Texts from Lake Wobegon.

JOE
Do you ever listen to a Prairie Home Companion? I just discovered it and I fucking love it. I want Garrison Keillor's disembodied voice to narrate my life.

IAN
I'm fascinated by it, because I can't retain a word of it and don't find it funny...but somehow I also cherish it and understand that it's a comedy.

JOE
It's bizarre. I listen in the car and find myself singing along to songs I've never heard before, literally trying to say the words as I'm hearing them.

IAN
Are you saying it's like a primal scream, but sponsored by "Be-Bop-a-Re-Bop Rhubarb Pie?"

JOE
Yeah, pretty much. When the lyrics are like, "Are you from Ohio?/Could you look up and smile?/You remind me of someone I know," I contemplate driving my car into a lake because I don't understand that feeling of familiarity, depression, happiness, and self-hatred.

IAN
Don't do that! Garrison feeds on the souls who do that!

Eggcorn, ahoy!

Oh, wow, the expression is apparently "bated breath," not "baited breath." I am now insecure for past mistakes and excited for future pedantry!

- My friend, Andrew.

Sixteen days after No-Shave November.

I didn't even realize it was December.

When you're unemployed, every month is No-Shave November!

One last one.

A family walks into a talent agent's office.

The father says, "We've got an act for you."

The family acts like they have superior education, finances, ability, and social prestige.

The agent asks, "What do you call that?"

The family replies, "'The Aristocrats!'"

A family walks into a talent agent's office.

The father says, "We've got an act for you."

The family tells a filthy shaggy dog joke.

The agent asks, "What do you call that?"

The family replies, "'The Aristocrats!'"

The family replies, "'The Aristocrats!'"

The agent asks, "What do you call that?"

The family travels through time.

The father says, "We've got an act for you."

A family walks into a talent agent's office.

I lust after awful women.

I spend an unattractive amount of time thinking about attractive women who I'd hate to spend time with.

Jennifer was one such woman. Jennifer was awful.

Picture her, always in Easter clothes. No matter when the Second Coming occurred, she would be dressed to impress.

Over the years, she changed from natural blonde to compassionate conservative to bleached blonde to neo-con to highlit blonde to tea-bagger.

She was charitable when frat boys wanted to grope her in public, but frugal when posting swimsuit pictures on Facebook.

Mrowrl.

Anyway. In a recent fantasy, I decided to spice things up and get caught while putting the "Oi!" in "coitus." So I let Jennifer walk in on her sorority sister and I.

Spicy, it was. It was so spicy that my subconscious took the reigns, and damned me to a life of shame and depravity.

The other problem of evil.

Christians love convincing themselves that predestination and free will can coexist.

I know this because they dominated every discussion in every lit class I've ever taken. We never once talked about bathos or mortality or "the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads"...just the symbiosis of predestination and free will.

Back then, I thought the Christians were arguing for square pegs and round holes, but now I've learned they're right.

God sets a destiny for each and every person...but it's the person's responsibility to fulfill their destiny.

Unfortunately, everyone has the same destiny: kill Adolf Hitler.

And Adolf Hitler is the only person who's done that.

So Adolf Hitler is the only person in Heaven.

Thanks, Christians!

Hand-written five years ago.

As I write this, I'm on a highway, driving 80 MPH.

Ink is flowing from my pen 80 MPH faster than it would normally flow. Imagine what Jackson Pollack could've done with ink traveling this fast!

Is it dangerous that half of my attention is focused on writing in the margins?

Maybe.

But it'd be more dangerous to let this sheet of paper fly out the window, into an adjacent neighborhood, and give some poor schlub a paper-cut at 80 MPH.

You're welcome.

How I became a snob.

In September of 1990, I was five, and my grandma was babysitting me.

To fill the time, we went to see a movie called the Witches. According to the newspaper, it was a children's movie, and it starred Anjelica Huston. These facts made it an ideal choice for the both of us.

What a cute movie!

In the first minute of the film, a witch kidnaps a little girl and traps her in a painting in her parents' house. The little girl spends the rest of her life in the painting, unable to move or speak, and then she dies.

So I walked out.

Moohoowahaha.

Dear Chase Bank,

That roll of nickels was a coin short of two dollars.

Sincerely,
the Phantom of Account 224031964.