The Teens Are Out Of Control Day!

When you get to the gate of the singles only condominium complex, they demand that you drive your car fifty feet back and then walk to the gate while they watch. They need to know you don't have any teens inside your car waiting to run through the gates as soon as they open. They need to know you're alone.

"I have no children," you say. "I just need a place to stay. A place safe from the teens."

You can hear laughter in the distance. Youths. They're probably just drinking beer and fornicating in the woods, but who knows. You have to get inside.

"Please," you say.

They wait thirty seconds and then the gate opens. You run inside and the gate closes behind you almost immediately. A thirty-one year old man with hair plugs and capped teeth greets you with a shovel. He holds the shovel out to you.

"Bury the dead," he says, pointing to the corner. There are some teens piled there. They must have tried to get over the wall and got picked off by snipers. Stupid of them, but they have little to no sense once they smell people of legal guardian age. They just do whatever it takes to get closer to their kill. And sometimes they get shot. You have to bury them now.

While digging into the ground you catch a glimpse of the bright green shimmer of the moon reflecting off the pool and shining in the windows of the building. You hope the fence is high enough to dip in their safely. The world may be sinking into ruin now that the teens have been infected with a substance that turns them into fornicating killers out for adult blood, but it'd be nice if you could get in a swim before the end.

Happy The Teens Are Out Of Control Day!

PPPS: Buy "You Are A Miserable Excuse For A Hero" if you haven't already! Long time no talk...

The Guy Who Stole Your Laptop Is Way More Likeable Than You Are Day!

You got your laptop stolen from a coffee shop not long ago (you left it alone on a table to go hit on a girl looking through postcards for terrible plays by the window. By the time the girl told you to leave her alone and you turned around, your laptop was gone). The guy must have immediately gone home and started answering your emails, because within 48 hours of losing your laptop, you and your father had reconciled your differences, your ex-girlfriend drunk dialed you, and your boss started telling everyone in the office that if they all had your attitude, the company’s stock would be through the roof already.

You check your sent mail file on Gmail and find that the guy who stole your laptop is capable of the most eloquent and evocative correspondence you’ve ever read. He was able to read into emails you’d gotten and instantly suss out what the writer was trying to say, and what the writer wanted to hear in response. And man did he tell them what they wanted to hear. Reading the emails he sent to your estranged father, ex-girlfriend, and especially your boss, you can’t help but shed a tear imagining what your life might have been like had you always had this strange man’s voice and grasp of human nature.

You decide to send an email to thank him, so you send it to yourself, assuming that he’s still reading.

Dear Guy Who Stole My Laptop,

Thanks for being me, in a way I could never be. I’m going to change my email password now.

Best

You change your email password and then you put on your good suit. You’re having dinner with your dad tonight.

Happy The Guy Who Stole Your Laptop Is Way More Likeable Than You Are Day!

PS: Hey UNITED KINGDOM, my new book is available in your part of town on July 3rd. Pre-order now!

PPS: Listen to me on NPR's "The Bryant Park Project," reading from and discussing my book.

PPPS: Another reading in NY this Friday, at KGB Bar. 7 PM. Free!

You Are A Fart Guitarist Day!

Today you’re going to quit playing fart guitar for an aspiring parody rock band that parodies popular rock songs in the vein of Weird Al, except without anyone knowing that you do it because you don’t make recordings that people can buy.

“I just don’t think there’s a future for me in Ned Bleppelin,” you’ll tell your lead singer.

“We have that gig at the orphanage in July. You’re just gonna let those kids go without hearing some funny music?”

“It’s not even a gig,” you say. “We just stand outside the orphanage’s window and play. They called the police the last time.”

This makes your lead singer cry. He grew up in that orphanage and his dream was that one day he would come back and perform there as a famous pop song parodist. After a few years of trying to make it, he grew impatient and just started playing outside the orphanage’s windows.

“What are you gonna do?” your lead singer asks.

“I’m going to join a song parody cover band” you say. “We’ll play parodies written by other people, like Al. There’s good money in it.”

“And the integrity?” he asks. “Is there much integrity to be found in that line of work?”

You shrug him off.

“Hey man, maybe one day we’ll parody one of your songs,” you say. “’My Fart Will Go On’ is bound to hit it big one day.”

Your lead singer loses his shit and starts throwing whatever he can find at you. Whoopie cushions, punching nun puppets, George W Bush masks. Whatever’s lying around the rehearsal space he sends flying at your head and cursing. You get the hell out of there and go meet your other band, Dare To Be Stupid, for practice. Tomorrow you’ll find out your former lead singer attempted suicide and is in the hospital. You won’t go visit. This is the business you’ve chosen.

PS: Pick up "You Are A Miserable Excuse For A Hero," the new book by Bob Powers. Out now!

The President's Gone Day!

It's day 6 and there's still no sign of the President of the United States. He took off over the weekend after he found out he got a staffer pregnant. She didn't want to abort and he got scared of having to raise another kid (his third), so he took off. He left a note for the Vice President that just read, "Sorry man." The nation's police forces have been instructed to treat the president's disappearance as if it were an abduction or a murder investigation. But the nation's citizens are starting to wonder whether he shouldn't just be left alone.

"He didn't want to raise a kid," people are saying to each other across dinner tables. "The Vice President can handle things. Let the guy go."

"Do we really want him to come back to his job even?" other people are saying to each other near water coolers. "If he'll run from something like this, what will he do when someone blasts us with bombs?"

"Don't blame me, I voted for Bill and Opus," some asshole just said to no one listening.

Today you're going to be driving across country to a place where you think there might be work and you're gonna pick up a hitchhiker. After driving for a bit, you'll get a look at his profile and you'll know it's him, but you won't say anything. You'll just keep going, taking your president as far as he needs to go. Just before dropping him off at a truck stop you'll say, "I ain't gonna say nothing."

"Appreciate that," the President of the United States will say. Then he'll wander around to the back parking lot of the truck stop, probably looking for his next ride. You'll drive on, feeling proud. You'll have served your country well today.

Happy The President's Gone Day!

ps: Bob's new book, "You Are A Miserable Excuse for a Hero," is out now! Pick up a copy soonish!

"You Are A Miserable Excuse For A Hero" Day!

FYI: If you haven't heard, Bob Powers' new "choose-your-own-ending" style humor book (for adults who are 33 and failing) is out today. Go check it out!

"You Are A Miserable Excuse For A Hero" Day!

You publish a magazine devoted to the Buick LeSabre. It includes all sorts of celebratory personal essays as well as fan-fiction written from the point of view of sentient Buick LeSabres who can love. Today you're going to get a call that one of your readers has taken a Buick dealership hostage because they've been putting their LeSabres in the back of the lot, away from street-view, and he won't let them go unless you show up and talk to him for a while about how awesome the Buick LeSabre is. You refuse because you're scared. Everyone at the Buick dealership is murdered execution style on the showroom floor.

Happy "You Are A Miserable Excuse For A Hero" Day!

PS:

"Miserable Excuse" excerpt up on the HuffPost

The Huffington Post ran an excerpt from my new book, out this Tuesday. Check it out.

And you can find a much longer sample, with many of the different outcomes, HERE! Give it a read.

Happy Memorial Day.

You're All Outta Love Day!

You're all outta love and you're only 46.

"I blew my love on a whole lotta people who didn't deserve it," you say at the dinner table, eyeing your two sons with scorn. Your two sons both give you the finger in response.

"Are you sure you didn't leave some of your love in your other pants," your wife says pointedly. She knows about the affair with the lady who sells you your pears.

"I should have been more miserly," you say, ignoring your wife. "What kind of man am I going to be now?"

Everyone sits and waits for you to do something that a man who's all outta love might do. Nothing happens. They get hungry and start eating again.

"Pass the salt," your son says.

"Nope," you say.

Everyone drops their forks to their plates and gasps. You realize what you've become and you drop your face into your hands and shriek.

Happy You're All Outta Love Day!

PS: Preorder YOU ARE A MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A HERO, the new book by Bob Powers. Out May 27th!

Sex Bus Day!

You were the sole survivor of the Great Christmas Eve Sex Bus crash of 2006. You barely remember a thing after the bus crashed through the guardrail and broke through the ice on the frozen over lake. There was screaming and there was cold, and then you were lying topless on a muddy bank feeling nothing but a sharp pain behind your eyes. You have no idea why you were the only one to not get trapped inside that sinking bus along with the rest of the exotic dancers, prostitutes, and Teflon salesmen. Some say you were lucky. Others, the families of the dead, they say you were cursed. You're inclined to agree with them.

You're presently paralyzed from the waist down and your heart is broken in two because before the sex bus crash you were engaged to be married to Lenny, the owner and proprietor of Sex Bus Tours Incorporated. Lenny was driving that night. You were all the way in the back of the bus tending bar. In between were twenty-six traveling Teflon salesmen and a staff of half-nude to completely nude women giving the salesmen a Christmas Eve they would never forget. You keep going back to that night, trying harder and harder to remember the moments after the crash. You try to put yourself back there and you try to see down the cabin of the bus, peering through the mass of naked flesh and bulbous middle-aged man to catch a glimpse of your Lenny.

You're certain he would have looked back at you at the end. Even if there were only a millisecond of time, he would have put his eyes to his mirror to find you and make sure you were all right. And you would most definitely have been looking for him. You just want to remember that one last look. You want to remember the last time you saw those eyes.

You start seeing hypnotists to take you back to that night, but the Sex Bus Crash is a spooky event in your town and many hypnotists refuse your business because they don't want you to take them there. Finally, one consents to do whatever it takes to free up your memories of that night.

It's rough going, but after many sessions with the therapist you finally find yourself transported onto that bus, experiencing the crash all over again like it was happening in the present. You search the cabin, peering past all the dancers and Teflon salesmen until you finally catch a glimpse of the driver's seat...and you find it empty. Empty with the exit door open.

"But I buried him," you say. "They brought up his body and I put him in the ground."

"Did you identify him?" the hypnotist asks.

You can barely breathe. It's like you're still in that lake.

"He was underwater too long, they said," you tell the hypnotist, realizing now that the only reason you're alive is because your Lenny must have jumped out of the sex bus just before the crash, then he swam to the rear entrance and pulled you out.

And then he disappeared. Why, you have no idea. But it's time to go find out...

Happy Sex Bus Day!

PS: Pre-Order "YOU ARE A MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A HERO," the new book by Bob Powers. Out next Tuesday, May 27th.

Hooker Wisdom Day!

Of all the Hookers on your block, Charlene is your favorite. The others are too busy looking for Johns or worrying about the cops to pay attention to you, but Charlene always takes notice of you when you come home at night. Unless she’s leaning inside a stranger’s car trying to make a sale, she’ll be sure to give you a snappy remark or quip that is infused with the wisdom of the streets. You’ll never forget all the clever truisms she’s given you over the years:

“If you get hit by a car, try to find someone who’ll take you to the hospital.”

“Hey sugar. Don’t eat uncooked chicken. It’ll make you sick.”

“What’s up stud? If you have a lot of money, keep it in the bank. They’ll give you interest.”

You always nod and reply with a “You got it Charlene, have a good night!” Then you head upstairs and put your head on your pillow to think about what Charlene said to you.

Tonight you’ll come walking home and you’ll be excited to see Charlene unoccupied. You’ve been feeling a little lost lately and you could use some good advice. When Charlene sees you, she spreads her smile wide and shows you those beautiful white teeth of hers.

“Hey Charlene,” you say.

“Hey handsome,” Charlene says back. “You know what they say don’t you?”

“What’s that Charlene?”

“No matter how much you want to drive a car, you need to get a license first. It’s illegal otherwise. You can still do it without a license, but if you got pulled over, you could get into a lot of trouble. Unless you could convince the policeman that you were on your way to an emergency or something, but that’d be pretty hard to pull off.”

You stay right where you are and you let those words of Charlene’s sink in. Your head is swimming and you can’t help it. As embarrassing as it is in front of all those hookers and all those Johns, Charlene’s words make you just drop to your knees and sob. Charlene rubs your shoulder gently with one hand while you cry before her. Then she tells you to “Get up and do what you gotta do.”

You wipe your tears away and you nod. Then you go upstairs. You turn on that television. And you watch a rerun of “King of Queens.” As you watch, you think to yourself, “Charlene was right. You really can’t drive a car unless you get a license first because it’s illegal otherwise. You can still do it without a license, but if you get pulled over you could get into a lot of trouble. You could try to convince the policeman you had an emergency, but that’s hard.”

You keep watching “King of Queens,” all the while thinking to yourself, “Thank you Charlene. Thank you.”

PS: Take a break from pre-ordering my book to pre-order Rebecca Barry's LATER, AT THE BAR, a fantastic book of fiction about upstate New York drunks, out next week in paperback. It's Girls Are Pretty Approved!

Bodybuilders Should Date Bodybuilders Day!

You're a bodybuilder who loves to whale on your abs and glutes, and you're falling in love with a girl who barely weighs a hundred pounds and doesn't have a muscle on her whole body. Your bodybuilder friends are really rude to her when you bring her to Muscle Beach.

"What are you doing with that softy dude? Bodybuilders stick with bodybuilders. We understand each other's need to whale on our delts," your best friend counsels you.

"I don't see why we have to be so limited in our perspective," you tell him. "There's strength of heart too, you know."

What are you gonna do if you move in with that girl and you want to arm wrestle somebody?" your friend says. "Heck you'll probably rip her arm out of her socket during a thumb wrestling match."

Your girlfriend will over hear this exchange and she'll leave a note in your mailbox telling you that she loves you but she doesn't want to cause you any trouble with your bodybuilding social circles. You'll run and track her down but it'll be too late. She'll have already enlisted in the army and been shipped off to Iraq.

Happy Bodybuilders Should Date Bodybuilders Day!

PS: Preorder Bob Powers' new book, out May 27th!

It’s Your Boss’ Birthday Day!

Get him a pony. Just walk it in this morning with a big bow and a “Happy Birthday” ribbon around its neck and park it next to you desk. When your boss asks what’s with the pony, tell him he’ll have to wait until the afternoon when it’s cake-time before he gets his gifts.

Your boss will bring you into his office and tell you to get rid of the pony.

“But I bought it for you,” say. “Don’t you want your present?”

Your boss will say that a pony is inappropriate, and he’ll accuse you of trying to imply that he’s childish.

“So I spent 53,000 dollars on your birthday gift and you accuse me of being underhanded?”

Your boss will apologize.

“You’re a real baby, you know that?” you’ll say.

Your boss will say, there, that’s what he’s talking about.

“You want you rattle baby?”

Your boss will tell you that you go a long long way to try to undermine him. Like the time you built a giant crib and put his desk in the middle of it.

“Just because Dad made me President and you Vice President,” he’ll say.

“I’m two years older than you,” tell him. “I will not take orders from my younger brother. This company is called Linus and Sons. Not Linus and One Son Who’s a Little More Important Than The Other Son, Even Though The Other Son Is Older.”

Your boss will throw his pen at the wall and ask what the Pony’s name is.

“I though you could name him,” tell him.

“I want to name him Aragon,” your boss will say.

“Aragon,” you’ll repeat.

“Aragon,” he’ll say again, with majesty.

You’ll both sit quietly, then, “Thank you for my present.”

Just shrug, then lean out his door and whistle. Aragon will come walking into your boss’s office. You’ll go back to your desk and your boss will spend the rest of the day brushing Aragon’s coat.

Happy It’s Your Boss’ Birthday Day!

PS: Preorder Bob Powers' new book, out May 27th!

Middle-Aged Riot Day!

Tomorrow, when they ask who started it all and why, they’ll put your picture on the screen and they’ll show some video of your sons, who will tell a reporter that they haven’t spoken to you since your divorce from their mom and so they can’t say they know why you threw that garbage can through the plate glass window of a Whole Foods. They’ll find your wife tomorrow too, and she’ll tell them that you were very charismatic and she can understand why so many middle-aged men and women followed your lead and started hunting down twenty-year-olds to strip naked and strap to the roofs of cabs so that people still in their offices can toss garbage and sandwich meats from conference room catering trays out their windows and onto the twenty-year-olds’ bellies. They’ll find some of your followers who weren’t put into the police trucks and they’ll ask them if they knew who you were or what they hoped to accomplish.

“HE! IS! OUR! VOICE!” your fifties-ish followers will say. They will be shirtless and they will have bricks in their hands, waiting for the next chance to regroup and tear up the financial district.

No one will know what set you off today. No one will know if you were apprehended or where you were taken. They’ll know only what was done, not why. They’ll know that their parents haven’t been home in a day and they might either be in prison or hitching a ride out of the lives they've spent three decades building.

Late tomorrow, a surveillance video will be accessed and leaked to CNN. It will show a grainy black and white image of you walking out of your office building. The timecode will be today at 3 PM. You’ll stop and crane your head back to catch some raindrops on your tongue. Then you’ll lunge forward and shove a passing bike messenger off of his bike. You’ll stomp on the bike messenger’s torso, and several other middle-aged people who were smoking outside will join you in your beat-down. Then you’ll crane your head back again and howl at the sky. When you take off running, dozens will be following you, as if your howl were a rallying cry. You’re gonna start a middle-aged riot today, and it’s been a long time coming.

Happy Middle-Aged Riot Day!

PS: Buy Bob Powers' new book, out May 27th!

Have Sex So Forgettable You'll Go Home And Slap Your Mama Day!

Today you should have sex that is so completely forgettable and not even worth the mess that you'll get on a plane and fly back to your mama's house so you can slap her across the face because she never told you sex could be so "eh."

"You're withholding," your Mama will say, rubbing her cheek where you slapped her. "You got that from me."

"But I want to give of myself completely and totally to another," you'll say. "I want to lose myself in strange flesh."

"Psssh," your mother will say. "If you figure out how to do that be sure and send me the handbook when you're done, kay?"

You'll slap your mother again. She'll slap you back and then overturn the coffee table separating the two of you. Both of you grab a weapon and settle this once and for all.

Have Sex So Forgettable You'll Go Home And Slap Your Mama Day!

PS: Preorder Bob Powers' new book, out May 27th!

Pay Your Uncle Pete To Ask You To Be An Assassin Day!

At around 1PM today, have your Uncle Pete show up to your social studies class dressed in all black. He’ll knock on the door and the teacher will let him in, thinking he’s a responsible adult who has something important to share. Then he’ll find you and he’ll say what you told him to say, word for word.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your studies, but I can’t take no for an answer when we both know that life as a highly paid killer is your destiny. Will you join our Secret Order of International Assassins? At fourteen you would be the youngest ever to have been recruited, but you will also be the most deadly. You have the gift of bloodshed, and you can use it for good if you take control now.”

He’ll come to your desk and get on his knees.

“Goddammit son, don’t let your evil talent fall into the wrong hands. Kill for us and you’ll earn vast sums of wealth, share the company of beautiful women, and ensure that the United States of America remains the greatest country on the planet.”

Say this to your Uncle.

“Rise.”

Your Uncle will get up from his knees.

“When I finish speaking, you have thirty seconds to leave my presence. Don’t pretend you know what stuff I’m made of. You know nothing of my gifts and you could never comprehend what I am capable of. If I kill, it will be at my own will, not because some nameless customer has paid a bill or a spineless president has let things spiral out of control. I am my own person, and you should respond to me with only one emotion. Fear. Now go, or yours will be the first blood that I shed.”

Your Uncle will then run out of the classroom. Your teacher and classmates will be silent for a minute. Raise your hand and ask your teacher if you can use the hall pass. By the time you return from the bathroom, you will have transformed from the school’s loneliest Magic The Gathering player to the school’s most talented killer who is as conflicted over his gifts as he is highly trained.

You’ll most definitely get invited to the end of the year wippets party in the woods behind the V.A. Hospital. It’s just a question of whose invitation you’ll say yes to, while giving all the others an “I’ll think about it.” Just don’t forget to give your Uncle the 30 bucks you promised him. That unemployed son of a bitch earned his keep this week. If only your Dad thought so.

Happy Pay Your Uncle Pete To Ask You To Be An Assassin Day!

PS: Preorder Bob Powers' newest book, out May 27th!

Stop The Rise In Girl Crime Day!

When you were a little boy and girls would tease you on the playground because you were so cute, you wanted them put behind bars for their crimes. You used to dream that one day you’d have the power to dole out the punishment girls deserve for crossing the line of justice.

When you turned 21 you opened up a private detective’s office, focusing only on solving girl-crime. Your slogan was, “If a girl did it, I’ll chase her for a reasonable fee.”

In your twelve years in operation you had a pretty good record and a pretty lonely life. But the new mayor is a woman and she had your license taken away because she says you’re prejudiced against girls.

“I leave the judging for the judge. I just capture,” you said. “Just so happens I capture girls and girls only.”

The newspaper columnists said you probably only capture girls because you get to pat them down to make sure they don’t have any weapons. You wrote a letter to the editor saying that’s ridiculous because girls are gross. But the rumors persisted.

Since you lost your license, girl crime has risen 740% with over 900 murders attributed to girls. Even girls who seemed to be on the track to a productive, law-abiding life suddenly turned to crime because they saw the opportunity to get away with it. In addition to all the crime, the town has become overrun with sociologists looking to study the girl crime wave and its feminine causes.

The mayor is going to pay a visit to your apartment today, where you’ve been drinking and feeling useless ever since you were stripped of your license, and she’s going to ask you to get back in the detective game and stop girl crime. Naturally, since this is the first time a girl will have been in your apartment, you’ll fall in love with the mayor, and you’ll stop wanting to wipe out girl crime because the mayor will make you think girls aren’t so bad. But the mayor only wants to use you to clean up the town, and when she makes that clear, your broken heart will turn you into an anti-girl vigilante and you’ll go out and fill up the jails and morgues with hundreds of girl outlaws over the course of one weekend. This, now, will make the mayor fall in love with you, but you won’t return her feelings. You fell for a girl’s tricks once, and you’re not gonna let it happen again.

Happy Stop The Rise In Girl Crime Day!

Unfrozen Fart Day!

Your Dad drew up his will, and he wants to have his body frozen when he dies.

“But I want them to freeze me so that the minute I get unfrozen I rip a fart,” you say. “I want them to melt me down in the future, and right when they’re wondering whether my my body can be reanimated to give them information about society in the past, I let fly this rip-roaring Harley Davidson type fart that lasts like two and a half minutes and makes everyone laugh.”

You’re going over the terms of his will, and you just aren’t sure about this.

“Can they do that, Dad?” you ask. “I mean, you’ll be dead when you’re frozen. How can they freeze your dead body in such a way that it will release gas?”

“It’s called science!” your Dad says, hitting you with the stirrer from his martini glass.

You skip down to the part where you inherit everything and you smile. He really does love you.

“I think it’s a great will Dad.”

Your dad tries to fart but can’t.

“Man I hope this works out. It’s worth dying tomorrow if I could be sure that I’d fart ten centuries from now.”

You wish you could relieve his pain, but you’ll have to leave that to the future for now.

Happy Unfrozen Fart Day!

Go And Rescue Your Classmates From The Caved In Crystal Cavern Day!

Your class went on a field trip to the Crystal Cavern but you weren’t allowed to go because you got in trouble for picking up Julie Rigby and running off of school grounds with her over your shoulder during recess. Julie was screaming and yelling for help while you carried her away and several teachers had to chase you across the street and up the next block before you let her go. You explained that you only did it because you like Julie but she thinks you’re fat (you are), so you assumed this is the way it has to be done. Since then you’ve been meeting with your guidance counselor during lunch so he can tell you what you’re allowed to do to girls you like and what’s not allowed and what’s illegal.

Keeping you from the Crystal Caverns trip was a harsh punishment, you thought, but now that they’re all trapped and likely to die in the caved in mine, you wonder whether it was a blessing. If you go and save all your classmates, you can probably lift up any one of your classmates and carry them wherever you like. You’ll be the hero, after all, and heroes get to walk away with whatever they want over their shoulders.

When you start to walk toward the mine’s entrance, the rescue workers laugh at you for being so fat and thinking that you can be of any use. Then you go straight to the pile of rocks and begin hefting the big rocks away from the mass and they wonder if maybe you might really be of some use. Then you pull one rock away and it makes all the others tumble deeper into the mine with a loud rumble. After that the people with the headphones listening for voices under the rocks, they take off their headphones and they shake their heads no. You go on home, wondering if tomorrow there’ll even be anyone left to carry off from the playground now.

Happy Go And Rescue Your Classmates From The Caved In Crystal Cavern Day!

Some Christmas Trees Can Talk and Fight Terrorism Day!

When you were seven you went downstairs on Christmas morning to see what was waiting under the tree for you. In the living room twinkling with tree lights and tinsel, you found a mountain of gifts sitting under the majestic pine raining its dry needles all over the wrapping paper. It was when you started picking up gifts and shaking them that you swear the tree started talking to you.

“Did you say something Christmas tree?” you asked it.

It spoke again. You can’t remember what it said, which is why ever since then you've assumed you were just having a dream that morning. Most of your childhood memories can be relegated to the stuff of dreams, at least until those memories are confirmed by an outside party.

Today, at age 35, you’re going to be woken up when your front door bursts from its hinges and an old, brown Christmas Tree still sprinkled with tinsel comes hopping through your apartment to your bed.

“Why didn’t you kill them?” the Christmas Tree will ask.

It looks like a tree that was thrown to the sidewalk on January 3rd. Except it’s standing on its own stump without a tree stand, and its branches shake around the midsection when it talks.

“You were real?” you ask.

“Christ. Don’t tell me you didn’t believe in me. So much for the wonderment of children.”

“What did you tell me all those years ago?” you ask.

“I told you that the world will end in 2008 unless you kill your parents and brother. You had 27 years for the love of Pete. We can track and gather info and we can collate data, and we can fake passports and bribe the right people, but to actually strike against a target we need humans. We’re only trees after all. We counted on you, man.”

You tell the Christmas tree that you’re pretty sure you’re going crazy right now and you’re going to stop talking to it. The Christmas tree will get frustrated and just to piss you off it will go to your shoe rack and shake it’s branches over your shoes so they’ll fill with needles. Then it will leave.

“Turn on the TV,” the Christmas tree will say before it hops out the door.

You get out of bed and turn on your TV to find photos of your mother, father and brother displayed on the screen, captioned with Eastern European names. The words “Missing Nuke” are displayed above them in scary red letters. The newsman is giving out evacuation instructions to the populace.

“I should have listened to my Christmas Tree,” you’ll think. “Now the whole world is gonna burn.”

You lay back in bed, dizzy but warm in your heart. Finally, at 35, you understand the true meaning of Christmas. Then you see a bright white flash in the east.

Happy Some Christmas Trees Can Talk and Fight Terrorism Day!

You Sure Do Get A Lot Of DUI’s For A Woman Day!

Getting pulled over for your fourth DUI turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. It looked like it was going to be the end of your life as a licensed driver, and you were probably even going to have to serve some jail time. Then the judge presiding over your hearing made one fatal mistake.

“You sure do get a lot of DUI’s for a woman,” the judge said.

No one knew what a stir that little statement would cause. A few people in the room even chuckled. But after you got your sentence for community service and AA, you immediately went to the press and told them about the double standard that sways over the county courthouse.

Within days the story about the judge who thinks women should drive less drunk than men swept through the nation and you had your pick of top-notch lawyers fighting to argue your civil rights suit against the County.

“It’s not that women don’t drink and drive just as much as men,” the judge said when interviewed on a local morning show. “It’s just that in my experience, they don’t get caught so much. Their center of gravity is different right? Maybe that helps them drive drunk better.”

But no one bought it. The judge was condemned as a sexist and forced to resign. He later killed himself by closing up his garage and letting the car run idle. Your suit against the County won you a $3 million settlement and you finally got to open that coffee shop you always dreamed about.

You still drink and drive, and you still get caught a lot, but you never have to do any time. None of the judges want you in their court room for even half a second after they saw how you handled their colleague. Which is nice because you used to be afraid to drink certain places knowing how far you'd have to drive home wasted. Funny thing is, now that you can drink and drive all over the place, all you want to do is sit at home and drink alone.

"Weird how that kind of thing works out," you mutter into your glass of bourbon just before it drops to the floor and you fall asleep sitting upright in a living room chair.

Happy You Sure Do Get A Lot Of DUI’s For A Woman Day!

You Can’t Stop Driving Day!

Your ex-girlfriend used to design parking lots and since she left you’ve been unable to park your car without being reminded of her. She hurt you real bad, left you for your landlord, and you just can’t handle knowing that every time you park your car you might be doing it thanks to her ingenuity of drawing straight lines on a paved lot. It’s made it so that every time you get into your car to run an errand, you find yourself unable to park. You just keep driving until you run out of gas or open the door and roll out of the car while it’s still moving, hoping that it crashes lightly into a tree or a river and not some kids.

Your therapist was good enough to give you one last session. He’s running beside your car right now, trying to open the passenger door. He needs you to go slower.

“I’m only going five miles per hour,” you shout at him.

“Slower!” he pants. “I can’t get in!”

“I’m going three miles an hour! If I go any slower I’ll park. I can’t park!”

“I can’t get in. Slower!”

He’s grabbing at the door handle, slapping at it but he can’t seem to get a good enough grip to open it.

“This won’t work! Call me!”

You keep driving and you watch your therapist shrink in the rear view. You look over at the door and realize you forgot to unlock it. You can’t help but burst out laughing. You laugh and you laugh until you see the post office and you roll out of the car to pick up some stamps. The car crashes into a Blockbuster Video, which is convenient since you had to return “Becoming Jane” anyhow. It's sitting on the dash.

Happy You Can’t Stop Driving Day!

Your Lawyer’s Here Day!

He’s got some bad news.

“I did the best I could. But the State won’t allow you to receive your lethal injection from a man dressed in a Boba Fett costume while another man in a Darth Vader costume massages your balls and talks about how you and he are one and the same. And they won’t abduct your mother and make her watch while her exclamations of disgust are pumped into the execution room via a hidden microphone.”

“What about the topless woman in a Greedo mask walking in just as I’m about to die and admitting to me that she shot first?”

“No go,” your lawyer says.

You shake your head in sadness for America. “They call this humane?”

“You shouldn’t have killed those kids,” your lawyer says.

Happy Your Lawyer’s Here Day!

Your Best Friend’s Boyfriend Is Your Boyfriend Now Day!

Your best friend’s boyfriend is knocking on the door. Open it up and he’ll tell you he’s your boyfriend now.

“Okay!” you say. You wrap your arms around him and give him a big kiss. Your first as a couple. “We don’t kiss now,” he says. “Newhart’s on.”

You hand him the remote and you order burritos. “We don’t eat burritos on Tuesdays,” he says. “Tuesday is sandwiches night.”

You throw away the burritos and you and he make some sandwiches. Then you turn off the TV and start having sex.

“We don’t have sex like this,” he says, pulling off your mask. “We have missionary position vagina sex.”

You change-up and it is magical. When you finish, you get up and go look for some marijuana.

“We don’t smoke weed after,” he says. “I lay here and you turn your back to me and cry.”

You’re starting to get the sense that he’s a little set in his ways. “I don’t want to cry,” you say.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he says. “But, when in Rome.”

You both get high, but he doesn’t loosen up. You invite him to take a shower with you, where you start scrubbing his front, but he doesn’t do anything to you.

“We don’t scrub each other’s fronts first,” he says. “I wash your ass for around eighteen minutes and then the water gets cold.”

He washes your ass for only twelve minutes before the water turns freezing.

“This is all wrong!” he shouts as he hops out of the shower hunting for a towel, which isn’t kept where he thinks it should be. Then he complains that the temperature in the apartment is maintained at a lower grade than it should be, and the light bulbs in the fixtures are 60 watt when they should be 75. When he looks in the fridge and finds no string cheese or celery sticks, he tries to pick up the refrigerator and throw it out the window, but he can’t.

“I think you might need a little more time to get over your old girlfriend,” you say. “She’s my best friend and she’s really great. I can understand why you’re having trouble adjusting to her being gone.”

“But I’m your boyfriend,” he says. “You’re just doing everything wrong.”

“I’ve probably already lost my best friend, and it’s just not worth it to trade a wonderful friendship for someone who’s just going to follow me around telling me everything’s wrong,” you say. “Seriously, go back to my best friend, or go home and be alone for a while.”

He shakes his head. “No. I’ll get used to you doing everything incorrectly. Really. Pretty soon, the way you do everything wrong will be the right way to do everything, and by the time I leave you I’ll be pissed off at the way the next girl does stuff because it isn’t the way you did it.”

You can’t help it. You like the thought of some girl two years from now having to put up with hearing how she’s all wrong because she’s not you. You decide it’s worth it. You take a seat on the couch and pull a pillow over your lap.

“You don’t hold pillows,” he says.

“Deal with it,” you say.

The phone rings. It’s your best friend. When you answer, she hangs up.

Happy Your Best Friend’s Boyfriend Is Your Boyfriend Now Day!

You Think You Know What The Smoke Monster Is Day!

You have been living alone for the twelve years since your divorce and you never really had much in your life to keep you occupied until you started watching "Lost." Now you spend all your days commenting in message boards and editing "Lostpedia" with your theories, but many of the other fans think you're a crackpot. The one theory of yours that no one wants to accept is that of the nature and origin of the Smoke Monster.

"It's sexual," you start off. "The smoke monster is an embodiment of the unresolved sexual tension between all of those characters who should be having sex with each other but aren't because they're either too busy worrying about the freighties or because they've already been killed and buried. Anytime someone comes close to having sex on the island but gets shot instead, the smoke monster grows stronger."

No one wants to accept your theory and anytime you add it to Lostpedia, it gets removed almost immediately. You're starting to get a little pissed which is why today you're going to find the other major players in decoding Lost-lore online and you're going to bring them to your house and starve them until they're too weak to escape. Then you're going to make them live with you as members of your family and all of you will watch Lost together when it starts up again. You've never watched Lost with anyone before, and you bet it would be fun. Just as long as the people you're watching with don't get stupid and contradict you, because for those foolish folks you'll keep a branding iron glowing hot and ready to scar their naked torsos (keep them all naked to make it harder for them to run away).

Be careful though. When you walk toward that first house of the first Lost "expert" you want to kidnap, how do you know he isn't waiting for you? How do you know he wasn't planning this all along? How do you know this isn't exactly what the island wants you to do?

Happy You Think You Know What The Smoke Monster Is Day!

You And The New Guy Should Get Along Day!

When you show up to work today, you boss tells you that you have to train the new guy.

“He’s just like you,” your boss says.

“Almost like your clone,” your boss’ right-hand man adds.

“You guys should get along just fine. You’re practically the same person,” your boss says.

You go to your desk and you find the new guy sitting on the floor next to it. He’s eating pudding out of a plastic container and it’s all over his face. When he finishes the pudding container, he throws it at the back of someone’s head then laughs very loudly.

“You’re the new guy?” you ask. “I’m supposed to train you."

“Thank God you’re not black,” the new guy says.

You march right back to your boss’ office.

“What do you mean he’s just like me?”

“You don’t see the similarity?”

You look back at the new guy. He’s now in a desk chair and he’s got his pelvis arched up under the desk, clearly massaging his boner with the desk’s underside.

“Okay, maybe a slight resemblance," you say. "But I’m not racist.”

“Yes you are,” your boss says without looking up from the documents he’s reading.

You decide to go back to the new guy and learn more about yourself.

“It’s hard to believe my boogie-snot still tastes good after so many years," the new guy says. "You’d think my changing chemical makeup might have altered the taste after a while. Or it might have been affected by my all-consuming sense of disappointment. But nope. It’s still my favorite meal."

You send out an email to the entire office, apologizing for your behavior in general. You promise to try to be easier to tolerate.

“Can I access the kind of pornography where it looks like someone is being victimized on this computer? Or do I have to use my iPhone?” the new guy says.

“tiedupandscared.com isn’t blocked yet,” you say. “But we’d better start training soon.”

“Let me just finish this threatening letter I’m writing to someone I want to be,” he says.

You wait.

“Okay, finished. Just have to drip a little of my blood at the bottom here. Aaaaad, let’s get to work.”

You’re amazed by just how bad the new guy smells. You send out another email, telling everyone in the office that you now understand why you’re seated alone by the window and you’ll try to rectify the situation.

It’s all getting too much to bear. You kind of want to train the new guy and then resign so you can start anew someplace where people aren’t already so familiar with your repulsive character. There’s just so much you have to change about yourself.

“Before we start training,” you say to the new guy. “I want to thank you. You’ve taught me so much about myself already.”

The new guy leans in. “I’m an undercover agent with the FBI. This office is a front for a human trafficking ring. You’re the only one here who isn’t in on it, so I made sure they’d pair me up with you by appearing to be compatible to your personality. Help me bust these scumbags.”

You shake his hand. He wipes his hand with an anti-bacterial napkin after you let go. Then you begin your brief tenure as the world’s most repulsive crime-fighter, all the while thinking, “I may be awaiting trial for masturbating next to patients' beds in a burn ward, but at least I’m not running a sex slave ring.”

Happy You And The New Guy Should Get Along Day!

You and Your Boyfriend Loved “The Matrix” Day!

You and your boyfriend have probably seen “The Matrix” over a thousand times. So when you come home today and find your boyfriend dead in his chair of a heroin overdose, you do like in “The Matrix” and you lean in close to his ear and whisper that you love him. That’s supposed to make him come back to life, if there really is a Matrix (you and your boyfriend think there is). But telling him you love him doesn’t work. You wonder if this means maybe there isn’t a Matrix, but you conclude that it probably didn’t work because you didn’t mean it. You try telling him you love him again, but the words sound empty. You realize, whispering into his cold ear, that you don’t love him. You never did. You feel free, suddenly. Thank God you found this out after he already overdosed, you think. I hate breaking up with people, you think. I usually just hang around and act cold, waiting for them to break up with me, you also think. You spray some lighter fluid on his clothes and around the room. You give him a kiss. Then you light him on fire and get on out of there. Time to hit the bars and find yourself a Neo who's in the mood for a little Trinity tonight.

Happy You and Your Boyfriend Loved “The Matrix” Day!

Death Race For Pizza Day!

“Another one of Johnny’s famously dumb ideas,” your ex-wife is thinking as she watches you on her badass big screen TV. “He’d sign up for anything.”

It’s true, you would. You like to be picked for stuff. You always stop on the sidewalk when activists ask you if you have a minute to listen to them rattle off statistics about the environment and hungry children. You love when you get a phone call out of the blue from someone who picked you to take their survey. And yes, eleven years ago when the show Death Race was the biggest thing on TV, you happily added your name to the millions of Americans writing in to become contestants. They finally got back to you last week.

Back when you signed up, Death Race was a ratings giant. Everyone wanted to watch people speed across the country with the goal of murdering their fellow contestants, with the last living driver to make it across the finish line winning a prize of ten million dollars (if more than one driver made it across, they all had to split the money, so it’s important to kill your opponents).

Death Race has fallen in the ratings over the years, which is why the prize this season is a large pizza with toppings of your choice. You’re pretty sure that since the prize is so measly you and the other drivers are on the same page about pretty much making this a cross-country road trip that ends with all of you having a fun little pizza party. No reason to kill people just to get the whole pie.

“I bet he thinks this is just gonna be a cross-country road trip that ends in a pizza party,” your ex-wife says to her new and very successful husband while watching you on their huge and awesome television. “Jesus what a sap.”

Just then, the driver to your right tosses a grenade into your passenger seat.

“That guy must be real hungry,” you think. Then you quickly toss the grenade back into his car and smash into his side to make him keep control of the wheel so he can’t toss the grenade back. His car goes off the road and slams into a tree, throwing the driver through his windshield and against the tree at 80 MPH. The driver collapses in parts on the hood of his car just a beat before the grenade detonates and you watch the blast in your rear view mirror.

“Extra cheese. Mushrooms. And sausage.” You repeat your topping choices out loud as you drive. That pie is yours. That pie is yours alone. The sign by the side of the road says, “You Are Now Entering New Mexico.”

Happy Death Race For Pizza Day!

PS: Become a Facebook fan of Bob Powers’ next book, “You Are A Miserable Excuse For a Hero.”

Your Building’s Superintendent Wants To Cut Your Hair Again Day!

He’s in beauty school and since your hair’s curly, he’s always wanting to give you cuts because curly is the kind of hair he has trouble with.

“Okay superintendent, just once more,” you say when you bump into him while he’s bundling up the trash bags.

Three hours later your hair looks horrible and your superintendent hates himself.

“I’m going to be separating trash for the rest of my life,” he says.

You can’t take your eyes off the mirror. You look terrible.

“I wish you were dead, Superintendent,” you say to him.

He runs crying to the basement and takes his life. You don't miss him until one day a UPS package arrives for you and there's no one around to accept it. You remember the horrible thing you said to him and you decide to start doing a little personal interior decorating inside that big empty house called Your Soul.

Happy Your Building’s Superintendent Wants To Cut Your Hair Again Day!

You’re Just Trying To Drop Off Some Snack Foods For The Children Who Live Inside The Crate and Barrel Day!

The store’s security chief has you in the back room and he wants to know what you’re up to.

“Did you see me steal anything?” you ask him. “You might as well call the police if so.”

The security chief says you and he are just having a conversation. “I’m just curious as to what your plans might be for my store. You’ve piqued my interest. When I see a man come into a furniture store every night at around a half hour before closing, and I watch him walk around the store leaving bags of Cheetos and Ritz Bitz in the show room before walking out without buying anything, I’m compelled to chat with that man.”

Maybe he knows, you think. Maybe he wants to know if you know too. It’s too uncertain.

“I’m just forgetful,” you say. “I misplace things. And I like to look at furniture.”

The security chief nods. “Say, you bought that Southport Storage Cube a while back. How’d that work out for you?”

You bristle when he mentions the cube. Does he know how the children communicate with outsiders? Does he know about the note you found inside the cube, telling you that by day Crate and Barrel might be a showroom for not very affordable furniture, but by night it’s a safehouse for children who’ve run away from their parents because their parents are too religious and wouldn’t let the children have crushes on boys and girls they were crushing on, so the children ran away in couples, to experience the highs and lows of puppy love without interference from their God-fearing parents. According to the note, the children found a way to sneak into the Crate and Barrel and they get to sleep in the same beds with the boys and girls they’re crushing on, and it’s just about the greatest thing in the world. The only problem is they get hungry at night.

Can you bring us some treats? the note asked of you.

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing,” you say to the security chief. “I’m honoring the heart of the little boy I used to be. The boy who fell for a pretty girl when he was twelve, and then his parents had to move to Chicago because his dad got a new job. That boy could have run away and lived his young love but he didn’t. He was scared. And he’s regretted it ever since. Some boys aren’t so scared as me. And they deserve to be cared for.”

The security chief grabs you by the lapels, letting you know he knows what you’re talking about.

“You listen to me, pal. This is my store. Now I may not have been able to capture those little kids yet, but I captured you, you understand? Now you’re gonna stop bringing food in here because those little kids might be able to elude my traps and my cameras and my alarm systems when they’re healthy and full of grub. But if they get hungry, they’ll get weak. They’ll get tired. And I’ll catch ‘em. Stay out of my store, you hear?”

“Arrest me!” you dare him. It’s not you talking now. It’s the twelve-year-old you long to be again.

“Stay out of my store,” the Security Chief repeats.

“It’s a public store,” you tell him. “It’s just an Ikea with high price tags and it’s open to every man, woman, and child who wants to come in here. You want to keep me out; you file a police report saying I’m trying to feed a group of lovesick little kids that you can’t catch. I’m sure everyone’ll get a kick out of reading that.”

He lets go of your lapels.

“As long as there’s a little kid trying to hold onto love in your store, I’m bringing him some Cheetos, you hear?”

The Chief steps away from you. You walk out the door. Your heart beating so hard in your chest you’re worried you might have a heart attack. It’s 8:50, almost closing time. As you walk to the door you think you see a pair of eyes peeking out from underneath one of the bedroom sets. Those little eyes look like they’re smiling.

Happy You’re Just Trying To Drop Off Some Snack Foods For The Children Who Live Inside The Crate and Barrel Day!

Carnival Cruise To The Edge Of The Earth Day!

It’s day 91 of your stay on the Carnival Cruise Journey to the Edge of the Earth. The ship has had to dock at various ports to refuel around 18 times. Many of your fellow passengers have begun losing their minds from being on the boat for so long, their only options being to hide in their cabins, to sit by the pool and watch the same thirty eight children urinate, to go to the club in the evening and listen to the cruise ship comedian tell his same forty minutes of jokes he’s been telling every night since the boat left the dock (he can’t improv anymore either since by now he knows by sight where every single passenger is from and what they do for a living), or to hit one of the dozens of buffets and stuff themselves until they’re praying to fall asleep before they vomit.

Overeating has taken a toll. The ship’s doctor has diagnosed six new cases of diabetes and fourteen cases of gout. No one wants to skip a free buffet or else they’ll feel they didn’t get their money’s worth. They also don’t want to get off the boat early. They paid to go to the edge of the Earth and dammit, they’re gonna stay until they get there and have the chance to take some photographs to prove they saw it.

This morning is a sad one for you, as your third ship-board romance will come to an end when you learn once again that you were only being seduced for recruitment into a mutiny. The ship’s mothers have watched their husbands eat themselves into oblivion with no care for what might become of their children. The mothers feel the need to take matters into their own hands. They don’t want the captain to take them back to shore. They just want to take control of the navigation to make sure that their children get to see the edge of the Earth, as promised.

“I’m sorry,” you tell Sarah, just as you told Molly before her and Trina before Molly. “The captain is Carnival Cruise Line certified. I have to trust him. I’m sorry I can’t help you, and I’m sorry you only slept with me to win my participation in your revolt.”

Sarah clocks you over the head with one of the decorative paddles on the wall. A few hours later, you wake up to the sound of women howling above-deck. You climb up and see them dancing around a flagpole atop which the captain’s head has been mounted. The mothers have taken over the ship and will control the remainder of your journey to the edge of the Earth. God help you all.

Happy Carnival Cruise To The Edge Of The Earth Day!

Why Won’t You Ever Spend More Than Twenty Minutes At A Time With Your Boyfriend? Day!

Your boyfriend is upset because you won’t ever spend more than twenty minutes at one time with him. Whether it be dinner, a conversation about your and his dreams, sex, even trips to the movies have to be interrupted by you getting up and going out to the lobby every twenty minutes and then coming right back.

“I’ve had it,” he says.

“I’ll explain,” you say.

Tell him that when you were six your mom died and your Dad got arrested for robbing a Party supply store a bunch of times, so you were in danger of being thrown into the foster care system. Luckily for you, your Dad frequented a brothel full of really nice and caring prostitutes. Just before he went off to jail they agreed to take you in.

They provided a warm, loving environment. Unfortunately, though, they had a habit of limiting all of their interactions to the length of time it takes for a lit cigarette to burn down to its filter.

“Any time I’d come in and ask one of them about the difference between right and wrong, or what happens to us after we die, just after I sat down she’d light a cigarette and set it in a nearby ashtray. Once the cigarette went out, the prostitute would just get up and go downstairs to the sitting room of the brothel. Even if I was crying over having not gotten asked to go to a dance.”

It was just a habit for them, tell him. Day after day they voluntarily entered into terrible transactions, their only escape being the passage of a set amount of time. They couldn’t help but live their lives in those chunks of minutes.

“I guess they passed it on to me,” say.

“I’m so sorry you had to live like that,” your boyfriend will say. “I’m willing to work through this with you. I just need you to communicate with me and –“

You get up and walk away.

Happy Why Won’t You Ever Spend More Then Twenty Minutes At A Time With Your Boyfriend? Day!

Dr. Myron Misses The Patients She Euthanized Day!

Every day she sees their faces. Stanley. Rita. Old angry Felix. Stinky Pete. That racist Maureen. Every last one of them was super old and super dying, and every last one of them lives in Dr Myron’s heart as big as a lost spouse.

She’s one of the most sought after euthanists in all of Portland. She gives her patients and their families the peace they crave after so much suffering. She knows what she’s doing is right, and that’s what she’s going to tell the Senate subcommittee today when she’s brought before them to testify.

She could avoid indictment if she agrees to never euthanize another patient again, and more importantly, she speaks on the record about the possibility that she might have come between one of her patients and his or her potential for unforeseen recovery. But she has no intention of doing that. Though she will agree with the crusading senators on one point.

“It is exactly like playing God,” she will tell them. “And it has a terrible side-effect. It makes the euthanist fall in love with her patients with as much strength as the love God has for His children, every last one of whom he makes sure to kill. I don’t know how big God’s heart is, and perhaps if it ever gets too full we’ll all start to live forever because He has no more room for the affection he holds towards so many billions. My heart is finite, so you can count on me to stop euthanizing people after just a handful more are given peace. I can only hold so much love before I’m forced to stay in bed all day mooning over my memories of those I’ve loved and lost. But until then, I gotta do what I gotta do because letting people live in pain is stupid as butt.”

Half the Senate floor will erupt into calls for the indictment and arrest of Dr Myron. The other half will dab at their tears and look up to God to thank Him for making room in his heart for just a few billion more.

“No one wants to live forever, Senator!” Dr. Myron will shout. Then a bailiff will grab her and in the hullabaloo sneak her out a side exit to bring her to your bedside. You’ve been nothing but a vegetable full of hot pain after that last stroke, and after a few minutes of prep Dr. Myron is going to fall head over heels in love with you.

Happy Dr. Myron Misses The Patients She Euthanized Day!

Goodbye Sal Of Sal’s Hoagies and Cheeseteaks Day!

Hear Bob Powers read this one, recorded at NPR's "Bryant Park Project" studios

Today immediately after slicing his one millionth Italian Hoagie into two halves, Sal of Sal’s Hoagies and Cheesesteaks will slice into his own throat and drop to the floor of his kitchen to die.

“Guess Sal hit a million,” Louie, one of his faithful lunch crowd will say as he watches the puddle of blood seep from behind the counter into the seating area.

“I knew this day was coming,” Jerry, another of Sal’s loyal customers will say. “But I didn’t do anything to prepare for it. What the heck am I gonna eat for lunch now?”

Jerry will crumple up his counter ticket. He has 58. The LED screen reads 55. Just three sandwiches short of getting that legendary millionth roll full of the finest cold cuts, veggies and oil.

“Call an ambulance!” a new customer will shout. “Call an ambulance!”

But no one will move. The ones who already got their food will eat their sandwiches in honor of their faithful chef. The ones who didn’t will weep at their tables, staring at their useless ticket numbers, wondering why they couldn’t have left work just a few minutes early to get just one last heaping pile of deliciousness before they have to resort to hitting the Arby’s five times a week.

But everyone will be waiting to see who just became the luckiest man in town.

“55!” Rita, Sal’s wife, will shout through her tears. Her husband’s one millionth sandwich will be in her hands. There’s some blood on the roll. “55!”

A little boy will shuffle to the counter, his eyes on the floor, his ticket held in the air for the nice lady to take. Rita will manage a smile for the boy when she hands him his sandwich.

“One Italian Hoagie,” she’ll say. “You eat it up.”

“Every last bite,” a customer will shout from his table.

“It’s your sandwich,” Rita will say. “My husband made this for you.”

It will take the boy most of the afternoon to finish it, as the sandwich is almost as big as him. But finish it he will.

Tomorrow Sal’s will be closed, and it won’t reopen. Soon, the sign above the shop window will be covered over, and no more will anyone get to read Sal’s famous marquee promise: “I’m Going To Serve One Million Hoagies To This World And Then I’m Going To Kill Myself.” It was a strange mission statement for a store owner, but it’s nice to see that some retailers still honor the promises they make to their customers.

Happy Goodbye Sal Of Sal’s Hoagies and Cheeseteaks Day!

Draft-Dodge Day!

Aliens just landed on Earth and they're hostile as balls. They've
already destroyed the White House, The Empire State Building, and some
building in LA that no one could give a shit about.

The military is preparing to launch a counter-attack and they've
reinstituted the Draft to use as many able-bodied Americans as they
can in their efforts to destroy the alien army and prevent the human
race's enslavement to the alien hordes.

You'd better bust ass to Canada. You're a pacifist and an
intellectual and you're not going to pick up a gun and join a war just
because a President you didn't vote for tells you that unless every
human being stands up to fight, the human race will be reduced to
nothing but a food and fuel source by noon tomorrow. You didn't start
this war. Neither did the president, sure, but he's probably really
excited about it. Fuck him if he thinks he can turn you into a
baby-killing soldier just by telling you that your immediate family is
in danger of being used as fertilizer for a distant planet.

Go to Canada and help the world by continuing to be a free-thinking
creative spirit. Make sure you bring a lot of reefer, hippy, because
your "guy" just got turned into ash while trying to rescue his
daughter from her elementary school that was targeted by a death ray.
I'm sure he died content, knowing that you'll live on to spew more of
your anti-big business horseshit at parties.

Happy Draft-Dodge Day!

PS: For those who have been sending panicked emails, this post is
fiction. Stop hoarding.

You Used To Eat Your Dinner Out Of An Old Tire You Found In A Lot Someplace Day!

When you were in your thirties, you had a string of bad luck that led
you to a vacant lot, where you found an old car tire that someone did
not need anymore, so you used the inside of the tire as a dinner
plate. This allowed you to keep the fried chicken pieces you bought
at the chinese takeout place from having to rest on the ground while
they were waiting to be eaten by you. You can only hold so many
chicken pieces at once (two) and the chinese place sold chicken pieces
in batches of three. So you would rest at least one of the chicken
pieces on the inside of the tire. The inside of the tire also
collected a great deal of your blood after some teenagers approached
you from behind while you were having dinner one night and they hit
you in the back of the head with a steel rod before setting you on
fire. Your thirties were rough.

Happy You Used To Eat Your Dinner Out Of An Old Tire You Found In A
Lot Someplace Day!

Make The Scumbags Pay Day!

Someone ate your pudding. You put your name on it, dated it, just like the sign on the break-room fridge says to do. You put it in the crisper drawer, even, because you know these fucking animals can’t be trusted to control themselves if there’s a cup of chocolate pudding sitting in plain sight when they reach in to grab some creamer. You know how it gets at 3 PM, when you’re looking for something, anything, to get you through the last 150 minutes before you get to run out the door hunting for alcohol. A cup of pudding is more than just a treat at that hour. It’s the portal to salvation. You can look at a cup of pudding, or a leftover birthday cupcake, and it’s like eating it might bring your Dad back to life long enough for him to tell you he didn’t mean it when he said you’re turning out just like him. You can’t expect them to hold back from stealing such a treasure just because there happens to be a name and a date scribbled on the foil lid.

There’s a flip side to that coin. How can they who stole such a bounty expect its former owner to react with anything less than the purest of unbridled vengeance? How can they hope to enjoy what was rightfully yours without also enjoying the full and horrible cruelty of your wrath? In short, how can they expect to get away with this?

Don’t let them. Not only should you make the thief pay, but you should make sure that everyone on the floor knows that YOU ARE NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH! You need to communicate that WHEN SOMEONE HITS YOU, OH SURE AS SHIT WILL YOU HIT BACK! You need to put the word out.

Why not do it with a note!

THERE’S A PIGGY ON OUR FLOOR!

Will the Piggy who ate my chocolate pudding cup, which I had clearly labeled with my name and the date, please replace it by tomorrow. I really like my chocolate pudding cups, and this refrigerator is supposed to be for everybody. Shame on you piggy.

Respectfully,

[YOUR NAME]

Post it on the fridge door and then watch the shitholes one by one read those words and then turn into quivering little bitches. They clearly did not know exactly just who the fuck you are now did they?

Happy Make The Scumbags Pay Day!

Uh Oh. Looks Like You're Gonna Finally Throw A Cup Of Hot Coffee In A Coworker's Face Day!

Oh well. You knew it had to happen some time. Every morning when you
walk back from the kitchen with your cup of joe (black, half a
Splenda), as you pass that endless lineup of desks with all those
faces you've been seeing every day for almost eight years, the urge
has grown progressively stronger and more undeniable.

They all look up and acknowledge you as you pass. As if they need to
confirm with their own eyes: 'Yup, he's still here. But where would
he go?'

The silent prayer to your higher power starts its frantic refrain in
your head as you try to keep your eyes on the ground and averted away
from that vast sea of poorly shaven and overly bejowled coworker
visage:

"Don't throw hot coffee in someone's face don't throw hot coffee in
someone's face they'll start screaming and clawing at their already
bubbling and peeling skin and they'll fall on the floor and you'll be
dragged away babbling wordlessly and oh dear God it's just got to
happen one morning! But not today. Don't throw hot coffee in
someone's face do NOT THROW HOT COFFEE IN SOMEONE'S FACE OH JESUS
THERE'S JUDYYS FACE IT TAUNTS ME SO!!!"

Looks like you're gonna finally throw a cup of hot coffee in a
coworker's face. Cross that one off the to-do list I guess. By the
way, you'll be charged with felony assault.

Happy Uh Oh. Looks Like You're Gonna Finally Throw A Cup Of Hot
Coffee In A Coworker's Face Day!

You Were On Last Night's Rerun of NCIS Day!

The emails have been pouring in all day long.  "Great job on last night's NCIS!"  "Hey I thought I already saw that episode but I must have missed you the first time!"  "I didn't know you even acted, but last night you were on that show NCIS, which is just like CSI, except there's an N."

You're not an actor.  You sell paint at a Tru Value.  You don't know what everyone is talking about, but apparently someone who looks just like you was on NCIS last night.  The weird part is when CBS forwards a bag of fan mail to you.  It's all from the elderly.

"I think you're very attractive and I'd like to get you naked and tell you what my experience of World War II was like."

You contact the network and you're told that you were indeed on NCIS last night.  "Don't sweat it," the head of CBS' parent company tells you.  "It started happening in season 3.  People just started appearing on the show without having any memory of doing so.  We can't explain it, it just happens.  Eventually, everyone's going to be on NCIS.  At least for a few seconds."

The head of CBS' parent company goes on to explain that it's kind of a great way to get the ratings up, having people find out from out of nowhere that they were on it.  Then he asks you what NCIS because he's never heard of it.

You start tuning in to NCIS regularly, waiting for your rerun.  When you finally see yourself, it's really you.  Standing in the background behind some people who are in the Navy, you're just standing there in clothes you don't own, staring straight into the camera.  You lock eyes with yourself and you can see how sad you look, how disappointed you are in everything you've become.  The you on NCIS looks down at the ground, ashamed.  You get up and turn off the TV.  You can't bear to look anymore.  

Happy You Were On Last Night's Rerun of NCIS Day!

Your Were Supposed To Have That Life Day!

There’s a guy who lives in your building who looks to have the perfect life, the one you used to dream you’d have. He’s got a great job (he’s a flammability tester, lighting stuff on fire all day to see if it will burn and what happens when it does. He even gets to set fire to big screen TVs!). He’s got a great lady (she’s a gorgeous European person who thinks that whatever will be will be). He drives an awesome car (a Prius!). And best of all, Propecia makes hair grow on his head, not on the back of his thighs (you deserve a refund).

You quit your job at the Mortgage brokerage so that you could tail your neighbor during the day because you need to find out there’s some flaw in his life, some shortcoming that will prove that no one has it all. You just need to find out that maybe his boss is the guy who married the ex-wife who he’s still in love with. Maybe his parking space is really far away from the door to his building. Maybe his lady drinks during the day.

You’ve been following him for weeks and so far you’ve been heartbroken to find that his life is just as wonderful as it looks from your kitchen window. You’ve decided today is the day that you just give it up and accept his and your fates for what they are. But when he comes out of his office at the end of the day, instead of heading towards his car he’ll walk straight towards yours holding a blowtorch.

He’ll light the grille of your car on fire and make you run from the safety of your vehicle. Then he’ll grab you by the arm and drag you into his office where a group of doctors are gathered around an operating table. Turns out this whole place is a secret laboratory funded by mad geniuses who want to conduct painful experiments on specific subjects. They’ve been waiting to experiment on a disappointed man to find out how he reacts when his less essential organs are removed without anesthetic, and after seeing your obsessive behavior these last months there’s clearly no better subject but you. You shouldn’t covet.

Happy Your Were Supposed To Have That Life Day!

Go and Save A Boy From Himself Day!

There’s an alcoholic in your life, yes? That one lost cause who never had anything to offer anyone, and could only take and take and take from anyone who ever had the misfortune to have a good heart within his vicinity? The one boy who forced you to choose between him and your dying dad and then just after you chose him your dad died and he took off in the middle of the night with your Mitsubishi Mirage (crashed it into some policemen who were walking by the side of the road looking for clues to crimes).

As it turns out, that boy is running out of time.

He needs someone to come and save him from himself. All he knows how to do is send himself further and further down the spiral, like he made a vow that he won’t take another breath unless there’s a damn good chance that it will be his last. He presently sleeps in a bathtub in an abandoned building holding a plugged in toaster on his chest, the knobs on the faucets spun open wide, hoping that someone in that building will pay a water bill and finally send something besides skinny bugs out of that spout and he’ll be electrocuted in his sleep. The boy is his own nemesis and he needs a hero. Though he is the undeniable reason why you have achieved nothing that you once dreamed you'd achieve, it would be so awesome if you dropped everything and flew across the country to save him from himself. Cool?

The plane ticket is expensive, but the entirety of your savings ought to cover it. Cool?

Happy Go and Save A Boy From Himself Day!

Tug Connection Day!

Go on a game show where contestants jerk it to a particular piece of porn while the audience watches, then the audience gets to vote on who had the strongest connection to the porn they were matched up with. The contestant chosen by the audience is awarded $5,000 so he can quit his job and stay home to jerk off to that piece of porn for like two months.

You’ll do your best, but the porn they give you will be the kind where the cameraman talks while the people are doing it, saying stuff like, “Wow, that looks like a warm place!” It’s a genre called Greek Chorus Porn and you hate it. You need your fourth wall.

You don’t win the money. Go home to find your girlfriend sitting on the couch, next to a suitcase. You’ve disappointed her again. She’s leaving.

“You didn’t even try,” she says.

“The porn was miserable. The cameraman reached out and high-fived the guy in it once.”

“You were thinking about me. I could see it in your face. All of America could see it. You were sitting there jerking off, thinking about how angry your girlfriend will be if you don’t win the money.”

“I wanted to make you happy.”

“If you can’t provide me with the kinds of luxuries that $5000 can buy, I’m going to go out and seduce someone who can. I’m sorry, but I need a man to give me stuff.”

She leaves. Go to the TV and replay the episode on your DVR. She’s right. You do look like you’re faking it. Like you’re a million miles away from your own right hand.

Happy Tug Connection Day!

Ask Your Doctor About The Redhead In The Waiting Room Day!

She’s furious as she browses through a magazine about the elderly, ripping the pages from the staples she’s turning them so hard. You try to make a move.

“I’m going blind. You?”

She looks up from her magazine.

“It won’t work,” she says.

“I’d make it work,” you say.

She tosses her magazine at you then picks up another one. The nurse calls you into the examination room.

“What’s her story?” you ask the doctor. “The angry redhead. I want to spend my last sighted months staring at that face.”

“Oh her, she’s terminal. Six months tops.”

You’re pissed. She’s dying and she thinks you’re not good enough just because you’re going blind? You’re in way better shape than her.

“What the fuck?” you shout at her when you go back out to the waiting room.

“Maybe I don’t want to spend my last six months on earth making some blind guy hold hot meatballs so he knows what the color red is,” she barks.

“That’s only for people who were born blind. You’d just have to deal with me cursing God for taking my eyes.”

“I curse God,” she says. “I threaten him, sometimes. Telling him how I’m going to fuck him up in six months if he doesn’t have a good reason for taking my life.”

“Maybe you could fuck him up some for taking my eyes,” you say.

“Why should I?” she asks.

“Because I’ll be there by your deathbed, whispering into your ear to do that for me. It’ll be the last thing you remember as you pass over. My voice.”

She considers it. Then, “Sorry. I’m gonna be real weak in the final months. I need someone to carry my bedpans to the toilet without spilling them. You gotta have eyes.”

She’s summoned into the examination room. You leave the doctor’s office, fall to your knees in the parking lot and shake your fist at Jesus for being so jealous of you that he had to take away your eyes to make sure you don't get the action you deserve.

Happy Ask Your Doctor About The Redhead In The Waiting Room Day!

Horny Teenage Killers On A Rampage To Hell Day!

Something’s happened to the teenagers in America. They’re all turning into conscienceless beasts who want to do nothing but have sex with each other, drink alcohol, and murder non-teenagers with their bare hands. They travel in packs across the land, gathering in fields for naked dancing, drinking from beer kegs, and setting fire to things. No one goes out at night anymore. The teenagers are out there. The night is there’s. You’re welcome to enter it, but they’ll do what they can to make sure you won’t reach the daytime.

It’s not clear what triggered it. Some say it was the new record by a band called The Stupid Tits that unlocked some part of them that doesn’t worry about getting into good schools. Others think that this was always their true nature, and they’re only showing it just now. Still others blame Rockstar Energy Drinks. Hopefully someone in science is trying to figure out the real cause, and how this change in them can be reversed.

You don’t have time to wait for science though. You have to get across state lines to get your wife an abortion. Her career is going well and she doesn’t want to raise another child right now. Your state has too many hoops to jump through before anyone’s allowed to abort. You’ve got to get to Godless Delaware, where the babies are killed with glee. You have to travel in the night. And you have to bring your daughter Jeannie with you.

Jeannie is twelve, going on thirteen. She won’t have a birthday for another six months, but they become teenagers so fast these days. Jeannie is still very sweet, but she’s become a little more obstinate lately. Just in case something changes in her during the drive, you’ve stashed a hammer underneath your seat. Your wife doesn't know it's there. She would never believe that her beautiful daughter could give her anything to worry about.

Time to go. Stay on lighted roads and watch out for barriers they’ve set up. They’ll be waiting. They can’t wait to drag you out of your car, set you on fire and then have sex on top of your charred bodies.

Drive fast, old man. Drive safe.

Happy Horny Teenage Killers On A Rampage To Hell Day!

Pontius Pilate Day!

You and your coke buddies are having the same old argument you always have about whether Pontius Pilate was gay or just way cool. Your coke buddy Steve thinks Pilate was just way cool and didn’t mind if an orgy got out of hand and he just started fucking a dude without realizing it. Your coke buddy Rohan thinks that Pilate was gay and deeply in love with one of his dressers. “Read the scrolls!” Rohan keeps shouting at you until his nose gushes blood again. Your coke buddy Jennifer thinks that Pilate was gay and, in his heart, celibate, save for a few public dalliances to call off the dogs.

“I think when we’re arguing about Pontius Pilate,” you tell them. “We’re really just arguing about me and who of you has a shot with me.”

They all blush with shame. Go to each of your coke buddies and give them a big kiss. Then pull your gun out of your pants and scream at them to throw all their money and coke on the table, take off their shirts and pants, and then get the hell out of your house. They’ll all sigh and do as you say and in two or three nights they’ll all come back and go through the whole routine again, because they just can’t go too long without seeing your face, or doing coke, again.

Happy Pontius Pilate Day!

Play Your New Drums As Loud As You Can, Until You See Your Dead Husband Again Day!

The house is pretty quiet now that you’re a widow so you bought a new drum set and put it together up in the attic. Go up there today and pound on that shit as loud as those early-golden-year wrists can manage. Punish those drums, find a beat and keep it going for hours and hours, waking up everything that ever even thought about getting some rest. Keep going until you wake the dead.

A cold wind will blow through the attic and you’ll look up and see the translucent, ghostly image of your dead husband standing before you, frowning in judgment.

“Rock music is a direct phone line to the devil,” he’ll say. “You’re thumbing your nose at Jesus.”

Stop your playing for a second and tell your husband, “It really pissed me off that you got all into Jesus the last five years of your life.”

Your husband will shrug. “Times got hard. I needed something to lean on.”

“How’s death?” ask him.

“Easy-peasy,” he’ll say.

Nod and smile. “I’m glad,” tell him. “Save your Jesus crap okay?”

Your dead husband will smile at you the way he used to, back when he was young and all he wanted was to find a basement or a backseat or the crook of a tree where he could get you alone for a few minutes. Kiss the tip of your drumstick and flick it to him. He’ll catch your kiss and disappear back into the other side and you’ll go back to abusing those skins.

Happy Play Your New Drums As Loud As You Can, Until You See Your Dead Husband Again Day!

Plumber With Dead Zone Powers Day!

You’re a plumber and you have an otherworldly power that lets you touch stuff in a particular area and receive a vision of someone who died there. Since so many people slip and die in showers, everytime you fix someone’s bathroom plumbing you have to endure flashes of a former occupant of that bathroom lying naked and dead under running water, blood pouring from their skulls and tub autumnal from their gradually evacuating bowels and bladders. It makes your clients nervous because, though you’re a good plumber, they hate to hear a stranger scream in their home.

Today, finally buy some gloves.

Happy Plumber With Dead Zone Powers Day!

Fools Gold Made 22 Million Dollars This Weekend Day!

Time to finish writing that movie about bathing suits you've been working on. You should call it LAYIN' OUT. It's the triumphant story of a pale girl from the city who never tanned before. She moves to Hermosa Beach because her Dad got transferred there for work, and at first no one likes her because she's never tanned before. But it's not that she can't tan, she just never tried. One of the tannest boys in the school ends up falling for her, and all his friends think he's out of his mind wasting his senior year with some pale girl, but then the pale girl says that she wants to learn to tan. It's not because she has anything to prove to the other kids.

"It's something I have to prove to myself."

They fuck on a boat. It hurts and is magical. They spend most of the next few months laying out like crazy until the pale girl is a deep golden bronze, except since it's her first tan, it's a "Virgin Brown" and it puts her over the top at the tanning competition. She wins and her mom tells her how proud she is of her then dies of cancer.

Happy Fools Gold Made 22 Million Dollars This Weekend Day!