Your Lawyer’s Here Day!

He’s got some bad news.

“I did the best I could. But the State won’t allow you to receive your lethal injection from a man dressed in a Boba Fett costume while another man in a Darth Vader costume massages your balls and talks about how you and he are one and the same. And they won’t abduct your mother and make her watch while her exclamations of disgust are pumped into the execution room via a hidden microphone.”

“What about the topless woman in a Greedo mask walking in just as I’m about to die and admitting to me that she shot first?”

“No go,” your lawyer says.

You shake your head in sadness for America. “They call this humane?”

“You shouldn’t have killed those kids,” your lawyer says.

Happy Your Lawyer’s Here Day!

Your Best Friend’s Boyfriend Is Your Boyfriend Now Day!

Your best friend’s boyfriend is knocking on the door. Open it up and he’ll tell you he’s your boyfriend now.

“Okay!” you say. You wrap your arms around him and give him a big kiss. Your first as a couple. “We don’t kiss now,” he says. “Newhart’s on.”

You hand him the remote and you order burritos. “We don’t eat burritos on Tuesdays,” he says. “Tuesday is sandwiches night.”

You throw away the burritos and you and he make some sandwiches. Then you turn off the TV and start having sex.

“We don’t have sex like this,” he says, pulling off your mask. “We have missionary position vagina sex.”

You change-up and it is magical. When you finish, you get up and go look for some marijuana.

“We don’t smoke weed after,” he says. “I lay here and you turn your back to me and cry.”

You’re starting to get the sense that he’s a little set in his ways. “I don’t want to cry,” you say.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he says. “But, when in Rome.”

You both get high, but he doesn’t loosen up. You invite him to take a shower with you, where you start scrubbing his front, but he doesn’t do anything to you.

“We don’t scrub each other’s fronts first,” he says. “I wash your ass for around eighteen minutes and then the water gets cold.”

He washes your ass for only twelve minutes before the water turns freezing.

“This is all wrong!” he shouts as he hops out of the shower hunting for a towel, which isn’t kept where he thinks it should be. Then he complains that the temperature in the apartment is maintained at a lower grade than it should be, and the light bulbs in the fixtures are 60 watt when they should be 75. When he looks in the fridge and finds no string cheese or celery sticks, he tries to pick up the refrigerator and throw it out the window, but he can’t.

“I think you might need a little more time to get over your old girlfriend,” you say. “She’s my best friend and she’s really great. I can understand why you’re having trouble adjusting to her being gone.”

“But I’m your boyfriend,” he says. “You’re just doing everything wrong.”

“I’ve probably already lost my best friend, and it’s just not worth it to trade a wonderful friendship for someone who’s just going to follow me around telling me everything’s wrong,” you say. “Seriously, go back to my best friend, or go home and be alone for a while.”

He shakes his head. “No. I’ll get used to you doing everything incorrectly. Really. Pretty soon, the way you do everything wrong will be the right way to do everything, and by the time I leave you I’ll be pissed off at the way the next girl does stuff because it isn’t the way you did it.”

You can’t help it. You like the thought of some girl two years from now having to put up with hearing how she’s all wrong because she’s not you. You decide it’s worth it. You take a seat on the couch and pull a pillow over your lap.

“You don’t hold pillows,” he says.

“Deal with it,” you say.

The phone rings. It’s your best friend. When you answer, she hangs up.

Happy Your Best Friend’s Boyfriend Is Your Boyfriend Now Day!

You Think You Know What The Smoke Monster Is Day!

You have been living alone for the twelve years since your divorce and you never really had much in your life to keep you occupied until you started watching "Lost." Now you spend all your days commenting in message boards and editing "Lostpedia" with your theories, but many of the other fans think you're a crackpot. The one theory of yours that no one wants to accept is that of the nature and origin of the Smoke Monster.

"It's sexual," you start off. "The smoke monster is an embodiment of the unresolved sexual tension between all of those characters who should be having sex with each other but aren't because they're either too busy worrying about the freighties or because they've already been killed and buried. Anytime someone comes close to having sex on the island but gets shot instead, the smoke monster grows stronger."

No one wants to accept your theory and anytime you add it to Lostpedia, it gets removed almost immediately. You're starting to get a little pissed which is why today you're going to find the other major players in decoding Lost-lore online and you're going to bring them to your house and starve them until they're too weak to escape. Then you're going to make them live with you as members of your family and all of you will watch Lost together when it starts up again. You've never watched Lost with anyone before, and you bet it would be fun. Just as long as the people you're watching with don't get stupid and contradict you, because for those foolish folks you'll keep a branding iron glowing hot and ready to scar their naked torsos (keep them all naked to make it harder for them to run away).

Be careful though. When you walk toward that first house of the first Lost "expert" you want to kidnap, how do you know he isn't waiting for you? How do you know he wasn't planning this all along? How do you know this isn't exactly what the island wants you to do?

Happy You Think You Know What The Smoke Monster Is Day!

You And The New Guy Should Get Along Day!

When you show up to work today, you boss tells you that you have to train the new guy.

“He’s just like you,” your boss says.

“Almost like your clone,” your boss’ right-hand man adds.

“You guys should get along just fine. You’re practically the same person,” your boss says.

You go to your desk and you find the new guy sitting on the floor next to it. He’s eating pudding out of a plastic container and it’s all over his face. When he finishes the pudding container, he throws it at the back of someone’s head then laughs very loudly.

“You’re the new guy?” you ask. “I’m supposed to train you."

“Thank God you’re not black,” the new guy says.

You march right back to your boss’ office.

“What do you mean he’s just like me?”

“You don’t see the similarity?”

You look back at the new guy. He’s now in a desk chair and he’s got his pelvis arched up under the desk, clearly massaging his boner with the desk’s underside.

“Okay, maybe a slight resemblance," you say. "But I’m not racist.”

“Yes you are,” your boss says without looking up from the documents he’s reading.

You decide to go back to the new guy and learn more about yourself.

“It’s hard to believe my boogie-snot still tastes good after so many years," the new guy says. "You’d think my changing chemical makeup might have altered the taste after a while. Or it might have been affected by my all-consuming sense of disappointment. But nope. It’s still my favorite meal."

You send out an email to the entire office, apologizing for your behavior in general. You promise to try to be easier to tolerate.

“Can I access the kind of pornography where it looks like someone is being victimized on this computer? Or do I have to use my iPhone?” the new guy says.

“tiedupandscared.com isn’t blocked yet,” you say. “But we’d better start training soon.”

“Let me just finish this threatening letter I’m writing to someone I want to be,” he says.

You wait.

“Okay, finished. Just have to drip a little of my blood at the bottom here. Aaaaad, let’s get to work.”

You’re amazed by just how bad the new guy smells. You send out another email, telling everyone in the office that you now understand why you’re seated alone by the window and you’ll try to rectify the situation.

It’s all getting too much to bear. You kind of want to train the new guy and then resign so you can start anew someplace where people aren’t already so familiar with your repulsive character. There’s just so much you have to change about yourself.

“Before we start training,” you say to the new guy. “I want to thank you. You’ve taught me so much about myself already.”

The new guy leans in. “I’m an undercover agent with the FBI. This office is a front for a human trafficking ring. You’re the only one here who isn’t in on it, so I made sure they’d pair me up with you by appearing to be compatible to your personality. Help me bust these scumbags.”

You shake his hand. He wipes his hand with an anti-bacterial napkin after you let go. Then you begin your brief tenure as the world’s most repulsive crime-fighter, all the while thinking, “I may be awaiting trial for masturbating next to patients' beds in a burn ward, but at least I’m not running a sex slave ring.”

Happy You And The New Guy Should Get Along Day!

You and Your Boyfriend Loved “The Matrix” Day!

You and your boyfriend have probably seen “The Matrix” over a thousand times. So when you come home today and find your boyfriend dead in his chair of a heroin overdose, you do like in “The Matrix” and you lean in close to his ear and whisper that you love him. That’s supposed to make him come back to life, if there really is a Matrix (you and your boyfriend think there is). But telling him you love him doesn’t work. You wonder if this means maybe there isn’t a Matrix, but you conclude that it probably didn’t work because you didn’t mean it. You try telling him you love him again, but the words sound empty. You realize, whispering into his cold ear, that you don’t love him. You never did. You feel free, suddenly. Thank God you found this out after he already overdosed, you think. I hate breaking up with people, you think. I usually just hang around and act cold, waiting for them to break up with me, you also think. You spray some lighter fluid on his clothes and around the room. You give him a kiss. Then you light him on fire and get on out of there. Time to hit the bars and find yourself a Neo who's in the mood for a little Trinity tonight.

Happy You and Your Boyfriend Loved “The Matrix” Day!

Death Race For Pizza Day!

“Another one of Johnny’s famously dumb ideas,” your ex-wife is thinking as she watches you on her badass big screen TV. “He’d sign up for anything.”

It’s true, you would. You like to be picked for stuff. You always stop on the sidewalk when activists ask you if you have a minute to listen to them rattle off statistics about the environment and hungry children. You love when you get a phone call out of the blue from someone who picked you to take their survey. And yes, eleven years ago when the show Death Race was the biggest thing on TV, you happily added your name to the millions of Americans writing in to become contestants. They finally got back to you last week.

Back when you signed up, Death Race was a ratings giant. Everyone wanted to watch people speed across the country with the goal of murdering their fellow contestants, with the last living driver to make it across the finish line winning a prize of ten million dollars (if more than one driver made it across, they all had to split the money, so it’s important to kill your opponents).

Death Race has fallen in the ratings over the years, which is why the prize this season is a large pizza with toppings of your choice. You’re pretty sure that since the prize is so measly you and the other drivers are on the same page about pretty much making this a cross-country road trip that ends with all of you having a fun little pizza party. No reason to kill people just to get the whole pie.

“I bet he thinks this is just gonna be a cross-country road trip that ends in a pizza party,” your ex-wife says to her new and very successful husband while watching you on their huge and awesome television. “Jesus what a sap.”

Just then, the driver to your right tosses a grenade into your passenger seat.

“That guy must be real hungry,” you think. Then you quickly toss the grenade back into his car and smash into his side to make him keep control of the wheel so he can’t toss the grenade back. His car goes off the road and slams into a tree, throwing the driver through his windshield and against the tree at 80 MPH. The driver collapses in parts on the hood of his car just a beat before the grenade detonates and you watch the blast in your rear view mirror.

“Extra cheese. Mushrooms. And sausage.” You repeat your topping choices out loud as you drive. That pie is yours. That pie is yours alone. The sign by the side of the road says, “You Are Now Entering New Mexico.”

Happy Death Race For Pizza Day!

PS: Become a Facebook fan of Bob Powers’ next book, “You Are A Miserable Excuse For a Hero.”

Your Building’s Superintendent Wants To Cut Your Hair Again Day!

He’s in beauty school and since your hair’s curly, he’s always wanting to give you cuts because curly is the kind of hair he has trouble with.

“Okay superintendent, just once more,” you say when you bump into him while he’s bundling up the trash bags.

Three hours later your hair looks horrible and your superintendent hates himself.

“I’m going to be separating trash for the rest of my life,” he says.

You can’t take your eyes off the mirror. You look terrible.

“I wish you were dead, Superintendent,” you say to him.

He runs crying to the basement and takes his life. You don't miss him until one day a UPS package arrives for you and there's no one around to accept it. You remember the horrible thing you said to him and you decide to start doing a little personal interior decorating inside that big empty house called Your Soul.

Happy Your Building’s Superintendent Wants To Cut Your Hair Again Day!

You’re Just Trying To Drop Off Some Snack Foods For The Children Who Live Inside The Crate and Barrel Day!

The store’s security chief has you in the back room and he wants to know what you’re up to.

“Did you see me steal anything?” you ask him. “You might as well call the police if so.”

The security chief says you and he are just having a conversation. “I’m just curious as to what your plans might be for my store. You’ve piqued my interest. When I see a man come into a furniture store every night at around a half hour before closing, and I watch him walk around the store leaving bags of Cheetos and Ritz Bitz in the show room before walking out without buying anything, I’m compelled to chat with that man.”

Maybe he knows, you think. Maybe he wants to know if you know too. It’s too uncertain.

“I’m just forgetful,” you say. “I misplace things. And I like to look at furniture.”

The security chief nods. “Say, you bought that Southport Storage Cube a while back. How’d that work out for you?”

You bristle when he mentions the cube. Does he know how the children communicate with outsiders? Does he know about the note you found inside the cube, telling you that by day Crate and Barrel might be a showroom for not very affordable furniture, but by night it’s a safehouse for children who’ve run away from their parents because their parents are too religious and wouldn’t let the children have crushes on boys and girls they were crushing on, so the children ran away in couples, to experience the highs and lows of puppy love without interference from their God-fearing parents. According to the note, the children found a way to sneak into the Crate and Barrel and they get to sleep in the same beds with the boys and girls they’re crushing on, and it’s just about the greatest thing in the world. The only problem is they get hungry at night.

Can you bring us some treats? the note asked of you.

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing,” you say to the security chief. “I’m honoring the heart of the little boy I used to be. The boy who fell for a pretty girl when he was twelve, and then his parents had to move to Chicago because his dad got a new job. That boy could have run away and lived his young love but he didn’t. He was scared. And he’s regretted it ever since. Some boys aren’t so scared as me. And they deserve to be cared for.”

The security chief grabs you by the lapels, letting you know he knows what you’re talking about.

“You listen to me, pal. This is my store. Now I may not have been able to capture those little kids yet, but I captured you, you understand? Now you’re gonna stop bringing food in here because those little kids might be able to elude my traps and my cameras and my alarm systems when they’re healthy and full of grub. But if they get hungry, they’ll get weak. They’ll get tired. And I’ll catch ‘em. Stay out of my store, you hear?”

“Arrest me!” you dare him. It’s not you talking now. It’s the twelve-year-old you long to be again.

“Stay out of my store,” the Security Chief repeats.

“It’s a public store,” you tell him. “It’s just an Ikea with high price tags and it’s open to every man, woman, and child who wants to come in here. You want to keep me out; you file a police report saying I’m trying to feed a group of lovesick little kids that you can’t catch. I’m sure everyone’ll get a kick out of reading that.”

He lets go of your lapels.

“As long as there’s a little kid trying to hold onto love in your store, I’m bringing him some Cheetos, you hear?”

The Chief steps away from you. You walk out the door. Your heart beating so hard in your chest you’re worried you might have a heart attack. It’s 8:50, almost closing time. As you walk to the door you think you see a pair of eyes peeking out from underneath one of the bedroom sets. Those little eyes look like they’re smiling.

Happy You’re Just Trying To Drop Off Some Snack Foods For The Children Who Live Inside The Crate and Barrel Day!

Carnival Cruise To The Edge Of The Earth Day!

It’s day 91 of your stay on the Carnival Cruise Journey to the Edge of the Earth. The ship has had to dock at various ports to refuel around 18 times. Many of your fellow passengers have begun losing their minds from being on the boat for so long, their only options being to hide in their cabins, to sit by the pool and watch the same thirty eight children urinate, to go to the club in the evening and listen to the cruise ship comedian tell his same forty minutes of jokes he’s been telling every night since the boat left the dock (he can’t improv anymore either since by now he knows by sight where every single passenger is from and what they do for a living), or to hit one of the dozens of buffets and stuff themselves until they’re praying to fall asleep before they vomit.

Overeating has taken a toll. The ship’s doctor has diagnosed six new cases of diabetes and fourteen cases of gout. No one wants to skip a free buffet or else they’ll feel they didn’t get their money’s worth. They also don’t want to get off the boat early. They paid to go to the edge of the Earth and dammit, they’re gonna stay until they get there and have the chance to take some photographs to prove they saw it.

This morning is a sad one for you, as your third ship-board romance will come to an end when you learn once again that you were only being seduced for recruitment into a mutiny. The ship’s mothers have watched their husbands eat themselves into oblivion with no care for what might become of their children. The mothers feel the need to take matters into their own hands. They don’t want the captain to take them back to shore. They just want to take control of the navigation to make sure that their children get to see the edge of the Earth, as promised.

“I’m sorry,” you tell Sarah, just as you told Molly before her and Trina before Molly. “The captain is Carnival Cruise Line certified. I have to trust him. I’m sorry I can’t help you, and I’m sorry you only slept with me to win my participation in your revolt.”

Sarah clocks you over the head with one of the decorative paddles on the wall. A few hours later, you wake up to the sound of women howling above-deck. You climb up and see them dancing around a flagpole atop which the captain’s head has been mounted. The mothers have taken over the ship and will control the remainder of your journey to the edge of the Earth. God help you all.

Happy Carnival Cruise To The Edge Of The Earth Day!

Why Won’t You Ever Spend More Than Twenty Minutes At A Time With Your Boyfriend? Day!

Your boyfriend is upset because you won’t ever spend more than twenty minutes at one time with him. Whether it be dinner, a conversation about your and his dreams, sex, even trips to the movies have to be interrupted by you getting up and going out to the lobby every twenty minutes and then coming right back.

“I’ve had it,” he says.

“I’ll explain,” you say.

Tell him that when you were six your mom died and your Dad got arrested for robbing a Party supply store a bunch of times, so you were in danger of being thrown into the foster care system. Luckily for you, your Dad frequented a brothel full of really nice and caring prostitutes. Just before he went off to jail they agreed to take you in.

They provided a warm, loving environment. Unfortunately, though, they had a habit of limiting all of their interactions to the length of time it takes for a lit cigarette to burn down to its filter.

“Any time I’d come in and ask one of them about the difference between right and wrong, or what happens to us after we die, just after I sat down she’d light a cigarette and set it in a nearby ashtray. Once the cigarette went out, the prostitute would just get up and go downstairs to the sitting room of the brothel. Even if I was crying over having not gotten asked to go to a dance.”

It was just a habit for them, tell him. Day after day they voluntarily entered into terrible transactions, their only escape being the passage of a set amount of time. They couldn’t help but live their lives in those chunks of minutes.

“I guess they passed it on to me,” say.

“I’m so sorry you had to live like that,” your boyfriend will say. “I’m willing to work through this with you. I just need you to communicate with me and –“

You get up and walk away.

Happy Why Won’t You Ever Spend More Then Twenty Minutes At A Time With Your Boyfriend? Day!

Dr. Myron Misses The Patients She Euthanized Day!

Every day she sees their faces. Stanley. Rita. Old angry Felix. Stinky Pete. That racist Maureen. Every last one of them was super old and super dying, and every last one of them lives in Dr Myron’s heart as big as a lost spouse.

She’s one of the most sought after euthanists in all of Portland. She gives her patients and their families the peace they crave after so much suffering. She knows what she’s doing is right, and that’s what she’s going to tell the Senate subcommittee today when she’s brought before them to testify.

She could avoid indictment if she agrees to never euthanize another patient again, and more importantly, she speaks on the record about the possibility that she might have come between one of her patients and his or her potential for unforeseen recovery. But she has no intention of doing that. Though she will agree with the crusading senators on one point.

“It is exactly like playing God,” she will tell them. “And it has a terrible side-effect. It makes the euthanist fall in love with her patients with as much strength as the love God has for His children, every last one of whom he makes sure to kill. I don’t know how big God’s heart is, and perhaps if it ever gets too full we’ll all start to live forever because He has no more room for the affection he holds towards so many billions. My heart is finite, so you can count on me to stop euthanizing people after just a handful more are given peace. I can only hold so much love before I’m forced to stay in bed all day mooning over my memories of those I’ve loved and lost. But until then, I gotta do what I gotta do because letting people live in pain is stupid as butt.”

Half the Senate floor will erupt into calls for the indictment and arrest of Dr Myron. The other half will dab at their tears and look up to God to thank Him for making room in his heart for just a few billion more.

“No one wants to live forever, Senator!” Dr. Myron will shout. Then a bailiff will grab her and in the hullabaloo sneak her out a side exit to bring her to your bedside. You’ve been nothing but a vegetable full of hot pain after that last stroke, and after a few minutes of prep Dr. Myron is going to fall head over heels in love with you.

Happy Dr. Myron Misses The Patients She Euthanized Day!

Goodbye Sal Of Sal’s Hoagies and Cheeseteaks Day!

Hear Bob Powers read this one, recorded at NPR's "Bryant Park Project" studios

Today immediately after slicing his one millionth Italian Hoagie into two halves, Sal of Sal’s Hoagies and Cheesesteaks will slice into his own throat and drop to the floor of his kitchen to die.

“Guess Sal hit a million,” Louie, one of his faithful lunch crowd will say as he watches the puddle of blood seep from behind the counter into the seating area.

“I knew this day was coming,” Jerry, another of Sal’s loyal customers will say. “But I didn’t do anything to prepare for it. What the heck am I gonna eat for lunch now?”

Jerry will crumple up his counter ticket. He has 58. The LED screen reads 55. Just three sandwiches short of getting that legendary millionth roll full of the finest cold cuts, veggies and oil.

“Call an ambulance!” a new customer will shout. “Call an ambulance!”

But no one will move. The ones who already got their food will eat their sandwiches in honor of their faithful chef. The ones who didn’t will weep at their tables, staring at their useless ticket numbers, wondering why they couldn’t have left work just a few minutes early to get just one last heaping pile of deliciousness before they have to resort to hitting the Arby’s five times a week.

But everyone will be waiting to see who just became the luckiest man in town.

“55!” Rita, Sal’s wife, will shout through her tears. Her husband’s one millionth sandwich will be in her hands. There’s some blood on the roll. “55!”

A little boy will shuffle to the counter, his eyes on the floor, his ticket held in the air for the nice lady to take. Rita will manage a smile for the boy when she hands him his sandwich.

“One Italian Hoagie,” she’ll say. “You eat it up.”

“Every last bite,” a customer will shout from his table.

“It’s your sandwich,” Rita will say. “My husband made this for you.”

It will take the boy most of the afternoon to finish it, as the sandwich is almost as big as him. But finish it he will.

Tomorrow Sal’s will be closed, and it won’t reopen. Soon, the sign above the shop window will be covered over, and no more will anyone get to read Sal’s famous marquee promise: “I’m Going To Serve One Million Hoagies To This World And Then I’m Going To Kill Myself.” It was a strange mission statement for a store owner, but it’s nice to see that some retailers still honor the promises they make to their customers.

Happy Goodbye Sal Of Sal’s Hoagies and Cheeseteaks Day!

Draft-Dodge Day!

Aliens just landed on Earth and they're hostile as balls. They've
already destroyed the White House, The Empire State Building, and some
building in LA that no one could give a shit about.

The military is preparing to launch a counter-attack and they've
reinstituted the Draft to use as many able-bodied Americans as they
can in their efforts to destroy the alien army and prevent the human
race's enslavement to the alien hordes.

You'd better bust ass to Canada. You're a pacifist and an
intellectual and you're not going to pick up a gun and join a war just
because a President you didn't vote for tells you that unless every
human being stands up to fight, the human race will be reduced to
nothing but a food and fuel source by noon tomorrow. You didn't start
this war. Neither did the president, sure, but he's probably really
excited about it. Fuck him if he thinks he can turn you into a
baby-killing soldier just by telling you that your immediate family is
in danger of being used as fertilizer for a distant planet.

Go to Canada and help the world by continuing to be a free-thinking
creative spirit. Make sure you bring a lot of reefer, hippy, because
your "guy" just got turned into ash while trying to rescue his
daughter from her elementary school that was targeted by a death ray.
I'm sure he died content, knowing that you'll live on to spew more of
your anti-big business horseshit at parties.

Happy Draft-Dodge Day!

PS: For those who have been sending panicked emails, this post is
fiction. Stop hoarding.

You Used To Eat Your Dinner Out Of An Old Tire You Found In A Lot Someplace Day!

When you were in your thirties, you had a string of bad luck that led
you to a vacant lot, where you found an old car tire that someone did
not need anymore, so you used the inside of the tire as a dinner
plate. This allowed you to keep the fried chicken pieces you bought
at the chinese takeout place from having to rest on the ground while
they were waiting to be eaten by you. You can only hold so many
chicken pieces at once (two) and the chinese place sold chicken pieces
in batches of three. So you would rest at least one of the chicken
pieces on the inside of the tire. The inside of the tire also
collected a great deal of your blood after some teenagers approached
you from behind while you were having dinner one night and they hit
you in the back of the head with a steel rod before setting you on
fire. Your thirties were rough.

Happy You Used To Eat Your Dinner Out Of An Old Tire You Found In A
Lot Someplace Day!

Make The Scumbags Pay Day!

Someone ate your pudding. You put your name on it, dated it, just like the sign on the break-room fridge says to do. You put it in the crisper drawer, even, because you know these fucking animals can’t be trusted to control themselves if there’s a cup of chocolate pudding sitting in plain sight when they reach in to grab some creamer. You know how it gets at 3 PM, when you’re looking for something, anything, to get you through the last 150 minutes before you get to run out the door hunting for alcohol. A cup of pudding is more than just a treat at that hour. It’s the portal to salvation. You can look at a cup of pudding, or a leftover birthday cupcake, and it’s like eating it might bring your Dad back to life long enough for him to tell you he didn’t mean it when he said you’re turning out just like him. You can’t expect them to hold back from stealing such a treasure just because there happens to be a name and a date scribbled on the foil lid.

There’s a flip side to that coin. How can they who stole such a bounty expect its former owner to react with anything less than the purest of unbridled vengeance? How can they hope to enjoy what was rightfully yours without also enjoying the full and horrible cruelty of your wrath? In short, how can they expect to get away with this?

Don’t let them. Not only should you make the thief pay, but you should make sure that everyone on the floor knows that YOU ARE NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH! You need to communicate that WHEN SOMEONE HITS YOU, OH SURE AS SHIT WILL YOU HIT BACK! You need to put the word out.

Why not do it with a note!

THERE’S A PIGGY ON OUR FLOOR!

Will the Piggy who ate my chocolate pudding cup, which I had clearly labeled with my name and the date, please replace it by tomorrow. I really like my chocolate pudding cups, and this refrigerator is supposed to be for everybody. Shame on you piggy.

Respectfully,

[YOUR NAME]

Post it on the fridge door and then watch the shitholes one by one read those words and then turn into quivering little bitches. They clearly did not know exactly just who the fuck you are now did they?

Happy Make The Scumbags Pay Day!

Uh Oh. Looks Like You're Gonna Finally Throw A Cup Of Hot Coffee In A Coworker's Face Day!

Oh well. You knew it had to happen some time. Every morning when you
walk back from the kitchen with your cup of joe (black, half a
Splenda), as you pass that endless lineup of desks with all those
faces you've been seeing every day for almost eight years, the urge
has grown progressively stronger and more undeniable.

They all look up and acknowledge you as you pass. As if they need to
confirm with their own eyes: 'Yup, he's still here. But where would
he go?'

The silent prayer to your higher power starts its frantic refrain in
your head as you try to keep your eyes on the ground and averted away
from that vast sea of poorly shaven and overly bejowled coworker
visage:

"Don't throw hot coffee in someone's face don't throw hot coffee in
someone's face they'll start screaming and clawing at their already
bubbling and peeling skin and they'll fall on the floor and you'll be
dragged away babbling wordlessly and oh dear God it's just got to
happen one morning! But not today. Don't throw hot coffee in
someone's face do NOT THROW HOT COFFEE IN SOMEONE'S FACE OH JESUS
THERE'S JUDYYS FACE IT TAUNTS ME SO!!!"

Looks like you're gonna finally throw a cup of hot coffee in a
coworker's face. Cross that one off the to-do list I guess. By the
way, you'll be charged with felony assault.

Happy Uh Oh. Looks Like You're Gonna Finally Throw A Cup Of Hot
Coffee In A Coworker's Face Day!

You Were On Last Night's Rerun of NCIS Day!

The emails have been pouring in all day long.  "Great job on last night's NCIS!"  "Hey I thought I already saw that episode but I must have missed you the first time!"  "I didn't know you even acted, but last night you were on that show NCIS, which is just like CSI, except there's an N."

You're not an actor.  You sell paint at a Tru Value.  You don't know what everyone is talking about, but apparently someone who looks just like you was on NCIS last night.  The weird part is when CBS forwards a bag of fan mail to you.  It's all from the elderly.

"I think you're very attractive and I'd like to get you naked and tell you what my experience of World War II was like."

You contact the network and you're told that you were indeed on NCIS last night.  "Don't sweat it," the head of CBS' parent company tells you.  "It started happening in season 3.  People just started appearing on the show without having any memory of doing so.  We can't explain it, it just happens.  Eventually, everyone's going to be on NCIS.  At least for a few seconds."

The head of CBS' parent company goes on to explain that it's kind of a great way to get the ratings up, having people find out from out of nowhere that they were on it.  Then he asks you what NCIS because he's never heard of it.

You start tuning in to NCIS regularly, waiting for your rerun.  When you finally see yourself, it's really you.  Standing in the background behind some people who are in the Navy, you're just standing there in clothes you don't own, staring straight into the camera.  You lock eyes with yourself and you can see how sad you look, how disappointed you are in everything you've become.  The you on NCIS looks down at the ground, ashamed.  You get up and turn off the TV.  You can't bear to look anymore.  

Happy You Were On Last Night's Rerun of NCIS Day!

Your Were Supposed To Have That Life Day!

There’s a guy who lives in your building who looks to have the perfect life, the one you used to dream you’d have. He’s got a great job (he’s a flammability tester, lighting stuff on fire all day to see if it will burn and what happens when it does. He even gets to set fire to big screen TVs!). He’s got a great lady (she’s a gorgeous European person who thinks that whatever will be will be). He drives an awesome car (a Prius!). And best of all, Propecia makes hair grow on his head, not on the back of his thighs (you deserve a refund).

You quit your job at the Mortgage brokerage so that you could tail your neighbor during the day because you need to find out there’s some flaw in his life, some shortcoming that will prove that no one has it all. You just need to find out that maybe his boss is the guy who married the ex-wife who he’s still in love with. Maybe his parking space is really far away from the door to his building. Maybe his lady drinks during the day.

You’ve been following him for weeks and so far you’ve been heartbroken to find that his life is just as wonderful as it looks from your kitchen window. You’ve decided today is the day that you just give it up and accept his and your fates for what they are. But when he comes out of his office at the end of the day, instead of heading towards his car he’ll walk straight towards yours holding a blowtorch.

He’ll light the grille of your car on fire and make you run from the safety of your vehicle. Then he’ll grab you by the arm and drag you into his office where a group of doctors are gathered around an operating table. Turns out this whole place is a secret laboratory funded by mad geniuses who want to conduct painful experiments on specific subjects. They’ve been waiting to experiment on a disappointed man to find out how he reacts when his less essential organs are removed without anesthetic, and after seeing your obsessive behavior these last months there’s clearly no better subject but you. You shouldn’t covet.

Happy Your Were Supposed To Have That Life Day!

Go and Save A Boy From Himself Day!

There’s an alcoholic in your life, yes? That one lost cause who never had anything to offer anyone, and could only take and take and take from anyone who ever had the misfortune to have a good heart within his vicinity? The one boy who forced you to choose between him and your dying dad and then just after you chose him your dad died and he took off in the middle of the night with your Mitsubishi Mirage (crashed it into some policemen who were walking by the side of the road looking for clues to crimes).

As it turns out, that boy is running out of time.

He needs someone to come and save him from himself. All he knows how to do is send himself further and further down the spiral, like he made a vow that he won’t take another breath unless there’s a damn good chance that it will be his last. He presently sleeps in a bathtub in an abandoned building holding a plugged in toaster on his chest, the knobs on the faucets spun open wide, hoping that someone in that building will pay a water bill and finally send something besides skinny bugs out of that spout and he’ll be electrocuted in his sleep. The boy is his own nemesis and he needs a hero. Though he is the undeniable reason why you have achieved nothing that you once dreamed you'd achieve, it would be so awesome if you dropped everything and flew across the country to save him from himself. Cool?

The plane ticket is expensive, but the entirety of your savings ought to cover it. Cool?

Happy Go and Save A Boy From Himself Day!

Tug Connection Day!

Go on a game show where contestants jerk it to a particular piece of porn while the audience watches, then the audience gets to vote on who had the strongest connection to the porn they were matched up with. The contestant chosen by the audience is awarded $5,000 so he can quit his job and stay home to jerk off to that piece of porn for like two months.

You’ll do your best, but the porn they give you will be the kind where the cameraman talks while the people are doing it, saying stuff like, “Wow, that looks like a warm place!” It’s a genre called Greek Chorus Porn and you hate it. You need your fourth wall.

You don’t win the money. Go home to find your girlfriend sitting on the couch, next to a suitcase. You’ve disappointed her again. She’s leaving.

“You didn’t even try,” she says.

“The porn was miserable. The cameraman reached out and high-fived the guy in it once.”

“You were thinking about me. I could see it in your face. All of America could see it. You were sitting there jerking off, thinking about how angry your girlfriend will be if you don’t win the money.”

“I wanted to make you happy.”

“If you can’t provide me with the kinds of luxuries that $5000 can buy, I’m going to go out and seduce someone who can. I’m sorry, but I need a man to give me stuff.”

She leaves. Go to the TV and replay the episode on your DVR. She’s right. You do look like you’re faking it. Like you’re a million miles away from your own right hand.

Happy Tug Connection Day!

Ask Your Doctor About The Redhead In The Waiting Room Day!

She’s furious as she browses through a magazine about the elderly, ripping the pages from the staples she’s turning them so hard. You try to make a move.

“I’m going blind. You?”

She looks up from her magazine.

“It won’t work,” she says.

“I’d make it work,” you say.

She tosses her magazine at you then picks up another one. The nurse calls you into the examination room.

“What’s her story?” you ask the doctor. “The angry redhead. I want to spend my last sighted months staring at that face.”

“Oh her, she’s terminal. Six months tops.”

You’re pissed. She’s dying and she thinks you’re not good enough just because you’re going blind? You’re in way better shape than her.

“What the fuck?” you shout at her when you go back out to the waiting room.

“Maybe I don’t want to spend my last six months on earth making some blind guy hold hot meatballs so he knows what the color red is,” she barks.

“That’s only for people who were born blind. You’d just have to deal with me cursing God for taking my eyes.”

“I curse God,” she says. “I threaten him, sometimes. Telling him how I’m going to fuck him up in six months if he doesn’t have a good reason for taking my life.”

“Maybe you could fuck him up some for taking my eyes,” you say.

“Why should I?” she asks.

“Because I’ll be there by your deathbed, whispering into your ear to do that for me. It’ll be the last thing you remember as you pass over. My voice.”

She considers it. Then, “Sorry. I’m gonna be real weak in the final months. I need someone to carry my bedpans to the toilet without spilling them. You gotta have eyes.”

She’s summoned into the examination room. You leave the doctor’s office, fall to your knees in the parking lot and shake your fist at Jesus for being so jealous of you that he had to take away your eyes to make sure you don't get the action you deserve.

Happy Ask Your Doctor About The Redhead In The Waiting Room Day!

Horny Teenage Killers On A Rampage To Hell Day!

Something’s happened to the teenagers in America. They’re all turning into conscienceless beasts who want to do nothing but have sex with each other, drink alcohol, and murder non-teenagers with their bare hands. They travel in packs across the land, gathering in fields for naked dancing, drinking from beer kegs, and setting fire to things. No one goes out at night anymore. The teenagers are out there. The night is there’s. You’re welcome to enter it, but they’ll do what they can to make sure you won’t reach the daytime.

It’s not clear what triggered it. Some say it was the new record by a band called The Stupid Tits that unlocked some part of them that doesn’t worry about getting into good schools. Others think that this was always their true nature, and they’re only showing it just now. Still others blame Rockstar Energy Drinks. Hopefully someone in science is trying to figure out the real cause, and how this change in them can be reversed.

You don’t have time to wait for science though. You have to get across state lines to get your wife an abortion. Her career is going well and she doesn’t want to raise another child right now. Your state has too many hoops to jump through before anyone’s allowed to abort. You’ve got to get to Godless Delaware, where the babies are killed with glee. You have to travel in the night. And you have to bring your daughter Jeannie with you.

Jeannie is twelve, going on thirteen. She won’t have a birthday for another six months, but they become teenagers so fast these days. Jeannie is still very sweet, but she’s become a little more obstinate lately. Just in case something changes in her during the drive, you’ve stashed a hammer underneath your seat. Your wife doesn't know it's there. She would never believe that her beautiful daughter could give her anything to worry about.

Time to go. Stay on lighted roads and watch out for barriers they’ve set up. They’ll be waiting. They can’t wait to drag you out of your car, set you on fire and then have sex on top of your charred bodies.

Drive fast, old man. Drive safe.

Happy Horny Teenage Killers On A Rampage To Hell Day!

Pontius Pilate Day!

You and your coke buddies are having the same old argument you always have about whether Pontius Pilate was gay or just way cool. Your coke buddy Steve thinks Pilate was just way cool and didn’t mind if an orgy got out of hand and he just started fucking a dude without realizing it. Your coke buddy Rohan thinks that Pilate was gay and deeply in love with one of his dressers. “Read the scrolls!” Rohan keeps shouting at you until his nose gushes blood again. Your coke buddy Jennifer thinks that Pilate was gay and, in his heart, celibate, save for a few public dalliances to call off the dogs.

“I think when we’re arguing about Pontius Pilate,” you tell them. “We’re really just arguing about me and who of you has a shot with me.”

They all blush with shame. Go to each of your coke buddies and give them a big kiss. Then pull your gun out of your pants and scream at them to throw all their money and coke on the table, take off their shirts and pants, and then get the hell out of your house. They’ll all sigh and do as you say and in two or three nights they’ll all come back and go through the whole routine again, because they just can’t go too long without seeing your face, or doing coke, again.

Happy Pontius Pilate Day!

Play Your New Drums As Loud As You Can, Until You See Your Dead Husband Again Day!

The house is pretty quiet now that you’re a widow so you bought a new drum set and put it together up in the attic. Go up there today and pound on that shit as loud as those early-golden-year wrists can manage. Punish those drums, find a beat and keep it going for hours and hours, waking up everything that ever even thought about getting some rest. Keep going until you wake the dead.

A cold wind will blow through the attic and you’ll look up and see the translucent, ghostly image of your dead husband standing before you, frowning in judgment.

“Rock music is a direct phone line to the devil,” he’ll say. “You’re thumbing your nose at Jesus.”

Stop your playing for a second and tell your husband, “It really pissed me off that you got all into Jesus the last five years of your life.”

Your husband will shrug. “Times got hard. I needed something to lean on.”

“How’s death?” ask him.

“Easy-peasy,” he’ll say.

Nod and smile. “I’m glad,” tell him. “Save your Jesus crap okay?”

Your dead husband will smile at you the way he used to, back when he was young and all he wanted was to find a basement or a backseat or the crook of a tree where he could get you alone for a few minutes. Kiss the tip of your drumstick and flick it to him. He’ll catch your kiss and disappear back into the other side and you’ll go back to abusing those skins.

Happy Play Your New Drums As Loud As You Can, Until You See Your Dead Husband Again Day!

Plumber With Dead Zone Powers Day!

You’re a plumber and you have an otherworldly power that lets you touch stuff in a particular area and receive a vision of someone who died there. Since so many people slip and die in showers, everytime you fix someone’s bathroom plumbing you have to endure flashes of a former occupant of that bathroom lying naked and dead under running water, blood pouring from their skulls and tub autumnal from their gradually evacuating bowels and bladders. It makes your clients nervous because, though you’re a good plumber, they hate to hear a stranger scream in their home.

Today, finally buy some gloves.

Happy Plumber With Dead Zone Powers Day!

Fools Gold Made 22 Million Dollars This Weekend Day!

Time to finish writing that movie about bathing suits you've been working on. You should call it LAYIN' OUT. It's the triumphant story of a pale girl from the city who never tanned before. She moves to Hermosa Beach because her Dad got transferred there for work, and at first no one likes her because she's never tanned before. But it's not that she can't tan, she just never tried. One of the tannest boys in the school ends up falling for her, and all his friends think he's out of his mind wasting his senior year with some pale girl, but then the pale girl says that she wants to learn to tan. It's not because she has anything to prove to the other kids.

"It's something I have to prove to myself."

They fuck on a boat. It hurts and is magical. They spend most of the next few months laying out like crazy until the pale girl is a deep golden bronze, except since it's her first tan, it's a "Virgin Brown" and it puts her over the top at the tanning competition. She wins and her mom tells her how proud she is of her then dies of cancer.

Happy Fools Gold Made 22 Million Dollars This Weekend Day!

Everyone’s Dying But You Day!

There’s a killer virus going around and everyone has it but you. Your friends, your family, your boss, even your mailman. They’re all being crippled with violent vomiting and convulsions and eye sockets that spurt blood suddenly. The death toll rises every day, and every day it’s just a little more amazing that you aren’t sick. It seems pretty clear that you’ll soon be the last man on earth. And all you can think about is your Pokemon card collection.

“Can I have your Pokemon cards when you die,” you ask pretty much everyone in your life when you visit their deathbeds. They usually either tell you that they aren’t even sure what Pokemon cards are, or they tell you that they’d rather use this time to say the things that have never been said.

“I’d feel really freed up to speak my heart if I knew what was going to happen to those Pokemon cards,” you say.

Your friends and loved ones who collect Pokemon cards will then usually tell you that they feel like you should be worried about more than Pokemon cards. For example, you might want to think about when the human race ends, which race will rise up to take its place.

That’s when you take a catheter in your fist and you threaten, “The Pokemon cards. Now.” They then sign the transfer of ownership for their collections and you do a little dance. Then you take a seat and talk about the old times.

Once everyone is dead, you’ll start breaking into homes hunting down the cards still missing from your collection. Unfortunately, one Pokemon owner who wanted to go to the afterworld as the sole owner of his collection will have boobytrapped his album of cards so that when you open it, three mounted shotguns with triggers tied to the album cover will fire and blow large holes through your head and chest and your right arm will be severed at the shoulder.

Happy Everyone’s Dying But You Day!

Get Your Algebra Teacher To Fall In Love With Your English Teacher Day!

Your algebra teacher and your English teacher are both bitter, angry individuals who love failing you. You’ve been trying to come up with a way to get both of them off your back, and the most economical way to do that, according to your calculations and your familiarity with classic English literature, is to get them to fall in love.

If they fall in love, you figure, it’s possible that they’ll be happier and they’ll discover there’s more to life than getting on your case because you decided to play Halo instead of read Chaucer or that handout about fractions.

You get them to fall in love by setting a trap wherein you loosen the lug nuts on your algebra teacher’s tires and her car goes off the road. It so happens that that’s the very same road that your English teacher drives home on every night. He’ll recognize your algebra teacher’s car as he passes, and he’ll call a tow truck for her and then let her know the next day that he’s the one who called.

“My hero,” your algebra teacher will say.

They’ll fall in love and spend a few days together before their shared bitterness feeds on itself and they both start to see each other as representative of all that they’ve settled for on the road to becoming public school teachers. They fight until someone says something regrettable and they’re both dead before you can say murder-suicide.

It didn’t quite work out the way you thought, but you’ll still end up with two periods with substitute teachers until the replacements are called in. Congrats, dumbass.

Happy Get Your Algebra Teacher To Fall In Love With Your English Teacher Day!

You’re In A Raft Day!

Today you’re going to wake up in a raft speeding along some rapids towards a giant waterfall and you won’t remember how you got there. You drink too much.

Happy You’re In A Raft Day!

Get Your Mother’s Wedding Ring Back By Proposing To The Pawn Shop Lady You Sold It To Day!

When your mother died, she gave you her wedding ring in her will, with the instruction that you give it to the woman you’ll eventually marry. A year later you discovered online gambling and it wasn’t long before you were forced to pawn the ring. You’re older now and lonely and you want to make some semblance of the life your mother hoped you’d make for yourself. So go to the pawn shop and tell Inez behind the counter that you’d like to give her the ring you pawned if she’ll give you her hand in matrimony.

“For so very long I’ve loved you from afar Inez,” say to her.

“Que?” Inez will reply, the tears forming in her eyes.

“For so very long I wondered if you would have me. If you would think me worthy.”

“Oh!” Inez will reply. She’ll clutch the locket around her neck which you know contains the photo of her first husband, ten years deceased.

Grab her hand from the locket and hold it in yours. “You’ve mourned long enough. It’s time for someone to make you happy again.”

Point into the glass case at your mother’s ring. “You’ve had a very long time to get acclimated to it. Will you wear it for me? Inez, will you be my wife?”

Inez will take the ring from the case and she’ll put it on her finger. Then she’ll throw her arms around your neck and kiss you. And then, at long last, she’ll lay the ring’s price tag on the counter, strike through the $900 with a pen, write $500 below it, and then you’ll count out five hundred dollar bills on the counter. When Inez writes up your receipt it will feel as ceremonial as if the two of you were signing your marriage certificate.

Happy Get Your Mother’s Wedding Ring Back By Proposing To The Pawn Shop Lady You Sold It To Day!

You Have An Axe In Your Face Day!

It’s hard fitting in in high school when you have an axe impaled in your face that can’t be removed without causing severe brain damage, so you basically just have to walk around looking like you’ve just been attacked by a crazed serial killer (the axe was impaled in your face when you decided to save a little money by enrolling in the cheaper juggling class).

The Senior Snowball dance is just around the corner and you want to ask a girl. Unfortunately, every time you get a girl’s attention and she turns to face you, she screams at the top of her lungs. It breaks your heart a little more every single time. But you have a good spirit so you keep trying to show the other kids that there’s a heck of a personality behind that axe in your face from which sometimes blood spurts out down your neck and chest. You’ve learned how to break dance and you also drive your Dad’s car to school and you offer people rides. But it doesn’t stop them from screaming whenever they look at you, even when they’ve been in your company for hours. That axe in your face never gets old.

Today you're going to ask Susan to the dance. You’ve loved Susan from afar for a while now. When you say her name she’ll turn, smile, then let out a howl of terror and run through a window and die. You’ll get so pissed that you’ll begin your killing spree of headbutts.

Happy You Have An Axe In Your Face Day!

Your Very First Ride On A Plane Day!

You’re nine years old and today’s your very first time riding on an airplane! More than that, you’re flying all by yourself to meet your Dad in Tucson (he finally was granted visitation rights). You’ll sure be excited when that plane starts to taxi down the runway. And then when you’re in the air, they’ll even give you free soda. All you want! About half way through the flight a man will sit down next to you and ask if you’d like to join the mile high club. Don’t ask him what that means, he’s just making a grown up joke. The real reason he’s sitting next to you is your father stole several billion dollars from his government and he’s going to call your father from the airphone and tell him that unless the money is wired back into his government’s account before your scheduled landing time, he’ll detonate the explosives he’s snuck on the plane and kill everyone in flight, including you. The man is very excited to die for his country and his God, so he shouldn’t be messed with. When you’re put on the phone to prove you’re okay, your dad will give you the secret signal he taught you a long time ago, the signal that says it’s time for you to fuck shit up because the fate of many people is in your hands.

“Time for Squidward to come out and play,” your Dad will say.

You’ll hang up the phone. Then you’ll show the world that nine years is more than old enough to shove a motherfuckers nose cartilage up into his brain cavity. Good luck defusing that bomb kiddo. Thanks for flying Jerry Bruckheimer Airlines.

Happy Your Very First Ride On A Plane Day!

Find The Guy Who Donated His Sperm To Your Mom Day!

You’re twenty-four and you’re leading a pretty good life. It’s about time you found the guy who donated the sperm that your mom was inseminated with. She got the sperm from a sperm bank and you read that you can initiate a legal action to learn the identity of the donor. Go for it!

After you find out his identity, go knock on his door and tell him you’re his son.

“Proud of me?” ask him.

“I hate you,” your father will tell you. “I never wanted a son. I wanted fifty bucks. In fact, I still need fifty bucks. If you want to make me proud, give me fifty bucks.”

You give your Dad fifty bucks and he makes a call to place a bet on tonight’s football game. While he’s on the phone, he slams the door on you. You get back into your car and drive home knowing that you just made your Daddy proud.

Happy Find The Guy Who Donated His Sperm To Your Mom Day!

Sleepwalk Day!

Tonight after you fall asleep, get up in your pajamas and walk around the streets with your arms out in front of you like a zombie. Then do all the shit that would piss people off if you did it during the day while you were awake. You can get away with anything while sleepwalking and no one will try and stop you because they’ve all heard that when you wake up a sleepwalker he becomes ravenous for human flesh. They’ll just follow you a few paces behind, making sure you don’t walk into an open manhole or a bonfire. So you can totally wander into a gym and walk straight into the women’s locker room, or go to a Crate and Barrel and just start banging pots and pans together while screaming racist slurs. Or, you could get onto a commercial airliner that isn’t boarding yet (they can’t stop you!) wander into the cockpit and pilot the plane to the Bahamas. Just make sure you keep walking around with your arms out in front of you because the minute those arms drop to your sides, all bets are off and you’re suddenly nothing more than a pervy racist hijacker in his pajamas with one hell of a story to tell.

Happy Sleepwalk Day!

Get Thumbnailed Day!

Anybody who’s anybody has a thumbnail image of his or her self somewhere on the internet, so that when someone clicks on that thumbnail, it expands to a full size photo or video clip. It’s about time you got one of yourself. All you have to do is take a photograph of your genitals or bosom. If you don’t want to do that, you have to become famous and then go to a beach wearing a swimsuit that makes you look either smokin’ or disgusting. If you want the thumbnail to link to a video clip, videotape your genitals or bosom while things are being done to them, either by you or other parties. OR, become famous and then say something racist either while wearing a swimsuit or in normal clothes. Your call. These are the only ways you can get thumbnailed. Try anything else, like a sniper attack, and you’re just going to end up as a photograph in a print newspaper above the caption “The Freeway Sniper just minutes before he was gunned down by police. Yes, that is a swimsuit he is wearing, and yes, total hogsville.”

Happy Get Thumbnailed Day!

The Monster Who Lives In The Couch Day!

Remember that old tale that parents told their kids to warn them from collecting too much loose change? The one about the guy who loved finding loose change so much that he spent days and days rooting under the cushions of the couch collecting coins, and he was down under the cushions so long that one day four fat people came by and they didn’t know he was there so they sat down on the couch to watch football. The fat people watched football for hours and hours and they ended up crushing the change-loving guy under the cushions forever. And now he’s doomed to live in the couch for all eternity and anytime someone drops a coin from their pockets into the cushions he eats it up and grows stronger, and when he’s eaten a million trillion dimes, he’ll be strong enough to climb out of the couch and go to a Coinstar, where he’ll feed himself into the machine and be turned into paper money. Well today, you’re that monster. And you’re one dime short. Any minute now, you’ll get to become dollars.

Happy The Monster Who Lives In The Couch Day!

Fire Drill Day!

One of the old ladies in your building let a Christmas candle set her drapes on fire. The firetrucks are pulling up and everyone is running down the fire escape. You watch a few people descend the fire escape past your window. You sit on your bed, considering whether it’s worth it to follow them or sit there and burn to death. Most of the time, you’re pretty sure that when people die in a fire they die from asphyxiation long before they catch fire, so it probably wouldn’t hurt. And you’d be dead, so that’d be handy.

Ultimately though, you figure the chance of dying from actual flames on your body is too great to risk it, so you climb out the window and you start down. You’ll find your own way to die later, soon as you find the time to think about it.

Two flights down you catch a glimpse into an apartment and you see a girl sitting on her bed smoking a cigarette and staring at the TV. There’s already smoke coming under her door but it’s like it’s just another weeknight for her. You knock on her glass and she looks your way.

“Fire,” you say, feeling stupid almost immediately.

She opens her window and blows smoke out at you.

“Big deal,” she says. “I’ll die by the smoke before the fire gets here. It won’t hurt.”

“You don’t know that,” you say. “What if the ceiling caves in and you get trapped under burning wood? Or like a backdraft thing happens.”

Now she looks pissed. “Why can’t you let me just sit here and die?” she asks.

“Because you’re my kind of girl,” you say.

She doesn’t look so pissed anymore. There’s a smile on her face and she tosses her cigarette out the window. “Help me up?” she asks.

You take her hand and help her climb out onto the fire escape. You descend to safety, hand in hand. Then you live on to be the most depressing couple that ever rented a movie together.

Happy Fire Drill Day!

Wear an Electronic Monitoring Collar Around Your Neck To Prove To Your Girlfriend That You're Not Running Around On Her Day!

Your girlfriend has been getting suspicious that you're cheating on her because you are. You need to do something to make her feel more secure. Why not agree to wear an electronic monitoring collar around your neck.

"But I don't want this," she'll say. "I just want to believe that I can trust you."

"And I'm demonstrating that you can," tell her. "You don't ever have to turn this on. But I'll know that you could any time you wanted to check up on me. And you'll know that I know, so without ever even having to turn it on, you'll be guaranteed that I won't cheat. Because I'll know that I could get caught. Blammo, our trust is guaranteed!"

"But I won't ever turn it on," she'll say.

"Yeah but how do I know that. See, I have to be faithful just in case."

"Okay," your girlfriend will say. "I guess it will work."

You and your girlfriend will kiss and part ways. Around eighteen minutes later, she'll turn on the monitor and discover that you're at your ex-girlfriend's house. You're really fast, and really stupid if you thought that she'd buy that "you don't ever need to turn it on" horse hockey. Anyway, pull your sweatpants back up because she's on her way over.

Happy Wear an Electronic Monitoring Collar Around Your Neck To Prove To Your Girlfriend That You're Not Running Around On Her Day!

Make Your Son Smoke A Whole Pack Of Cigarettes In One Sitting Day!

You just found a pack of cigarettes in your son’s bag and you know just how to get him to never smoke again. Sit him down and tell him that he has to smoke the entire pack in one sitting, while you watch him.

Your son agrees, and then the two of you spend the next several hours just sitting there across from each other in your living room. Eventually, you can’t help it but one of you starts making casual conversation because otherwise you’d both be bored to death. Maybe it’s because he’s so relaxed with all that nicotine flowing through his blood, but your son ends up really opening up to you. He tells you what he’s scared of, what he wants to do with his life, and the kind of man he hopes to be. For the first time you feel like your son is your peer, and you are so glad to be his dad.

When he finishes the pack, you half-heartedly tell him that you hope he learned his lesson. Then you spend the next several days not speaking to each other, like always. You begin to miss that talk you had and you wonder if you’ll ever get to experience your son in such an easy, unguarded state.

You need to get some nicotine into his blood fast, so what you do is you wait until he’s asleep and then you put a nicotine patch on his skin. Once an hour has passed and the nicotine is in his blood you kick his bed to wake him up. Then you ask what he was dreaming about and you two end up having the father-son talk of all father-son talks. You end up repeating this every night until your son is so addicted to nicotine he smokes six butts before school even starts.

Sound familiar? That’s probably because more kids get addicted to smoking because their dads want to have enlightening conversations with them than any other cause, including peer pressure. If you’re a kid and you don’t want to smoke, go sit down with your dad and have a chat. Otherwise, you’re practically guaranteeing that he’s going to poison your blood with nicotine while you sleep.

Happy Make Your Son Smoke A Whole Pack Of Cigarettes In One Sitting Day!

Chatty Airplane Neighbor Day!

The guy sitting next to you on the flight from Portland, Oregon to New York City is a bit talky. You need to send him some signals to let him know that you’d like your privacy. Try body language. “I can hear you now,” say to him. Then stick a knitting needle in your ear until blood pours from your punctured eardrum down your neck. “I can’t hear you now.” If he keeps talking, slam your head against the window until you fall unconscious. If when you wake up he asks you what you dreamed about and then proceeds to tell you his own dreams, rip up your Skymall catalog and start swallowing big hunks of the pages until you have no choice but to throw up all over yourself and him. If he hastens to get some towels from the flight attendant and then wipes your clothes clean so that he can tell you about the time he entered a pie eating contest, reach into his face and pull out his tongue.

When you disembark, your wife will be waiting for you at baggage. You’ll head home, tired and a little worse for wear, and you’ll head to your bedroom to rest. When you pull the covers down, that tongue will be lying on the sheets, wiggling and swerving like it’s trying to finish a sentence.

“You were saying?” you’ll say to the tongue. You and your wife will laugh hysterically. Just because you’re apparently on the receiving end of some sort of supernatural justice for being impatient with people doesn’t mean you can’t laugh about it. Don’t turn around because the man from the plane is behind you and he’s got blood dribbling down his chin onto his shirt.

Happy Chatty Airplane Neighbor Day!

Kids Are Huffing Inkjet Cartridges Day!

They’re thirty-eight bucks a hit! But all across the country people are finding their printers out of ink because their kids are ripping the cartridges out of them and heaving the fumes into their lungs to get a high that will make them feel like Jesus’ first orgasm.

Guess what. The printer companies won’t do a damn thing about it. Their profits are skyrocketing because the only thing that’s more important to Americans than getting high is printing out stuff. So they’re refusing to take the get-high chemicals out of the ink. They will, however, sell you a videotape about how to talk to your kids about huffing their cartridges.

It’s all gonna frustrate you so much that today you’re going to switch to a laser printer. Guess who’s happy about that. Right, THE LASER PRINTER INDUSTRY.

Everyone just wants to make a buck off the erosion of your little boy’s brain.

Happy Kids Are Huffing Inkjet Cartridges Day!

Your Son Wants To Cover Himself In Gold Body Paint Day!

“Like Tommy Lee Jones in the movie ‘JFK’, during the gay orgy scene” he says.

You ask him why he wants to look Tommy Lee Jones in the movie ‘JFK.’

“I’m in high school and I’ve been trying to come up with a look that helps me to stand out and announces my identity, and when I saw Tommy Lee Jones in gold body paint I thought, ‘That’s what I’ve been missing,’” he says.

You know you’re supposed to support your son so you take him to a costume shop and help him pick out some tubes of gold body paint.

“You’re sure you wanna do this,” you ask him when he comes down for breakfast the next day, covered in paint. “You look like a bowling statue.”

“I guess I do look kind of funny,” he says.

“You have to remember, Tommy Lee Jones is a movie star. He had to get into shape for that role,” you say.

“Did you just call me fat?” your son asks.

Nod your head. Your son is only 5’4” and he weighs 210 pounds already. He’s crying now.

“Hey. Hey,” say to him. “Why don’t we work together to slim you down to the point where you’ll look even better than Tommy Lee Jones did in that gold body paint.”

Your son will nod and you and he will go to subway and start eating those diet sandwiches until all his weight is lost. Subway will contact him and ask him if he’d like to be in a commercial. He’ll ask if he can wear gold body paint in it. Subway won’t contact him again.

Happy Your Son Wants To Cover Himself In Gold Body Paint Day!

Parents Groups Are Turning Against You Again Day!

Your latest invention is not being warmly received by parents. You pitched it as the answer to parents who want to keep their teenage kids from going places they’re not supposed to go when they’re out at night unsupervised. It’s a small, plastic charge that gets inserted via the teen’s nostril and it’s connected to a map of neighborhoods that are divided into green and red zones as designated by the parents. Should the child enter a red zone, the charge detonates.

“So it’s a bomb,” the leader (very pushy) of the latest parents group to get all not-without-my-daughter on you says. “You’re suggesting I put a bomb in my child’s face.”

“It’s a very small charge sir,” you explain with a tired sigh. “It will do no more harm than if your child popped a very bad pimple.”

“My child has good skin,” one of the other parents will say. “You really think I should put a bomb in her face?”

“You really want her crossing those tracks? And you know the ones I mean.”

Everyone quiets down. They know the tracks you mean.

“How do we get the bomb-- I mean, the charge, in our kids’ faces?” a parent asks.

Your assistant starts handing out the barbiturates while you demonstrate how to discreetly dose a glass of iced tea while setting the dinner table.

“Two of these capsules will knock your kid out for four hours. The insertion procedure only takes five minutes. That gives you a bonus three hours and fifty five minutes of not hearing your child ask you why he can’t have a car.”

The parents group laughs as one. Then they all line up to buy bombs to put in their children’s faces. You could sell stripes to a zebra.

Happy Parents Groups Are Turning Against You Again Day!

You’re The New Rob Schneider Movie Day!

Today, you are the new Rob Schneider movie called “Dr. Fux.” You are about a Doctor named Dr. Fux whose last name sounds like the word “fucks” but it’s spelled differently. When the characters who appear in you hear the name “Dr. Fux,” they think the name is spelled “Fucks” and that leads to lots of misunderstandings involving small animals who go out of control. At the end of you, everything is explained to the people who misheard Dr. Fux’s name and it’s all going to work out. Newspapers are going to write about you as if you were what’s wrong with society at large. You won’t make a lot of money, enough to not be a financial disaster, but people will remember you for being horrible. Only a certain group of people will like you, and they are all stupid. In short, today anyone who likes you is stupid.

Happy You’re The New Rob Schneider Movie Day!

Watch “The Day After” With Your Kids Day!

Play your old videotape of nuclear terror TV movie “The Day After” and sit with your arms around both your kids as the low production values scream across the TV screen. At the end of the movie, say to your kids, “That’s what was scary to me when I was a kid. Was it scary to you guys?”

Your kids will shake their heads no.

“Well what scares you then?”

“Mom leaving us,” they’ll say.

All three of you will look out the window and watch your wife pack the trunk of that guy Rick’s car. Occasionally, she’ll cry a little and Rick will pull her into an embrace and kiss her forehead.

“Can we go with her?” your kids will ask.

“She doesn’t want you,” say. “She doesn’t want any of us.”

Leave your kids to watch their own little horror movie through the living room window and go into the kitchen to drink gin at the breakfast table.

Happy Watch “The Day After” With Your Kids Day!

You Just Went And Set The Carpet Underneath Your Desk On Fire Day!

“What did you just do under there?” your cubicle mate will ask.

You’ll place the lighter fluid, matches, and sunflower seeds (you chew them when you’re nervous) on your desk and you'll turn your big wide eyes towards your cubicle mate.

“Ohhhh I done did it,” you'll say. “I really done did it.”

The smoke will be rising now and your cubicle mate will shout that there’s a fire and everyone had better head for the exits.

“Ohhhh I done did it,” you’ll say, still at your desk with your head in your hands. “I really done did it.”

As everyone is filing toward the exits, start shouting, “I warned ‘em! I warned ‘em if they kept on pressurin’ me! Din’t I warn you all?”

Once everyone is gone from the floor, set off the charges by the wall to blow the far offices out from the building. From that point on you have exactly fourteen minutes before the firefighters make it to your floor. Haul out the bones you bought from the black market and lay them out near your desk. Then strip down and run around the floor rubbing your anus on everyone’s phone and computer mouse. THEN steal the 8 million in bearer bonds from the safe and get the hell out of there. You know this would go much quicker if you didn’t have to do the anus thing, but whatever. Just make sure the bones are lain out right so it looks like you got burned up and no one will go hunting you down in Buenos Aires. Seriously though, if you can speed up the anus part…

Happy You Just Went And Set The Carpet Underneath Your Desk On Fire Day!

One Day You’re Going To Make A Spring Break Comedy And Everyone Who Ever Made Fun Of You Will Feel Like A Fool Day!

Today after the senior talent show, when your short film, a tone poem put to celluloid, is greeted with a chorus of boos and building chant of “Ho-MO! Ho-MO! Ho-MO!” you’re going to be dragged out back behind the bleachers and beaten to a bloody mess then left face down in a puddle of mud. Your tormentors will walk away laughing with joy. You’ll stay put.

You’ll spy a worm struggling to get out of the dirt. You’ll commiserate.

“One day we’ll both show them what we’re capable of, won’t we worm?” you’ll whisper to the worm. “I’ve written a script, worm. It’s for a full length feature film, a spring break comedy called Nipples Cove. One day my film will be shot and it will be embraced by everyone who ever harmed me or doubted me or tried to keep me down. I’ll give them my heart on the screen and they’ll embrace it. And I’ll allow them to apologize for what they’ve done, and I’ll forgive them. I will, worm. You have to forgive. It’s what makes you better than them. Nipples Cove. Don't miss it, worm.”

“Dude the homo’s talking to the mud,” one of your tormentors will shout. “Let’s kick his ass again.”

They’ll all come running back and they’ll hold your face in the puddle of mud, until the day turns tragic.

Happy One Day You’re Going To Make A Spring Break Comedy And Everyone Who Ever Made Fun Of You Will Feel Like A Fool Day!

Disaster Recovery Notification Plan Day!

Your office just created an Disaster Recovery Notification Plan, which is basically nothing more than a phone chain so that if there’s a nuclear war, each person in the office will call the next person in the phone chain and tell them they have the day off.

In the first draft, you were supposed to call Kevin, who was supposed to call Rita. You have a big crush on Rita and you hate the thought of Kevin being possibly the last person to ever speak to her before she dies, so you bribed the admin to switch the names in the plan so that you get to call Rita (you gave the admin 30 dollars).

Today you’re not going to be able to resist the temptation of calling Rita. You just can’t decide whether you want to pretend that there’s been a disaster so that you can offer to come over her place and keep her safe from apocalyptic cannibal hordes, or to avoid her turning on the news and learning the truth, do you want to get your hands on a dirty bomb and detonate it someplace crowded? The dirty bomb would make your story believable when you call Rita, but you’d also risk being arrested for being a terrorist, which leads to waterboarding. But Rita is a smart girl. Would she really believe that there was an apocalypse just because you called her and told her so?

Love can sometimes land you into these kinds of difficult situations. The only way to get out is to be a man and attack your country.

Happy Disaster Recovery Notification Plan Day!

Briefs Off The Clothesline Day!

All of your underwear is going missing. Your Hanes White Cotton Pocket-Front Men’s Briefs. They’re being stolen off your clothesline when you hang your laundry to dry. There’s a perv out there somewhere who digs men’s briefs. Today after you hang your laundry you’re going to wait in a bush with a shotgun so that you can kill the bastard who’s running off with your undies.

Not long after the clothes are hung, you’ll hear a rustling in the grass. A disheveled woman will sneak into the yard with a man who is not wearing anything below the waist but is carrying a pair of slacks. The woman will yank the underwear from the line and toss it to the man who will hastily pull on the underwear and then the pants which he probably stole from someone else’s yard. Jump out and corner them with your shotgun.

“Please don’t shoot,” the woman will beg. “We lost our house and all our savings thanks to that son of a bitch George Bush.”

“What do you mean by that?” you’ll ask.

“He’s a prick,” she’ll say. “And we lost everything.”

You assume it has something to do with the mortgage stuff.

“My husband has been working with a social worker to get him a new job. He’s been interviewing, but he can’t do that without underwear can he?”

You concede that interviewing without underwear on would be next to impossible.

“Please don’t hurt us, we’re just trying to feed our daughter and make enough money so she can quit her job.”

She’ll point to the street where her daughter is standing holding a sign for passing cars that reads, “Pull over and I will get in your car and sing songs while you drive to work. $2.”

“Take the underwear,” say. “Keep up the good fight.”

They’ll move to hug you but they’ll smell so you’ll hold them back with the gun again. Send them on their way and then go to Sears to price dryers.

Happy Briefs Off The Clothesline Day!

Just You And The Fuckin’ Angels Day!

Your wife is out of town this week on business, which means you have the house all to yourself. Or at least you would. If it weren’t for all the fuckin’ angels wandering around whining about what it’ll take for them to get their fuckin’ wings. They won’t shut the fuck up and it pisses you off. You’re supposed to be watching porn or sports while your wife's away but you can’t because an angel will inevitably walk in front of the TV and start yammering about how she doesn’t sprinkle enough God dust amongst the living and she really should sprinkle more if she wants to get her wings but she’s just always so tired and busy. You tell the angel to shut the fuck up and get out of the fuckin’ way but she just starts crying and yelling about whatever angel got her wings that day and why can’t she. You tell the angel to stop comparing herself to other angels because who knows what gets one angel her wings as opposed to another. It’s different for everybody. But the angels never buy that. They know it’s a contest of status and that if you haven’t gotten your wings by a certain age, you’re pretty much doomed to be a haunter. And no one likes a haunter. Then she starts crying and you grab your coat and stomp out to a sports bar where you can get some peace and quiet without all the fuckin’ angels and their fuckin’ angel bullshit. Fuckin’ angels.

Happy Just You And The Fuckin’ Angels Day!

Your Ex-Husband Parachutes In Day!

You and your new husband will be walking across a beautiful flat field of short, bright green grass and many flowers when a man in a parachute drops to the ground not thirty feet ahead of you. He’ll gather his parachute for a second and then he’ll catch sight of the two of you and pause.

“Anna?” he’ll ask.

You and your new husband will go to him. He’ll remove his goggles and you’ll see it’s your ex. He was always into that daredevil crap and you wanted no part of it. Your refusal to join him in his skydiving and his windsurfing and crap was a big sticking point with him. You and he haven’t spoken since 2004.

“This is Larry,” you’ll say to your ex.

“You remarried,” he’ll say to you. “That’s wonderful.”

“Thanks,” you’ll say, genuinely touched to hear a kind word from him. Your last conversation was rather heated. “And you?”

“Engaged,” he’ll say. “There she is.”

He’ll point over your shoulder. You’ll turn to see a woman dropping from the sky in a parachute of her own. She’ll gather her parachute and join you. The four of you will go out for lunch, where you’ll be happy to learn over the course of the conversation that your new husband is afraid of heights.

Happy Your Ex-Husband Parachutes In Day!

Pube Omelet Day!

Your son was sent home with a painting that he did in art class that you have to sign to prove that you looked at it. It’s a painting of an omelet on a plate with curly little hairs sprouting all over it. It’s title, PUBE OMELET, is written along the bottom of the painting with little flames rising from the letters. The plate holding the pube omelet also holds some potatoes and a little sprig of parsley. To be honest, were it not for the pubes, it would look like a painting of a really delicious breakfast.

“What else is in the omelet,” you ask your son.

"Broccoli,” he says. And he points to the little spots of green. “And mushrooms.”

You point to a speck of gray in the omelet and he nods.

“And is the white stuff Swiss cheese?” you ask. He corrects you. It’s Manchego.

“It looks scrumptious,” you say. “Except for the pubes.”

Your son looks down at the ground. You lift his chin up and you tell him that everyone gets preoccupied when their bodies start to change, or are late in changing.

“But one day you’ll be a man,” you’ll say. “Soon even. And you won’t have to dream about eating pubes or feeding other people pubes because they’ll be all over your genitals.”

Your son beams up at you and asks if you can enroll him in a cooking school. You do.

“Go easy on the pubes,” you say with a smile. He nods obediently. You’re pretty sure he won’t try to put any pubes in his food at cooking school. But to be certain, you and your husband will make a point of rinsing the soap after every shower (your son tends to linger outside the bathroom while you’re showering. Sometimes he's holding a plastic baggie).

Happy Pube Omelet Day!

Spy Vs Spy Day!

You started spying on your wife to see whether she is drinking again and you found out that coincidentally she hired a spy to spy on you to see if you’re a spy with the government and she never knew (she realized she never checked that out). You aren’t a spy for the government, you’re just a dentist, but since you were spying on your wife her spy saw you doing spy stuff so he came back to your wife and said, “Yup, he’s a spy.” Your wife suddenly thought that her husband isn’t the man he said he was and she instantly started drinking again, which is exactly what you were spying to see if she was doing. You trying to check up on her is what made her start drinking again. Which is why no one should bother people who love to drink about their drinking. It’ll just make them drink more. Ignore the problem, and not only will you save spy money, but the problem might just go away or you’ll at least not know about it assuming you’re married to the kind of drunk who’s polite enough to keep the drinking a secret from those who care about him and therefore want to ignore what’s killing him.

Happy Spy Vs Spy Day!

Looks Like Your Mom Is Going To Go And Follow Incubus On Tour Day!

Your Mom is a huge fan of the band Incubus. She’s not just into the music, she digs the fan culture that’s grown up around the band. There’s apparently a society of Incubus fans that travel around the country in their Ford Escorts and their Hondas partying in the parking lots before heading into the stadium for upwards of 70 minutes at a time of emotive hard rock from their favorite band ever.

Your Mom never got to go out on tour because she was raising you. Now that you’re seven, she figures you’re old enough to order pizza.

“If you hurt yourself or don’t know how to turn the oven off or something, call Mr. Keough next door. He’ll come and help out.”

“The crossing guard told me never to talk to Mr. Keough but she wouldn’t say why,” you tell your Mom as she applies gray paint to her cleavage and neck for some reason. This is apparently what female fans of Incubus do. They paint parts of their bodies battleship gray.

“You’re a big boy and Mommy needs you to be on your best behavior while she’s gone,” your Mom says.

“Please don’t go I’m scared,” you say.

“Incubus! Incubuuuus!” Your Mom screams it into the mirror with an upraised fist, like she’s practicing. She didn’t hear your plea. Now she’s in the medicine cabinet sliding all of her Paxil bottles into a big sandwich bag.

“Don’t play my CDs,” she tells you as she pinches your cheek. Then she climbs into her Fiero and zips away to go and find her favorite band.

Not long after she leaves, some burglars start trying to get into your house but are thwarted because you know how to devise the crude delivery of torture and pain from simple household products.

Happy Looks Like Your Mom Is Going To Go And Follow Incubus On Tour Day!

The Cinnamon Mafia Day!

Justin and Charnice started referring to themselves as the Cinnamon Mafia today and they won’t tell you why.

“Is it because…you guys have access to really good baked goods?”

Justin and Charnice laugh and tell you that what you don’t know could fill the Staples Center.

“Is it because…you’re engaged in various prostitution and gambling enterprises and…you like sweets?”

Justin and Charnice laugh and tell you that you might as well have just stepped off the bus from Idaho.

“Does it have to do with butt sex?”

They say no.

“Thanksgiving?”

Nope.

“India?”

Uh uh.

“It doesn’t mean anything, does it.”

Justin and Charnice then show you the scabs where they sliced their thumbs open to take a blood oath.

“Oh my god you guys really are in a mafia,” you’ll say.

“A Cinnamon Mafia,” they’ll correct you.

“Yeah but what the fuck is that?” you’ll ask.

Justin and Charnice tell you you’re a little boy and that you should go home to Mama. That pisses you off, so you drive back to the town where you grew up and ask the boys you used to mess with on the street if they want to start a mafia with you.

“I want to call it The Taffeta Mafia,” you’ll say. Surprisingly, they’ll all shrug and say why not. You’ll tell them that the first order of business is to go and kidnap the captains (and sole members) of the Cinnamon Mafia and torture them until they explain why they called themselves that.

“Second order of business,” you’ll say, “Is gabagool!”

All of your Taffeta Mafia soldiers will jump up and shout, “Gabagool!” Then they’ll go and put knives to your friends’ genitals for a while.

Happy The Cinnamon Mafia Day!

Your Son Just Got His First Tattoo, And It’s Really Racist Day!

On a sentimental whim, you’ll go into his room tonight to tuck him into his covers long after he’s fallen asleep. He may be fifteen, but he’s not so big that you don’t tear up a little when you see him sprawled on his belly, just like he’s slept since he was a toddler.

When you pull the covers back a bit you’ll see that tattoo. It’s definitely real (you can see that part of it is still scabbed) and it’s definitely racist. Racist enough to get his ass kicked in certain neighborhoods. It’s not often that a father gets to blink his eyes just once and see all the limitations that are suddenly placed in his son’s way, but when you see how high up on his neck the tattoo has been drawn, it’s clear that he can remove “prized civil rights attorney” from his dream resume.

You’ll bail on tucking him in, allowing his covers to slide down his back. Let him catch cold. At least he won’t have to go into school and then come home with a letter from the principal demanding that you come in for another talk. You’ll go back into the living room and sit in your chair and wonder what the hell it was that you did wrong?

“Was it because I spent most of his childhood in prison after being charged with a racially motivated hate crime that involved ‘curbing?’” you’ll wonder to yourself. You’ll think about it a little longer before concluding that any mistakes your son makes are entirely the fault of his mom and what a jerkface she was before she joined the Church of Christ.

Happy Your Son Just Got His First Tattoo, And It’s Really Racist Day!

Lose Your Virginity Day!

You’re pretty shy around women, which is why you’re still a virgin at 34. You’ve pretty much been counting on the fact that one day a woman’s car is going to break down outside your house and she’ll need a place to stay for the night and inevitably, because you’re both alone in your house, the two of you will do it. It hasn’t happened yet but you’re pretty confident that at some point in the next few years at least one woman’s car will have to break down outside. Just in case, you keep the lights on in your living room all night long so it looks like someone’s home, and you also spend a lot of time sitting by the window staring out at the street.

Tonight a car is going to sputter to a stop right outside and a beautiful woman will get out and walk toward your house. But at the last minute, she’ll end up knocking on your neighbor’s door to ask for help. He’ll invite her in and you’ll hear the two of them doing it through the wall. You will be sad.

They’ll live together for several years until he starts doing drugs and inviting dangerous people over to their house and she comes running next door to you for a place to crash for a while. Your neighbor will come by looking for her (he needs money) and you’ll tell him to go away, so he’ll come back with all of his drug addict friends. You’re going to have to fight and kill them all if you want to finally be alone in your apartment with the woman whose car broke down right outside (which can only mean sex, even if her car broke down three years ago, she’ll see it as the funny way that fate works and she’ll want to do it just to have the story to tell about how fate works in funny ways and you never know).

Time to get lucky. Now kill all those drug addicts!

Happy Lose Your Virginity Day!

You’re Covered In Japanese Beetles Day!

That’s what you get for sitting still for too long. Lazy people are always at risk of drawing thousands of Japanese Beetles to gather on their skin and on top of and underneath their clothes because lazy people are too busy concentrating on the sweet little dreams in their heads, dreams of when they loved and when they might love again, dreams of one day finding a reason to make a special afternoon in a park for themselves, dreams of driving fast in a pretty car with one hand on a bare thigh that isn’t theirs (for goddamn once!). They dream and dream and dream and sometimes they even consider making a plan before they go back to dreaming and it takes up so much of their goddamn time that Japanese Beetles can spend an entire afternoon swarming around them before the lazy people finally turn on the news or check a website or get a phone call that tells them, “Holy shit you’re covered in Japanese Beetles! You have to move out!”

Happy You’re Covered In Japanese Beetles Day!

She’s An Explosives Expert Day!

Today you’re going to tell your Dad that you’re getting married and he, being the over-protective son of a bitch that he can’t help being, will ask what your fiancé does for a living.

“She’s an explosives expert,” you’ll say.

Your fiancé will hear you from the other room and she’ll wander into the kitchen with a big grin on her face. “Well, I wouldn’t say expert, but I’m pretty frigging good.”

Your fiancé will grab you by your ass and pull you in for a kiss. Your father will watch.

“Who do you work for?” your father will ask because he’s apparently the fucking Gestapo all of a sudden.

“Whoever pays the most,” your fiancé will say.

Your father will drag you into the other room. “I didn’t raise my son to marry a mercenary,” he’ll say.

“You didn’t raise me, period,” you’ll say.

Your fiancé will stand too close to the stove and the stray gunpowder on her sweater will ignite. She’ll run screaming.

“This what you want?” your father will ask you. “You want a wife who’s constantly on fire?”

“Better than a wife that’s always ice cold,” you’ll say.

Your father will slap you and tell you not to talk about your mother like that. You’ll run out the front door, crying. You’ll forget that your fiancé is still on fire in the kitchen. You won’t remember until you’ve run all the way to the train station the way you used to when you threatened to run away from home as a teenager.

Things were simpler then, back when you could pretend to run away from home without having to worry about the fact that your fiancé just exploded. Why do we have to grow up?

Happy She’s An Explosives Expert Day!

Those Vampires And Zombies On Facebook Aren’t Real Day!

Just keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll get to sleep tonight. Maybe you can forget all about the fact that you got bitten by some guy who you don’t remember how you know but he was in your email address book so now you’re friends and he had to go and turn out to be a goddamn fucking Facebook zombie and of course he ran straight over and bit you.

“FACEBOOK ZOMBIES AREN’T REAL!” you shout at the ceiling. “It’s just a web thing. That’s all.”

Just in case, you open your bedroom window and put your cat out on the fire escape so she can make a run for it if you get bloodthirsty. Your cat immediately runs up the steps to the roof like an idiot. Like you won’t immediately go up there and eat her should you become bloodthirsty. Fucking stupid cat.

“I’M NOT A ZOMBIE!” you shout into the darkness. Your roommate leans into your room to tell you to keep quiet. Just in case the zombies on Facebook are real and he got bitten, you’d better drive an axe into his neck and take his head off.

As the blood spurts into the air and the blade of your axe gets stuck in your roommate’s clavicle, you can’t help but wonder what the fuck was so bad about Friendster anyway.

Happy Those Vampires And Zombies On Facebook Aren’t Real Day!