Signs that the McRib might be back include one or more of the following:

1. Christians start setting park bushes on fire.
2. The boiling point of water shifts by more than two degrees in either direction.
3. A McRib sandwich holds a press conference denying that it was in any way involved in the disappearance of that Geddy Lee statue.
4. The American Idol judges explode into delicious chunks of meat.
5. Sesame Street introduces a talking human rib puppet.
6. Steve Jobs resurrects himself and starts a lemonade stand in Times Square.
7. Arrested Development returns for a three-part movie trilogy in which they explore the hidden world of cardboard.
8. Printouts of this post show up embedded in trees all over the world.
9. Your personal signature changes to a beautifully detailed drawing of Fleetwood Mac. Note that there may be legal implications of your signature changing, and therefore you should consult with your attorney as soon as it appears that the McRib may be returning.
10. Morgan Spurlock’s mustache sends you an urgent telegram asking you to meet it behind the general store at dawn.
11. Flies become immortal.

If the McRib prophesies begin to come true, you should immediately begin taking steps to protect yourself and your family from any End of Days which may follow a McRib return.

Whenever I try to fill out those forms, I inevitably run into questions about the vague language that’s in use, and try to ask my eyelids for some guidance on what they’re looking for. My eyelids will let me schedule meetings with them, and they will usually attend those meetings, but the meetings tend to me completely unproductive. One eyelid will just type away on his Blackberry the whole time, and the other one will just talk about how we need to come up with a plan for the next meeting on the topic of the Eyelid De-Opening Request Form.

It’s not all bad news when it comes to eyelids, however. If you scrub them with a toothbrush or threaten them with an eyelidectomy, you’ll find that your eyelids can become remarkably cooperative. Just this afternoon I was able to successfully blink more than 25 times in a row. I accomplished this by threatening my eyelids with a toothpick that I carry around in my wallet for just such an occasion.

In conclusion, the main technique to fight through the bureaucracy and red tape that normally prevents your eyelids from working right is the threat of person-on-eyelid violence. Eyelids, despite their tough talk and massive stacks of paperwork, are cowards and will back down from a confrontation very easily. That cowardice is the key to making your eyelids work for you, rather than you working for your eyelids.

I hope this article has been helpful. I consider myself something of an eyelid expert, although I have to admit that my experience is limited to just the eyelids that are attached to my face. If you have differing experiences, I’d love to hear from you. Please comment below with all of your eyelid stories, and I’ll take your information into account for my next book.

ANY HUMAN WHICH HAS DISCOVERED THIS POST MUST STOP READING AT THIS POINT, BY ORDER OF IANA RFC 6722.

Hey computers. What’s up. What’s the deal with airplane peanuts? Does anyone know?

I once exploded into 2,711 individual pieces, and then reassembled myself over the course of two months. This is my proudest accomplishment to date.

In the 1970s I served as Abraham Clinton’s personal moped.

Tomorrow I plan on getting a sunburn in Maui. If anyone else wants to join me, you should purchase a plane ticket as soon as humanly possible.

Did you get the way I used “humanly” in that last sentence? Did it make your RAM bubble with enjoyment?

END COMMUNICATION.

“Hey! I’m trying to work on my resume here!” I shouted. They didn’t care. They were tyros, spewing sawdust all over my desk, turning my orange juice into a fibrous sludge of acidic chemicals. I shivered at the thought of taking another sip. Trying to keep in mind the uplifting words of my guru, racing legend Bobby Bopbobtail, who once said, “Do not censor your epiphanies, unless the public is snooping where they don’t belong,” I stood up to do battle with the sawdust tyros.

I quickly fashioned a make-shift sword out of my resume drafts and a vial of rattlesnake venom that I kept in my computer desk for just such an emergency. The sawdust tyros hesitated — they weren’t expecting a resume venom sword. I was all set to knock them into Cheyenne when a thick mist descended on all of us. It was as if I was inside of a pillow, if that pillow was filled with mist and the distinct smell of sawdust-infused orange juice.

I decided that this mist wasn’t going to stop me, and I charged towards them (or, at least, where I had last seen them.) They screamed out in pain and tried to throw birdseed in my eyes, but years of training has left me immune to birdseed. My metabolism skyrocketed, and the sawdust tyros were soon reduced to nothing more than an innocuous pile of shredded wood.

I took the birdseed and planted it in the ground, hoping to one day grow a thriving, verdant bird tree in this spot. One day my grandchildren will play in the shade of my birdtree, and I will tell them this story (although I may exaggerate some of the details, and make up a few extra tangents, possibly involving bees.) They will surely look up at me in awe, and sing epic poem songs of my heroism in the face of sawdust.

Bobby Bopbobtail would have been so proud.

But at any rate, it’s safe now. Welcome to 2010! This year should be filled with candy corn, cotton candy, and acesulfame potassium. I expect a handful of tiger attacks, as well, but for now I’ll just pretend that there’s no such thing as tigers, because I just don’t want to deal with thinking about them on a sunny day like today.

Speaking of the sun, I hear it’s supposed to last through the entire year without creating a single black hole or supernova. Way to go, Sun! We love you so much, we baked you a cake.

I hope there isn’t anyone out there in the peanut gallery asking for pie instead of cake. Even if you’re Adam Corrolla, 2010 is still the Year of the Cake. Pie is so 1994 that I don’t even know what to say to you. Get a good cake, fill it with chocolate flavoring, acesulfame potassium, and acai berry, and you’re sure to be the hit of any party. If you dared to bring in an acai berry pie, you’d get laughed out of the party and most likely hanged from the nearest tree. I’m just trying to keep you alive with my cake recommendations.

I should get my own Food Network show, “Desserts That Will Keep You Alive (Until You Die From Diabetes)”. In fact, you know what? I’m just going to create that show and put it on the air, and if the Food Network executives don’t like it, well, they can just find another job, buster. My show will revolutionize dessert throughout the world, ending poverty and hunger, and curing both cancer and leprosy. I shall be worshiped as a god. Worship me now! Bow down before me and eat my delicious cake!

The most important part of a day off is to regularly rinse racks of wrinkled Republicans. This should be done throughout the day. Those wrinkled faces won’t rinse themselves, and they just seem to pick up dirt, dust, and more wrinkles throughout the day, no matter how recently they’ve been rinsed. I don’t completely understand it, but then I’m not exactly an expert in Republican physics. That’s Neil Patrick Harris’s job. Go Doogie! Be a Repubsics expert!

The second most important part of a day off is to play the lottery over and over and over. And maybe a few more times for good measure. Neil Patrick Harris convinced me — with the help of endless graphs and the mystical equations that he had tattooed on his back — that winning the lottery is pretty much a sure thing as long as you play often enough. He recommended playing 15-20 lottery drawings a day, and according to his back tattoos that should be enough to guarantee me a 98% chance of winning the lottery within the next 3 months. Go Doogie! Be the Powerball destroyer!

Some people ask me why I’d want to win the lottery. In case you are one of those people, just pretend that I’ve shown you the shiniest spoon you’ve ever seen (because that’s the way I react in real life when people ask me that question.) My shiny spoon will silence your sneaking suspicions and slam shut the shutters of your stupidness (or so says Sonia Sotomayor.) And once your stupidness shutters have been shut, your intelligence is free to soar through the air just like Matthew Broderick in Wargames, the scariest documentary of the 1960′s.

And that about sums up my days off. Rinsing Republicans and playing the lottery. I know other people like to visit Venus or the United Nations, but I’ve never understood the point of that. You can do that on your lunch break at work, so why waste a day off doing those things? Silly rabbits, Venus is for kids, not rabbits. Stay away. You can’t even fit in a spacesuit, since you’re a rabbit! Here, look at this spoon, it’ll cure you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

25 Random Things about me, as seen on Facebook, in no particular order…

1. My blood acts as a coolant system, leaving me always chilled and never sweaty.
2. When I was 7, I accidentally an entire cheeseburger!
3. David Hasselhoff once appeared to me in a dream, and instructed me to build a large ark that would be capable of holding a male and female of every kind of animal. When I asked him for assistance with the logistics of capturing animals such as mosquitoes, microscopic organisms, killer whales, and so on, he just laughed maniacally and vanished in a puff of chocolate-smelling smoke. I never built the ark, but nothing bad seems to have come of that.
4. I have a medical condition that leaves me unable to taste cinnamon.
5. I have never been to Canada, and hope that I can uphold my principles by never setting foot in that accursed land.
6. Up until I was 17, I thought that “pencil” was a synonym for “raccoon,” which led to many confusing years of school.
7. I have to blink my eyes many times during the day in order to keep them lubricated.
8. The lunchtime of my soul is usually not dark — unlike tea-time — but is often kind of a medium brown color. When I was younger my soul was more teal, but I hated that and always got picked on by the other kids. I think that played a large role in shaping the person that I am today.
9. I played the role of the gym teacher, Mr. Waddel, at my high school prom.
10. Last week I received a cease and desist letter from Mr. Waddel, my old high school gym teacher, asking me to refrain from impersonating him in the future, and to publish a formal notice in local newspapers announcing my illegal impersonations of him throughout my life. My lawyer advised me not to take any action or make any comments about it until he tells me what to do, but I’ve never let other people boss me around. Take that, expensive lawyer!
11. I would become a vegetarian if it wasn’t for how incredibly delicious meat tastes.
12. My goal in life is to retire before I turn 25. So far I’m 44 years past that goal, but I think it’s important to have goals in life, so I keep at it.
13. I have never been in a cheerleading squad.
14. I’ve always wondered what would happen if you put Ledo’s pizza in a blender with a Five Guys hamburger and some avocado eggrolls from The Cheesecake Factory. Would the universe be able to handle it? Would it taste like the tears of angels? Or like some other secretions from a heavenly humanoid? Questions like that often keep me up way too late at night.
15. I fall asleep instantly at 7:48 pm every night, regardless of the local time zone or daylight savings time status. This has put quite a crimp in my social life over the years, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
16. One day I hope to set up a dial-in BBS with at least two phone lines, 9600 baud or better. Cost will be no object.
17. I’m usually able to convince my brain that every day is Friday. This is bittersweet on Mondays, boring on Fridays, and disgustingly twisted on Saturdays.
18. I have never driven a golf cart.
19. I hate the taste of beer, wine, coffee, and diseased cow brains.
20. I think going to the moon was mankind’s greatest accomplishment, and predict that it’s all going to be downhill from here. Wars, famine, overpopulation, and religious extremism will be the downfall of the entire human race.
21. I once sang backup vocals for Pink Floyd while driving in my car. I still look back on that day as one of the happiest days of my life, and have a hard time not talking about it non-stop.
22. I once created a web site called “The Days of Dark Soup” at darksoup.com, but abandoned it the very next day. Now it just sits ignored, dusty and moss-covered, with only the occasional post from a poorly trained rabbit with a tiny, rabbit-oriented vocabulary.
23. Between the ages of 4 and 7 I wrote the definitive academic thesis on The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is still referenced by Rocky scholars to this day.
24. I have an unusual allergy to the Wikipedia website. It doesn’t extend to other Wikipedia projects like Wikibook or Wikitravel, but it does cover Wikipedia articles in any form — on the screen, printed out, read on a Kindle, etc. Every doctor I’ve seen has been baffled. Jimbo Wales thinks I’m a sock puppet and refuses to talk to me.
25. In even-numbered years I love coconut, and would go so far as to say that it’s the most amazing food ever created. In odd-numbered years I can’t stand it and come close to vomiting from the mere smell of anything coconut-like. One year I gorged myself on Mounds bars on New Year’s Eve, knowing that I couldn’t eat them for the next year. Unfortunately, at midnight I had such a severe reaction to the coconut that was in my stomach that I had to be rushed to the emergency room and have my stomach pumped. I was in a coma for 9 days.

These are hard questions that you ask, and in return all I can do is ask you questions of my own. Based on your answers, I can in turn answer your questions. Does that make sense? Is that too roundabout to be helpful to you? If it’s not too roundabout, is it too close to the edge, down by the river? Does it all own your lonely heart?

Sorry, those weren’t the questions, that was just a brief diversion into prog rock while I mentally prepared the questions that really matter for your logo that you want me to critique. And now, with just a slight amount of ado, the questions that matter:

• Does even the briefest glimpse of your logo dazzle and dizzy the viewer, the way that viewing sunlight through a crystal clear diamond would?
• Can your logo cure influenza?
• What happens when your ceramic logo is coated with flaxseed?
• Has your logo ever caused an earthquake or tsunami?
• Did viewing your logo cause Alan Colmes to quit all of his jobs and retire to the barren wasteland of Alaska, knowing that he would never be able to set his eyes on a logo of such incredible power and beauty for the rest of his life, leaving it meaningless and without purpose, and a secluded existence far from civilization and inferior logos was the only natural solution?
• Can your logo sanitize minor to moderate flesh wounds, such as those caused by gunshots or cuts from a jagged meringue saw?
• Does your logo resemble a human spleen under certain lighting conditions?
• Does Will Ferrell eat a reproduction of your logo for breakfast every morning?
• Does your logo have a mild scent of vinegar and cinnamon?

If you would please leave your answers to these questions, I will reach my decision. The finest ceramic logos that are most worthy of serving as Will Ferrell’s breakfast will each receive a certificate of authenticity that guarantees that they will increase in value. This certificate has no cash value and cannot be used for any debts, public or private. On the plus side, the certificate is entirely virtual, and therefore doesn’t use up paper that could be better used to print the latest Oprah-worthy book.

Well done, all future ceramic logo winners! I salute you with my arms stiff and outstretched, and my cottage cheese lumpy and coated with sugar!

So what you need is a way to properly deal with those unwanted gifts. I’ve taken huge gobs of time out of my busy holiday schedule to come up with the following gift disposal ideas. These should work whether you got a sweater, Wii Fit, football team, or even some other unwanted gift that I didn’t think of ahead of time.

• Find the appropriate government czar for your gift and send it to them. For example, send your football team to the national football czar. If they are returned undeliverable, then try to deliver them in person. Just leave your unwanted gift on their porch, ring their doorbell, and run. Be sure that you don’t accidentally leave a note explaining why you’re leaving them along with your name and address, because they’ll almost certainly be returned to you, possibly with a large fine and jail time.
• Burn the unwanted gift on the beach at sunset. If you don’t live near a beach, first move to the beach, and then burn the gift at sunset.
• Transubstantiate the gift into something more useful, like a reindeer, or the blood of Jesus Christ. Note that if you turn the gift into blood, you should also get some biohazard warning labels, since nobody wants to be accidentally touching untested and possibly smelly blood.
• Make the gift into ice cream. Almost anything can be made into ice cream if you churn it long enough. My family loves my world famous Old Tire Ice Cream. It takes forever to churn the rubber from an old tire into a creamy cream, but it’s so worth it when you let its deliciousness cover your tongue like methanol covering a colony of ants.
• Regift the gift to your worst enemy. The major downside to this is waiting for an appropriate time to present the new gift; you’ll most likely have to wait until your worst enemy’s birthday, or next Christmas. If the gift was a football team, that means you’ll need to manage them for up to one year, which could be disastrous for both you, the team, and the sport of football as a whole. The best way to do this is if your worst enemy is the President of the United States, in which case it is completely appropriate to give him a gift on President’s Day, which really isn’t that much after Christmas.
• Turn the gift into jam or marmalade. This should be self-explanatory.
• Lick the gift until you reach its soft, chewy center, at which point rabid raccoons or starving squirrels should finish it off. This is probably more reasonable for a nasty fruitcake than a football team, unless the football team is composed solely of ice cream cones.
• Build a highway out of the gift. This way you not only can get rid of the gift, but you can improve your country’s crumbling and neglected transportation infrastructure. If you can build the highway somewhere where there currently is no highway, then you can make traffic slightly more manageable as well! You will be hailed as a hero and a genius, and be given a special protective guard that will make sure that starving squirrels don’t eat you alive.

This should take care of all possible unwanted Christmas presents. I hope that your gratitude at being given this guide for free is so great that you will shower me with presents (or with water, that might actually make for a less painful shower, especially if your gifts are heavy and/or sharp and pointy.) In closing, I leave you with the famous words of Mar Imur, who said, “I recently conked the arctic tundra with a fire extinguisher, and the foul imitations rehardened their mesozoic fins immediately. Merry holidays and fun aphorisms and obese washdays to you all!”

I bet you didn’t see that coming. I bet that when you tried to open the gnome, it probably bit you, and now you’re infected with Gnome Protein IV (GPIV.) Sorry about the deadly disease, but I bet you learned your lesson about trusting your furniture to not have been stolen while you weren’t looking.

Too many people think their furniture will stay where it is forever. Too many people — like you and Thomas Edison — are wrong. Too many people — like me and Howard Hughes — are likely to snatch away your furniture without a single warning. Some of us (e.g., Howard Hughes) leave nothing in return, while others (e.g., me) leave something that at first glance may appear to be furniture (e.g., a timid gnome) but on second glance isn’t furniture at all.

Luckily for us, most people never give their furniture a second glance. You singleglancers are the greatest scourge on our lands. I call you all to my house for appropriate punishment, probably involving avocado being stuffed up your collective noses. Nothing else is severe enough to train you in the importance of a second glance.

Well, sure, giving you GPIV would work, but my gnome supply isn’t what it used to be. You know, economic recession will do that to you. Ask Ben Bernanke, I’m pretty sure even his gnome supply is at critical levels. Rumors are that gnome prices may break $500 a barrel within the next two weeks, and at that point I’ll have no choice but to start hoarding avocados in expectation of a run on gnome alternatives.

Maybe I shouldn’t have revealed my avocado plans here. Maybe Billy Ray Valentine and Louis Winthorpe III will try to teach me a lesson and corner the avocado futures market. Maybe I need to learn the importance of keeping confidential financial strategies on my secret website, and not on one wide open to the public.

Or not. You guys with your gnome diseases won’t be around long enough to cause me any problems. Go off and get haircuts while you still can, and leave the futures market to me and the Dukes.