The Monster Who Lives In The Couch Day!

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

Happy The Monster Who Lives In The Couch Day!

Fire Drill Day!

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

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

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

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

She opens her window and blows smoke out at you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Fire Drill Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chatty Airplane Neighbor Day!

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

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

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

Happy Chatty Airplane Neighbor Day!

Kids Are Huffing Inkjet Cartridges Day!

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

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

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

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

Happy Kids Are Huffing Inkjet Cartridges Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parents Groups Are Turning Against You Again Day!

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone quiets down. They know the tracks you mean.

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

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

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

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

Happy Parents Groups Are Turning Against You Again Day!

You’re The New Rob Schneider Movie Day!

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

Happy You’re The New Rob Schneider Movie Day!

Watch “The Day After” With Your Kids Day!

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

Your kids will shake their heads no.

“Well what scares you then?”

“Mom leaving us,” they’ll say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disaster Recovery Notification Plan Day!

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

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

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

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

Happy Disaster Recovery Notification Plan Day!

Briefs Off The Clothesline Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Briefs Off The Clothesline Day!

Just You And The Fuckin’ Angels Day!

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

Happy Just You And The Fuckin’ Angels Day!

Your Ex-Husband Parachutes In Day!

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

“Anna?” he’ll ask.

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

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

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

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

“Engaged,” he’ll say. “There she is.”

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

Happy Your Ex-Husband Parachutes In Day!

Pube Omelet Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Pube Omelet Day!

Spy Vs Spy Day!

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

Happy Spy Vs Spy Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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