serialMouse

I had jury duty the other day.

There are several things you don’t want to do when you have jury duty. The first one is not to spend the night before trying to get your Marine Corps buddy to kill off twelve consecutive flaming “La Cucarachas” in the last legal hour of the drinking curfew in Cocoa Beach.

Marines, Kahlua and time limits seldom mix. Plus those guys know twenty-two different ways to kill without mercy or remorse. They are trained extremely well… with your tax dollars no less.

Another one is to justify dropping mescaline at six thirty the next morning in the futile attempt to actually make the 8am sign in deadline thus avoiding the issuance of a Brevard county bench warrant. It’s not so much the trip, which with practice can be handled with ease, but the fact that there are a fuckload of new people in the jury congregation room.

New people and transitions… bad in altered states.

You start to become very aware of the people around you, especially the eyes. There has never been a person in the history of history that could hide the fact they have been up for three straight days to a sober average citizen. Add in the acid and that’s when things get pretty weird.

For those of you who have never experienced jury duty I envy. The boredom is without measure. I found myself fantasizing that some deranged ex-husband who’s final “never-have-custody-of-his-kids” hearing was happening today, and he would burst into the courthouse spraying bullets and lobbing live grenades.

I’ve had jury duty in a couple of places in the United States. Service varies not only from state to state but also from county to county. Brevard county Florida is a special place. Here in Brevard County we love freedom, guns and Jesus. Jews are tolerated, but only because it’s Florida.

The clerk of the Brevard county court is a mid-fifties super sweet Creole. I remember her accent was amazing. I had never heard a white woman with such rich vocal color. At least I’m pretty sure of that… I was more interested in the fact that her head kept increasing in size. Like I said it was becoming a very weird morning.

As she started to click off the rules and regulations I became less and less interested in her anatomy and more interested in what she was saying.

“What a beautiful day it is… right?” she asked her captive audience.

“What brilliant sunshine in the sunshine state! Much like the sunshine of freedom we wake up to everyday as citizens of this great nation!”

The congregation chimed back their approval.

“You are here today to exercise your only true constitutional duty.”

I chalked up her omission of your right to vote to the hallucinogen… I’m cool like that.

“Jury duty is your civic responsibility. The representative system of government cannot function without the right to a trial by a jury of your peers. This is the way God intended.”

I was tempted to shout back “Salam Alaikum my sister!” but there aren’t enough drugs in the universe.

“The American system of government is the greatest system of government in the world…”

“Amen” “Yes ma’am” “Praise” came the varied and interrupting responses.

“…and we are blessed each and every day to serve under the banner of freedom and exceptionalism.”

“Hallelujah!”

“Before you are randomly selected to stand judgment on the scum that will present themselves here today…”

Huh? Wait… ok I was exceptionally high… she might not have said that.

She did say a lot of other things. Her inference to the Lord Jesus, the perfection of the American system of justice… well I figured I wasn’t the only one tripping that morning.

She didn’t mean any harm. She didn’t find anything wrong in conveying her thoughts to a room full of complete strangers. Why would she? There was not a single dissenting voice. No one thought any different.

We finished our morning sermon with the reciting of the preamble to the Constitution as well as the pledge of allegiance. All very prim, proper and patriotic. I managed to find a chair that wasn’t moving and sat for two hours in a sweaty paranoia before we were all dismissed due to plea bargains and a water main break.

Thus endeth my constitutional civic duty for the year.

I’m starting to find reality a bit tough to swallow. I was peaking like Sir Edmund Hillary that morning in the Judge Fran Jamieson courthouse but I’m sure of what I witnessed. I’ve been here, there and everywhere and I have yet to see anything as remarkable as the American hive mind. I wasn’t watching people being intimidated into just believing what they are told. I’ve seen that. This was different. Our more perfect union is changing. It’s going to get silly.

My advice is simple… never drink Kahlua with Marines.

At the end of a particular Duran Duran music video there is one of those moments. The band is whipping across English Harbor on a brilliant luxury yacht, their backs are to the camera and the fashion model protagonist of the video shoot leans into frame and winks.

Her name is Rio… they say… and she dances on the sand.

That wink. That look. The way a woman makes you feel with just a glance… well… I fully understand why the Trojan wars were fought.

By the time I made it to Antigua that particular party had vanished. Rio had left long ago and Antony Price suits were no longer in fashion. And so it goes. Real life never follows the utopian fantasy created in one’s imagination.

The entire collective populace of the United States has lost their fucking minds and America’s worst generation… the baby boomers… have power. I leave the country for a spell and come back to this?

They have changed the game on me. No more space program, no more amazing American innovations like Al Gore’s Internet. Opinion is news, national infrastructure is on its last leg and the only thing that matters in childhood education is the ability to memorize facts for a standardized test.

But we are special. We are the greatest. We always has been, we always will be. The shining city on a hill for all to revere. Back to back World War champs!

Remember… it’s not a lie if you believe it to be true. That’s the real Bush Doctrine.

So now I find myself in a bit of a dilemma. I’m torn between giving up, packing my boards and heading to the banana republics for good or staying here a bit longer and doing what I can to help our nation be all that she can be. It’s a tough choice but in the end I have come up with the only viable solution… I am going to stay a while and do everything in my power in the next few years to get Sarah Palin elected President of these United States.

No shit.

During my Mother’s time the country saw progress in large part because there was a shared sense of duty, statesmanship and compromise for the greater good. Oh sure they hated blacks, fags and women but they bitch smacked Hitler so I’m going to call that a draw.

Now we get the same hate but with no upside.

Money is speech, corporations are people and recording a policeman beating a hippie with your cell phone is a felony. Against you… not the cop. These are all upheld laws of the land.

Congress has a ten percent approval rating yet over ninety-nine percent of these swine will win re-election in November. They can draw their districts any way they want. They can’t lose because they stacked the deck. They service only themselves.

The Supreme Court says that strip-searching a nun who was arrested at an anti-war demonstration is not a violation of her civil rights. And why not… bitch might be packing. As Justice Kennedy said “people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals.” To the United States Supreme Court, it makes perfect sense to ask a citizen to prove their innocence as guilt is now implied. How’s that taste?

We have no liberty, we have no voice, and we have no freedom, so fuck it right? Might as well get mine.

The great America philosopher George Carlin predicted this twenty years ago. He said, “If you have selfish, ignorant citizens then you get selfish, ignorant leaders.” and my girl Sarah is the personification of all of this. She is the leader America needs… the leader America deserves. We are a nation of greedy, narcissistic cunts so we should elect a leader who shares our values.

Plus she’s got that fine ass wink… and we have already established how hard that makes me.

Too late for SP this year, which is a shame. President Obama wins reelection in November 53%/47% but that clears the stage for the greatest Presidential election in my lifetime… 2016. I have already donated $500 seed money to SarahPac and I suggest you do the same.

Greatness is overrated and Sarah gives hope to the millions of Americans unfavored by the exceptional. Once we get her in office I can leave for good with a clear conscious that I did everything in my power to give Columbia exactly what she deserves.

Oh Rio Rio hear them shout across the land… from mountains in the north down to the Rio Grande.

I sometimes think I’ve stumbled into an alternate reality consisting entirely of stupid.

I’m not talking your ordinary garden variety dropping acid with the girl who works the nightshift at the 7-11 stupid. I mean… we’ve all been there. No… this is grade A only in America stupid. Stupid that offends stupid.

I was down on the beach the other day… much drunker than I had intended for a Wednesday… and the topic du jour bouncing between the retirees and local surfcasters was the census. I wasn’t involved in the discussion; I was laying in the sun trying to remember why I was drinking on a Wednesday.

To a man the eavesdropped entertainment around me were totally against the census. Most had decided not to participate, or at least that was their public position. The gist of their argument was that there was no way they would volunteer their private information to the government.

Especially this government.

Sometimes you can’t just speak up and expose this kind of stupid without getting a little on you so I thought it best to just lie there in muted elitist contentment. Besides… fuzzy memories of a process server, a fire and a mini bus full of Canadian tourists were starting to remind me why I was drinking on a Wednesday.

Funny how these God fearing Americans, who love this country so much that they wear American flag wife beaters and have Lee Greenwood ring tones, blanch at a simple fundamental Constitutional provision.

The United States Constitution is a wondrous thing. For all it bestows upon us it only requires a citizen to do two things. One, of course is to respond to the census. The other I believe has something to do with forced conscription in order to keep the King of England from stealing slaves.

The Constitution guarantees my right to paint myself day glow green and tap dance around a flaming box of horseshit Sunday noon on the courthouse steps. This is not only astounding but also fortuitous since with the Democrats in power I’m sure there’s now an NEA grant available for just such a performance.

In a relationship as one sided as this, how could you not do the very least you can do?

How is it that semi rational people… wait… scratch that… I’ll start again. How is it that these Section 8’ers find issue with giving the government less information in the census then they give Amazon.com while ordering their leather bound gold embossed autographed by Jesus himself copy of Going Rouge? Do they really think that the government will use census information to round them up and ship them off to the gulag?

Here’s a little secret. The government doesn’t care about you as an individual. The government is only interested in one thing… twenty percent. You can do almost anything in this great land of ours and get away with it as long as you fork over twenty percent.

Think about it.

Al Capone mowed down seventeen people in an alley in Chicago, owned every whore in the Midwest and went all Lou Gehrig on a business associate and finally went to prison… for tax evasion. Meyer Lansky made a yamaka out of Bugsy Siegel’s scrotum and went to prison… for tax evasion. Bernie Madoff once ate forty-two orphans in one sitting and he went to prison for… well, you get the point. The government is nothing more than Big Paulie from Goodfellas.

Fuck you… pay me.

The government does three things well; Blowing shit up, delivering the mail and collecting their twenty percent. Anyone who thinks different should party in New Orleans for a week. None of those three things have anything to do with shipping you off or killing your Na-ma.

Astonishingly though, people think nothing of buying their groceries from the Publix with a credit card. This is critical information about the very fiber of you as a human and you give it away… for free. Publix sells your information to Proctor and Gamble, Kimberly Clark and worst of all… Archer Daniels Midland. You make the most basic choices that show exactly what kind of person you are in the grocery store and it’s not the government who benefits from that information.

Ever buy rolling papers with a debit card? Who do you think might be interested in that purchase? The I.R.S., Veterans Administration or the Bureau of Indian Affairs? No… more likely your car insurance company and Frito Lay.

In a recently released study from Yale University, Visa can now predict a cardholder’s separation and pending divorce within thirty days of when it actually happens by watching triggered trends in purchasing. This allows Visa to kill your limit or revoke the card altogether because you’re about to become more of a risk. Another study shows how Master Card… using data existing in their data banks… can pick out an individual by analyzing their grocery store purchases even if that person stops using a card and begins using cash instead.

This is also why you get a letter from Brighthouse cable suggesting you seek treatment for your cocaine addiction after you order six porn movies and a documentary on the Franco-Prussian war from the on-demand channel at 4:30 on a Tuesday morning.

Or so I’ve heard.

Within the next ten years the commercials you see on your television while watching Dancing with the American Idol are not going to be the same ones I see even though we will both be watching the same show at the same time. Your entertainment viewing patterns, purchases and travel preferences will have been broken down by the spawn of the HAL 9000 and the subroutine will spit out with ninety-nine percent efficiency exactly the advertisements that impact you and yours. As the head of ADM said early this year, ”If you show us what you buy, we can tell you who you are… even better than you can yourself.”

So if you don’t want to answer the census because of unbending paranoia or you’re offended that they are asking if you’re a Negro… and for the life of me I haven’t actually seen a Negro since 1966… well then so be it. Just don’t think for one minute that the government will come break down the door because of it.

They’ll come once they realize that you’re fifty and Tivoing rerun episodes of Saved by the Bell for those days when the wife is gone and the house is empty… you sick fuck.

I foresaw my death the other day.

My hometown newspaper will print:

“Matthew Warmke of Cocoa Beach Florida… formally of Podunk… died last weekend from a massive stroke while slamming in the pit during a performance of Flogging Molly. Mr Warmke, seemingly unaware that his age and addictions would finally get the best of him, was in the process of removing his shoes to throw into the crowd when he collapsed and died. The mosh, oblivious to the fact that he had passed on, raised him above the regalia and surfed him through the fandom for seven minutes before they realized he was no more. Those close to him remarked that by far this was the way he would have wished to go.”

When you get as old as I am you really start thinking about your exit. It is coming fast and there is nothing you can do to stop it. In my case I know one thing for sure… my aging and decline will be brutal. I’ve destroyed most of the bones and joints in my body to the point where Vicodin is the only way I can get a good night’s sleep and I’ve had toxins and dead food in my bloodstream so often my internals are beginning to resemble coleslaw.

What I find funny is that I haven’t really aged like most of the people I know who popped out during the Kennedy/Johnson era. I still ride a skateboard, spend more time and money than is practical traveling the country to find the fastest roller coaster and think fart jokes are hysterically funny.

I got an email from a high school friend around Christmas sent to remind me that Jesus was the real reason for the season. This from a guy who used to accompany me while we would knock on doors on the third floor of Pickering Hall searching for orange microdot.

What happened there?

Living in the world’s second largest retirement community has given me a unique look into the psyche of the aged. It ain’t pretty. Muhammad Ali once said… “A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”… but does that mean we all have to turn into Abe Simpson?

I’m still just about as liberal as I was at twenty. My brother Jim and living in a hurricane zone with valuable shit and loved ones turned me on gun ownership… but other than that my belief system has remained consistent. The same cannot be said for a shocking number of people in my demographic.

I’m not a fan of old people.

I believe that once you’re on the over par side of seventy you should not be allowed to vote. If you can’t do it for the first part of your life you shouldn’t be allowed in the last. Besides… old people are the deciding factor in elections and policy decisions in which they will play no part. They are the group most likely to be influenced or intimidated by false information. You know… like tea partiers… only with real world experience.

Now I realize that I am advocating the disenfranchisement of my sainted Mother, a woman of unimpeachable character and strong liberal beliefs, and I have thought about it. It’s worth it.

For every one of her out there, there are a half a dozen who long for a simpler time and place. A fallacy created from their own faded and selective memories. All the women were strong, all the men were good looking and all the children were above average.

The Reagan administration would allow no less.

Sorkin was right… decisions are made by those who show up… but most of us have more important shit to do each day. You got time to go to a town hall? I’m just trying to make it through the day.

The majority of law that impacts you directly is voted on in off year elections and spring primaries… and for retirees Election Day is like Langerado, Bonnaroo and the Denny’s free grand slam breakfast day combined.

Why are we leaving the future of our country to people who sit around all day and do fuckall? We get enough of that in Congress as it is… we shouldn’t be the enablers in this relationship.

If Americans over the age of seventy are allowed to vote, then Americans under the age of eighteen should be allowed as well. After all… our mistakes are their futures. And if anyone thinks that we learn from our past errors as the generations click by, I have this whole Vietnam/Iraq argument warmed up in the bullpen.

I trust the political savvy of my niece Megan… who is three… far more than the lady I rode on the elevator with the other day. She told me that there were blue Christmas trees at the White House last year because the First Lady is a practicing witch. The lady did… not the three year old. Megan evidently enjoys exploring with someone named Dora.

It is exceedingly unlikely that I will ever reach the age of seventy… what with my many appetites and the soon to arrive Mayan apocalypse and all… but if I do I shall cease my constitutional rights as they pertain to voting. Civilizations can only continue if they constantly evolve and my experience shows that the older you get the less likely you want time to keep moving forward.

I will bitch, moan, lobby, cajole, persuade, donate and advocate my position but I will leave it up to those who have to live with the consequences to make the final call. Besides, if humanity is relying on my sound judgment after seventy years of the flying circus my life has been then we are truly fucked.

Finally… the mouse is off the schnide! After a few seasons of drought I managed to nail down at least one correct pick in last year’s game. A whopping nine points for ole Walter Cronkite. While I was happy with my semi impressive showing my joy was short lived. Last year’s winner… with a stunning forty-four points is Jules. She may pick up her fabulous prize pack at any local Circuit City.

The rules are still the same. You get one point for each correctly picked corpse along with bonus points (100 – the age of the person when they ceased to be). The person you pick must be in the public eye, no picking your grandmother. As always, you are limited to ten picks and if you played last year you cannot pick anyone that you picked in 2009. Please post your picks in the comments section below.

Here are my picks… the winning picks… for 2010:

John Glenn – God speed Senator.

Prince Phillip – I’ve dated my share of powerful women but jez. One pace left and three behind, how many of us could do that for over fifty years?

Ray Bradbury – I was never a huge fan. Good I thought, but not as great as everyone else thinks.

Monty Hall – TV’s big dealer trades what’s behind curtain number two for a box under the display floor.

Betty White – I have a mad hard on for this woman… even today. She’s not only sexy, but sexual. I don’t like American women, or blondes… but I would have sold my soul for ten minutes with this goddess.

Tiger Woods – Why not? I have a feeling he’ll pull a Belushi.

James Garner – This is a dead man… at the tone leave your name and number and no one will get back to you.

Ann B Davis – Why did she work for the Bradys? She was Carol’s lesbian lover. And now you know.

Muhammad Ali – I could have just said “the greatest”, but you might have thought I was talking about me.

Roger Ebert – My “Swazye” pick for the year… a ringer.

It’s my day of jubilee!

Three years ago today I walked away from the real world and struck out on my own. I was motivated …I believe… by the phrase “Fortune favors the bold” but the more I think about it, it was just probably because I’m self-destructive. Whatever brought me here… I made it.

They say there are two important dates when one runs his or her own business. The first is day 366. Ninety five percent of all small businesses fail in the first year, so if you can make it to 366 you’re in pretty good shape. The second important date is the third year anniversary. I don’t know why but I know its true because smart people told me so.

Tomorrow starts year four.

My nipples are hard. In the morning I’m heading for the center of town where I shall spin around and throw my knit cap in the air.

While I know that this previous year was incredibly difficult for a great many number of people, I’m not one of them. Point of fact, 2009 was one of the top five years of my life. The money was good, my health and the health of my friends and family was strong and it was one of the only years since I became an adult that I was neither married nor divorced.

The gauge of any successful year must be measured on avoidance of churches and courtrooms.

I have decided that I’m going to live and work under the assumption that the Mayans are right and the days are dwindling down. That means there are only 1098 days left until we all make our exit. I intend to grab the most out of each second left.

I may not go down in history… but I’m definitely going down on something.

This year’s numbers are interesting. I managed to spend time in seven states that I had never seen. That brings my total to thirty-nine. I traveled just over seventeen thousand miles in the last twelve months and loved each minute I was doing it except the one day I spent in Pittsburgh.

If being a Browns fan wasn’t enough to hate the steel city, I suggest you spend time there. God… when I die… I’d rather spend eternity in hell than spend another minute in Pittsburgh. No wonder all the trees in Pennsylvania lean west.

The coming year will be one for the books. For the first time in a long time, I have a pretty good idea of my direction and purpose. It’s nice to know what to do. I’d tell you what to do as well, but my ethics don’t exactly scream, “Listen to this guy”.

Seriously… You know the compass Jack Sparrow has? The one that just points at whatever you want? That’s my moral compass.

So let us get started on the new year. I hope that we get to spend some time together in the next twelve months. Remember… no one stands over your grave and admires your car.

Here’s to thinking positive and testing negative!

The Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share; it also protects those with whose views we disagree.

Senator Edward M Kennedy – American Statesman (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)

The Chinese are trying to kill us.

Arsenic in toothpaste, lead in toy paint, Moo Shu Siamese kittens and now… the Bluth Cornballer. This nasty little kitchen device disguises itself as a harmless little white two-slice toaster that I grabbed off the shelves of Target for the low low price of $6 US.

I didn’t own a toaster… since breakfast for me is usually served in a glass, but what with the price I figured I couldn’t lose. I did… several fingers. The machine does in fact make toast, as well as a giant hole in your kitchen countertop. It does all this because the outside of this Marquis de Sade home appliance heats up to the approximate temperature of the far side of Mercury.

I just know there are at this moment Chinese slaves chuckling at the thought of seared American finger flesh. Bastards!

Fortunately salt water cures all ills and into the ocean I went. This afternoon I watched STS-129 launch from outside the breakers on my 9’ Neilson. It marked the first time since I moved out to the island that I did not film the launch, and it felt bittersweet. The reason I did this was not because the waves were fantastic… which they were… but because my time on the top of the mark has come to an end and I had to experience a shuttle launch from the water at least once.

My landlord, along with over a dozen others owning units in my building, has decided to let the bank take back my concrete and plaster Shangri La. It seems he decided that it didn’t make much sense to pay the bank three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a condo worth a buck sixty.

This would be a very good thing, but there is a catch. After giving the banks trillions of taxpayer dollars to save us from the Bush/Clinton derivatives fuckup, the banks have decided not to use that money for people to invest in homes and condos. Forget Florida condos completely… there are no banks out there that will assign a mortgage even for fine upstanding citizens like me on an oceanfront unit with less than 50% down.

I could buy a house inland instead but I found another catch. I’m self-employed. While my company makes good money… I do not. Great for tax purposes, not so good when it comes to getting a loan. So in the greatest opportunity to feed off the misery of others and create wealth for myself that will occur in my lifetime, I’m standing naked in the doorway holding a shit covered stick with both hands.

I did get one last laugh though… I invested heavily in AIG and Citi Bank during the second week of March this year. God does love me, he just shows it funny.

So now I’m a squatter. My landlord is a super cool Russian mobster who told me to hang as long as I can, sans rent. There are plenty of other places up and down the coast to rent for around the same deal I have now, but I just got all these old farts here to like me. I can’t start up again with another gaggle of retirees… they hate youth. Besides, one cannot just live somewhere without someone getting a rent check. I have money, there’s gotta be a lawyer out there in all this mess that will claim it soon enough.

Add to that the fact that as Oliver Babish said, “Trust me Charley, they will… knock on your door… one day” and it makes for a very unstable situation. Knowing that at any time a Sheriff’s Deputy can walk right on in interferes with my social agenda.

Change is always good and as always I remain optimistic, but it is going to be a solid kick in the kernels to leave this place. I truly love living here. It’s funny how places can do that to you. A great locale can lower a bucket into your well of discouragement and lift it up to the light of day.

For almost two years I have watched the world float by with assholes on only three sides. Even though it has cost me a ton of electronic equipment, living on the ocean is the only way to live. The future will be interesting and interesting is fun. I savor insurmountable opportunities.

But just in case… can you clear out a space in your garage?

Starting your morning with a finger in your ass trivializes anything else that might happen later that day.

To be fair, it really depends on whose finger it is. I mean the finger of your lover might be enjoyed… perhaps even invited in while the same cannot be said for the guy standing behind you at Starbucks. Then again you might be into that sort of thing, it’s not for me. After about the sixth time that happened I quit drinking coffee.

As I grow older I find myself slightly more concerned about my physical well-being. That wasn’t the case in my madcap days of yore. The false immortality of youth aside, I come from a substantial gene pool with very few accounts of inbreeding, mutations or conservative tendencies. The only time I have ever found myself in the hospital is through my own stupidity and things in, on and growing out of my body function consistently as per factory specs.

So when it became necessary for me to engage in a lengthy debate with my dick before it would allow even the slightest trickle of urine to pass, I began to sit up and take notice.

I’m an educated man… or whatever Podunk public schools and Ohio University makes you… so I knew the deal. It seems I have a prostate the size of a small Latin American country. Since I need to pee for my job I figured I would have to drive into Orlando and see my doctor for the first time in nine years.

The prostate exam is one of life’s simple pleasures. I was enthusiastic and not just for the fact that it has been some time since I’ve gotten any satisfactory ass play. My doctor is a kind man with a great sense of humor, a keen instinct and short stubby fingers. I wore my best suit… I made it a thing.

You really have to. The number of jokes and fun one can have with it are never ending. It also gives you a chance to really bond with your doctor and his staff.

“And what are we here for today Mr. Warmke?”

“Finger up the ass Mater, I hope that’s your area of expertise.”

“No… sorry. I’m pee in a cup. Fill this up please.”

“Right. Thanks. See you in an hour.”

I cannot understand why guys seem to have a problem with this procedure. Women can put up with anything a doctor throws at them. I once saw four doctors, three interns, six nurses and the UPS guy go elbow deep into my first wife’s pussy when she was delivering our youngest and I’m going to wince when Doc G looks up my old address? Please.

As it turns out, the actual act is lame in comparison to the anticipation; I dare say I was disappointed. If you think about it it’s a lot like sex between your parents… or how you might mentally perceive that to be.

We chit chatted a bit… he feigned interest in my small talk while constantly checking me out. Awkward jokes and strained verbal nothingness covered the three hundred pound gorilla in the room. He indicated he was ready; I ignominiously dropped my pants and spread my cheeks. There was lube and latex. He entered without warning and did his business quickly and efficiently… without a care to my needs or feelings.

I heard the snap of a plastic glove and a box of Kleenex appeared over my shoulder.

“That wasn’t so bad right? Clean yourself up. I’ll be back.”

“Admit it doc…” I said, “… that’s the reason you went to med school isn’t it?”

It was apropos that all of this happened on April 15th. Doctor G wasn’t the only entity I was actually paying to turk me on that day. It’s nice to get all your anal activities done in one lump.

Doc says that soon I shall urinate freely, which is a relief. You cannot appreciate just how wonderful it is to pee until you can’t. He says the enlargement is a product of aging. I contend it is from the constant pounding due to a chronic masturbation habit… but in any event Merrick makes pills to fix everything that ails ya.

I highly recommend that everyone go out and get his or her prostate checked. Spend the day… make it a thing.

Squirrels are inherently suicidal.

Why else would they wait until the last possible second to dart out in front of your car?

If they are not born with the intuitive desire to pull their own trigger then what else could be a squirrel’s motivation to voluntarily eat Michelins? Pressure at the office? Relationship issues? Invested heavy with Bernie Madoff? God only knows. Is life really that depressing when you’re a squirrel?

Perhaps squirrels are adrenaline junkies.

They do tend to spin and spasm if you manage not to flatten them and then they bolt for the nearest tree… climbing only a few feet before turning around to reconnoiter their previously perilous position. Is that how they get off?

Normally off the hook thrill seeking madmen tend to do their insanity in groups. That’s not the case with squirrels. Squirrels aren’t cliquish. One squirrel does not turn to his buddies and say, “Here… hold my beer. I wanna try something.” Squirrels work alone.

Therefore it stands to reason that squirrels are inherently suicidal.

But not right away. All of my rodent kamikaze experiences have involved older and more matured squirrels. I’ve never pancaked any pre-teen vermin.

Could it be that they become self aware once they reach the age of reason and in doing so come to the realization that they are indeed only squirrels? Does the thought of knowing life will only ever be nuts and trees drive them screaming into the roadway?

They cannot believe that a better life waits for them in the great beyond once they die… for surely they know that suicide is a mortal sin and thus excludes them from passing through the pearly gates. There are no squirrels in heaven.

It could be the natural way of things. We can only eat so many and you hardly ever hear of squirrels dying of heart attacks, typhoid fever or cancer. In order for the planet not to be overrun, squirrels have evolved to where suicide is the only way to keep their numbers down.

After all, there are only so many nuts and trees in the world and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It could very well be that squirrels are indoctrinated at birth that they must sacrifice themselves in maturity to continue the lineage. Like a Spartan or a Klingon, squirrels may live their whole lives in anticipation of the moment when they may immolate themselves for the greater good of their community.

If you think about it that way, you can almost feel a sense of omnipotent satisfaction and not guilt while you’re scraping the nutty little fuckers out of your wheel well.

It isn’t your fault… squirrels are inherently suicidal.

Boy… wasn’t 2008 a hoot? Who could have imagined that for the second year in a row nobody I picked died. I have been getting letters from famous people for a month now begging me to put their names on my picksheet. I mean come on… Britney Spears is still alive? Who could have predicted that?

The rules have not changed. You get one point for each correctly picked corpse along with bonus points (100 – the age of the person when they ceased to be). The person you pick must be in the public eye, no picking your grandmother. As always, you are limited to ten picks. Please post your picks in the comments section below if you wish to play along at home.

Here are my ten picks for 2009:

Steve Jobs – If he’s not sick then he’s on meth and has as good a chance as any to kick off either way. No one drops that much weight unless they are sparking or they are dating way out of their league.

Kirk Douglas – Spartacus departic us… hit by a cross town bus.

JD Salinger – One of the daily double of my favorite writers that will move into paperback over the next twelve months. JD has been living in my guest room for the past few months and unless he cheers up I’ll kill him by May.

Gore Vidal – The second of my favorite writers to pass. A man of letters… now that’s a title.

Walter Cronkite – It seems a shame that most news anchors now are news readers. I think it has to do with learning your craft without having to look good doing it. Video killed the radio star and journalists with opinions. Good night… and good luck.

Elizabeth Edwards – The person who gets shit on actually gains. Trust me on this one, I know of what I speak. If the world were fair, she would live and he would die slowly, but then again if the world were fair there wouldn’t be rich people.

Hugh Heffner – The only person in the world where going to heaven will be a step down from actual life.

Harry Morgan – Goodbye… farewell… amen Colonel Potter.

Elizabeth Taylor – I’m the only person that makes the argument that Michael Jackson has been trying to transform his face into an exact copy of Ms Taylor’s. I can’t say that I blame him. Watch anything she did between 1955 and 1970 and you will see what God had in mind when he initially thought up the whole concept of women.

Peter O’Toole – I have always wanted to be Peter O’Toole. Who wouldn’t want to be? Charm, wit, panache and the ability to be slightly buzzed all day long… now that’s living. When he falls down I’m picking up the mantle.