For now, I will put my little Oliver Cromwelle to bed with a lovely rhyme about intolerance and violence to the elderly.

Best dad ever? It’s too early to say.

(But I’m probably in the conversation.)

Are you a silly goose? Yes you are a silly goose! You waddle and frolic in the sunshine puddles! You love to eat bread don’t you, you silly goose? All you ever do is eat bread and squawk and befriend children of all colors!

I love you, goose!

Woah, calm down, goose! Take a chill pill!

Let’s calm down and discuss this rationally, man to goose. I can see you’re upset, and I’m seeing a lot more of your disgusting goose tongue than I ever want to see again. Now that I’ve seen that, I can imagine what it would be like to make out with Satan.

Now take a deep breath and tell me what it is that you’re mad about.

Now you’re chasing me! Leave me alone, goose! I don’t deserve this goose grief!

You have suprised me with your nimble footspeed over this short distance, goose! I’m not getting any separation! That’s the last time I underestimate an angry goose!

I hate you, goose bastard!

Hey, goose! Leave that man alone! He worked hard today and he deserves a restful nap here on the grass in this park free of your nudging goosenags.

I am going to come back here tomorrow and shoot you, goose. I’m going to blast your goose face away. I have soured on you.

I hope you get fondled by a hobo tonight, goose. You’ve got it coming.

Estimated by scientists to measure more than 15 feet in length and weigh 75 pounds, this icicle embodied all that is mighty and pure about the USA. Like George Washington’s chiseled jaw, Rutherford Hayes’ immaculately-groomed beard, and Lyndon Johnson’s fertile groin, this icicle projected America’s rugged strength and dignity that has justly subjugated the planet earth. That it should sprout up here in North Minneapolis is certainly divine affirmation of mayor Rybak’s half-million dollar initiative to install designer water fountains across the city. In fact, I would posit that this icicle is a herald of Rybak’s inerrancy.

Emboldened by patriotic fervor and sub-zero windchills, I approached the gleaming icicle. With trembling fingers and moistened lips, I reached for it and removed it from my garage with a mighty “CRACK!” At that moment, thunder rolled across the heavens and Hugo Chavez’s living room curtains tore in two.

Resplendent in my workout gear and disheveled hair, I posed with the excalibur of icicles and felt its shimmering American power pulsate through my body like an electrical charge. I was suddenly vivid and alive. It was as if was imbued with the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt after 12 cups of coffee. Mine eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! Glory, hallelujah!

Then Bridgette made me come inside and fold laundry.

Ten years ago…

-I weighed about 80 pounds more than I do today.

-I was at the most depressed, emotionally screwed up point in my life.

-I had managed to push away most of my closest friends through a series of selfish, self-destructive behaviors.

-I had a terrible work ethic and had little professional ambition beyond working at the music store near my college.

-I could fit all my worldly belongings inside my Chevy Lumina.

-I didn’t read books and my academic curiosity was minimal.

-I was afraid to commit to a relationship with God because I feared he would ask me to give up things that I now realize were silly or futile to begin with.

-I didn’t know how to let my guard down and stop the jokes.

-I spent all my money on music and fast food.

-I had a bloated ego that was in the process of being crushed to smithereens by life’s circumstances.

-I had never changed a diaper or had a baby smile at me in recognition.

-I had a fear of my own deep-seeded emotions which manifested itself in a latent callousness toward women.

Ten years later, I still don’t have everything figured out, but it’s pretty amazing to consider what God was able to do in my world over this last decade.

I’m serious dudes, I am famished right now. It’s still morning and I’m bleary eyed from my shame, but I could eat the biggest, fattest tostada you ever saw. I would eat it so fast that you would get nauseous from watching me do it.

Anybody here got a tostada?

Holy crap, look at that sweet, sloppy tostada. I bet it soaked right through that paper plate. When I get to heaven, I want to be thrown into a darkened room full of those crunchy corn sons of bitches and just go to town on them for weeks.

I bet I’d never get tired of tostadas. They have to be good tostadas though, no fancy ones with shrimp or fish on it. Just a regular American tostada piled high with beef, cheese, and glory. I like my tostadas piled higher than Abe Lincoln’s hat and fatter than Mary Lincoln’s girdle.

Looks like I’ve got tostadas on the mind pretty bad this morning. I can feel the saliva pooling in my mouth as I write about them. I just wish I was an assistant manager at a Taco Bell so I could sit in some dirty back office somewhere and eat tostadas all night. That would be my dream job. When you’re a Taco Bell assistant manager, the world is your greasy oyster.

Looks like I’m out of time. I’ve got a class to teach. I hope these kids are ready to take notes on tostadas, because that’s about to happen. If I get in trouble, the teacher’s union will accuse the administration of being racist. Problem solved!

See you in hell, all you non-tostadas!

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m a huge Beatles fan and McCartney enthusiast. Having read similar (and more authoritative) books like The Beatles by Bob Spitz and John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman, some parts of Carlin’s book were treading overly familiar territory for me. However, he does an excellent job at connecting themes in the music of McCartney and Beatles with the events of their lives and their own personalities. Throughout the text, Carlin posits that McCartney’s music is his truest, most endearing expression of self and reflects not only his unparalleled talent but his need to prove himself and to please others. It’s definitely worth a read for any Beatles fan or serious follower of pop music history inclined to dismiss McCartney’s work as trite or suburban.

Here are a few interesting tidbits from the book worth sharing:

-Carlin tracks the arc of McCartney’s character from age 9 (when his mother passed away) to today. McCartney matured from a bright, good-natured kid from a poor neighborhood to the early Beatles days as the group’s most assured talent and yin to John Lennon’s yang to the supreme confidence and accomplishment of the late 60s to his years as a sort of neo-hippy family man prone to losing his musical focus from time to time. All the while, McCartney comes across as genial and ingratiating, but also self-centered and slyly self-aggrandizing in a way the unfilterable Lennon could never manage.

-McCartney wrote the song “Maybe I’m Amazed” about the experience of having a beard and being awesome. In other words, it’s about me.

-Carlin details how John Lennon served a central role in McCartney’s life to an extent surpassed only by Linda, his wife of 30 years. Lennon, McCartney’s childhood friend and collaborator, was the only person who McCartney ever viewed as a true professional peer capable of offering meaningful criticism. Carlin offers one example after another from the 70s and 80s of McCartney indignantly reacting to critics in the studio, while Lennon’s take from afar (usually via a newspaper or magazine interview) was always incredibly meaningful to him. Years later, McCartney offhandedly mentions his songs that John liked, and his friends recall him agonizing over the insults Lennon tossed his way. As McCartney himself said a day after Lennon’s death, “He was pretty rude about me sometimes, but I secretly admired him for it.”

-McCartney has long been able to ingratiate himself with journalists and promoters by affecting a genial, effortless facade and by making silver dollars magically appear from their ears and by kissing them on their special zone.

-For all his musical abilities, Paul McCartney was the primary creative force behind two of the lousiest films of the 20th century, 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour and 1984’s Give My Regards to Broad Street. They are both mind-numbingly inane, pointless exercises in hubris. On the plus side, at least they’re in color.

-In one interesting aside, Carlin throws out an analogy for the dysfunction of the Beatles by the late-60s. Lennon was the emotionally aloof, ne’er-do-well husband and father, McCartney the tidying mother blindly trying to make the best of everything, George Harrison the surly teenager, and poor Ringo Starr was the boy playing with the toy airplane in the backyard.

-Some have speculated that McCartney hired Mark David Chapman to assassinate Lennon. Because this sounds about right to me, those people are accurate. You can find more of my valid, provable ideas at www.911truth.org.

-McCartney’s relentless womanizing exploits as a young man were unsurprising (I’m shocked – SHOCKED – that the Beatles had sex with groupies!) but nonetheless pretty pathetic. He was a serial cheater, while also sure to instruct his girlfriends how to dress, wear their makeup, and behave (not unlike how he tended to direct his bandmates at times). His turnaround once he got involved with Linda is thus all the more remarkable. They were soulmates and basically inseparable for the three decades of their marriage. Admirably, they raised their kids in a stable, loving (and rich beyond imagination) family. All their kids went to neighborhood public schools and have turned out to be the sort of totally unembarrassing celebrity kids you don’t see much of.

-Putting the intelligent, but minimally musically-talented Linda McCartney in Wings was a totally reasonable decision with no downside, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

-Carlin’s passages describing Linda’s death from breast cancer in 1998 are incredibly moving. The real heartbreak, however, is following Paul’s heartbroken self-destruction blindly into a new marriage with Heather Mills, who turned out to be a lying, narcissistic bitch to the surprise of none of her ex-husbands.

-Paul McCartney is an animal-loving vegetarian, like my wife and Hitler.

-After avoiding playing many of his Beatles hits in concert, McCartney’s shows since 1989 have featured crisp performances of much of his Beatles material to the delight of his fans. In unrelated news, Paul McCartney enjoys money.

This is about as much fun as having your genitals shocked with an electrical charge by Ben Franklin for the amusement of a bunch of dandy French bastards.

Life with a sick, screaming infant is certainly different. Your focus shrinks down to surviving the next few minutes and the puzzle of coaxing comfort from a red-faced, drooling baby. This is something like trying to force-feed pills to a yowling cat while the countown timer from Catchphrase is about to go off. The effects of the exhaustion, screaming and sleeplessness are that time somehow stretches and your sense of despair heightens to Kirkegaardian depths as you experience the vertigo that comes with cognitively confronting the ultimately unknowable subjective realities that define life. Also, the noxious blast of your baby’s breath smells like germs and breastmilk, which doesn’t especially help.

If there were some way I could wipe Oliver’s desperate tears away and help him to feel better, I would. I have tried bouncing him, holding him, and rolling him. I have bathed him and sung to him and twirled him. For all my child-rearing effectiveness, I might as well as been Barney the Dinosaur with a gun in my mouth in a Burmese prison cell.

On the plus side, I got to watch a DVD about Abraham Lincoln I got for Christmas at 4am last night. Apparently his trials were somewhat harder than mine and he didn’t have lovely history DVDs to help him through the night. He only had a telegraph ticker and the sturdy arms of Edwin M. Stanton.

Well, he’s up and crying again. Wish us luck, everyone! Hopefully we won’t all get carbon monoxide poisoning!

While at my parents place, I had a strange moment when my mother pulled out her old pickle strainer from the back of the lazy Susan.

(Incidentally the term “lazy Susan” begs the question of who was this lazy Susan and what ingenius fellow was she with who enabled her laziness? Thomas Jefferson perhaps?)

I hadn’t seen this pickle strainer in perhaps fifteen years, and my reaction upon seeing it was oddly emotional. Suddenly I was transported back to my past and the memories of all the pickles I ate as a youngster. Some were crisp, others flaccid, but all equally wonderous. Pickles were, and shall always remain, the reason I rise in the morning.

Here my brother Patrick demonstrated the proper usage and treatment of the Pickle Strainer of Legend.

One of the beautiful things about this pickle strainer is the way it removes the pickles from the murky brine without moistening the fingers. On a day when my baby was screaming and my stools were loose, this pickle strainer brought me nostalgic satisfaction and meaning. If necessary, I would have traded it for my wedding ring.

I wish the pickle strainer could hold me.

Favorite Albums

Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

This was my most enjoyable musical find of the year. This rootsy, North Carolina-based trio has been around for a while, but their new album received a lot of attention because it was produced by the bearded zenmaster Rick Rubin. The album sounds gorgeous and organic, and I just couldn’t believe how many songs I loved the first time through. The album felt familiar, yet its warmhearted themes and tight brotherly harmonies were punctuated with plenty of unexpected left turns that kept me guessing.

Doves – Kingdom of Rust

Doves were a moody British band I loved back in the early aughts who I thought had started to slide with their last album. Happily, they rebounded this year with what I felt was their best effort. Doves’ best material has a melancholy sweep to it and is able to build and crest under Jimi Goodwin’s beautiful alto. This album has no shortage of such cinematic loveliness. Kingdom of Rust is definitely worth checking out and giving a bit of time to let it seep under your skin. (Incidentally, this seemed to be Bridgette’s favorite of the new albums I got this year.)

U2 – No Line on the Horizon

Read my full review from earlier in the year here. Many listens later, it’s still a great album with tons of layers. I’ll only add that the album’s elusive, slow-burning songs have gained stature in my mind while the middle stretch of radio-oriented material feels a bit more out of place.

Wilco – Wilco (the Album)

My brother in law and I are each big Wilco fans, but this is an album we disagree on. He’s inclined to favor Wilco’s fractured, dissonant, “challenging” material from earlier this decade like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which I also dig) and A Ghost is Born (not as much). A few years later, lead singer Jeff Tweedy is apparently in a happier, more contented mental space and he’s produced another straightforward “mature” album. While its heights aren’t as towering as 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, this is a great album with warmth, wit (see “Wilco [the Song]“), and impeccable craftsmanship.

Runners Up:

EELS – Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire
E sacrificed some melodic consistency for thematic purity on this album. It’s probably destined to be a worthwhile curio in the EELS catalogue, but it doesn’t stand up next to their last effort.
Mark Knopfler – Get Lucky
Same as Knopfler’s last three albums: expertly-performed, authentic, and relaxed.
Michael Bublé – Crazy Love
A wonderfully tuneful, tasteful album for any pop-jazz vocal afficianado. I’m honestly not sure how much of the artistry is his though, so I can’t put it on my most-recommended list.
Joshua James – Build Me This
Singer-songwriter’s inevitable band-oriented sophomore effort. Good stuff, but bigger isn’t always better.
Peter Bradley Adams – Traces
This guy keeps making the same album, but who cares when they’re so damn good?
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – The Live Anthology
Rocking and revelatory.

A Disappointment:

Derek Webb – Stockholm Syndrome
The controversial album from this important Christian artist was a mixed bag for me. The daring production style (see: Yorke, Thom) was great and created a freshness to the material, but the songs just weren’t strong enough musically. Christian reviewers (especially those with more progressive inclinations) bent over backwards praising the album’s sometimes ham-fisted lyrical content. On the other hand, I just couldn’t get past the fact that a lot of melodies felt undercooked. It’s a fine album if you’re the type to read and reflect on the words without ever desiring to sing along.

Favorite Songs:

Doves – “Kingdom of Rust”: A dark, textured epic.
EELS – “Beginner’s Luck”: Catchy and deserving to be heard.
Rocket Club – “One More Day”: Local country-rock effort written by a father who lost his daughter to a fatal illness. Always gets me a bit misty-eyed, like “Christmas Shoes” but better. (FREE DOWNLOAD)
Wilco – “One Wing”: Great mix of Wilco’s beautiful and artistic ambitions.
Derek Webb – “What Matters More”: The best and worst of Webb’s album is distilled into this pretty remarkable track that his record label refused to release.
Jars of Clay – “Headphones”: A stirring call to Christian love.
Avett Brothers – “I And Love And You”: A wonderfully broken, rootsy ballad.

(See also their hilarious video for “Slight Figure of Speech”)
U2 – “Moment of Surrender”: For me, this was the best, most beautiful, most movingly-performed song I came across this year.

(See also my musical roundups for 2008, 2007, 2006, & 2005)

I got up this morning much earlier than usual to assist my lovely wife with our crying child. After Oliver eventually fell back asleep, my wife retreated to bed and I went ahead with my morning routine about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. The end result of this is the fact that I’m now alone in the school. I am but a beleaguered apparition shuffling silently through the vacant hallways of remorse.

How might I take advantage of this rare opportunity? Should I yell some of my swear words really loud? Should I correct tests naked? Should I correct the anotomical inaccuracies contained in some of the drawings on the middle school boy’s bathroom stalls? It appears that the world is my dark, wintery oyster this morning.

Oh wait. Nevermind. Apparently, I’m not alone – I just saw a custodian. He must think along the same lines I do, because his shirt is totally unbuttoned.

Man, that guy’s belly is really hairy. He seriously makes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed look like the epitome of fine grooming.

Anyway, long story short, I’ve spent so long writing this and thinking about KSM’s fat, hairy neck that I just missed my first hour class.

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.

Eating this Malt-O-Meal is a wonderful experience. It is like savoring a warm spoonful of nostalgia and calcium phosphate. With mechanical precision I eagerly begin my feast upon the creamy wheat essence; my eyes are staring into the middle distance and my is torso positioned firmly at a slightly acute angle. Each mound of granular brown paste greets my eager lips with a quiver of welcoming before it is quickly smothered and devoured by my ample flesh-hole. The steaming Malt-O-Meal is then swallowed down into my body’s nether-regions never to be seen again until it gets blasted out defecation alley on Christmas morning.

Can you see that my lust for Malt-O-Meal is both beautiful and perverse? It is only in this unnatural entangling that my soul finds repose. Only the sweet sating of an engorged belly bloated with thick cereal sludge and water chestnuts can end my existential agony.

Thank you, Malt-O-Meal, for being there for me. Thank you for filling my mouth time and again with such sweet shame. Thank you for being so delicious that you make Cream of Wheat taste like a bum’s diseased scrotum.

I love you, chocolate Malt-O-Meal. I want to enter a long, abusive relationship with you. I want you to make me feel like garbage night after night with your emotional abuse. I will forgive you. You just taste so damn good.

The only thing we ask is that you pledge your eternal allegiance to me and never visit another blog again.

This is a photograph we took on a recent holiday of some repute. I can’t recall the name of this particular occasion, but it was something to do with bite-sized Milky Ways and Lucifer.

In this image, Oliver smiles at his mother. In our case, I happen to be married to his mother. It’s a tangled, byzantine web that I would explain if I had more time. The modern world is crazy!

Here, the man-child is positioned in a Baby Bjorn Swaddlemaster 5000. You will also note that the brown Baby Bjorn matches his brown shirt and brown hair and my wife’s browness. “Brown” is a funny word to repeat over and over again out like, much like the word “moist”. Be advised, however, that putting those two words together with swear words is enough to get you politely kicked out of a dinner party with your wife’s friends from college.

Here, the boy is strapped to me, like a stray cat caught in a thresher.

This is a video of Oliver smiling as he is tickled and tossed about. I’m sure some politically correct college professor somewhere is droning on about why it’s wrong to shake babies, but around our house we just do what feels good.

-Windows shattered by the unveiling of oversized Christmas tree: 2 windows at $700 each
-Superflouous destruction from tree: $100
-Yuppie neighbors’ high end stereo destroyed and window shattered by huge icicle: $780
-Clark’s flannel shirt ripped when stapling lights to the house: $20
-Hole in ceiling created when Clark is in attic: $988
-Yuppie neighbors’ dishes smashed and carpet stained with wine when the Griswold’s house lights up: $50
-Santa and reindeer lawn display kicked in by Clark: $99
-Saucer sled ripped to shreds when lubricated with a non-nutrative cereal varnish and ridden down a mountain and across a Wal-Mart parking lot: $15
-Damage to warming shed Clark sleds through: $350
-Light bulbs smashed by Cousin Eddie’s bag of dog food: $2
-Strand of Christmas lights chewed up by cat: $9
-Living room chair destroyed by flaming cat: $400
-Cat: $14
-Uncle Lewis’ suit burned in tree fire: $100
-Drapes burned in tree fire: $50
-Ornaments destroyed in tree fire: $75
-Superfluous damage and destroyed walls in tree fire: $1500
-Door knocker ripped off by delivery man: $65
-Yuppie neighbors’ dining room window smashed when Clark fells tree: $700
-Banister post chainsawed off by Clark: $60
-Door destroyed when Snots the dog smashes through it in squirrel chase: $148
-Fine china smashed by Snots and squirrel: $90
-Yuppie neighbor’s dress ripped apart by squirrel: $110
-Windows shattered by SWAT team: 4 at $700 each
-Yuppie neighbor’s door kicked in by SWAT team: $575
-Uncle Lewis’ toupee singed in gas explosion: $325

-Final successful endeavor in Chevy Chase’s career: Priceless

That comes out to a grand total of some $10,825, not counting the inevitable city fines coming for starting a massive chemical explosion. The lesson learned by America? When in doubt, allow Chevy Chase set something on fire and let the good times roll!

I lay prostrate before you, gentle readers, to yet again apologize for the lack of new content on the John Larroquette Project. The horribly oppressive millstones of fatherhood and professional employment remain such that it’s difficult to find spare moments to devote to blogging. However, the flame of my blogging passion still burns, albeit tenuously amidst the gusting gales of responsibility and re-heated lasagna.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had many worthwhile ideas for blog entries flit fleetingly past my consciousness. I’d like to take a moment to share some of those concepts with you. You the reader can then harken back on 5+ years of JLP entries to imagine the predictably perverse paths of grotesque alienation and obscure historical references that I would undoubtedly trod down once again…

-The gaunt Northern European male models that infest the pages of the Baby Bjorn instruction pamphlet. How exactly are these photographs supposed to make me feel?

-Musings on what it’s like to hold a wide-awake baby at 4 in the morning while you’re watching rodeo bloopers that are being broadcast on television for some reason.

-The magic of menthol-lyptus

-Something overly descriptive about breastpumps

As you can plainly see, I’ve still got it.