I was at Wal-Mart the other day, and whilst there I saw that Wal-Mart now has its own bank.  Now, one might think that such a bank would most fittingly be called Sam’s Choice Savings and Loan or something, but in fact, it’s called Woodforest.  No offense new Wal-Mart bank, but wood is the only flavor in which forests come.  You could have just called it Forest and everyone would have assumed the wood part.  Now, if you called it something like Spatulaforest, that would be kind of cool and I’d understand the whole compound name thing.  So, yeah, no way I’m giving my money to people who don’t even know what forests are made out of; I’m gonna stick with the good old First Bank of Mayonnaise Jar Under My Mattress.

I was at Maymont the other day, and just outside of the pen of the ill-fated bears, I saw these three Matrix-looking government guys, just hanging out and looking all soulless and badass.  At first I though maybe they were just hoping that one of Richmond’s many dialup techno rebels would challenge them to an awesome kung fu battle, but then it occurred to me that them showing up the same week as the bears got killed off was a bit too coincidental.  I’m thinking that the bears didn’t bite anyone after all; they just took the red pill.

Everyone goes on about how awesome the Special Olympics are, but they’re not looking at the big picture here.  I mean, what about all those guys who spend years training and faking drug tests and stuff just to get to the Olympics only to find out that some kid in a wheelchair is more special then they are?  That’s why America didn’t do as well in Turin this time around, all our athletes are suffering from low self esteem.  It’s tough to figure skate when you’re crying on the inside.

I was reading the installation manual for our new security cameras at work, and it had all these pictures of different setups and arrangements you could use with it.  So there’d be like, one picture with a view of a convenience store on it, and another of like, some guy’s family who he apparently was spying on, and a Hampton Inn or something.  But one of the pictures was just of a lionfish.  Now there’s only one person in the world I know of who has an interest in lionfish security, and that’s Captain Picard, who, unless I miss my guess is not a regular Samsung patron.  Shame on you, Samsung, for implying that you handle security on the Enterprise; stop pathetically endeavoring to steal Worf’s flava.

Why is it that evil robots made out of liquid metal always just make their arms into pointy things and stab people, it’s way too cliché these days?  If I’m ever made of liquid metal and have to smite someone, I’m gonna mix it up a little and morph my arms into weed whackers or kittens or something, so that the last thing my victims see isn’t me being unoriginal.  Also, if I ever kidnap anyone, I’m just staying good and clear of iron foundries, cause those things are way too dangerous.  That’s why Pittsburgh has like, the lowest liquid metal robot from the future-related fatality rate in all of America, in case you were wondering.

If you were at the public pool and while you were under water you decided to practice your whale calls, I bet that any marine biologists who were also swimming there would be briefly excited before realizing the horrible non-whale containing truth.

I’m the worst person ever, because the other day I saw an article about National No Name Calling Week and the first thing that passed through my mind was, “Whoa, what kind of retard came up with that idea?”

I think more people would read the newspaper if they started using more internet-friendly writing conventions.  Like, at the end of World War II, instead of being all like, “Victory in the Pacific!” they should have just put up a big picture of the bomb and made the headline, “Pwned!”  If I ever get thrown back in time and start up a major media outlet, I’m gonna do that.  That and learn the Charleston.  And maybe crush all those who have the temerity to oppose me and then rule them with a fist of iron.  And then get a funnel cake.

            The Olympics, let us face it, are really not all that fascinating.  Maybe it’s because they started like, the week after the Superbowl, or maybe it’s because totally awesome car chases on ice didn’t make the cut this time around while curling gets yet another chance to emboreden the airwaves of the world; whatever the reason, this Winter America needs something better to hold its interest.  Interestingly enough, there are one or two new sports recently making a big splash on the political arena (that, by the way, was of course not a Teddy Kennedy reference), shooting people in the face, and choosing new Supreme Court Justices.  And since I already covered the whole matter of Vice Presidential Postality last week, this time we’re gonna consider the matter of who ought to be nominated to the highest robe-wearing gathering in the land.

            Now, perhaps you think that having already done this whole justice-go-round thing twice in the last year that there’s not liable to be any need to choose yet another in the coming months.  To you I say phaw, tsk tsk, pish tosh, and other British grandmotherly saying that MS Word refuses to recognize as real actual words.  It is the case, you see, that the average age of the Supreme Court is 578, which means that, statistically speaking, odds are that any one of them might be “moving to Florida” at any time (and my “moving to Florida” I mean being vanquished by a series of hurricanes before feeding Elian Gonzalez to a lion).

            Which brings us to the real issue at hand here; who should the President nominate when the time inevitably has arriven?  Some will surely say that he ought to choose a woman, to foster a greater understanding on the courts of women’s issues.  Others will maintain that a member of a minority group (such as Lutheran monkey wranglers or Rhode Island) would add much-needed balance to the presently honky-infested court.  Normally I would agree, but the truth is that far and away the best candidate out there is not only totally a dude (fondness for Broadway musicals notwithstanding) but also an inveterate slice of Wonder Bread.  In other words, me.

            Yes America, I blog before you today to throw my name into the metaphorical hat worn by such great justices as William Howard “Tubs” Taft, Oliver “Yo Mamma So Fat” Holmes, and Felix “Actual Name Already Adequately Amusing” Frankfurter.  Some may say that I lack the legal credentials necessary to arbitrate the great debates of this nation of ours, but happily enough, all you have to do to get on the court is convince the Senate to affirm your awesomeness. 

            This is not so difficult as it might appear at first, because many senators are only too aware of the fact that the last two justice hearings have been so legendarily boring that pogs have once again overtaken the network news in the polls.  Therefore, in order to spice things up and pathetically attempt to prove themselves certifiably hip (or “crunk” as they say in Canada) while actually playing right into my diabolical hands, I shall simply challenge them to a dance-off, at which all who dare to oppose my mad quest for power will find themselves epically served by my kung fulicious 80s dance skillz (which are so kung fulicious that I am actually required by international law to use a Z when describing them).  Also, I’ll promise to put root beer in all the Capitol water fountains and train enough monkey butlers for all of Congress.

            Why, you may ask, do I want to do such a thing in the first place?  For the power? From some sense of civic duty to my nation?  Because I want to find out for myself whether what they say about all the justices using their power rings to summon Captain Planet is really true?  Actually, I just want a job where I get to sit at a big table, they can never fire me no matter what, and where I can wear anything I want to work.  Anything (and by Anything, I mean hammerpants and battle armor).

            So, write to your Senator today and urge them to keep calling the White House at 3 in the morning every day until George Bush nominates me!  And if they don’t, call Dick Cheney and tell him they want to go quail hunting with him.

            I read an article in the paper the other day about how pirates had attacked some French ship and made off with a vast assortment of cheeses and unjustified snootiness, which is funny enough all by itself, but the best part was when they were interviewing some French minister of pirate relations who said, and thus I quote, “We reckon it was pirates.”

            I’m really tired of restaurants that just throw a bunch of old junk on the walls and act like it somehow constitutes a coherent interior eatery decorational paradigm.  In an effort to be different, therefore, and needlessly rock the boat, I want to build a restaurant where I travel many years into the future and bring back a bunch of future junk, which I will then use to adorn my festive little bistro.  Then, many years alter when the future actually gets here and my restaurant is no longer  a window into the world of tomorrow, I’ll just sell it to Applebee’s and start a new one next door with an assortment of fresh geegaws of the 22^nd century.

            I wish I had an identical twin, because then I wouldn’t tell anyone about him, and I’d go and be all like, talking to some friends and stuff, and I’d conclude with some witty epigram or pithy observation and then walk off.  Then, my identical twin would come running up from a completely different direction wearing like, a plastic suit and some goggles and be all like, “Have any of you seen Ben?  I have to tell him about something absolutely horrible stuff that he needs to avert in the future!”

            In a similar vein, up along Route 33, there’s a place called Twin Cedars Farm.  Every time I drove by it, I want to build a time machine, go back thirty years and run over one of them, the return to the present and see whether it’s called Lone Cedar Farm.  Unless of course they were really only metaphorical cedars to begin with, which would be totally lame, because if you can’t even grow any literal cedars, you’ve got no business calling yourself a farm.

            If you’re taking a girl out to a movie on your first date and are endeavoring to select an appropriate mix of songs for the occasion, you probably ought not include Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, lest she think it portentous of things to come.  And by “things to come” I mean going on a wacky musical rampage of slaughter.  Unless of course she’s an emo.  Far from fearing death, they actually love it.  Death is their tapioca.

            National Geographic did a cover story on Africa, with the tagline, “Whatever you thought, think again.”  Which probably works great if you happen to believe ridiculous things about Africa, like that they produce over 78% of the world’s tartar sauce there, or that lions are in fact merely composed of a crunchy liony shell and filled with marshmallowy goodness, or other such silly and probably untrue notions of which you ought be disabused.  But what about those of us whose thoughts concerning Africa are instead remarkable only because of their generally insightful nature?  For us, National Geographic implies that we have only been lying to ourselves.  So, you thought that the Pyramids are in fact not the discotheques of the gods?  And you were positive that “Kenya” was by no means an anagram for “Delicious Hummingbird Spectacles”?  Well think again, foo!  Sorry National Geographic, this means war.

            You know how old guys always buy Crown Victorias and paint them white with a bunch of antennae and stuff in an attempt to make everyone think they’re cops and thusly create unnecessary traffic snarls (as opposed, one can only imagine, to all those absolutely indispensable traffic snarls which further the welfare of all mankind)?  I hate those guys with a passion that I usually reserve for Ben Affleck and Hitler, so I have hatched an ingenious plan to look silly.  I want to buy a Crown Victoria and instead paint it like, fifty different wacky non-authoritarian colors so that I’m like, the Technicolor Dream Cop or something, and only hippies and the tragically colorblind will be put in fear of my coppitude.

            Weddings, as a general rule, are happy occasions, but the invitations to them are almost invariably lame and boring, “Myron and Tabitha cordially invite you to attend blobbity blobbity blah…”  Instead, I think wedding invitations ought to be more along the lines of monster truck rally advertisements, “See Ysythrog jump over 7 flaming school buses!  Watch as Brianrietta battles Truckasaurus!  First three hundred guest get a giant foam novelty hand!  Remember, you pay for the whole seat, but you’ll only use – The Edge!”  I think marriages would probably last longer.

            So, as most of you probably have heard by this point, Dick Cheney shot some dude while they were out hunting for quail.  First, let’s clear a little something up here that every major media outlet up to this point has gotten terribly and irresponsibly wrong; they weren’t hunting for quail, they were hunting with Quailman, who has been lying low the last few years but remains a tireless warrior for all that is grood in the world.  And what were they hunting?  Zombies, the greatest threat to our nation’s security since slap bracelets.  What actually happened was that this lawyer guy foolishly wandered away from the main zombie hunting party and one of the undead fiends grabbed him.  With just seconds to think before the vile creature ate this dude’s brains, Dick Cheney decided that his best bet was to use his heat vision to set the zombie on fire.  Alas, when one is being held by a burning zombie, one tends to get a bit singed around the edges, to say nothing of being thoroughly soaked in that on-fire zombie smell that even Febreeze can’t properly get rid of.  Of course, after all this happened, the mishapular dude who was so recently liberated from the cold and smelly embrace of the living impaired needed a bit of medical attention, and since all concerned were worried that CNN couldn’t be trusted not to reveal all America’s top secret plans and tactics in the War On Zombies, they came up with the story about quail, shotguns, and all that jazz.  A great hullabaloo has since ensued, as many politicians and TV reporters, though rightly suspecting a zombie connection to Dick Cheney (though little suspecting that Dick Cheney & The Zombie Connection would be an awesome name for a band), but altogether lacking proof, have become outraged as usual.

            As often is the case in matters of this sort, a little historical perspective can do a great deal of good when it comes to dispelling the rumors of the day, and it just so happens that contrary to popular belief, Aaron Burr (who, incidentally, knew for a fact that Alexander Hamilton had long since been replaced with an interdimensional ninja vampire assassin but chose not to tell anyone out of a sense of honor and awesomeness) was not the only vice president to shoot someone while in office.  So put on your learning trousers and suspend your disbelief, because we’re about to take a little trip down our national memory lane.

            Hannibal Hamlin (1861-1865), for instance was forced to step down during Lincoln’s second term after a furor arose in which Charles Sumner was revealed to be a werewolf and in which Mr. Hamlin subsequently slew him with a silver weed whacker.  I could go on, but the entire episode will probably be made into a Hugh Jackman movie at some point in the next year, so you can just go and watch it then.

            George Clinton (1805-1812) inadvertently started the war of 1812 after he learned that British parliament was plotting to steal all of our fledgling nation’s reserves of funk and funk-related paraphernalia.  Failing to convince Congress of the dire need to take action, he nonetheless received permission of James Madison to travel secretly to England and preemptively steal all the funk belonging to British Parliament.  In an audaciously badasstacular caper, and with the assistance of his awesome dreadlock-derived powers, George Clinton did indeed make off with the official funk of the U.K, but realizing that the King’s army would never let him escape as long as the funk remained in his possession, he was left with no choice but to travel to the distant future and start a band, after which point the statute of limitations had long since run out.

            Adlai Stevenson (1893-1897) was briefly at the epicenter of a swirling vortex of scandal and mixed metaphors after he discovered that the Lincoln Bedroom was not only haunted by the ghost of our nation’s only President to have ever gone into the future and fought the Klingons, but also by a groovy taffy monster.  Enlisting the help of the Harlem Globetrotters and Phyllis Diller, Adlai Stevenson came up with a brilliant plan in which he and his dog would dress up like hair stylists and distract the taffy monster while the rest of his kooky gang would drop a net on it or hit it with a barrel or something.  Although it was eventually proven that the taffy monster was in fact merely Levi Morton trying to chase everyone away from the White House in order to dig up George Washington’s secret pirate treasure, it was all the same decided that the whole tawdry affair was better kept a secret.

            So there you have it, just a few of the vice presidents of America who have been compelled by the national interest to issue beatdowns to the forces of evil.  And next time you can go out for a walk in the forest without having to take your zombie repellent along, just remember who’s out there tirelessly setting zombies on fire.

            So, I would imagine that most of you out there are familiar with L.L. Bean, purveyor of fine mail-order garments and seasonal ham baskets.  But has the thought ever occurred to you that nobody knows who this L.L. Been fellow actually is (not that it has to be a guy, mind you).  I mean, if we’re going to be going around wearing flannel shirts and cardigans fashioned by him, I think the least we can do is verify that he is not, in fact, one or more supervillians.  Alas, all of my research into this subject has suggested that the truth may be exactly that.  But before you all recoil in collective horror at the implications of such an audacious thesis, let’s take a walk through the evidence and see just how deep the rabbit hole of diabolical fashion goes.

            First, let’s take a look at the L.L.  Now, there are only two people who have those initials that I can think of.  One is Lucretia Lunchferrets, whom I am fairly certain that I just made up, while the other is Lex Luthor, nemesis of Superman and all around evil genius.  Why, you might ask, would he want to sell clothes to anyone?  I suspect that he makes all his sweater-vests out of kryptonite in the hopes that one day Clark Kent will decide to go for the business casual look that only sweater-vests can make, and in doing so shall plunge headlong into a certain, yet trendy, demise (however, the fact that The Kryptonite Sweater-Vests would make a great name for a band would, to some degree, mitigate the terribility of such an event).

            Now, as for the Bean part of things, I think that our best bet here is to start out by casting a catawumpus eye at none other than Sean Bean, who was played by Boromir in Lord of the Rings.  Though once a good and noble man perhaps, the power of the One Ring has clearly corrupted him, and as a result one suspects that he has some plans which involve selling sweaters to Frodo, so that he’ll lose all interest in the ring and go on to play a cannibal in Sin City.  Or perhaps he just got tired of Gondorian shopping malls always getting beaten out by the Gap of Rohan and wisely decided to start up his own franchise of trendiness.

            The way I see it, the two of them were probably both at say, the evil laundromat, or at one of those evil speed dating things, or maybe just serendipetously happened to frequent the same evil needlepoint shop.  Sharing many things in common, they would have both soon lamented the general paucity of affordable yet evil clothing on the market and so, by pooling the endless resources of Lexcorp, and the endless creepiness of the Steward of Gondor, they started selling flannel shirts with the ultimate goal of taking over the world.

            Of course, this entire scenario leaves out the one other possible player in this diabolical little duo of doom, Great Britain’s own Jim Varney, Mr. Bean.  Long a very vocal critic of the increasingly intrusive British government (he recently helped to defeat a bill which would have made it illegal to not be a total sissy), Mr. Bean surely realized long ago that his best bet was to amass a great fortune using his own innate humor-generating abilities and to invest these gains in his own personal army of like-minded free-thinkers, so that when the fateful day or reckoning did at last arrive, Mr. Bean’s Army of Doom (which would also make a great band name) would be able to sweep the vile oppressors before them as all the normal people shall be swept away before the unstemmable tide of force-wielding geeks when they start selling tickets for “Star Wars: Episode VII: Mr. Bacca goes to Coruscant.”  Clearly, to have a stake in such a profitable enterprise as a major garmenteer.

            Either way, L.L. Bean is at best devoted to overthrowing the legitimate government of the United Kingdom and killing superman, and at worst is only gather funds to help ensure that hobbits turn evil and have to fight Bruce Willis.  Not that I’m trying to start a boycott or anything, I’m just trying to burnish my Upton Sinclairian credentials so that next time a real controversy comes down the pike, I’ll be able to lie about it more convincingly to Oprah.

            You know how football players always wear those mouth guard thingies that make them walk around with their mouths all halfway open looking vaguely dumb?  Well, if I had a football team, I’d make buy mouth guards that looked like orange slices, that way all of my players would look like the Godfather.  Because if there’s one thing that NFL players fear nigh-universally, it’s the Godfather.

            The other day I saw a license plate that said IM4 BUCS.  In order to get that plate you must either really like deer, or be a severely discounted prostitute.

            Why is it that evil doctors, upon capturing someone, always feel the need to demonstrate their evil by doing something evilly doctorious to them, like making them into a freak or giving them a bad haircut or something?  It’s just so cliche these days.  That’s why if I’m ever an evil doctor and I catch a good guy, I’m going to do something completely non-medical to them, like feed them to a tiger that happens to be on fire, or shoot them in the face with a paintball gun full of bees, neither of which, to my knowledge, is an actual medical procedure anywhere except in Mexico.

            I saw an ad for cars the other day, and it said that Dodge was a registered trademark.  I sincerely hope that doesn’t mean that I need to use a different word to describe not getting hit by something.

            To Treebeard,, mosquitos are nothing, but yellow-bellied sapsuckers are like tiny little vampires of death (as opposed, one imagines, to all the other varieties of vampires out there which are not of death, such as the vampires of tragically poor fashion choices, and the dreaded vampires of chronic typographical errors).

            Duck hunters are willing to spend like, all day out on a freezing river in the dead of winter just on the off chance that some ducks will fly by and they can shoot them.  Don’t get me wrong, I hate ducks too, just not enough to go to all that trouble to vent my boundless fury upon them.  Most types of hunting are like that, you just sit around in the woods being all extra quiet, hoping that you can shoot something and eat it.  With one exception: zombie hunting.  Zombie hunting is sooo much better, because not only are they marginally more evil than ducks, but you also don’t have to build a temporary treehouse and wear an orange hat.  Also, you can use chainsaws, which, if I recall correctly, are generally discouraged in duck hunting.

            Neptune is my favorite god of the ocean if I had to pick one.  Not because I love the ocean though; I just really enjoy the sugarless gum he invented.

            It must really suck being an Indian superhero, because everyone expects you to have thematically Indian superpowers.  So, you can’t just be like a guy who flies around and stops crimes; your motivation has to be to avenge your ancestors.  And your name, by law, has to either make reference to a specific tribe, or bears.  So, Captain Badass is not an acceptable name. Chief Mataponi Thunderpants I Really Love Bears, is much more appropriate.  Also, you can’t just be really strong or really fast, unless right before you use your powers, you say something about spirit pumas and your ancestors.  Finally, you will never get your powers thanks to a scientific accident or radioactive Toby Macguire bite.  Rather, you will find an ancient relic of your people, like a dreamcatcher, or a casino.  So yeah, if you’re an Indian, just forget about being able to try being a cyborg, ninja, or time traveler.

            Someone needs to make a sitcom where the Cowardly Lion and Aslan share an apartment in New York and hilarity ensues.

            You know those bumper stickers that say, “Don’t Let the Car Fool You, My Treasure is in Heaven”?  The other day I saw one on a brand new PT Cruiser.  This suggests that, contrary to the bumper sticker, at least a good $35,000 of their treasure is in fact driving around Richmond.  Really, if you’re going to get that sticker, then your car needs to be either at least ten years old, or a Daewoo.

            First off, allow me to apologize for not posting more this past week.  Unfortunately, I seem to have incurred the fiery and diminutive wrath of the bandwidth gnomes, and as a result, Comcast has been a magical world of high-speed wonkiness all week.  Please be assured that at some future date my merciless armies of doom will deliver a mighty whomping to these craven offenders, thereby setting all the world aright once more.  So, the story which I am about to relate unto you is true.  It is also one which children, those with heart conditions, and people who go to bed at 10:00 every night like my grandmother should ever try to reenact.

            ‘Twas ten o’clock, this Tuesday past, and I was at the fabled and oft-visited Waffle House of Chester, delighting in the company and conversation of Amy, whom I, to my boundless chagrin, have yet to come up with a suitably legendary epic name for.  The evening started off in an altogether normal and reasonable fashion, the coffee (billed as the best in America, though whether that includes South and Central America remains to be seen) was good, the jukebox, having gone rogue just the day before and, in a fit of pique, devoured any number of quarters without rendering its usual service in exchange.  Indeed, we passed some two hours in such an amenable that even the silences which inevitably occur when two persons of an introverted nature congregate seemed not the least bit troublesome.  Talk turned to all the universalities of human existence, assuming that Star Trek, contra dancing, and Andre the Giant count as universalities.  At length, however, we both remarked upon how regrettable it was that there were not more places open on a late Tuesday night.  Truly, the only choices available are Walmart, Walgreens, and, of course, Waffle House.

            It was then that we hatched the Idea.  The wonderful, terrible, not the least bit thought out Idea which was to rule the night.  That idea, of course, was to set forth on an epic voyage about Richmond hitting every Waffle House beknownst to us.  As I mentioned before, it was already well past midnight at this point, and we both had work upon the morrow, but since the best ideas in life rarely take such trifles as good sense to mind, the die was cast, and we soon set out along our way.  By the time we left, the denizens of the Chester Waffle House bid us a tearful adieu, and off we went, in Amy’s Civic, listening to some of the finer modern works of Turkish pop music.

            First stop was the Dubious Waffle House of Hull Street, where their jukebox has waaay more songs, the cops usually hang out (though not on Tuesday, it would seem), they have a well-stocked larder of chocolate chip waffles, and where the kindly wafflemeisters found our mad quest both silly and endearing.

            From thence we struck out towards the Other Waffle House of Hull Street; the new one, where all the cool kids hang out and where there’s usually way too many people to properly rawk out.  Happily, that night there were but a few lost souls dining there, lonely and disconsolate creatures who must surely have incurred the wrath of the waffle gods and thus been condemned to an eternity of restless waffle wandering and wastrelry.  On the bright side, their pecan pie was quite good.  Now, by this point, we were both, as a result of sleep deprivation and considerable coffee imbibery, getting a tad bit punchy, with any breaks in the conversation being quickly taken up with giggling.

            Next on our journey was the far away and exotic Waffle House of Brook Road, which they built after some guy got shout outside the old one in that part of town.  It was totally far, and when all we ordered was a round of coffee the waiter looked at us like his puppy had just died.  He did complement me on my shoes though, and after yet another long voyage upon the untrodden roads of early morning we returned once more to Chester, from whence we parted ways and tried to get a few hours of sleep lest we conk out at our respective jobs the next day.

            It was, in short, a most fantastic expedition, and one which many worthy explorers shall most certainly seek to attempt for themselves in search of similar renown.

You know how at stores sometimes they have say, a $10 and less rack? Well the other day I saw a $10 and up rack, which is absolutely ridiculous, because you can put anything on there, as long as it’s over $10. Yup, space shuttles, the Hope Diamond, most congressmen, anything, as long as it’s over $10.

If I was friends with the Incredible Hulk, I think I’d buy him a mood ring, that way I’d always know if any hulkification was immanent. "What’s that Bruce, you’re anxious or slightly agitated? I think I’d better go out to the store and buy us some pork cola until you’re back to calm and peaceable."

If you really hate Brussel’s sprouts, then you will also probably never go and try to retrieve a cabbage that’s more than 50 feet away, especially if you’re a pirate and your depth perception is bad.

I think that maybe the Incredible Hulk just has really bad self esteem, and that’s why he’s got so many issues. Maybe it would help if when he met someone, he tried saying, "I’m getting angry; and while a lot of people don’t like me when I’m angry, why don’t you stick around and see if maybe we hit it off anyway?" Seriously, I think that whole "you wouldn’t like me" thing is just him trying to keep anyone from getting too close to him because he’s had some bad relationships in the past. Hulk need counseling.

What puts the ape in apricot? Courage.

Pier 1 is always advertising their unique blend of ridiculous home decor, which I happen to be a big fan of. The only thing I don’t get is why they keep limiting themselves to just that one pier. Come on guys, when I want a coffee table shaped like an Indian elephant with surfboards for tusks, if it has to come from Pier 2, I’m not gonna complain as long as you can get it for me. "Hey, do you have any fake bronze lamps shaped like a cobra riding a unicycle here?" "Nope, all those come in up at Pier 7, and we don’t even talk to them anymore. Not since the Chinese Emperor bookends incident." (And of course, The Chinese Emperor Bookends Incident would make a great name for a band)

Just once, I would like to see a cartoon or motion picture where someone who wears glasses can successfully navigate the world without them. Like you know how in Scooby Doo, whenever Velma lost hers, her eyes would get all squinty and she’d stumble into all sorts of wacky situations in which she mistook the taffy monster for the Harlem Globetrotters or something? Yeah, that’s not the way it happens in real life at all. I want to see a cartoon character lose their glasses and just be like, "Don’t worry guys, as long as solving this groovy mystery doesn’t involve me having to drive, operate heavy machinery, or shooting a man in the head at over 60 yards, I’m okay."

If your name was Al, and you were dating a woman named Betty, and you had to pick a song to be y’all’s special song, and you chose "Still Crazy After All These Years" you would never hear the end of it from all your Paul Simon afficionado friends.

The other day, I saw a car with the license plate "14 QPS" and all I could think was, "Whoa, that’s a lot of quilts per second!"

If I was Clark Kent, I think I’d get one of those Superman T-shirts and just wear it around town on my day off just to see how truly clueless everyone in Metropolis was. And then, if anyone did actually, for once, at long last, suggest that there was some similarity between myself and Superman, I’d laugh nervously, then set their shoes on fire and fly off.

I was at Maymont the other day, and whilst there, I saw what has to be the most messed up chicken ever. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was a rooster, but instead of crowing in a manner appropriate to saying, "Hark, I am a rooster, bring me my dinner, woman!" It would just sit there in the chickenarium, looking confused. Every few minutes though, it would get this look of abject horror on its face, as if up until a second ago, it had in fact been Pat Sajack and this whole being a rooster thing was a new and altogether hideous development. Then, instead of crowing, it would make this weird, soul-rending, Witch-King of Angmar shriek, and then go right back to looking confused.

Chickens are weird.

            Well, here we again, at that most blessed day in all of February, Groundhog Day, when about a jillion people make the pilgrimage to tiny Punxatawney, Pennsylvania to see if the eponymous groundhog of that fabled burg will see his shadow.  Of course, if he doesn’t, then it means that Spring is just around the corner, while if he does see it, it means that Bill Murray will be doomed to ten thousand years of immortal suffering while learning valuable lessons about life, love and not allowing rodents to drive.  At any rate, suffice it to say that Groundhog Day is one of our nation’s most hallowed and sacred of traditions, being as how it is the one holiday on the calendar that Hallmark hasn’t really managed to cash in on yet.  And verily, I would like nothing better than to leave you all secure in the belief that all is well in groundhog world, that you might go on with your wholesome and decent lives, battling zombies, solving wacky mysteries, and making fun of foreign countries that happen to have silly names.  Alas, as a blogger, it is my responsibility to stir up scandal, garner headlines, and by doing so do my part to kick the mainstream media in the face like Bruce Lee in the Face Kickalympics.  Therefore, it is my solemn and silly duty to inform you that I have it on the best of authority that Groundhog Day is rigged.

            Okay, now that the collective gasp of horror which surely just rose from all my readers has hopefully dissipated like the delicious smell of a double steak bacon waffleburger, I shall commence with the getting into of all the gory details.  You see, it happens to be the case that the night before Groundhog Day (or, Groundhog Eve, and it is called within the Catholic Church), the unscrupulous city fathers of Punxatawney issue a press release to the newspapers of the world in which they say what Phil, that most revered of ground-dwelling earth squirrels, has prognosticated for the year.  And what is worse, all these newspapers, these so-called bastions of liberty and incorruptibility gladly buy into this hideous and smelly web of groundhog-related lies and deceit.  Clearly, something must be done to stop his dreadful perversion of groundhog weather prediction.

            All this does however beg the question of why anyone would even go about thus pulling the proverbial wool over the eyes of America in such a way?  Who, indeed has anything to gain by lying in the stead of the inestimable groundhog?  Nobody, except of course for the Weather Channel.  You see, while more and more Americans have, in recent years, turned away from listening to old men talk about their knees, looking at the bands of wooly bears, and throwing spaghetti at the wall in favor of such things as Doppler radar and accuforecasts, a recent poll showed that nearly 3072% of Americans still find their most reliable source of weather forecasts to be an underground rat living in the Keystone State.  As a result, the soulless minions of the Weather Channel have doubtless tried to buy off said groundhog with all manner of blandishments and promises.  But nay, all their efforts have come to naught, and they have now resorted to a most duplicitous plan of action.  What they conspire to accomplish is nothing less than the complete destruction of Punxatawney Phil’s good name and reputation by putting out spurious and inaccurate forecasts in his name in the hope that the people will lose faith in him.

            This, my friends, is one outrage with which we must not put up.  Indeed, as a fellow member of the alternative media I feel a particular responsibility to making sure that the truth on this matter gets out and that assuming that a diplomatic solution cannot be reached, a rescue attempt will be the only recourse left to us.  I foresee a brilliant and unexpected night raid where, under cover of darkness, I and a crack team of ninjas will infiltrate the Weather Channel’s compound, gnaw through the electric fence, leap o’er the moat full of firebreathing pumas, kick a bunch of people in the face, and affect the daring and audacious liberation of our nation’s greatest weatherman.  From there, we will surely have to go underground, so to speak, moving from town to town, ever watchful of outsiders, while transmitting our own pirated signal to the world so that good men and women everywhere may still know whether or not it’s going to be partly cloudy or partly sunny tomorrow.  True, sacrifices will have to be made, but in the end, I have no doubt that justice will prevail and that the edifice of lies which the newspapers and the Weather Channel have built will crumble like an alabaster hippopotamus struck with a stinger missile.  Viva la Groundhog!

            With more and more people these days wanting to earn their degrees, and with just as many people as ever wanting to take their money and spend it on hot tubs, supermodels, and death rays, it comes as no surprise that everybody and their grandmother is starting up online universities (Coming Soon: Ben’s Grandmother’s University) where, with as few as three or four professors, who are often imaginary and/or actually housecats, enterprising young P.T. Barnums of the ether can start their own institution of higher learning and making money.  Clearly I cannot allow such corruption and exploitation of the naïve to continue without trying to get a piece of it for myself, which is why I now introduce to you the newest cyberian learnatorium, Captain Ben’s Online University, College of Dark Overlordery, and $1.57 Ethnically Thematical Dry Cleaning Establishment (motto: El Queso del Mundi).  Yes you too can now learn such Sally Stutherian arts as home pet repair, crossbow design, not totally lame interior decorating, crushing all those who dare to oppose you, band name making upology, monkey wrangling, the art of maniacal laughter, global domination on a budget, sending me money, funky Waffle House styling, and dwarf tossing.  But before you just start hurling cash in my general direction as an Indian doth fling cashews at the screen during a showing The New World, let’s stop and meet just a few (by which I mean “all”) of our qualified and mostly non-fictional professors.

            First, we’ve got Professor The Ghost of Colonel Sanders, who has generously agreed to return from his watery grave that he might instruct the youth of America in the manly arts of deep frying things, wearing a white linen suit, and ancient Sumerian kung fu.  Not only that, but he’ll also be your freshman year academic advisor and lunch lady.  Just remember, he doesn’t accept cash or checks, only mint juleps and livestock, so prepare accordingly.

            Next, we come to The Professor from Gilligan’s Island, who is also, thanks to the miracle of podcasting, no longer dead.  Embark on a three hour tour of finding stuff out with him in such mostly not made up classes as building a radio out of coconuts, turning someone uninvisible, setting up a wireless office network made out of orangutans and corned beef, and of course, not being able to patch a hole in a boat to save your life.  While studying with the Professor, you will have the opportunity to bask in the canola oil-colored glow of his extensive wisdom concerning life in the tropics, as well as learning why nobody around here ever mentions what is euphemistically referred to as “The Mary-Ann Incident” more than once around him.

            Then of course, we have Professor M.C. Hammer, who has recently returned from an extended sabbatical while working on his latest book concerning the history of pants.  Under his flat topped Yoda-like tutelage, you will learn such ancient Fritos of wisdom as not touching this, stopping, introduction to carpentry, and horribly mangling the Addams Family theme song.  Students in all of our programs are welcome to attend his weekly Pantsravaganzas of the many specialized uses of pants that nobody ever thinks about for any number of very good reasons.

            Finally, we have Professor Emeritus Vigo the Carpathian, who, despite being suffering from an acute case of Carpathian Kitten Loss (don’t worry, it isn’t contagious. much), lectures on a wide variety of topics, such as having a giant Christina Ricci-like forehead, not smiling ever, and controlling the weak-minded.  While attending his classes students are to refrain from wearing anything depicting the Statue of Liberty and all Romanian students with poor interpersonal skills are to exercise extreme caution when visiting the Professor during office hours.

            Whether you’re taking a break between classes or merely out recovering from a cyber hangover after a night at one of our many wild and crazy virtual frat parties, you’ll love the majestic and not actually there at all scenery of our fine and capacious virtual campus.  Or stop by our online Bistro and download deliciousroastbeefsandwhich.exe.

            What ever you plans for higher education may be, I can safely and without fear of contradiction say that Captain Ben’s University & All That Other Stuff will serve your needs equally well, regardless of whether you’re a college grad looking for better credentials or a stay at home mom trying to get back into the filed of global domination.  Either way, the smartest thing you could possibly ever do is to fill out an application today, and start sending me money, I mean, learning stuff, today!