This Is Their Black Vietnam Day!

Your students are going to embark on their uprising today. They’ll start burning their homework in a giant bonfire, then they’ll strip down to their waists and dance around the fire, occasionally stopping to perform sex acts on each other predesignated by the colors of the bracelets on their wrists.

“I always thought those bracelets were going to be the downfall of this generation,” you’ll say to the other teachers locked in the teachers lounge with you.

“I thought it was the video games. Especially that one called Murder The Adults. Sick,” another teacher will say.

“I thought it was the attention deficit disorder drugs,” the janitor will add.

“Jersey Shore. It was Jersey Shore and Four Loko and the fathers all leaving them behind,” the divorced school nurse will say.

“Quiet!” the school Principal will shout. “Let them tear it up. Our kids are finally reacting to their world, instead of shrugging their shoulders at it. This is their moment. This is their Black Vietnam.”

The Principal will then open the door to the lounge, run into the hall and shout, “Exact your vibrant vengeance upon me, kids! I am authority!!!”

The kids will launch themselves upon the principal and tear wads of his skin off in their teeth. One of the teachers will manage to get the door shut and locked.

Many of you will be crying quietly, until one teacher pipes up with a question.

“Why black Vietnam?”

No one will have an answer right away.

“Maybe he means like the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement rolled into one?” someone will suggest.

Some of you will nod.

“How old was Principal Watkins? 39?”

Yes, he was 39. So he pretty much knew very little about Vietnam. And he probably knew even less about Black Vietnam, whatever that is.

“Could he have meant the Rodney King riots?” someone will ask. “He lived in LA for a little while. He told me that once. Did they ever call the riots that?”

No. They never called the riots that. You’ll have another 36 hours of being locked in that lounge together before the police quell the student uprising, so it’s suggested you spend that time taking a vote on whether or not to amend the Principal’s last words before you’re asked on the morning news what they were. Maybe change them to something like “Those are my kids out there. I’m going to go reason with them.” Anything but the Black Vietnam thing. What the hell was that?

Happy This Is Their Black Vietnam Day!

You’re Going To Marry Her Day!

You got that after-school job making sandwiches at Fanta’s Deli. You’re bringing in almost a hundred bucks a week now, and it’s only going to go up from there. Time to tell Diana your plans.

“I’m going to marry you Diana,” tell her. “I’m going to save up my money and as soon as I can afford the proper wedding for you, we’re going to get married.

"In hell,” Diana will say.

Diana will spend the rest of her life sabotaging your finances to make sure you never have enough money to pay for the kind of wedding she deserves. She’ll call your places of business and submit anonymous complaints about your service. When you try to increase your savings by betting on the horses, she’ll sneak into the stables in the middle of the night and hobble the front-runner to offset the odds on the longshots.  When you manage to have enough money to invest, she’ll start dating the manager of your hedge fund and subtly influence him to divert all of the billions he manages into unimaginative start-ups with crappy prospectuses.

It’s not that she hates you. She just has a lot she wants to do with her life and she thinks having a husband would just be a needless distraction.

“Please,” you’ll say to her in about twenty-five years after she’s bankrupted you ten times over. “Just let me accumulate enough money so I can marry you. I’m so tired.”

“Never,” she’ll say. “If I spend every minute of my life trying to keep you from marrying me, at least I’ll die knowing I spent my life trying to pursue the life I wanted.”

“I’m going to find a way,” you’ll say. “One day you’ll be distracted. Grieving over a deceased parent perhaps. Or making arrangements for a cross-country move thanks to a new job. One day you’ll let your guard down and I’ll earn the approximately twenty-eight grand necessary to pay for the wedding that you deserve.”

“We’ll just see about that, motherfucker,” she’ll say. Then she’ll single-handedly bring about another recession, putting millions out of work, solely to empty your bank account so she’ll never have to say the words “I do” to you in front of 150 of her friends and family just before a gorgeous sit-down reception where everything is just perfect, down to the flowers in the centerpieces.

Happy You’re Going To Marry Her Day!

Presidential Book Of Secrets Day!

When you look inside the Presidential Book of Secrets, you’ll find out that the moon landing was faked, 9/11 was an inside job, JFK was assassinated by an experimental sex robot that became autonomous after being struck by lightning, 55% of the House of Representatives is populated by extra-terrestrials as per the treaty, Katrina never happened and neither did Live Aid, that sex robot who killed JFK is still out there and she wants to learn how to feel, Eric Stoltz has been dead for years but it’s imperative China believe he’s still alive, Barack Obama was born in an African restaurant in Hawaii called Taste Of Kenya, which is why all the confusion, and finally, you are the prettiest little thing in the whole wide country, which is a weird secret for the president to be briefed about but whatever.

Happy Presidential Book Of Secrets Day!

Be Tortured Day!

When you see a friend who still bothers to acknowledge you and they ask how things are going, start shaking your head and saying things like “Oh everything is so very difficult because I’m more sensitive than you and others.” Then spend ten minutes trying to explain a very common emotion (loneliness? fear?) as if you were the first one to ever feel it and you’re reporting back to the populace, who could never possibly understand. Your friend will probably begin to weep, just before cutting into his or her own skin in protest of a God that would be so cruel as to make you so much more sensitive than the rest of the planet that you are forced to curl up in a ball and lament your predicament while others are able to just get to work and finish something.

“Well I’d better get to work and finish something,” your friend will say. “Perhaps you should spend the day drinking heavily to ease the pain. You clearly deserve it.”

Thank your friend for understanding, and then go to the bar that opens in the morning and stare at yourself in the mirror behind the bottles. You really enjoy your own face.

Happy Be Tortured Day!

Blood Of Kevin Day!

Kevin, one of your altar boys, has been pricking his fingers and dripping his own blood into the wine you drink to represent the blood of Christ during mass. Confront the boy and ask him if he has any questions.

“I assume it’s a compulsion,” say to the boy. “I assume you can’t help yourself.”

The boy will nod. “I felt jealous. Like my own blood was being rejected. I felt like if any blood was going to be drunk during mass, I needed it to be mine. Not Jesus’s.”

Relate to him by telling the story about how when you were a teenage altar boy you started shaving chunks of fat from your thighs, baking them into wafers and mixing them in with the communion for people to eat.

“Did you ever get caught?”

Nod. Tell him you felt shamed to the core, and that you don’t want to make your altar boy feel the same.

“But I can’t let you continue to trick me and my parishioners into drinking your blood.”

Kevin will ask, “But what am I supposed to do? I have all this glorious mead flowing through my veins. I need it inside somebody!”

Ask him, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

The boy will say yes, and you’ll coach him on the proper way to ask a partner if she might be into blood-play without scaring her off. Don’t tell him to quickly laugh it off as if he was joking when it seems she might be disturbed by his question. He needs to take this seriously, and he needs those who matter to him to take it seriously as well, or it’ll just get more out of control.

“What if she says no,” he’ll ask. “Am I just supposed to open up a Kool Aid stand on my street corner and surreptitiously drip my blood into the pitchers?”

Tell him yes. “I don’t care what happens at a Kool Aid stand. When people buy from a Kool Aid stand they know they’re taking a risk. People come to my mass, they expect Jesus’s blood. Not some awkward pubescent punk’s doesn’t know when and how to express his sexual identity. Keep it out of my mass.”

The lights will go down and the movie will be about to start (you and your altar boy are seeing “Blue Valentine”) so hush up and let your guidance sink in. He’ll be the better for it.

Happy Blood Of Kevin Day!

Wear The Dress To Tonight’s Town Council Meeting Day!

When you walk into the meeting a hush will fall over the crowd. The only sound in the room will be your high heels stepping toward the microphone, save for a few groans and the occasional pant of someone trying to catch his breath.

At the microphone you’ll read your statement. It will be brilliantly worded, despite the fact that it could just as well be a succession of fart noises for all it will matter. For everyone there with you in that room tonight, your words will only serve as the reason for you to expand your bosom with air and release.

But you’ll speak your heart. You’ll tell them you respect the fact that they think yearbooks are devilish in that they promote pride and vanity, sins in the eyes of God. You’ll tell them how proud you have been of your son for fighting them tooth and nail to get a yearbook for his graduating class, because he didn’t leave his old school district with its top-ranked yearbook committee just to end up in this podunk town and be told he’ll never be able to put a caption underneath a poorly framed photo of a bad haircut again.

“I’m thinking of his transcripts,” you’ll say, making sure to shift your balance and send your left hip jutting out just so. “And I want to put this to a vote right now.”

You promised yourself you’d never again wear the dress. It has too much power. It’s sent too many men to their ruin. It even once forced you to pack your bags in the middle of the night when you spotted a caravan of angry wives coming over the hill, their headlights blazing like firey torches in the hands of an uncontrollable mob. No, the dress is too much and the best thing would be for it to be destroyed.

But is it wrong to wear the dress in an effort to help your son?

“All in favor of allowing yearbooks into our school, raise your hands.”

The council will suddenly look frightened.

“What do you want us to do?” the council president will ask. “We don’t want to make you unhappy. We don’t want to make you leave.”

Tell them, “Raise your hands.”

The entire council will raise their hands.

“Now say that it’s unanimous and that a yearbook committee will be established in the school as of Monday morning.”

The council president will do as you command. You’ll thank them and announce that you have to go. They’ll protest, a few of them crying, but they’ll be silent as they watch you leave.

You’ll leave a note next to your son’s pillow telling him that by the time he wakes up. you’ll be gone, and that he’s going to have to go and live with his aunt across town.

“Make the best yearbook any high school’s ever seen,” write to him. Then get in your car and start driving. When word gets around town about your dress and the power it has, and the lives it took when several of the council members strangled themselves with their own ties not long after you left the council meeting, the town’s wives will come for you.

“Just like every other stronghold of small-town America,” you’ll say to yourself, watching horizon of closed minds recede in your rear view mirror. This time was really the last time. This time you really are going to destroy that dress.

Or you’ll at least pack it away into storage. No reason to throw away a perfectly good dress after all, is there?

Happy Wear The Dress To Tonight’s Town Council Meeting Day!

Sit Down With Lance Day!

No one ever sits with Lance, the divorcee who comes to the coffee shop every day to rearrange the photos of his ex-wife for the scrapbook he’s putting together in hopes of winning her back. Do him a favor and go ask him some questions.

When you first take your seat Lance will look at you and say, “What.”

Tell him you just wanted to share some time with him, find out his story.

“I’m trying to get my wife back. That’s my story. You’re either going to help me by going away or you’re going to ruin everything by distracting me with your horseshit questions.”

Ask him if he really thinks a book full of pictures of his ex-wife will win her back.

“You got any better ideas?”

Move on, tell him. Open yourself up to new experiences.

“New experience. Like what, sex with you? That’ll be the day.”

Ask him why sex with you is so impossible to imagine.

“I can imagine it, sure. I can also imagine killing myself right after. Here’s how that’ll go down. We’ll have sex, Patty will find out and decide that I don’t care about her anymore, all my efforts of the last 14 years will be lost all because you tricked me inside of you. Suicide is next, because yeah, that’s what happens when the only thing you ever wanted slips away.”

Ask him why Patty left.

“Why do they always leave?”

He was doing too much cocaine? Ask that.

“Bingo! She wins the jackpot.”

Tell him that 14 years seems like too long to hope for a second chance.

“Look, you’re very pretty, and I don’t expect you to give me any other advice except to move on. But I don’t care. I’m going after my ex-wife. You can chase a career goal or kids or some kind of big sailboat trip or whatever. You fill your three or four decades before death with whatever activities you want. I’m going to fill mine by making the perfect scrapbook in order to win my ex-wife back. The world doesn’t give a shit about either of us so let’s do whatever we want.”

Just then Patty will sprint into the coffee shop, stop at Lance’s table and say, “It’s never going to happen.” Then she’ll steal his unfinished scrapbook, sprint outside and toss it into a passing trash truck before running away.

Lance will take out a shoebox full of photos and a new empty scrapbook.

“She does that. I got duplicates,” he’ll say.

Leave Lance alone to start over on his Pattybook. You should really be more focused on your big sailboat trip or whatever.

Happy Sit Down With Lance Day!

It Ends Day!

Today the world ends when some aliens from outer space accidentally fire a weapon near our solar system and it detonates, causing an explosion big enough to wipe out several galaxies. Just before the blink of hot white kills you and everything else, you’ll be at City Hall with your pregnant girlfriend, reciting the words the judge is telling you to recite in order to be considered officially married by the city. You’ll be scared, wondering whether you’re making the right decision, whether the rest of your life is going to deliver what you hope. Then you’ll look down at the baby in your girlfriend’s stomach and you’ll think, “I’m going to make this world great for you little sweetie. The world won’t be perfect, but perfection is what I’m going to demand of it.” The judge will tell you to kiss the bride. You’ll be married and she’ll have to pee. You’ll take the opportunity to pee as well, and you’ll think, “The first urination as a married man! Let’s see if it feels different.” You’ll watch your new wife disappear into her rest room, then you’ll put your hand on the doorknob of the men’s room. As you turn the knob, white, some heat, an escape of breath from your longs, and gone. Everything gone with no evidence that anything was ever there. It’s over.

Happy It Ends Day!

The Kids Who Want To Make Their Mom Come Day!

You and your sisters and brothers have all returned home for Dad’s funeral, and tonight you’re all going to stay up late with your mom, drinking and reminiscing, and your mom will let on that your father never gave her an orgasm.

“Nope,” she’ll say. “Just wasn’t in the cards I guess.”

After lots of questions, you’ll learn that not only did your father never give your mom an orgasm, but she never gave herself one either.

“Never occurred to me I guess,” she’ll say. “I decided long ago that I wanted my first orgasm to be given to me by someone else. I even cheated on your dad some to try and find the right man to give it to me.”

No matter how many men your mom had sex with, she just couldn’t find that exactly right guy with that exactly right touch. So she gave up.

“By now I figure screw it,” she’ll say. “I’m gonna die soon so why bother try what ain’t gonna happen. Oh did I tell you kids I only have six months to live?”

You and your sisters and brothers will pow-wow, and after you take a vote on it, you’ll agree to go out and find a man to have sex with your mom until she climaxes. After placing several ads on several websites, you’ll narrow the pool down to fifteen guys. One by one they’ll go in and have sex with your mom, and when that doesn’t work out, you’ll invite all fifteen back to do her all at once. She’ll tell you that was fun, but still, no dice.

“Guess this thing’s shot,” your mom will say, referring to her clitoris.

You’ll send your mom to a sex therapist, where after one breakthrough session she’ll remember the time she came the closest to coming.

“We were out in the barn, me and Tommy Braddock, one of the stable boys my papa hired. He knew just what to do and with how much pressure, and I swear he had me on the ropes, but then we heard Papa’s shotgun. Papa was standing in the barn door and he chased Tommy off. I never saw him again.”

When your mom relays the story to you, you’ll know you have no choice but to track down Tommy Braddock and bring him to her. Luckily, he’ll still be alive and he’ll remember that time just as well as your Mom.

“Wow,” Tommy will say. “That’d be amazing to finish where we started. It’ll be like we started having sex when we were kids, and we never finished until we were seniors. It’ll be as if we’ve been having sex our whole lives.”

You’ll fly Tommy back to your Mom’s house and send him into her room. You’ll close the door on them just as you catch sight of Tommy kissing your mom, then you and your siblings will listen at the door to what will sound like a raucous marathon of love-making. Lots of shouting, lots of headboard banging, lots of instances of people taking the Lord’s name in vain.

When you reenter the room you’ll find Tommy dead, your mother’s bedsheets wrapped around his neck.

“He tried to kill me,” she’ll say. “He came back her for revenge. He told me that getting fired as a stable boy sent his family into poverty and ruined his life, and then he tried to crack my skull against this headboard.”

Eventually your mother turned the tables, got a length of bedsheet around Tommy’s neck and choked the life out of him.

“And guess what?” your mom will say, smiling.

“Did you?” you’ll ask.

“It was magnificent,” your mom will say. “Just as Tommy released his death rattle I felt a current of pure synaptic ecstasy spasm through every inch of my body, head to toe. I felt it burrow into my marrow then explode outward again. All this time I’ve been chasing the perfect sexual partner, when I had no idea that all I had to do to finally have an orgasm was murder a man with my bare hands.”

Your mom will pull you and all your siblings into a hug. Her tears will soak the tops of your heads. Then she’ll tell you to take Tommy out back and bury him. She’ll watch from her chair by the window while you dig. When you finally have him buried, you’ll come back upstairs to find your mom still in her chair, her eyes closed, a peaceful smile on her face. She’ll still be warm, having perhaps just passed a few minutes prior.

That smile will tell you she died happy, not because she finally had an orgasm, but because she raised such good kids that they would go to such trouble to give her one.

Happy The Kids Who Want To Make Their Mom Come Day!

The Tree Voices Day!

The trees have been whispering stuff to you while you lay awake in bed. With every gust of wind through the branches, you can hear their eerie declarations.

“Give more TV shows a chaaaaaance,” they whisper. “You’re tooooo quick to juuuuudge things harshly. It’s like yooooooouuu want to beeeee the firrrrst to own your opiiiiiinion and it’s coooosting you the opportunity to enjoy some really great shoooooooooows. Liiiiiiike with that one. You know. The one with the cop. It’s a goooooood show. Soliiiiiid. But yoooooooou just were so exciiiiited to dislike it before all your friends. You’re going to miiiiiiiss out on some really gooooood TV if you keeeeep this up.”

You’ll do that thing where you fall asleep for a bit, the kind of light sleep where you wake up after fifteen minutes and you aren’t sure if you slept or not. Then the voices will pipe up again.

“Whiiiiiite Collar. That’s the one. It was killing meeeeee, but I remembered.”

You’ll wait for more, but the trees just wanted to tell you that they remembered the name of that show you gave up on. It’s White Collar and you think it blows.

Happy The Tree Voices Day!