Ghost Roast

November 1st.

It's too late for a Halloween story, you realize. It's the day after. It's too late.

That's never stopped me before, you realize. If it's one thing Spiral Reverie readers love, it's waiting forever for posts that may or may not be excruciatingly disappointing. The greatest thing about me is when I'm not there at all. All those spaces are left unfilled, overflowing with suffocating potential.

I'm my most intriguing when I'm a ghost. When the mystery thrives over whether or not the blog's finally dead. But it's never dead. It's one of the only things that'll outlast the end of civilization. Not even the end of the internet, the end of servers, or the end of language could destroy this blog.

No. The end is just the beginning. The beginning is never the end. Burgers are waffles. If those drums in your ears were timpani, you'd have headaches all the time.

And now in the spirit of whatever the hell that just was, another attempt at beginning to post content here again for a while. Starting with the nonsense from me you love most. ANOTHER RIDICULOUS STORY.

The Tears of Caga Tió

Holiday cheer meets confectionery defecation!

It is Christmas day now, isn't it? And as usual, I'm exceedingly sleep deprived after staying up all night working on various things. You'll never find a healthier chap.

At any rate, though I was tempted to do a Krampus story this year - there will be a Krampus story yet - this year, you get a bizarre little short for the Spanish crowd.

Just earlier this month, the surreal, brilliant Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations Christmas special introduced me to a certain Catalan mythological character and holiday tradition - none other than Tió de Nadal, otherwise known as Caga Tió. In a sense, Caga Tió is the anti-Krampus. Rather than punishing children for being children - all children are terrible, remember, you parents out there especially know this to be true - like Santa's monstrous Germanic pal, Caga Tió's sole holiday task is to inevitably poop candy. Ideally, turrón.

Should the Caga Tió fail in this task, the children beat it with sticks. Savagely. See? I was right about children all along.

Anyway, your annual Xmas short story. The whimsy. The weird. All that noise. Go!

The Cruelest Holiday Season

Oh hey, it's already December. And not only December, but Christmas Eve. An exciting time of the year, if there ever was one. But arguably, all times in any and all years are both exciting and unexciting at once. Depends on where you are, who you're with, and countless other variables. Predicable opening paragraph, predictable opening paragraph filler. The opposite of exciting.

And I haven't even remarked yet about how I still need to write here on a more regular basis. Good thing I just got that out of the way. 2011 is a year I've spent mentally congested. Exceedingly so. This was my most inactive year yet writing here on Spiral Reverie. One of my 2012 goals is to change that. This inactivity on my part certainly hasn't been for a lack of trying. I have piles of blog posts sitting here unfinished - many things I wanted to say, or to finish saying, but then that mental congestion struck. Not that it's much of an excuse.

I'll be getting a few more of these things out of the way over the course of the remaining week of the year, at any rate. With any luck, perhaps I'll be a more exciting writer worth your following in 2012. Should I fail at that, in the least, there'll be more juicy little morsels entailing various strings of words that may or may not form thoughts that make some kind of sense for you to sink your mind-fangs into in the next year

All that yammering aside, I'll catch the few of you passing internet tumbleweeds up on all things interesting and uninteresting in a post I'll end the year with in another week or so, the salvaging of a post I intended to complete about four months ago. Funny, that. (And there will be a funnier Xmas story later tonight. I promise. I won't break this one.)

On to the purpose of this post. These prior paragraphs? An appetizer - probably some bread you've filled up on enough as so to lose interest in what lies ahead - before the mass of somber that follows as the substance of this post. You guys like somber, right? Statistically, a lot of you aren't feeling too wonderful at this purportedly festive time of year, after all. I've actually got some legitimate excuses for my latest bout of lethargy and malaise.

This one's for you, sad people. Relatively raw, just the way you like it. Always gluttons for punishment.

The House That Murder Built

Oh, right. Halloween.

Once again, I disappeared for over a month and a half. More blog posts are coming, but things are clogged up, and for reasons that are surprisingly reasonable for once. This time, anyway.

But hey, I tossed something horribly spooky at you last year, so this year, you're getting a goofier, weirder Halloween short story again. And not very long, unfortunately. But then, short fiction is short fiction. In the least, though my short story output has been much slower this year, it hasn't halted entirely.

With how infrequently I update these days - frustrating as that is - feel free to think of this blog as a ghost. Ghost blog. You lose, Ghost Dad.

What We Pretend to Be

Halloween afternoon. I was going to have two stories up for you today, but I keep trying to push myself to get more up here than I reasonably can in a single twenty-four hour period. I'm delaying the late-September story into early November, after the election - yes, yikes, but it has to be done.

Anyway, defying the norm, here's your October story, in October! Just in time for Halloween. The story's theme, no less! Could it possibly be more of a coincidence? (Yes.)

Hit that jump. It's short, but not quite as goofy as the previous three years' awkward Halloween stories.

Potatokins Checking In - This Internet Thing is Easy

Oh shit! It's Potatokins.

I know you can't stand it, internet people, but the number one potato man's here to drop some fury on you sorry humans. The loser who runs this blog thing - more like a bog, am I right? - wasn't too smart about his passwords and now his Google account is mine. (At least for the duration of this post.)

Some of you are confused right now - in fact, all of you are. That's okay. You're human. It's expected that you don't and won't understand anything. Your entire civilization is a failure but a few of you are probably just now starting to figure that out. It's too late.

There's no hope left for you, and some people might suggest that you turn to religion, but let's be honest. Yours are all made up. All you have left is to pray to the real god, almighty Potatoto - by which I mean me, Potatokins. (That's Mr. Potatokins to you, also - failure to address me with proper respect will only lead to oil-soaked rags and perhaps fire.) Of course, Potatoto - ME - is only interested in the affairs of potatoes and feels no sympathy or mercy for you fleshy sacks of sawdust.

Bip bip bip.
Bip bip bip.
The potato is it.
You're in awe of my rhymes. Rap is the only worthwhile thing you humans contributed to the universe - and potatoes are better at it than you are. Mostly Potatokins - ME - because there are no other sentient potatoes yet. And there probably doesn't need to be. Well adjusted potatoes might take the edge off.

AND THIS POTATO THINKS NOTHING OF ANY OF YOU. Gewurztraminer, The Flying Nun, penicillin, aerodynamics - none of these things are worth ANYTHING. I hope you understand by now how terrible all of you are.

Also, for some reason, you can follow me on Twitter now. TWEET TWEET TWEET, HUMANS. Potato words and potato knowledge are more valuable than anything your species could ever hope to produce.

And I rule this blog forever from now on. POTATOTOTOTOTOTOTOTO. You can't handle it. I've also got more eyes than you ever will.

You just got potatosmashed, entire internet.

In Deference to Poor Decision-Making

Hey there, internet. Valentine's Day was five days ago now, obviously. I intended to have a science or some other sort of V-Day related post up that day, since I always had something new for the holiday the past two years. But after spending last week doing Film for Lovers 2010, I was pretty exhausted, and I kept myself busier than usual over the weekend, so that didn't pan out. At any rate, we're still in that "Hey, Valentine's candy is cheap as hell now!"/"Let's see how many times I can cut myself before I pass out from blood loss!" season, technically speaking. So that makes it okay for me to finish and post my Valentine's Day post late. Five days late. Because tardiness is my M.O. - people have called me tardy my whole life. And hey, this time around, rather than a normal post, you're getting one of my weird and whimsical short stories. You always like those, even when they harden the arteries. As a kicker, this is my first short story written from a lady's perspective! No, it isn't just a collection of misogynistic menstruation jokes.

Crimbozilla Appears: Festive Holiday Monster from Beneath the Sea!!

The ocean floor and its numerous volcanic vents have traditionally long since been one of the last things most human beings thought to concern themselves with - particularly around the holiday season. It's time to grab some wrapping paper and get your gift on, then maybe grab a little viscous courage in some egg nog and get your drink on. Upon imbibing enough of that courage, it's time to find some suspended leaves to hang out under and get your sexual harassment and slapped-in-the-face on. It's a holiday tradition. Most people need help.

This year, humanity could make no greater mistake than ignoring the wild realm of the bottom of the sea. No, the sand golems and see-through fish aren't rising up to enslave humanity for the fourth time - you'd think we'd have learned by now, but no - does the air pressure feel like it's drastically changed lately? Unless that happens, they're not coming back anytime soon. (Unless they invent some kind of specialized pressure-suits, in which case, we're all doomed.) The threat lurking beneath the waves at this, the end of the decade, is perhaps both the deadliest and most festive mankind has ever faced.

That is to say, the arrival of Crimbozilla! First detected by the USNOAA in 1997, the nature of Crimbozilla long remained a mystery until his sudden rise from the cover of miles of ocean to cross the Gulf of Mexico and set foot on land at the Florida panhandle. Local residents weren't sure what to make of the 100-foot tall red-and-green lizardman as it stomped their neighborhoods flat. Local gas station owner Vernon Hammett commented, "If that giant asshole ruins my light show, there'll be hell to pay!"

The scientific community was dumbfounded that such a creature as Crimbozilla could stalk the globe without their notice, having explored and mastered the seas in ways that would make Jacques Cousteau weep. As such, skepticism soon grew, leading scientists suspecting that Crimbozilla's timely holiday appearance and festively colored scales were planned - Crimbozilla had to have been engineered by some sort of nefarious Christmas mastermind.

When reached for comment at the North Pole, celebrated rogue Uncle Santa denied any link between himself and an aquatic genetic research lab recently discovered within the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch - despite the elves that staffed it all being card-carrying members of SantaCorp. When he was questioned further, Uncle Santa became belligerent and hurled a bottle of his patented Ho Ho Holiday Lager at a journalist from Reuters and ended the press conference early.

Three more journalists were later hospitalized after they were beaten senseless by surly talking reindeer who discovered them snooping around the outskirts of Uncle Santa's heavily fortified arctic compound. Such extreme actions are legally permissible in the private territory of Santaland where SantaCorp is headquartered, but only when said actions are carried out by legal citizens of the territory.

As Crimbozilla made his way further inland, he stomped through the city of Tallahassee, pausing only occasionally to pelt the skyline with hails of candy canes he breathed. (As opposed to fire or ice or anything remotely useful to a gigantic rampaging monster.) The children were overjoyed even as highrises collapsed around them.

The US military attempted to mobilize against Crimbozilla as he crashed through Georgia, only to find that there wasn't a single enlisted man or woman willing to take up arms against the lovable behemoth. Lieutenant Nathan Portly told The New York Times that, "I just can't shoot at that guy. My kids love him too much." All other soldiers interviewed echoed his sentiments, many of them overwhelmed with childlike nostalgia at the sight of the festive lizard monster. "I just want to climb onto his back and live there forever!" said Cadet Lindsey Merrick. Cadet Merrick was referring to the actual gingerbread village populated by apparently sentient cookie-people that made their home on Crimbozilla's back.

As Crimbozilla went out of his way to demolish every major city in North Carolina, he scattered his surroundings with snow laced with hormones inducing joy in all those subjected to it, causing the notoriously cranky hill folk and notoriously corrupt banking executives alike to emerge from their respective burrows to fill the air with the cheerily discordant sound of improvised Christmas caroling. This was reportedly incredibly annoying to all who did not celebrate the holiday, as well as those who'd taken the time to cultivate a taste in music beyond "whatever's on the radio."

Crimbozilla neared New York City by late morning on December 24th, causing many to both celebrate and dread the prospect of a Crimbozilla rampage through the city perhaps resulting in the greatest Christmas in human history. Many wondered, how exactly could you could you top a giant monster who spread happiness and joy with every bit of destruction he caused? In England, a quiet ceremony was held where the Queen knighted Crimbozilla in spirit, having been unable to draw his attention away from his unrelenting trek across the eastern United States at a time when the British isles were facing a paralyzing shortage of holiday spirit in the face of a devastating figgy pudding shortage.

Early that morning, Japanese researchers mobilized their own artificial monster to subdue Crimbozilla - Kuwako the 90-foot silkworm moth. Demonstrating an astonishing lack of foresight in their choice of giant bugs to engineer, as a domesticated insect, the docile Kuwako showed no interest in leaving her massive silk cocoon and only responded to offerings of mulberry leaves from the SDF. As such, Operation Tone It Down, Buddy, was a nonstarter.

When Crimbozilla at last reached New York City, he took an unexpected turn - knocking several Long Island homes into the Atlantic Ocean - and instead trampled Rochester into the ground. Nuclear supermonster experts suggested that avoiding the Hollywood cliche of wrecking New York City indicated a previously undetermined advanced intelligence in the jolly holiday beast. Several rumors began to circulate on the internet that Crimbozilla held the secret of eternal life somewhere in the gumdrop castle atop his head.

Shocking Americans with the notion that their nation was not the only one in the world, Crimbozilla crossed the Canadian border, leaving Rochester behind as a pit of overwhelming joy and peppermint-scented death. Crimbozilla sneezed a torrent of expertly-prepared and carefully-wrapped gourmet chocolates down onto Winnipeg before setting his sights on Toronto.

Toronto mayor David Miller teamed up once again with actress, director, and political activist Sarah Polley and staged a protest, forming a circle around the vicinity of the city to make it clear to the incoming Crimbo colossus that while they appreciated the cheer he stood for, they were a culturally diverse people and would prefer he respect that - also, nobody was too keen on the rampant destruction he brought with him everywhere he went. So moved by this heartful protest was the nation's beaver population that they converged on the city and constructed a glorious impenetrable domed dam structure as so to hold off seemingly unavoidable holiday horror. That dome - constructed entirely from love, and also really sturdy logs and some twigs - was the only thing Crimbozilla could not pass.

Following this show of unprecedented solidarity - completely one upping that time that moose looked at a disgusted Republican tourist from America threateningly when he set foot outside of Alberta - Crimbozilla once again turned northward. Just barely missing Ottawa, Crimbozilla crunched his way through the frozen snows of Quebec. The American media stopped covering Crimbozilla at this point, as there were far more important things - like after-Christmas sales - to cover. Besides, who cares about a giant monster traipsing across part of the globe if they aren't on US soil anymore?

To much disappointing, Crimbozilla ignored Montreal and made a beeline for the Labrador Sea. As it became more apparent that Crimbozilla's destination was somewhere in the arctic, the scientific community once again hurled accusations - mostly conjecture - at Uncle Santa, insisting that he knew something the rest of us didn't. In response, Uncle Santa affirmed that it was sheer coincidence that Crimbozilla was heading toward his territory, suggesting that perhaps Crimbozilla wanted to meet the grand ruler of the holiday season himself. When a BBC reporter crossed a line by asking Uncle Santa if he'd ever stop treating the public like idiots, he threatened to use his time machine to go back and cancel Christmas that day. That shut everybody up.

Crimbozilla disappeared somewhere in the arctic, leaving many to wonder if we wouldn't perhaps see him emerge again in time for the holidays in 2010. By the end of Crimbozilla's rampage, the body count was somewhere between five and six million. Nobody really seemed to mind too much.

A Very Spiral Reverie Halloween

Yes, it's getting to be that time of the year again. As the fall and winter holidays roll around, so too do my ridiculous blog posts on the subject. It's kind of a tradition for you to look forward to each and every year. (Especially the several hundred thousand of you who aren't read this yet. Someday you will, someday. And you'll feel on top of the world for it, knowing I recognized you years prior and made a point of addressing you directly from the past. See how important my readers are to me?)

As usual, you can expect an absurd original comedy blog story for Halloween later this week. (Specifically on Halloween itself.) But first! I thought I'd give you guys a double-decker holiday update this year with the important cultural insight I'm known for providing you on a regular basis. (They don't call me Mr. Information for nothing.)

What cultural insight shall I provide this year? Some suggestions for low budget to no-budget last minute costumes that everyone can enjoy! And also some suggestions on new twists on classic dumb traditions to make the holiday edgy and cool again! (Assuming that, to you, edgy and cool entails entirely unnecessary and tragic violence.)

Adult Costumes

OH NO! After blacking out one time too many, it's only five minutes until the big office Halloween party! OH NO! How can you possibly find a costume in time!? OH NO! Don't worry, I'm here to help you! OH NO! Stop saying that. OH NO! Fine, have it your way. Look, just follow my advice and you'll be the hit of every party on the planet - all at once. OH NO! I give up. You're dead to me.

- Secret Murderer - For a change, why not try the charming sociopath waiting to murder everybody the instant they turn their backs? We all know half of you secretly fantasize about this anyway and all you need is an icepick, some kind of life, or maybe a stapler if you really feel the need to sink that low. (Stapling deaths HURT. And also take a long time to finish.)

- Someone Who Keeps Forgetting It's Halloween - The yuk-yuks will never stop when you keep asking your coworkers what's going on and react in complete confusion to the strange revelry all around you! What do you mean it's Halloween?! It was just August! This shouldn't be too hard to pull off considering all those quaaludes you've been doing lately. That's why you blacked out earlier. You've got a real problem, you know. Maybe you should consider seeing that office counselor? Maybe just a little? Okay, geez, I'll back off. You can't say I didn't try. My only crime here is caring too much.

- Too Cool For This Holiday - Impress your coworkers by leaning against walls and standing in corners with your arms crossed at all times while casually remarking to anybody unfortunate enough to get within earshot about how you're so over Halloween, because it's some kinda baby holiday for sugar addicts. Personally, you can't wait for Thanksgiving to roll around so you can snort yourself some turk'. Butterball in the hizzouse. (Warning: If you repeat that last sentence to actual living human beings, you will probably get punched. Repeatedly.) Your coworkers will try to pretend that your cleverly disguising references to popular holiday cuisine isn't actually a thinly veiled cry for help. They all know you're a drug addict, but they'd rather not deal with it. It'd be easier just to fire you, frankly.

Or, if you want to get even more creative...

- Traumatized Veteran - You've just returned from one of any number of American wars: Korea, Vietnam, World War II, Iraq, Afghanistan, or if you're feeling creative, one of any number of potential future wars! (Remember, we're all traitors unless we blindly support the glorious military-industrial complex.) Make up your own back story - maybe you participated in the bombing of Dresden, or maybe you were ordered to murder half a Vietnamese farming village's children! Or maybe you drove around in a desert town taunting thirsty children with candy and water you had no intention of giving them before an insurgent blew up your armored vehicle! The possibilities are virtually endless, and as such, so too are the possibilities of how you can take out your deep-seated trauma on all your friends and loved ones! No one will ever look at you the same way again after you don this costume - secondhand uniforms aren't hard to find on the cheap, either! - and everyone loves an American hero. Especially the ones who come home realizing that our military propaganda's blatantly misleading the American people on what it means to go to war each and every day of every year, and how brainwashed most of the American people have become to this notion. Bonus points if you can get a wheelchair or pull off the appearance of some kind of amputation. (Even more Bonus points for Born on the Fourth of July references in the things you scream at people. It's not hard to be taken more seriously than Tom Cruise.)

- Human Colostomy Bag - People are often full of things. Now you can be too, as the sexiest colostomy bag at the office party! Astonish your friends and coworkers! Will you be covered in excrement by the end of the night? We hope not, the costume - constructed entirely out of plastic bags and saran wrap - doesn't function like the real thing!

Kids' Costumes

So, adult readers of this adult blog written for adults by an adult (technically) - I know what you're thinking now. "Thanks for all the great costume ideas, Mr. Super-Genius! But what about my kids? How can I bring your greatness to them!?" First of all, I don't like kids. They're noisy and annoying and think they know more than they do. (Hey, that sounds an awful lot like many adults, come to think of it.) Secondly, we've already established that you have a real problem with substance abuse. Did you really have to drag a child into your living nightmare? Regardless, I'm a cool guy and I like the cut of your jib, so I've got a few suggestions for you here. They might not be as awesome, but let's face it - it's hard to make anything awesome family-safe enough for kids in today's America. If only you'd had crude, surreal '80s and early '90s cartoons to warp your children like they did me.

- Conscientious Objector - Hey kids! Now you too can glower at that one kid who always dresses like a soldier and whose father wants him to join the marines when he grows up. That kid's so proud, but it's the things daddy saw in the war that make daddy so angry and make mommy sometimes cry all night! At least your parent in question has their demons under control, even if they're sometimes gone all night and seem really twitchy at breakfast the next morning. That just means they love you twice as much as other parents! Aren't you special?

- Spider-Paper-Bag Man - Can't afford a real Spider-Man costume? That's okay! All you need is a regular grocery bag and the ability to draw something that looks vaguely like a circle! Kids are dumb. They won't complain when you insist that sticking a brown paper bag over their head is more than enough for a Halloween costume. It doesn't matter that you have no artistic talent and don't have any idea what Spider-Man looks like. Who cares? You're too busy shooting up in the bathroom. That is important business right there. And in fact, they may even thank you later when they return home with twice the haul the other kids got thanks to their extra-pitiable costume! What is Halloween about, after all, if not some combination of pity and loathing? (This costume may also result in a visit from child services. You've been warned.) Take heed: you're asking for trouble if you don't make sure the kid isn't in the costume when you try to cut out eyeholes. (The child services visit is pretty much guaranteed there. They might find out about your addictions! That's the worst thing that could possibly happen! How's daddy/mommy supposed to live without his/her 'medicine'!?)

- Foster Child - Like the first suggestion, this one doesn't need any actual costume! The kid's costume is their attitude! And like the first costume, sharing sob stories about how daddy or mommy used to shoot smack into their eyeball before kissing you goodnight is a guaranteed pay to awesome bonus candy! There's no candy sweeter than candy given out of cautious concern for a child who may have nothing else that could ever possibly bring them happiness! (And like all other sources of happiness in life - tangible or intangible - someday the candy's going to run out too. And then what are you going to do?)

Traditions

Traditions are lame, right? Of course they are. They're old. All old things are terrible. That's why you throw them into the nearest dump. It's something all of humanity does all the time. Even with our fellow human beings. (Unless they're in politics - then they get to ruin discourse and hold the whole country back from making meaningful progress.) Now that we've established that old things are terrible, it's out with the old and in with the new!

Considering putting together a haunted house this year, are we? Maybe? Sure, you could take the route with extra Jesus where you give out toothbrushes and tell children of all ethnicities that they're going to burn in eternal hellfire if they don't pray at the altar of old Crucifixiony McPartyDrag, maybe throw some references in to how much you hate and fear Islam because the talking people on the TV-box told you to. But those are the worst kinds of haunted houses conceivable. Why not do something crazy and new? For instance, you could construct a Rube Goldberg murder machine and put on a display more enthralling than those old TV commercials for that Mousetrap board game! The local children will watch with eyes wide as the crazy contraption completes its motions and randomly shoots one of them at the end! (Note: If nobody is successfully shot, you'll have to restart the machine until it all works out.) Now kids can get valuable life lessons and delicious candy in the same night! Some dreams do come true.

To finish things up, you're naturally looking for new ways to spice up your yearly candy distribution methods, aren't you? Yes, you are. It's written all over your face in lutefisk-scented magic marker.

Why not totally shake things up and send ripples through the neighborhood by very carefully placing small razor blades into your candy or tainting them with rat poison? Both these things are very difficult to pull off without being obvious and all the more rewarding for success! As you're undoubtedly well aware - at least here in America - there's been paranoia about just these two things happening for decades now. But! In your favor, it's all just a manufactured media panic. no one really does this! They won't expect it and no one will know it was you!

(Note: The writer in no way endorses child murder - or murder in general, for that matter - no matter how funny it might be. I wish that this disclaimer weren't necessary, but this is the internet.)

Wacky Prank Holiday Jamboree

I said I'd be back, and here I am, blogging for you on April Fool's Day at Illuminati gunpoint. Don't ask how that ended up happening, let's just say that if you ever run into a talking potato pancake on a street corner, ignore it and keep on walking.

Given the nature of the holiday today, many are playing all kinds of pranks all across the internet. (While others are stepping up the spread of viruses, worms, and all sorts of malware.) You can rest easy knowing that I would never lower myself to that sort of behavior.

April Fool's Day - otherwise known by the even better name, ALL FOOLS' DAY - was founded before the invention of time itself by Gregorian Calendar. Of course, Gregorian stole the idea from his brother, Julian Calendar. This very act of thought larceny can be seen as the original "April Fool." (In truth the very first prank played on April 1st a year prior to the holiday's founding by Bob Heartburn, who would later go on to notoriety for founding something people tend to enjoy far less than this holiday. The Calendar brothers were, ultimately, little more than thieving whores, but you might be surprised by how many in human history were in reality little more than just that.)

Let's take a look at other famous pranks in human history:

- In 1938, Orson Welles and the Columbia Broadcasting System pranked America through the broadcast of a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds." This prompted a widespread national panic as the result of which Amelia Earhart suddenly "blipped" (That's the scientific term for it) out of existence a year prior. Many who were alive during the original broadcast insist today that there was nowhere near the scale of shocked response to the radio show that the media insisted there was. Qualified revisionist historians believe these oldsters to be liars.

- In 2005, cult comedian Mitch Hedberg faked his own death in order to flee America and pursue his greatest aspiration: to dress up in a Smaquis the frog costume and educate the children of France about forest fires.

- Thomas Edison, in fact, did not exist at all. He was a character created by Nikola Tesla when he realized nobody liked him enough to properly credit him for his inventions. The character of Edison amounted to little more than Tesla wearing a pair of those fake glasses with a nose and mustache - humans at the time were easily fooled, and ultimately burned Tesla at the stake upon thinking he'd killed Edison when his "face" abruptly fell off in the middle of a demonstration of his time machine. Unfortunately, the time machine itself has been lost in the archives of human history - as far as you know.

- April Fool's pranks aren't restricted to human culture, either. A couple of years after the Calendar brothers got the trend going - which at the time frequently amounted to acts of wanton violence and the spreading of disease, because that's about as far as humor had gotten at that point in the development of human civilization - the dinosaurs decided it was time to get in on that action. Specifically, they decided it was time to screw over the humans who'd come to depend on them for hard labor by all evolving into birds at once. This was later documented in the popular primetime animated documentary series, The Flintstones. (The live action rubber costume-based sitcom "Dinosaurs" presented an alternative take on this prank.)

- Believe it or not, every other major website or blog (Even the meaningless ones like this) is obligated to pull some sort of April Fool's prank every year. In fact, the internet has come to celebrate the holiday to the point at which trolling has become the internet world's favorite past time, with the existence of the internet itself being perceptible these days as some elaborate prank. (By Al Gore, no less. Did you see that coming!?)

- NASA would like us to believe that Spirit and Opportunity, our inspirationally-named Mars Exploration Rovers (Pronounce "MERRRRR"), landed on the surface of Mars back in January 2004. For a while, they had a lot of people going with that one. But once they started releasing color photos of the surface of Mars, it became apparent that they were pulling one of the best pranks in recent scientific memory. Presently, Spirit and Opportunity are believed to be roaming somewhere in the Arizona desert.


As you can see, human creativity is boundless. (Except where fannypacks are involved. What were they thinking?) At times, it may seem like all the good pranks are taken. This is not the case. As such, I'd like to end this jovial holiday blog post with some suggestions of April Fool's pranks you might consider trying. If you can pull them off, you certainly won't be forgotten.

- Throw a brick through your boss's window with a death threat tied to it. Make sure you're careful not to leave any fingerprints or DNA evidence behind, no matter how fun the idea of shaving your head and giving the brick a wig of human hair might seem. (If you must do this, I suggest using someone else's hair instead.) Sit back and watch the hilarity unfold.

- Try posting a viral video on Youtube full of ironic self-referential humor so dense nobody other than yourself or perhaps your pet (Your only friend, and even then only out of a lack of choice) would understand. What could possibly go wrong? The internet loves this stuff and you'll show them what a great prankster you are in the process!

- Start fires - lots of them. Just be sure to let everyone know you were doing it as an April Fool's joke so you can all have a laugh over it. Otherwise some people might be a little pissed. Whatever you say, just make it clear that it was an April Fool's joke, not a goof.

- Blow up the moon. C'mon, it can't be that hard, and it's only a matter of time until somebody does.

- Spend a few decades studying quantum mechanics and general relativity. Become the world's foremost expert on string theory. Invent the greatest pair of scissors ever conceived. Cut all the eponymous string theory strings. Sit back and fuckin' coast.

- 9/11 again. Nobody would see it coming. I don't think this one needs any further explanation. But you should probably wear a funny hat or something while doing it so everyone knows to laugh otherwise it might get kind of awkward.

See how easy it is?

Well, that's it for this post. This potato pancake's trigger... whatever he's holding the gun with... it's apparently getting kinda itchy. Maybe I should've written this post as a cry for help, but I guess it's too late now. I'm off to sleep with the fishes in a brand new pair of cement shoes, but maybe they'll find enough pieces of me by tomorrow night to get that next Sane Gaming post done as planned. Maybe.

Rudy Randolph: Red-Nosed Mafia Hitman

Hey!

It's technically Christmas day now, but it's still the night of the eve to me. I'm just up late, as usual. And this time, my late night ramblings once again serve a purpose. As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm a little late with the Xmas holiday season writing exercise/story this year. But fear not, fear not. I've been working on it, bit by bit, and though it isn't getting posted until Xmas morning at last now, you can finally enjoy having another holiday and classic festive children's story ruined by my sense of "humor."

Breathe easy, internet denizens. All's right with the world. (Not really.)

--

Rudy Randolph: Red-Nosed Mafia Hitman

Rudy Randolph was the man. Rudy Randolph had no plan. He'd spent his high school years doodling cartoons in class, imagining himself as "Gun Man," a new kind of superhero who solved all the world's problems through wanton gun violence. College art programs weren't too impressed by his fixation on a talking cartoon gun, but one professor decided to put it all on the line, getting him accepted into the prestigious "Yes, I CAN READ" University. All because he was impressed by the detail Rudy Randolph put into the gun holsters.

"We can mold this boy!" the professor proclaimed. "He'll be the next Garry Trudeau! Or at least some sort of Tony Millionaire knockoff!"

The professor was wrong. Professors are almost always wrong. Science didn't teach him anything. A mere two and a half years later, that same professor found himself buried in a hole at the bottom of the Earth. Never bet on Gun Man. You gonna get shot.

His mind stuck in cartoonland, Rudy Randolph slogged his way through a grueling six and a half years of education in the higher arts. Going against every wish in his body, Rudy Randolph transformed Gun Man into a metaphor. Gun Man became the representation of every force in the world that stole away our choices. Without choice, man became no more than a two-dimensional twig arrangement. The accolades poured in, and Gun Man was soon the icon of progressive, self-actualized thought in the world. Even Europe was getting in on that action - they usually ignored American rattlings, and rightly so. Gun Man had been twisted into the art of generational outrage - the new Che Guevara t-shirt, you could say.

As for Rudy Randolph, all he wanted was for Gun Man to shoot people. What purpose does a gun serve if not to end lives? (And also to punch holes in Coke cans, and make the holder look like Admiral Badass of the Mounted Cool Dude T-Rex Cavalry.) He launched a webcomic, the internet being the one canvas he had yet to paint, and introduced Gun Man to the world as a mild-mannered revolver with an unpredictable temper, fighting off the forces of disease, oppression, and poverty - which were led by a literal loose cannon - and saving the world with his bullets. Before the mystique of metaphor could drop away, several popular newsgroups denounced the comic as trash - like most webcomics - and insisted that it couldn't have been the work of avant-garde artist Rudy Randolph. There were trolls lurking on the internets.

Rudy Randolph struck back in a series of blog posts decrying those questioning the authenticity of his work. Gun Man was the genuine article. Gun Man was life - the ending part, at least. He even pointed a gun at David Letterman on national TV when trying to make his point during an interview. This got him sent to prison for twelve years, giving Rudy Randolph plenty of time to achieve commercial success with his comic, but at a price - his fans only read the comic and bought Gun Man merchandise to be ironic. Not a single person subscribed to Rudy Randolph's firm belief that guns and shooting were the highest zen known to man. And Rudy Randolph felt this without having owned or so much as held a gun even once in his life. His affinity for firearms came from something deeper than intuition or religious conviction. The fact of the matter was, Rudy Randolph was Gun Man. He simply hadn't been born properly equipped to fire projectiles from his body, and plastic surgeons laughed at the idea of crafting a human being into a massive gun. Damn the limitations of human flesh!

Comfortably wealthy and ill at ease with life, Rudy Randolph found himself seeking out internet newsgroups once again, this time achieving a modicum of peace in conversations held with fellow Sopranos enthusiasts. They laughed together at the idea that the mob didn't exist. They laughed together at the political power mafia groups must have held. They laughed together at the fact that none of them had gotten past second base with a woman. And they agreed that Fat Tony was the best character on The Simpsons.

Internet camaraderie can be a dangerous thing. Joey Burkhart showed up in their internet relay chat room one night and announced that he was autistic, as it could have been the only explanation for his failures with the opposite sex. (As opposed to his crippling body odor or sole pick-up line - "HOW 'BOUT FUCKIN' ME!?" - which he insisted would eventually not only work, but work spectacularly. He was wrong, of course, but you didn't need to be told that.)

"It's gotta be da Asperger's!" he typed. "Y'know, dem ass burgers. Dey always fuckin' things up." Yes, the individuals in this newsgroup even went out of their way to type as though they were no more than two-dimensional offensive Italian stereotypes, when they were all unmarried internet geeks nearing their forties with no real friends. And none of them were actually Italian, either. Such was the severity of their delusion.

"Yeah!" Jimmy Snackpack agreed. "I bets we all got dis shits. No wonda we get along so well! We should form our own mafia family! Then the world'd respect a buncha screws like us." Jimmy knew that 'screw' was an insulting term, but still liked the way it felt to pronounce the word far too much to treat it as such.

One by one, the other members of the newly formed "Aspie Mafia" decided that their poor social skills could only mean an accurate self-diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. Rudy Randolph went along with the rest of them on this, simply because he didn't want to be left out of the group. As he lay in bed at night, he questioned his decision, repeating to himself, "Hey, I'm a gun, not some kinda retard."

For those offended by this point, let us remind you that there's no such thing as a politically correct gangster. Or in the least, that was one of the many ideas that Rudy Randolph and his group subscribed to. They were not only pitiable outcast victims of a cruel society that didn't understand their disorder, they were superior human beings because of their perceived suffering. None of them were simply insufferable, narcissistic pricks, oh no, not a one.

Following a few arranged meetings in real life, the members of the "Aspie Mafia" all began to wear gray trench coats and sunglasses everywhere they went - even at night. After going underground and anonymous, the "Aspie Mafia" began to take work from irate local geeks. This mostly amounted to being paid to rough up local Dungeons & Dragons games at several comic book stories, and paid well enough to keep these self-proclaimed goombahs well-fed and thoroughly sloshed. It also funded the purchase of Hoagina - Rudy Randolph's classic Webley Mk VI revolver, which he named in the feminine after a particularly good sandwich he'd recently eaten.

With Hoagina in hand, Rudy Randolph felt complete, invincible, like one a-spicy meatball. Nothing in the world could stop him. He could even take the lives of his own comrades if he so chose - they weren't nearly as good a shot, and preferred a good baseball bat to a sidearm in their line of work. Hit jobs began to roll in, and together with Hoagina, Rudy Randolph brought a hail of bullets down upon greater Milwaukee.

It was only this Christmas that doubts once again came to inhabit the mind of Rudy Randolph. That maybe he wasn't a gun. That instead, he might have just been better off actually sleeping with some of those women who'd thrown themselves at him back when he was still a respected artist and moderately attractive in his youth. Now he looked like something they'd cut off an obese Steve Schirripa impersonator. And after a particularly nasty hit, he wasn't sure his heart was in the work anymore.

"I don't know what to say," he said to the regular bartender as he drowned his sorrows in gin and bourbon. "You shoulda seen the look on those kids' faces when I plugged da guy."

"I hear ya," the bartender said, unsure as to whether he should ignore the man or call the cops on the unlikely hitman. From the outside, he looked like a deluded accountant, or maybe an out-of-work teamster.

"Who the fuck calls in a hit on a guy who dresses up like Santa? He seemed like a pretty stand-up guy, and da kids..." Rudy Randolph was finding it increasingly difficult to finish sentences. "Dey'll never b'lieve in Crimmass again." Rudy Randolph began to sob.

"Hey, look," said the bartender, feeling sympathetic on Christmas Eve. "How about I call you a cab, huh? You've had a little too much to drink, and I bet you'll feel better once you've slept this off."

"Yer not lishtening!" Rudy Randolph shouted. The bar was empty, so he could act out all he wanted. "I fuckin' KILLED a Shanta! I FUCKIN' KILLED HIM! IN FRONT OF CHILDREN!"

"Are you sure that wasn't just a movie you saw?" the bartender asked. "Maybe it'd be better if I took you to a rehab clinic."

"NO! I've had enough!" Rudy Randolph exclaimed, struggling to stay afloat as Gun Man threatened to consume him once more. "We keep killing people! We're a buncha no-good screwball murderers! The mob's nothin' to look up to! I jusht wanted to draw cartoons!"

"Whoa, slow down," the bartender said, raising his hands defensively as Rudy Randolph heaved Hoagina onto the bar. "How about I make you some coffee? We can go have a chat with the police after this. If you turn the others in, I bet they'd give you a good plea bargain."

"Who's gettin' a plea bargain, huh?" asked Tommy Hoffman, the de-facto leader of the "Aspie Mafia." He'd come in and taken a seat at the bar without anybody noticing during Rudy Randolph's tantrum.

"Oh god, make it shtop," Rudy Randolph cried, looking down at his half-finished glass. "I just don't want to hurt anymore. No more o' dis job."

"Chin up, buddy," said Tommy, giving Rudy Randolph a playful punch in the shoulder. "Worse things've happened. We'll getcha through this. Joey said you seemed kinda down lately. He's offering to take you in - give ya someplace to sleep and feel at home for a few days. How 'bout that?"

"I already squealed," Rudy Randolph said with a sniff. "I love youse guys, though. You're real pals, tryin' to help me like this." He was too drunk to really know what he was saying anymore.

"Of course, you also just made it clear that you can't be trusted to keep quiet about our little operation," Tommy said, tapping his fingers thoughtfully on the countertop. "Enjoy that drink there. You're finished."

"I retract that last statement about lovin' youse guys."

--

Wasn't that just another wonderful vaguely holiday-themed character exercise? It was indeed. And now that it's Christmas morning and all that, I suggest you go have a good one. Beats the alternative.

Let Us Give Thanks

Holiday time again! I've got another gaming-related entry in the pipeline (Just what you were all waiting for, no doubt), but for now? You're getting another terrible holiday-themed short story - my first Thanksgiving story. That sound of silence? That's a million people entering cardiac arrest at the thought of such a story from an individual like myself - it's just that exciting a prospect.

There's a lot of important themes in this one - family, kung fu - actually, that's about it. But do enjoy nonetheless. It's my job to help you lose a few braincells while I in turn exercise my brain before turning it to soup on holiday events in Kingdom of Loathing, Guild Wars, and Animal Crossing: City Folk.

--

Let Us Give Thanks

"Good evening, Yorkies and filthy humans alike," announced the Grand Yorkie over the Johnson family's transistor radio. It was Thanksgiving here in New Yorkshire City, where the Yorkshire Terriers were king, and a breed quite nostalgic by nature. (Nikola Tesla might've owned a Yorkie at some point. Or maybe he crossed paths with one. Nobody knows for sure.)

"The pre-Christmas season is upon us already, so I just thought I'd remind you this year - as I do every year - to take a few minutes out to buy something once you've finished your dinners. Any citizen who fails to do so within 12 hours of the designated dinner hour will be punished by stoning." They called it stoning, but what the Grand Yorkie referred to was actually an established practice of bombarding offending members of society with little hollow plastic toy bones - a sight far more common in NYC than any actual stones. It was almost never fatal - so long as you kept your mouth closed and lacked particularly oversized nostrils - but it was quite an annoyance, and physically unpleasant enough to serve as an effective criminal deterrent.

"And remember to save a doggie bag for your household Yorkie! If you don't, it's punishable by death, but of course I don't need to remind you people of that! Yes I do." With that, the radio cut off, the Grand Yorkie's annual Thanksgiving address complete. He was one of the more loving and appreciative grand tyrants over the city's human populace - he even allowed the humans to speak of themselves as though they were still in control of society without punishment. "Even the smallest of creatures deserve some sense of pride," he'd said on the matter. The Grand Yorkie was a truly noble fellow.

"He's done, George," said Agnes Johnson, nudging her dozing husband with her elbow.

"What?" the aging military man snorted, awaking with a start. "Oh, right." George Johnson had done twelve tours on the moon, fighting for human control over the moon secessionists - like many of his fellow veterans, he referred to them as "moonies," a very politically incorrect term that none of you should ever make use of in your daily lives unless you're sincerely committed to offending your colleagues of moon descent - and spent the past six years in a moon prison camp. Most of these years were spent subsisting on government moon cheese and playing mini-golf - a pastime most frustrating in moon gravity. Some have even been known to call it a form of torture.

"Time for the holiday prayer, I guess," George grunted, pushing himself to his feet. Only Agnes held him in her gaze, the rest of his family a thousand miles away - mostly metaphorically. His twenty year old deadbeat son, Billy, was more concerned with the latest bootleg moon music and beating his heroin addiction than giving his dominating father the respect he felt he was entitled to. His twenty-seven year old daughter, Ana, was off in orbital graduate school, present only in hologram form - her holographic image hadn't refreshed in a full half hour. And George's mother - his poor, sweet old mother - was over 600 years old and not particularly concerned with anything going on around her anymore.

"Ahem," George cleared his throat dramatically. No response. Gritting his teeth, he placed his hands firmly on the table in a futile effort to draw the others' attention, and began to speak. "On this day, let us give thanks. Let us thank the original pilgrim family - the Thankertons, for whom the term is named - who first came to this great nation centuries ago bearing the gift of disease, which they spread across the land. From this bountiful disease we sprang, laying waste to the heathens who had yet to discover Jesus-in-a-bun. Jesus-in-a-bun! You eat it for breakfast and lunch, and if you even consider not eating it, you deserve to die. Jesus-in-a-bun! From Christco. Though we even now suffer at the hand of the Yorkies - er, kindly as they can be, it's really more our fault that we suffer - let us continue to curse the name of the swamp people who rose from the marshes of south Florida. Nobody likes those boggarts. Amen."

"Yeah, yeah, real touching," groaned Howell, the household Yorkie, who'd chosen the name for himself in developing a fondness for the human television relic known as Gilligan's Island. "Now how about horking some-a that turkey my way?"

"Now Thurston, you know that's not how we use that word," Agnes corrected the dog with a kindly smile.

"It's Howell! HOW-WELL! How many times are you going to get this wrong?" the dog bellowed, standing up and attempting to put his paws on his hips in emulating a human stance of indignation. Of course, being a dog, he just ended up flopping over.

George did his best to ignore the dog's usual antics. Under New Yorkshire City law, there had to be at least one Yorkshire Terrier in every home. The Grand Yorkie had to keep the humans in line somehow. And though humanity had lost its grip on society in that city long ago - turned out their grip was much more slippery than they'd thought - life hadn't changed all that much. Sure, the talking dogs took a little getting used to, but it's not as though the humans had been smart enough to figure out their language to begin with. While frequently not the most adaptable of creatures, humans do occasionally show a tremendous talent for being too lazy to care about things - the day the Yorkies began to speak is simply another example of this. Countless terrible children's movies may have made most people completely numb to the concept.

"So," George said upon once again clearing his throat. "Who wants the first cut? Billy?"

Billy wasn't listening. He was too busy rotting his brain with that hyper-techno music - the kind that just amounts to a bunch of random noise and screaming. He was also shooting a little heroin at the dinner table, but that just happened to be the way he rolled, to stick to archaic turns of phrase. (Family dinners made him shoot up. That was his reasoning, anyway.) Billy resented his father, falling into one of the two standard military brat archetypes as he had - the resentful and rebellious variety, as opposed to the aggressively pro-military, anti-thinking type. Both archetypes naturally serving as examples of humanity at its more annoying.

"Billy!" George shouted, losing his patience.

"Answer your father, Billy," Agnes smiled to him. Living with a husband suffering from not only post traumatic stress disorder, but future post traumatic stress disorder, was a trying ordeal for the aging woman. She placed her hopes in her children, and the idea that George might someday learn to keep his temper more in check, and maybe stop beating up people in the supermarket. But with the Earth government having cut funding for counseling and psychiatric help for soldiers to a mere micro-penny - quite literally, just to emphasize how little the regressionists cared for the notion of mental health - her hopes had faded considerably over the years.

"Whatevsers, old peoples," Billy grunted. "How 'bout you gimme some-a that breast meat and one-a them drumsticks?"

"The drumsticks are mine," George hissed, cutting into the side of the turkey.

"Ow!" The room fell silent as the turkey shuddered, having cried out in pain. Talking dogs, and even canine rule were one thing - talking turkeys were another.

"What was that?" George asked aloud, unsure just who he was asking.

"Geez, that stings," the turkey muttered, standing upright on its drumsticks. "Yowch. Seriously, man, watch it with that thing."

"Hey, you're Thanksgiving dinner - dinner doesn't talk to me like that," George said through clenched teeth.

"I think it just did!" Billy laughed. "Man, that was some good heroin."

"We already know you like heroin! Stop reminding us every five minutes!" George snarled, then turning his attention back to the turkey. "And you! Shut up and let us eat you!"

"How would you like it if I ate YOU?!" the turkey posited, shaking a wing in George's direction.

"What?! You can't eat me! You lack mandibles!" George said, waving a two-pronged fork at the turkey menacingly.

"You're talkin' like a moonie again, dad!" Billy called out. (For those wondering about Billy's uncharacteristically energetic behavior for a heroin addict, it all comes down to that they cut the drug differently in the future. Future-heroin's not the same. That's all you need to know.)

"I was a prisoner of war for six years!" George bellowed, stabbing at the turkey.

In a moment of inexplicable dexterity - especially considering that the turkey lacked any sort of digits with which to grasp objects - the turkey sidestepped George's lunge, pulling the fork away and stabbing it into the back of Grandma Johnson's hand, pinning it to the table. She didn't seem to notice. In fact, she didn't react at all - nor did she bleed. Another perk of aging: the gradual transformation of blood to sawdust.

"Who's to say I lack mandibles!?" the turkey defiantly asked. "I'm made of tofu!! I never had a head to begin with!"

"We're health-conscious in the future!" George shouted in a moment of angry unnecessary exposition to nobody. "If you're looking for a fight, turkey, you've found one!"

By this point, Agnes had left the apartment to get medical help, seeing as neither of the Johnson men were in any way useful when a crisis arose - as much of a crisis as you could really consider a grandma-stabbing, anyway. Ana had undoubtedly ditched the family dinner as soon as she felt she could fake technical problems, herself - a regular practice of hers during any family event at which she was expected to appear. One could hardly blame her.

"What, so I'm a turkey now?" The tofurkey probably would have had an indignant look on its face, had it actually had a face.

"Well, it is what you are."

"Racists."

"Hey, I may be a -" Billy's attention span failed him, as it frequently did. "Let's just kick this guy's ass."

"Watch it," the tofurkey warned the remaining Johnsons. "I'm a one-turkey army."

As the tofurkey spoke, Billy ran over to the stereo and put on The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army."

"So now you're a turkey, are you!?" George demanded, pointing his knife at the aggressive tofurkey. "Turn that shit off, Billy! This is no time for classical music!"

"It's okay when I say it," the tofurkey said, just as Howell leapt up onto the table.

"Turkey time!" shouted the dog, plunging through the stuffing, his mouth gaping - only to bite down on air.

"Not this time, rover!" the tofurkey riposted, sending the dog flying through the window across the room with a solid tofu-drumstick roundhouse kick.

Taking the opening he'd been given, George followed the tofurkey's lead and sent him out the window after the dog with a slow-motion roundhouse kick of his own. (Because everything's cooler in slow motion.) This attack sent Grandma Johnson to the floor, taking the entire table with her. Predictably, the Johnson men didn't even notice.

"Looks like Thanksgiving dinner's ruined again," George mused. "Of course, we didn't get Thanksgiving back in the prison camp."

"Shut up, dad -" Billy's attention span gave way again. "We're in trouble anyway. The dog, y'know." Any failure to properly pamper one's household Yorkie was a punishable crime - any abuse of said Yorkie would be blamed on its owners, and regarded even more harshly.

"Yes, it looks like we'll be spending this Christmas working in the nog mines again," George said, resignedly. "This is what I spent those six years working for."

Billy walked over to the window, an almost-thoughtful look creasing his face. "Say, if we can't eat tofu now either, what are we supposed to eat?"

"I don't know, son," George said, placing a hand on his son's shoulder. "I just don't know."

"Don't touch me."

"Don't you tell me what to do."

--

So, as you saw, our dysfunctional family didn't pull together and learn to work together as a team because they secretly love each other and just wanted to pretend to be dysfunctional when they only were at a shallow level at best to simply make a one-dimensional narrative work - this isn't a movie. And now there's holiday-themed punishment looming overhead. Basically, the moral of this story is, whatever you do, stay on Yorkshire Terriers' good side. And also tofu might rise up and start wrecking cities someday - I'm not saying that it will, just that it might. (Note: This idea also applies to anything and everything else conceivable in our world.)

Being that it's Thanksgiving now, dinner likely some number of hours off for most of you - at least, speaking to the American readers (As for the rest of you, I guess you can take this entry as an admission that Horace Engdahl was right - American writers are too isolated and insular to be Nobel prize worthy. In fact, you can take every bit of this entry as evidence to that fact and treat it as though every writer in American history was involved. I insist.) - so go take it easy for a while. It's been a long year, and we have a rough holiday season ahead. Put your feet up, and gorge yourself on whatever you like to on this foodiest of holidays, whatever your personal dietary preferences may be.

Skeletons are Eating My Bacon Bits

It's Halloween, isn't it? (Of course it's Halloween, that was a rhetorical question. ... Those of you who unconsciously said "Yes" or even so much as nodded in response to the question - go have a cookie.)

As I prepare to finally post this, I'm writing from my new PC - a Dell Inspiron 530S, which I've christened Freyja, continuing my death incarnation theme in naming my electronics. Very sleek, far more powerful than my last machine (Not exactly cutting edge by today's standards still, but nonetheless very nice, after coming from a dated HP Pavilion in Enma-sama.), and as of far? While it's pretty odd going from WinXP to adapting to Mac OS X for the better part of a week to Vista, Windows Vista isn't too bad. (Though I'm glad I didn't get in on it while it was the wreck it was early on.) I'm pretty happy about all this, as you can tell, but I won't prattle on any longer - there're more important things to get to.

It's been quite a while since I last wrote a cheesy little holiday short story in here. I did it twice last year, and they never really got much of a response. I kind of doubt anybody read them. But I'm sure one of two of you - even if only in part, I can still add you together and pretend you equal at least one whole person - have been wondering if I was ever going to do any more of those. Inside, you've longed deeply for a third part in my series of holiday-themed "MAKE 'EM LAUGH, MAKE 'EM LAUGH, MAKE 'EM LAUGH (This is the part where you punch me in the face for obnoxiously singing this)" short stories.

Lucky for you, I've found enough inspiration to throw a third one together. Put your hands together for attempt number three! (It's genius, and you just don't realize it yet. That's okay, sometimes it takes people a while. Maybe a decade or fifty.)

--

Skeletons are Eating My Bacon Bits

I was having a pretty bad day when the skeletons first showed up. There was a power blink in the apartment complex overnight, so my alarm didn't go off and I didn't have time to shave before work. Then I got a flat tire and was late to work, where the boss chewed me out and I had to make up some excuse like that I was too unstable to drive properly and basically guilted him into letting me go home early. (I think that's about the third time I've done that now.) Of course, that didn't help too much - the in-laws just had to call when I was at my desk. They wanted to know when they could come pick up my wife's things.

"I was her husband," I told them. "I keep them! I keep them!" I spoke this way because I find that kind of bad grammar hilarious. But I didn't use any weird accents with it, because I didn't want to risk offending any coworkers in earshot. Harold Wong in Software Design was probably my only friend left lately. He was the only friend I'd had other than my wife since we got married. Her parents didn't find my response as funny as I did - but she probably would have laughed.

As I set my bag down on my bed after getting home from work, just wanting to eat my hamburger and watch some comedy on TV before bed, I saw my closet door open - out marched two skeletons. One was short and stout - his actual bone structure more resembling a cartoon character than an actual former human being - and the other looked more or less normal human-sized. I probably would have been bothered by this more, but nothing really bothered me lately. I just wanted to eat my dinner.

At first, I wondered if their emerging from my closet of all places wasn't some sort of weird vision representing some latent homosexual tendencies. But looking back, I was married for a good eight years before my wife's death a few months ago. (That was the first true grade-F July 4th I've ever had. Even when Uncle Earl had a coronary halfway through a hot dog four years ago, my burger turned out perfectly, making it a solid C-grade family gathering. Everything kinda balanced out.) We'd had a pretty healthy sex life - not once did I ever think to myself, "Man, this whole vagina thing's kinda overrated." Not that anybody would put it that way. I really loved her, after all. And I'd certainly made some good memories with my previous five girlfriends - save maybe for the one who wanted me to choke her. Things got pretty uncomfortable by the end of that relationship. So it definitely wasn't a sexual orientation thing - I was comfortable with who I was.

Then I wondered if perhaps these literal skeletons in my closet weren't that Jesus guy trying to tell me something. But then, last time I saw him at my door, I punched him out. I wasn't interested in their damn church gathering or their damn potato salad - I didn't really care that their congregation was looking for new local members. You do not try to sell your religion door-to-door. Then the woman holding the pamphlets for their "Cheezus Christ" pizza party started yelling at me about how that Jesus guy was just acting - yeah, like we didn't already know that - and how my behavior was completely inappropriate and they needed me to be responsible and take him to the hospital or something. I pretty much tuned her out halfway through. I had more important things to think about at the time - like where I could find one of those toy wind-up monkeys with the cymbals. My wife always wanted one of those.

The skeletons follow me everywhere these days. I really wish they wouldn't. The fat one - a skeleton can be fat, right? - keeps asking people to guess his name. When he tells them it's "Boner," they roll around on the floor laughing as though it was the funniest joke ever told. I've heard funnier. People are avoiding me at work these days, all because of these obnoxious skeletons. Mostly because of these obnoxious skeletons. I haven't exactly been a regular cheerbucket since my wife died. But I didn't really have many hobbies, so her death inevitably comes up in most conversations. Harold Wong won't even talk to me anymore. One of the skeletons keeps doing a "Chinaman" impression every time he comes by to chat. It's not cool.

I haven't visited my wife's grave at all in the past month since the skeletons showed up. I'd really like to talk to her and let off a little steam, but I'm pretty sure if I go there, these skeletons'll raise her from the dead and make her like them. As much as I'd like to see her again, I don't really like the idea of their doing that. I'm pretty sure the fat one would try to sleep with her - and I don't think skeletons are really capable of copulation, but I'm sure that one would find a way. My wife was a strong, brilliant woman - she deserves better than that. I haven't really slept much since her death.

I'm hoping these skeletons go away soon - at least back into my closet, or wherever they originally came from. I'm getting pretty tired of their antics and I'm starting to think it's about time I bought a gun. Guns are expensive. I haven't had much money lately.

--

Wasn't that equal parts spooky and holiday cheer-filled? Yes - yes it was. Now go have some candy to take the edge off. (No, none of that was melancholy. I don't know what you're talking about.)

"Frosty" the Festive Holiday Zeppelin

I know you all missed me dearly while I was gone - ached for my next entry, even. It's been a long week, finishing up some assorted work, assorted seasonal stress, and so forth. Took a while for inspiration to strike me. Obviously, it's often more scarce than I'd like, but I got some more work on Project 27 Days done, which I'm still hoping to finish relatively soon and finally get published sometime in 2008, if I can manage to find an agent willing to represent me, and they, in turn, can manage to find me a publisher. At least, if all works out, I finally graduate today.

I hope none of you have been grievously injured or killed since my last entry - though my writing does tend to have that effect on people. I need readers, after all. ... Or do I?

Uh, anyway, without further ado, after the long wait, I now present to you a new enchanting tale of holiday cheer well representative of Christmas (Or Crimbo, as some call it.) in the modern world. Pass it down to your children, and in turn, their children. Burn it - scar it into their memories. This is a story of holiday cheer not to be forgotten. Or questioned.

---
"Frosty" the Festive Holiday Zeppelin

These days, the holiday season seemed to be officially starting sooner and sooner every passing year. This year, it began in July. Families in America spent July 4th gathered around their televisions, taking in the splendor and wonderment that was the new holiday special, "Santa Sinks a Commie U-Boat." It was pretty violent and tasteless, but then, without these thematic elements, where would American family entertainment be? Fraggle Rock? They had to bomb that after hearing allegations that they might've been harboring some of the gays. (Later, it turned out someone misheard the last part of "Dance Your Cares Away.")

Behind as ever, Amherst, Massachusetts' local NFL game preparation team at the newly constructed Bart Simpson Stadium toiled away, hoping to make a memorable mark on the sporting television world at the Amherst Noam Chomskies' debut football game, just a few days off in early November - critically late in the holiday season, as Robot Santa No. 3 would soon be making its rounds in the AmericaDome. (Following mass global nuclear fallout, every nation sequestered its citizens from the rest of the world in a massive dome spanning the nation. Not that this did much to protect anybody from the nuclear zombie armies that rose up in America's southwest but weeks after the war began and ended - largely due to the growing boredom of all sides involved. These zombies did, however, make construction of the southwestern quadrant a real pain in the ass.) Nobody really liked Robot Santa No. 3, as it was voiced by reviled comic-beast Jeff Foxworthy, one of history's greatest monsters. But nobody really knew how to reprogram the Robot Santas - a minor inconvenience when Robot Santa No. 2 became self-aware and began eating children instead of dispensing gifts. Nobody had stopped him yet. That might have required using a baseball bat. And a small amount of force. That would constitute exercise, which Emperor Bushie IV decreed treason back in 2112 before he fell into an eventually fatal thirty-year coma from alcohol poisoning.

To celebrate the 2222 NFL season, the Amherst team planned to send the crowd on a trip down memory lane by flying an old zeppelin painted to resemble famous historical figure Frosty the Snowman over the field at halftime. At this point, everything was just about good to go. The zeppelin had been painted white, and the front had been painted to resemble a snowman's face, though the Earth hadn't seen snow in over seven hundred years, so there were some mild concerns that the zeppelin may only confuse and anger the spectators when they were expecting to be entertained. It wasn't going to be easy outdoing the Denver Dinosaurs' halftime show with those girls and their magical musical orifices. That just took talent. And in modern America, talent involving various uses for one's orifices was the only kind worth having. Sigmund Freud might have had a stroke, were he to behold so many sexual psychological fixations displayed at once.

With Project Frosty nearly complete, Red Dodger and Dave Forkington were looking forward to kicking back with some brewskis and watching a human air hockey tournament. Manufacturing had just delivered the all-important giant hat to complete the Frosty-zeppelin, and for once, things seemed to be going according to plan - this rarely happened, as by 2222, most people had no attention span to speak of. Red was a rare exception, but then, he'd always been considered a bit slow in the cognitive faculties, and that's how you end up working for the NFL in the first place.

"I can't believe this is actually working out," Red said, as he watched Aaron the overseer direct the lowering of the hat onto the Frosty-zeppelin from the command center window at the Amherst NFL HQ.

"No kidding, looks like I may get to get this cancer treated a bit this year after all," said Dave, between walkie-talkie command relays to Aaron.

After the crane finished lowering it, the field technicians spent a few minutes securing electro-fasteners to the hat, ensuring that it wouldn't go flying away or falling off and killing anybody when airborne, and reinforcing its sonic defenses to render the giant mutant bats that filled the skies harmless.

"Beautiful," Red smiled somewhat sincerely. "This is the sort of thing that got me into this business."

"I thought it was because you couldn't find work anywhere else, what with people hating the way you talk - complete thoughts, and all. I know that's what got me here. I wanted to be a doctor. Maybe see if I could actually help some people. Maybe not die of cancer," Dave mused.

"We're all dying of cancer inside, Dave, we all are," said Red, watching the scene outside. He was right. Ever since the fallout, most people had at least one form of cancer at all times, but most had mutated enough to ensure their long-term survival. Cancer was just a real pain in the ass. Nobody got any cool side effects from their mutations either, just extra nipples or testicles, occasionally a secondary brain they'd have to carry around in a petri dish, lest they forget how to breathe.

Moments after the hat was secured, things went awry for poor old Red and company. The painted face on the front of the zeppelin sprung to life, and Frosty began to scream, "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" And just kept screaming that over and over. Up close, judging by the technicians' state of panic, it must have been a terrifying sight to behold. But from the relative safety of the command center, it was really just kind of annoying, like a kid throwing a fit in a grocery store.

"Well, this is different," said Red, interested enough to raise one of his eyebrows - but only the one. Even the sight of Frosty shooting laser beams from his eyes and mouth, vaporizing everything it could in the area wasn't enough to make that second eyebrow budge.

"Hey, looks like there was a bit of magic in that old hat!" Dave exclaimed without a sense of irony.

"Shut the hell up, Dave," Red spat, "It's not old, we just got it in from manufacturing two days ago! You know how much trouble this's gonna cause?"

"Should bring a bit of cheer to the kiddies, don'tcha think?" Dave said, always the optimist. "If it doesn't traumatize them for life, that is. Or kill them."

"Well, they're not my kids," Red said, picking up the phone. "Keep an eye on Aaron, will ya? It'd be better if we could keep initial casualties to a minimum."

"Too late," Dave observed, "he just got vaporized by one of Frosty's eye-beams."

"So much for worker's comp - hey, Hank?" Red got through to manufacturing. "Yeah, yeah, we've got a bit of a problem here. I'm not sure what you guys were thinking, but this hat you sent us - yeah, that one - seems like it'd pose a bit of a thread to the spectators.
"No, I don't particularly like spectators, that's true. I'm more of an epic-porn man than a live sporting events fan, myself. Well, it just seems like killing them would still be a pretty bad idea. I'm no saint or anything, but I don't see how we can let Frosty fly now in good conscience. Anyway, Dave had an idea, so I have to ask - you guys make any new hires in the past month?
"Zarlock the Planet-Tainter, huh? You guys didn't, perchance, run a background check on the guy before hiring him, did you? No? Yeah, I get it, he sounds like a cool guy. I wish the dimwits I work with knew how to grow pot. Anyway, I'm pretty sure he's one of those evil wizards - you know, warlocks? - that kept turning up in the news a few years ago. No, I'm not being judgmental, I just think he might've put a curse on the hat, or some kind of black magic anyway. Yeah? Yeah, it does look pretty badass, but my job's on the line here. We want the stands full of children who'll grow up to be big boosters for the Chomskies, rather than distance themselves like what happened with the Philly Fuckwads last month. I'm not sure what they were thinking with that name either, don't ask me.
"Let's get back on topic though - could you ask Zarlock to maybe come out here to get rid of the spell? It's getting kinda messy and I've got a wife and kid to feed. No, I haven't tried calling the fire department yet. What're they gonna do, really? Come on, water has never beaten laser beams. Geezus, what movies do you watch? That has never happened - Napoleon was proven to have powerful optic lasers at Waterloo. Yeah? Shut up. I'm running out of options here, what do you expect me to do?
"What do you mean send him up without the hat? Without the hat he's just a big white smiley face! You know how many supremacists that could incite? Yeah, I know what happened in Charleston. That's what I'm trying to stop from happening here. What? Repainting it in blackface is entirely inappropriate. This is the damn twenty-third century, you think I want to reopen those wounds yet again?
"Great, just great. Well, I wouldn't even know how to suggest we get that hat off again - it's killing everything in a ten mile radius and nobody's even flying it yet! I'm not sure how we could even get a pilot over there in one piece. A bunch of lead shields, maybe... regardless, you guys are assholes, you know that? Yeah, fuck your mother too! Next time try doing some background checks before you hire even more warlocks, huh? Some of us have advertisers to placate!" Red angrily slammed the phone down.

"Any luck?" Dave asked.

"Nope. Apparently somebody already got in touch with corporate and they're blaming us for not checking for magical traps before installing the hat. Looks like Christmas is ruined. Again."

"Well, I was planning on jumping the Canadian border anyway. I'd rather take my chances with the giant beavers than stick around and risk losing my health insurance again," Dave shrugged.

Red simply glared out the window at Frosty, as it continued to devastate the surrounding city blocks. "This was a big waste of everybody's time, you know that?"

---

Didn't you feel your insides just warm up and pickle from holiday cheer in reading that? If they didn't, you may want to contact a medical professional. Right now. And also do the same if your insides did pickle too. Better delicious than sorry.

What?

Anyway, that's enough from me for now. Hopefully you didn't end yourself after reading that. For this is an important story. You must remember that.

Yeah, I need to find some more worthwhile things to muse about rather than just writing even more stupid comedy. It's been a while since I last wrote something here that actually meant something. At least this entry was better than that last one, though, eh?

Wait, that's not a Yule Log at all!

"At last!" you all just exclaimed to yourselves, "a holiday season themed update! Surely but the first of many to come!" You sit there shaking giddily in your seats while those around you become genuinely concerned and wonder if you have blood sugar problems. But that's okay. What do they know? They may be thinking that you're diabetic on the outside, but secretly, they're all diabetic on the inside.

And thus, the holiday season - much like Santa Claus when he first came to Earth, riding the meteor the killed all the dinosaurs - has arrived. You'd better believe there've been casualties. Sure, I could harp on the occasional news story you hear every year where someone abruptly dies when out in the madness of the holiday shopping season rush, whether trampled on Black Friday or simply dropping dead from exhaustion later into December. But these stories are relatively unimportant. After all, these are humans we're talking about here - they're always just dying for one reason or another. I'd wonder why someone hasn't addressed the whole species yet with the one statement that could probably put an end to that - "Cut it out already!" - but humans dying is a good thing. If they didn't, the whole planet'd be even more clogged up with various biological flotsam, and another popular mythical figure would have to come crashing in to destroy us. Then all that will be left is a dead, lifeless rock for the giant monster-Santa and space-Krampus to duke it out on. Sure, it would be awesome, but with everybody dead, nobody'd be there to film it and exploit the chaos for magnificent riches. And isn't that all existence is about? Then again, that seems to be the Libertarian philosophy, and I have to say, no thanks.

The best we can hope for here as citizens aboard Spaceship Earth is to re-enact these battles each holiday season, by constructing gigantic twelve-story Santa robots with giant Fists O' Fury(tm) and real working eye laser beams that could level a city block, and having them battle it out with our neighbors' corresponding Krampus-bots. Which will be traditionally lazily constructed, by piling hundreds of full trash bags atop one another from May onward - with beard clippings glued to them, as Krampus' facial hair was pretty spotty at best - and take to the streets in jubilation every December 25th as we attack our neighbors and fill the streets with filth! After five years, the world will be consumed by complete holiday dystopia and we'll finally begin to celebrate the cyberpunk classic, Blade Runner, year round. I forget exactly what the point of this rambling was, but I guess when you get down to it, it's that there's a distinct deficiency of robots and chaos in the holiday season. This is 2007. Get with the program, people!

Holiday traditions. Pretty nutty stuff. Comedian Jim Gaffigan's pointed out well himself that many of them sound like the actions of a drunk man, bringing a tree into the house to decorate for Jesus, or hanging up some leaves so you can get some action. But these traditions? Antiquated. Archaic. Forgettable. Even bull-plop, as individuals afraid to use actual curse words might say. It's time we adopt new traditions. New traditions for the new millennium. The following are just a few ideas.

1) Naked Caroling - A new age spin on a tired classic that nobody does anymore because carolers are annoying. Mind you, if you're even moderately attractive, you might be better off not doing this, as it may titillate listeners instead of traumatize them, producing the opposite effect to the ideal. Anybody can do it. Just venture outside into the chilly winter night clad only in the horrific fleshsuit you were born in and give your friends, acquaintances, and neighbors reason to have you thrown out of the neighborhood. You might not even have to pay to venture to new places and meet new people! Even if they have to sign a form when you first meet them acknowledging their awareness of your status as a registered sex offender. Someday, that'll just be another story to tell the inmates.

2) Yuletide Propagandizing - Politics, politics, politics. Who doesn't love to talk politics, engaging in a rousing debate with people of opposing beliefs for whom you once held respect, and ultimately ended up in a screaming match with, resembling deranged toddlers? This holiday season, try wearing your political beliefs on your sleeve by engaging everyone you know in angry, aggressive political debate - because you're right, and they're wrong - then ending it by shouting "Merry Christmas, motherfucker!" as you stomp off and slam the nearest door you can find. If you're one of those dicks who goes out of their way to openly state controversial political beliefs for the sole purpose of inciting people - things like, "racism is just an opinion! Freedom of speech! You can't judge me for having an opinion!" and "Ayn Rand was a genius!" - you probably are a Libertarian, and we all hate you and your precious Ron Paul. Your participation in this newly cherished holiday tradition is unwanted.

3) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Vandal - Petty vandalism is always fun for everybody. It's a victimless crime! (Unless you count the people whose stuff you messed up. I don't.) Instead of merely writing obscene messages or questionable '80s cartoon references on bathroom stalls, why not write them on your neighbor's tacky plastic Santa/sleigh display out front? They need to know that Jem was not that outrageous after all, and that like many rock stars, she suffered later in life for the same old mistakes made at the height of her fame. Double-necked guitars just weren't cool anymore. Also, bonus points if you can arrange their light displays into something obscene while they're at work.

4) The Eyes of a Christmas Elf - Most of us get invited to holiday parties. Not me, but I don't like parties anyway. Too much noise, too many humans. Regardless, this is a fun game you can play at any holiday party. Upon arrival, pick a stranger - any stranger - and proceed to stare at them from some corner for the rest of the night. They will inevitably notice and become uncomfortable. If they smile or return you look with any sort of positive expression, you must narrow your eyes - almost glower, but keep the rest of your face blank and expressionless. It will ruin their evening, and possibly the rest of their holiday. If they try to approach you, duck behind some people and make your escape to another corner. If they make a big deal out of it and draw all the attendees' attention to their predicament, run up to the second floor of the house - assuming it has one - and jump out a window. Speak not a word during the entirety of the party, and speak not of it afterwards, as though the incident never happened. If successfully executed, you will ruin the entire party. And if you attended said party with a date or spouse, one can safely say that your relationship is over. You had gotten into kind of a rut, anyway.

5) Holly Jolly Freedom of Expression - It's high time the conservatives got what they had coming to them, wouldn't you say? Enough of these "family friendly" holiday displays. Your unique and original commissioned Christmas sculptures are works of impressive art an beautiful displays of human sexuality! If the neighborhood kids' parents want to shield them from the Santa/Mrs. Claus/Frosty three-way and animatronic elf orgy, they can blindfold the little tykes whenever they set foot outside! This is America! They've got to learn about the birds and the bees and the alligators sometime. Think of it as an educational holiday this year.

As you can see, at their core, all new holiday traditions re really about one thing, and one thing only - hate. Specifically, making everybody you have ever been so much as acquainted to despise you. And possibly getting into all sorts of legal trouble. But what a rush! What a thrill! When they come to take you away, at least you can be honest about snorting snow to get into the holiday spirit!

Yeah, this one was mostly incoherent rambling till it found direction later on. I wasn't feeling too inspired this time, and it shows. Haven't come up with a good subject for a more meaningful entry in a while either. I should do that before there's nothing left to this blog but the insane babblings of an inane weirdo. Maybe the next holiday one won't be as terrible.