The biggest problem with having a beautiful, sweet wife who is also a gifted decorator and homemaker is that our house has become so comfy that all of God’s creatures want to live with us. In the past six months we have been infested with roaches, ants, fleas, ants again, and now this: Yesterday I trapped and killed seven mice in our kitchen. Seven. onetwothreefourfivesixSEVEN! And I may not be through. It is just gross.

One thing about it, the bastards do not stand a chance when they get in to my house. I am a rat killin’ sumbitch. My secret . . . crunchy peanut butter. They are powerless against it.

Sniff. Sniff. Mmmmmm peanut butter. I’m so hungry. This is great. My favorite thing right here on the ground just for me to eat right up. Mmmmmm peanut bu . . . SLAM!!!

---

I had to be at work at 7:00 this morning. I usually come in at 7:30. Some observations:

• It is still pitch black dark at 6:45 in the morning.
  
• There are a suprising number of people out at 6:45 in the morning.
  
• Thirty minutes makes a huge difference. I usually feel like crud in the mornings, but I really did not want to get up this morning.
  
• when you come in at 7:30, you have to search for a parking spot. At 7:00 you can park it anywhere you like.

Actually I got here at 7:07. I am the most punctual guy in the world – after noon.

---

There are basically three types of posts that I make to the blog here. 1) News or political commentary. 2) Personal notes to my intelligent and talented readers. 3) Humor or parody. I am an aspiring humorist. That is what I want to do in life. My heroes are P.J O’rourke and Christopher Buckley and Douglas Adams and Neal Pollack, guys like that. I have noticed lately that when I post short humor pieces or parodies on my blog, they get no comments.

I realize that I am being neurotic, but I just wondered what the reason was for that. Have I left nothing to say? Are they not funny? Do you skip over them? Do I smell funny? Don’t leave me! Please! I can change, I swear!

I am writing a piece for my Expository Writing class about the history of Jazz. This morning I have been scouring the Ken Burns web site for stuff to steal. I found this great tidbit about the Kansas City Jazz scene:

Competition between Kansas City musicians ran especially deep. "For some reason," Claude "Fiddler" Williams remembered, "Kansas City was different from all other places because we'd be jamming all night. And it you come up here ... playing the wrong thing, we'd straighten you out." "Regardless of how much anybody played or where they were from," said Mary Lou Williams, "when they came to Kansas City they found out how little they were playing." The trumpet player Buck Clayton compared Kansas City musicians to gunfighters. Lips Page, he recalled, used to slip notes under the hotel-room door of visiting trumpet players reading, "Meet me tonight at such-and-such a club."

The pianist Sammy Price remembered going home at 10 o'clock to change his clothes after playing at a session only to return to the club at 1 a.m. to find they were still playing the same tune. There were informal cutting contests for high school kids, free-for-alls for professionals, and the equivalent of heavyweight championship contests between the top musicians in town, often held at the Sunset or the Subway, the Reno or the Cherry Blossom. Kansas City jazz rewarded both individualism and cooperation. In order to provide a pleasing background for a succession of soloists, those waiting to play were expected to master complex harmonized riffs: "It showed a young guy that came in there," the bassist Gene Ramey recalled, "that he didn't just have to learn how to play a solo, he had to learn how to team ... [how] to breathe at the same time." Kansas City jam sessions were most like camp meetings, Ramey continued, "completely imitated from one of those revival meetings, where the preacher and the people are singing, all that living, and there's happiness all around."

One evening in 1933, the great tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins himself was in town with Fletcher Henderson's band, on the last night of a week long engagement, part of what would be one of the struggling band's final tours. After the show, he carried his horn into the Cherry Blossom at 12th Street and Vine, looking for challengers as he did wherever he went. Three of Kansas City's best tenor players were waiting for him: two whose styles owed much to his, Herschel Evans and Ben Webster — and 24 year-old Lester Young whose unique laid back style couldn't have been more different than Hawkins'.

By four o'clock in the morning they were looking for a fresh piano player. Mary Lou Williams was fast asleep at home:

Around four a.m., I awoke to hear someone pecking on my screen … Ben Webster was saying, "Get up pussycat, we're jamming and all the pianists are tired out now. Hawkins has got his shirt off and is still blowing." Sure enough, when we got there, Hawkins was in his [undershirt], taking turns with the K.C. men. It seems he had run into something he didn't expect. Lester's style was light ... it took him maybe five choruses to warm up. But then he would really blow ... That was how Hawkins got hung up. The Henderson band was playing in St. Louis that evening and Bean knew he ought to be on the way. But he kept trying to blow something to beat Ben and Herschel and Lester. When at last he gave up, he got straight in his car and drove to St. Louis. I heard he'd bought a new Cadillac and that he burnt it out trying to make the job on time. Yes, Hawkins was king until he met those crazy Kansas City tenor men.

Hello. You are listening to NPR member station KNEE and we are going to have to interrupt Jed Ledbetter’s Ozark Mountain Jubilee for just a few minutes to bring you Boulevard 2002.

This wonderful programming that you have been enjoying costs money to get on the air. Other radio stations constantly interrupt their broadcasts with piercing, aggravating commercials that they have sold to local car dealerships or small time politicians in order to afford to keep playing the same top-forty drivel that you can hear anywhere else. Here at KNEE, we follow a different business plan. We play no commercials, and we give you the best programming on the far right end of the AM dial. How do we do that? We let our listeners pick up the tab.

If you are a regular listener and you have not made a pledge yet, shame on you. Do you realize that you are stealing from the public? Or how about we just stop broadcasting, how would you like that? Not very well I would think. Honestly, where else are you going to hear great programming like everyone’s favorite call-in auto repair show: Goofy Grease Monkeys? Or perhaps you are a fan of long running NPR Quiz show, What’s the Difference Between a Beaver and a Weasel? Irregardless of which KNEE programming you frequent, it costs money to get them on the air. These shows count on you, and you are apparently a thief and not worthy of our trust.

But KNEE realizes that it takes more than just award winning programming to get people to part with their pocketbooks, so we are offering this special deal: If you call right now with a pledge of twenty dollars, KNEE will ship you a lovely purple bumper sticker that says, “I’ve got KNEE on the brain!” A pledge of fifty dollars will get you a very cute pink plastic KNEE key chain that you can keep for one year at which time you either return the key chain or renew your donation. Pledge one hundred dollars and KNEE will send you the precious CDs, The Best of Garrison Keillor Wheezing into a Hot Microphone, and Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know about Sex. Remember people, these products are not available in stores.

If you act now and buy a special five hundred dollar Gold Membership, KNEE will reserve you two seats at our annual Arbor Day banquet in which we recognize the sacrifice made by the volunteers who read the local news and weather once every other hour over the KNEE airwaves. That’s right, for only five hundred big ones you can meet a dozen or so local semi-celebrities, and buy yourself the peace of mind that comes from knowing that KNEE will be on the air for at least six more months.

No we have to get back to more folk music and corn-pone humor on Jed Ledbetter’s Ozark Mountain Jubilee. Stay tuned, because we will be back in twenty-two minutes to goad you for money with more from Boulevard 2002. Call . . . pledge . . . or be prepared to suffer the consequences of your actions.

Children’s music makes me happy. I love how it can be directed at a younger audience, but be more intelligent than most of what most adults listen to. I love that Bob Dorough can write lyrics meant for eight year olds and they are more poetic and more intelligent than anything you will hear on MTV. They seem to grossly underestimate us. That is the story, the lowest common denominator. That is why we have The Bachelor and Christina Aguilera and Josie and the Pussycats. Three is a magic number. Somewhere in the ancient mystic trinity, you get three.

I forgot how much I enjoy going out to the red barn after the boy goes down and plugging in one of my three sweet axes and just playing stream-of-consciousness for about thirty minutes or an hour. It is not long enough, but it is nice. A relaxing way to end the day. A good creative outlet when there is nothing left to blog. The only problem is that between work and school and you all, my fingers ain't got much left in them by the end of the day.

The boy came back from Mee-Mee’s yesterday and when I got home from work, boy was he glad to see me. (And I, him) He sat on my lap, straddling my legs, facing me. He kept looking at me and grinning and then he would fall on to my chest and then he would lean back and grin and then he would fall onto my chest. This went on for about ten minutes, until the television finally distracted him.

So this morning blogspot was down and then this afternoon, our internet connection was down, and now that it is back up, I am not much in the mood. Too tired. I can not seem to get the sleep thing happening lately. As I mentioned earlier, the boy is up a lot at night. I can not seem to convince myself to go to bed until it is way too late and I have ruined any hope of a peaceful night’s sleep. Sometimes I go to bed and stare at the ceiling. Sometimes I have too much caffeine. Every morning, Wylie gets up and wants me to get him some milk at a time that is too late for me to go back to sleep and too early for me to get up. So I get up and take a shower and mess around making tea and adjusting my pompadour until I still end up being five minutes late for work. If I showed up for work on time, I might catch them talking about me, except that no one else is here that early. Just Laurie. She wouldn’t talk bad about anyone.

Saturday night I got to play music and read stuff that I have written and play more music and read more stuff of mine to a nice group of about forty or fifty people at this great little party that Ms. J and her thecomfyhome threw for our good friend, Lady Amy-Amy, who was turning thirty. It was really nice to get to read something I wrote to a friendly crowd that was paying attention and listening to every word. It was exhilarating to hear them laugh at the funny parts. It was reassuring that they laughed at the parts that I though were funny and not at the parts that I meant to be not funny. Also it was nice to have them completely stop paying attention when we started playing music, because we were playing background tunes and if they had stopped and listened, they would have heard that we had not rehearsed any and really were not very good. Everyone just starting talking among themselves as soon as the music started back. That was fine because me and Dan had never played with Mark Bennet on the piano with us. As it turns out, he is a really good musician. I knew that he was a piano performance major working on his senior recital, and I figured that he was going to be a technically impressive musician, but I was pleasently surprised to find out that he can not read the notes any better than I can, and also he is a wonderful improviser. But then at the end of the night, all of the people said good job even though they did not hear what went down. Ms. J was happy with us and said that we made the party with our background music and funny readings, but she was wrong. She made the party. She always does. That is why she has thecomfyhome and that is why everyone will want her to throw their parties for them, just as soon as they see what she can do.

October 21, 2002

Mr. A.G. Lafley, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive
Procter & Gamble
1 Procter & Gamble Plaza
Cincinnati, OH 45201

Dear Mr. Lafley:

As a man with a house full of Procter & Gamble products, and a man with dry skin that shows signs of aging, I was very excited to discover your Oil of Olay Total Effects Body Visible Anti-Aging Moisturizing Treatment on the shelf of my local market. I have used Oil of Olay products often in the past to try and reduce the signs of aging and stimulate surface cell renewal, and I have had moderate success. As the label on your Oil of Olay Total Effects Body Visible Anti-Aging Moisturizing Treatment touted it as an improvement over old treatments, I felt certain I would not be disappointed.

I am sorry to say, Mr. Lafley, but the product did not perform like it should have on problem areas such as my arms, legs, and chest. While I have no known allergies to any of the items listed in the ingredients, when I rubbed the Oil of Olay Total Effects Body Visible Anti-Aging Moisturizing Treatment into the aforementioned areas, they immediately broke out in a red, puffy rash.

I do not think that it is unreasonable to say that this is not acceptable. As a long time customer and appreciator of the large line of Procter & Gamble products, I would appreciate it if you would send me another product in your line that would address my wrinkling and aging needs without turning me into a swollen, itching mess. If you do not have an acceptable replacement product, then a full refund of the $3.79 the Oil of Olay Total Effects Body Visible Anti-Aging Moisturizing Treatment cost would be acceptable. I have included my store register receipt and proof of purchase from the bottle label.

Sincerely,


Nathaniel W. Greer

Enclosure(2)

Prepare yourselves for another fit of bitching. If that sort of thing depresses you, fell free to skip ahead. I have posted a lovely sonnet below.

---

First of all, let me say that Wylie is an exceptional boy. He has amazing athletic ability. He has the vocabulary of a five year old. He can be a sweet as saccharine. This morning he was lying in bed with Ms. J. watching his morning Sesame Street. I walked into the room and said, “Bye y’all. Have a nice day.” And Wylie goes, “Stop Dadoe! I need a bye-bye kiss!”

But something is terribly wrong. Either there is something wrong with him, or we have made a horrible parenting misjudgment, (the latter is much more likely) but he is well over two years old and still does not sleep through the night. No kidding. He needs our attention every night at some point. This morning he woke up flipping out at 4:00. He wanted in my bed. Then he didn’t want momma in the bed with us. Then he wanted a cup of milk, which he gulped down in about three seconds, and then he wanted more milk. When I would not give him more milk, he wanted back in his bed, where momma was now sleeping. Then we finally got him back asleep and I went back to my bed wide-eyed. I finally got back to sleep around 5:00, and Wylie still gets up at 6:30 ready to watch his shows. This was honestly a very average night. I think we missed something in one of the parenting manuals somewhere.

I’m sleepy! I love the boy, but I am ready for an eight hour sleep without his interruptions. Thank God for Grandparents.

Anyone with any advice on this is welcome to offer it. Anyone with kids, that is. If you have no kids, keep your parenting advice to yourself.

---

General complaints about work:

I really don’t understand why management doesn’t enforce a “no talking” rule at work. We rarely have to communicate out loud for business purposes, and if we did, there is email and telephone and instant messenger and bulletin boards. It drives me crazy to have to listen to people discuss ignorant, banal, and often times made-up nonsense. It is distracting. It keeps me from my work and keeps me from being able to concentrate on more important things like writing to you. Often times I will literally put my fingers in my ears to not have to listen to people talking about the jousting competition they were at this weekend, how many points their kid scored in pee-wee basketball last night, which pepper is the hottest, who is going to win Survivor, and what score their kid made on the ACT test. It drives me crazy! I actually had a lady at work tell me that her son had always made straight-A’s in class, “until he signed up for those damn AP (advanced placement) classes! Those things ain’t doin’ nuthin’ for him but ruining his grade point!”

Also the lady in the cubicle next to me has six gospel tunes saved on her hard drive that she plays over and over every single day. I even went so far as to subtly make her a mix CD of assorted tunes that I thought she would enjoy: a little R&B, some soul, some blues, some gospel, some pop. She listened to it once and went right back to listening to the same six tunes again. If I try to put on something, she just turns hers up louder.

---

Governmental Waste

So you say that you don’t believe all of the nonsense people spread about government employees getting away with anything and never working hard? I just took a call from a customer who had gotten locked out of a particular mainframe system. This is not a big deal, and is something that we deal with all of the time. We just call a number that rings in the office of the administrators for that system, and whichever of the four of them that is available will answer the phone and reset this person’s ID. This afternoon I called the number and after four rings it rolled to another phone. That phone rang four times then rolled to another phone. That phone rang four times then rolled to another phone. That phone rang four times then rolled to another phone. The person who answered that phone told me that the admins that reset security violations had snuck out without saying anything at about 11:30 (this was at 2:00) She did not know where they went, neither did she know when or if they were coming back. Furthermore, she could not take a message because she worked in another division down the hallway and she was not even sure why she was taking their calls. I had to go back to my customer and say, “Sorry, but it looks like you are out of luck and are not going to be able to access that screen until Monday.”

That right there is your tax dollars at work, friends.

That is why I am a small government, privatization, no-taxes, libertarian-conservative.

TGIF!

Things That Sustain Her

It is not like changing the air filter for the central heat
Or cutting the grass out of a sense of obligation,
More like and obsessed greaser polishing his street machine
When I massage her neck until my hands cramp from motion.

Nor like taking out the trash or washing the silverware,
But like a gardener kneeling in moist dirt
Gently cultivating each sweet scented soft flower,
When I switch off the small screen and surrender the night.

Like a voyager out of matches who must regularly nurture
His fire to survive, I am grateful and glad
To serve her; Take her window gazing at furniture,
Clothing and fixtures I could never afford.

These things mean no more to me than any other time together,
But yielding the remote or bringing home sweets are things that sustain her.

Today Only

Censored!

Pieces Dan and Nathaniel have written
But Ms. J will not allow them to perform
At a Coffee House Open Mic

The Song
by Andy
Collected, Coerced, and transcribed by Dan

I am a black orchard monkey.
I've come to eat all the fruit...
and now I've come down the road.

Down the road, we are going down the road.
We are going down the road just like a toad.
In the middle of December past month of November,
We were hoppin' down the road like a big ol' toad...

Going to the house gonna watch some TV, gonna eat what's on my...
Don’t know, I'm gonna get some...Cho, Cho, Cho, Cho, Cho, Cho...
Like, like...frog, frog down the road, road like a frog, frog...
Big purple, black, orange, yellow, white frog.
Purple, orange, yellow and green I don't know what I'm doing to me,
But I'm goin' down the road like a toad.

Big ol' truck goin' down the road. Big ol' truck goin' down the road.
Goin' fast and slow...like the big ol' nose...on the face of Pinocchio!!
Were driving down the road at an amazing rate of speed
With pine trees on our left and right and grass beneath our knees'.
We were driving along at a great rate of speed and it was not fast it was slow to me
'cause I was use to snortin' lots of methamphetamines.

Now were gonna met these red necks right up here.
There gonna do lots of favors and drink us allot of beer.
Their gonna take us down to the swimmin' hole,
We’re gonna get us a couple hoes and don't you know,
We’re gonna, swim down at the hole this New Year.

'Cause we're crazy red necks livin' in the woods.
Crazy red necks, feelin' pretty good.
We we're driving down the road lookin' at them goddamn telephone poles...
With wires between them on the center of the earth.

High now, we're talkin' about the world and the way it was round,
About the way that the lizards crawled around.
They don't crawl strait they kind-of-curve just like this, eunt, eunt, eunt.

It was the coolest thing I ever thought of, because I was not a model.
Now I'm just a cook, now, now, now, now just a cook and not a model.
'Cause I could serve on the stage,
eating lots of crackers and bouillon today....

BOUILLON?!?

Bouillon of course, the chicken based by-product that contains no chicken but makes things flavorful in a chicken sort of manner.

Oh yeah, bouillon.

Today Only

Censored!

Pieces Dan and Nathaniel have written
But Ms. J will not allow them to perform
At a Coffee House Open Mic

A Folk Song
by Nathaniel

Jews
Jews can't loose!
Jews
Jews can't loose!

If you bet on the Jews, you'll always end up ahead.
If it were up to the French, the Jews would all be dead!

Jews
Jews can't loose!
Jews
Jews can't loose!

Too keep your money safe, put it in a Jewish bank.
When found on a pirate ship, Jews are made to walk the plank.

Jews
Jews can't loose!
Jews
Jews can't loose!

Horowitz! Goldberg! Miller! Stein!
Horowitz! Goldberg! Miller! Stein!

When fighting Jews in battle, hardly anyone has ever won.
They always forget that Jews are God's chosen ones!

Jews
Jews can't loose!
Jews
Jews can't loose!

Horowitz! Goldberg! Miller! Stein!
Horowitz! Goldberg! Miller! Stein!

Horowitz! Goldberg! Miller! Stein!
Horowitz! Goldberg! Miller! Stein!

Jews
Jews can't loose!
Jews
Jews can't loose!

Jews
Jews can't loose!
Jews
Jews can't loose!

Today Only

Censored!

Pieces Dan and Nathaniel have written
But Ms. J will not allow them to perform
At a Coffee House Open Mic

Barbeque
by Dan

The pain, which my ass was stricken with, was unimaginable.
A pain like no other…
Silent screams could be heard evacuating the room, as if they were jumping from a lost ship at sea.

The pain...
The pain...

Oh the horror...

By it's inception I knew the tragedy of the coming morrow.
But how could I say no to such a request.
Warned twice of it's impact I engage without hesitation into inevitable sorrow.

Time...

Is my only ally in this struggle.
However time is something that a dying man may not wish.

At long last the pain was taken from my soul.
A simple, ancient method was performed on my body like an olden ritual.
And in one word you'll know the rest of the story...

Enemized

Today Only

Censored!

Pieces Dan and Nathaniel have written
But Ms. J will not allow them to perform
At a Coffee House Open Mic

Coffee
There's a familiar exchange of love between the men and the coffee cup. Why shouldn't the coffee cup get some love? After all you don't hold the delicious black nectar of life itself. All we do is consume. So my hat is off to the coffee gods and the cups that make their consumption possible. Another thing, we rarely pay any attention to coffee cups outside of drinking coffee. We treat them like a porno mag stuffed under the bed only drawn out by our desire for a quick fix! NO! I Wont Have It! I am here to put an end to coffee cup neglect. Not only should the coffee cup be used for all beverages, but I think the coffee cup, if properly examined by a group of native
Kwajaleins (part of the Marshall Islands), is the answer to high speed travel in space. Oh...My...Gosh!

It's all clear! Don't you see it?! CAN YOU FEEL IT BABY!! All this time we've been sittin' on our butts lookin' at porno mags while the Kwajaleins have been goin' who-knows-where, doin' who-knows-what.

I just want to know one other thing.
ARE YOU WITH ME BOTHER!!??!!

Thanks for listening while you read.
talking from his ass
Dan...

Retort
Let me tell you something cowboy:

I had a coffee mug that I loved very much. I would refill it many times during the day. When it was fresh and full I would gently hold the steaming mug to my bosom and let the aroma lift to my anxious palate in a sort of olfactory orgasm. Savoring every molecule, I would slowly lick the last few drops from the sides of the mug when the volume became low enough that gravity would not pull them out.

The dark bean was my savior; the snowy ceramics mug my best friend.

Focusing on the sunburst Gibson Les Paul on its outer shell, I know its message well. "Hard Rock Cafe" it proclaims, "Houston, Texas." Loud and clear it speaks to me, in a back country sort of guffaw that makes one picture a lonesome scene, perhaps a camp fire and Sam Elliot as he pulls the mug away from his parched lips and sucks the java residue from his ample mustache.

Ah my old friend the coffee mug, how it has been with me through the ages. A gift to me from my roommate Ray-Ray after a psychology department field trip, I often carried it in my backpack during the college years. Many a day it left the classroom next to notebooks in an empty and neglected state, waiting to be rinsed and refilled at my convenience. Often times it would hold more than just coffee. First thing in the morning as the precious brew was percolating; perhaps I would fill it with milk to take a BC powder with. Occasionally it would be necessary for the first cupful to be half Evan Williams or cheap vodka, still trying to combat that hangover. My mug was always with me, and often the only thing that got me to work or class on time.

Perhaps the thing that I miss most about my old friend is the way it brought perfect regularity to my digestive system. As I close my eyes even now I can remember sipping that last cup of the morning and immediately making a break for the privy. Nothing in the universe is so healthy for ones colon as a steady supply of the glorious bean juice of the Java Arabica plant. Even to this day I long for that feeling of immediacy to my bowels.

The coffee mug, I know it well. Alas I have no good use for it now. The damn thing just sits on my desk holding pennies.

Longing for more,
Nathaniel

Sweet Ms. J's website is finally online:
thecomfyhome.com

The Thrill

Doyle: See, you don't want to question the genius, Vaughan. Morris here is a modern-day poet, kinda like in olden times.

Morris: Yeah, I got a new tune in composition entitled "The Thrill." And it goes somethin' like this:

"I stand on the hill, not for a thrill, but for the breath of a fresh kill. Never mind the man who contemplates doin' away with license plates. He stands alone, anyhow, bakin' the cookies of discontent by the heat of the laundromat vent. Leavin' his soul!"

Then like in poetry I go dot-dot-dot, you know, kinda off center, then I drop down and then I go:

"Leavin' his soul! And partin' the waters of the medulla oblongata of---brrrrrr!---mankind!"

That was a damn good song, wasn't it Doyle?

I've got a big bag of peanut emenems on my desk and I just can't help myself.

So Jimmy Carter has been given the Nobel Peace Prize. I was trying to think of what he has done in the last year to deserve this. All I could come up with was a couple of subversive op-eds in the New York Times (or was it the Washington Post? Does it make any difference?) and having cocktails with murderous dictator Fidel Castro. Of course the Nobel Peace Prize has been a joke ever since they gave one to Arafat.

In his latest column for NRO, John Derbyshire slam dunks New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka and his horrible screed "Somebody Blew Up America." Derb spends the better part of the column making like a college English professor on Baraka's horrible poem. He closes with the following passage:

Pleased with having got to the bottom of this "powerful and respected" poet's challenging production, I felt inspired to have a go at something along the same lines myself. I cannot hope to compete with such a giant of American letters, of course, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I hope Mr. Baraka will take my feeble effort in that spirit. Everybody has to start somewhere, after all. Amiri Baraka, for example, started out as LeRoi Jones, a humble organizer of race riots back in the 1960s. Who knows? If I keep at it long enough, maybe I could become Poet Laureate of New York State. I could sure use 10,000 bucks. OK, here goes.

Somebody Stuck It To New Jersey Taxpayers
by John Derbyshire

Who took help from Jews when getting his scam started
Then turned and spat on them when a cozy sinecure came along
Who praises despots, wreckers of nations
Murderers, despoilers of innocence — Kabila, Lumumba, Lenin, Che
Who thinks Nkrumah was a benefactor of anyone but himself
Who believes the most transparent driveling anti-Semitic lies about 9/11
Who thinks "Tom Ass" is a really, really funny way to write "Thomas"
Who mau-maued the governor
Who put one over on the guilty white liberals at those fool Art Councils
Who's an illiterate moron
So stupid he can't even keep his racism straight...

This is why I love October

I realize that I am a few weeks and two columns late, but I just discovered that Hunter S. Thompson is back from his summer in Lebanon.

Omar's grasp of American football was improving. Two years ago he thought a football was round.

"How did you get so smart so fast?" I asked.

"Well," he said, after giving my question some thought, "maybe it is because I studied American football very intensively for 10 years before I even met you."

I laughed at him. "We will see," I smirked. "I will bet you $100,000 that I will pick more winners than you do this season."

He reached into the pocket of his long black jacket and pulled out a fist-full of money. "Yes," he muttered, "I think I have it right here." He smiled faintly and dropped 100 big ones down on the bar.

I was stunned, but not entirely surprised by his bold maneuver. "Fair enough," I said. "I will go along with just about anything, in September. Can I give you a check?"

"Of course," he chirped. "Money means nothing to me, nothing at all." He paused. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

"Because I hate people like you," I said sharply. "Your instincts are Evil, and you are overcharging me for petroleum products." I flashed a grotesque-looking grin at him, a face he had never seen before. "You might get away with that oil rip-off," I told him. "But you will never get away with pretending to know Football. I will beat you like a gong."

This week is a washout. I know it is only Wednesday, but I hold no illusions of improvement. I could not get motivated right now to stand up and pee at the same time.

It all started Saturday morning when I woke up to discover the boy covered in flea bites and my house in a state of chaos. I flipped and started lunging around the house slamming cabinet doors and cleaning as if it were the Lord’s work.

The only good thing that has happened this week is that I have won three free Mountain Dews in a row.

This past weekend Wylie’s room suddenly became infested with fleas. I do not know why. Chloe the Brave Dog had not been inside in weeks and they were not anywhere else in the house. Suddenly the boy was covered in bites. So I spent the day Saturday washing everything in the house and Ms. J sprayed some raid around in his room and helped clean up. Sunday morning there was double the number of bites on him. Apparently we just pissed the little demons off.

So after church on Sunday I sent Ms. J and the boy to Meemee and Obi’s for a few days and rounded up Dan and we worked ourselves into a murderous rage. We closed up the house, turned off the power, and set off three cans of flea bomb inside and one under the house. Then we spread ten pounds of diazinon on the yard. Finally we flea dipped Chloe the Brave Dog and put a fresh flea collar on her. If the bastards come back, I am giving them the house and moving.

So that means that Monday after work I had to skip class and clean up all of the counter tops and wash all of the dishes that were exposed to the fleabomb. (While this was going on I watched my hapless Braves get beat by the personality-less Giants.) For dinner, a crappy frozen pizza.

Tuesday afternoon I had to go back to my heartless ham-fisted butcher of a dentist to have the permanent crowns put on. As usual, he did nothing to numb the teeth that he was working on, but stopped several times to give me injections that ensured my lips and nose were numb until well after dark. I went home and went to bed.

I woke up from my nap yesterday to discover that Ms. J was home. She left the boy at Meemee and Obi’s. She had already eaten dinner, and she had decided that I needed to keep my current job (which I loathe and have been desperately trying to find a replacement for.) I had slept too late to go to class, which I really did not want to go to anyway. Finally I went to McDonalds and got a Big ‘n Crappy only to discover that my bite was all screwed up and I was going to have to go back to the butcher and have it adjusted.

Today has been a busy, shitty day at a job that I hate but have been informed that I can not leave. Worst of all, you people don’t even care. Just another day filled with disappointments. Thank God for Mountain Dew.