“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!

Also beware
The Hiffolump of Doom
Because, like the name implies,
It is not a friendly animal

But mostly
Beware the First of June
It comes in like a lamb
But a giant mutant lamb
Covered in poisonous spikes
So you shouldn’t touch it
Or your fingerprints will fall off

I should have written this poem
Twenty four hours ago
Or more
To give you adequate warning

Now
It’s really too late
Isn’t it?

The First of June is totally here
Bearing lambs and lions and pandas
To poison and stab and eat you
Not necessarily
In that order
You know how animals are

Unordered.

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!”

You can read the complete shooting draft of the screenplay below, or you can down the PDF script of Porcupines are Deadly, 100% free of charge and guaranteed to work in all weather environments — tropical storms, hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes excepted.

                                             PORCUPINES ARE DEADLY

               EXT. PARK - DAY

               A whole bunch of people are standing around on the top of a
               grassy hill in their local park.  All of a sudden, with no
               warning whatsoever, one of them speaks.

                                   BLUEMAN
                         I like porcupines.

                                   REDMAN
                         That's stupid, porcupines will stab
                         you with their spines.

                                   ORANGEMAN
                         How would they stab you with their
                         spines, do they peel the skin off
                         of their backs, sharpen one of
                         their vertebrae, and then stab you
                         with that?

                                   REDMAN
                         Shut up, now I hate you even more
                         than I hate porcupines.

                                   BLUEMAN
                         I still like porcupines, I don't
                         care what kinds of crazy things
                         they do with their spines.

                                   REDMAN
                         You should care, porcupines are the
                         silent killers of the sea.

                                   ORANGEMAN
                         I don't think porcupines can even
                         swim.

                                   REDMAN
                         Shut up, now I hate you even more
                         than Orangeman, who I just recently
                         started hating even more than
                         porcupines.

                                   ORANGEMAN
                         I am Orangeman.  Orangeman and I
                         are one and the same.

                                   REDMAN
                         Shut up.

               For several seconds nobody says anything.  High up in the
               sky, a porcupine-shaped cloud slowly drifts over their heads.

                                   BLUEMAN
                         I like raspberries.

                                   ORANGEMAN
                         Don't you start with your raspberry
                         foolishness!

               Blueman has no choice but to walk away, rejected, dejected,
               and projected, but at least he wasn't ejected from the park
               against his will.

               INT. BLUEMAN'S LIVING ROOM

               Blueman walks through the door, still looking dejected after
               his harsh thrashing at the hands of the other mens' hands.
               His pet gerbil was waiting for him on the living room couch,
               and is excited beyond belief now that he's home.

                                   BLUEMAN'S GERBIL
                         Yay!  Home you now!  Ok food!

                                   BLUEMAN
                         Aren't you a cute little porcupine,
                         with your words and your
                         hungriness.  You'd never stab me
                         with your spine, would you?

                                   BLUEMAN'S GERBIL
                             (stunned)
                         What--  How--  Who told you?

               The gerbil, unsure how Blueman came to discover his secret
               spinal plans, has no choice but to bolt out of the room.
               Seconds later the back door slams and car wheels screech in
               the driveway.

                                   BLUEMAN
                             (to no one in particular)
                         Oh.  Well, so much for my character
                         judgement.  I thought he was a
                         harmless little porcupine, but all
                         this time he was planning to murder
                         me in my sleep with his spine.  I
                         guess it's true what they say...

               Orangeman and Redman poke their heads in through the window,
               and say, simulatenously:

                                   ORANGEMAN
                         Life is like a box of wine: you
                         never know if you're supposed to
                         drink it or put styrofoam in it!

                                   REDMAN
                         Life is like a box of wine: you
                         never know if you're supposed to
                         drink it or put styrofoam in it!

               INT. GERBIL HEADQUARTERS - NIGHT

               Hundreds of gerbils, plotting.  Maps of attack along the
               walls.  Endless rows of computer screens crunching data.  X
               rays of their spines to assess their vertebra-sharpening
               progress.  They work silently, deadly and efficient.  One of
               them may have been compromised, but he was just a drop in the
               bucket of gerbils.  There are many more where he came from,
               all as evil and deadly as Blueman's.

               They will destroy us all.

                                                         FADE TO BLACK.

You can either read it in HTML below, or download the PDF version of the script. The choice is yours and yours alone.

               EXT. GRAND CANYON - DAY

               As the sun rises over the Grand Canyon, JOHN MCCAIN waddles
               up to the rim and gazes deep into its soul.

                                   JOHN MCCAIN
                             (to no one in particular)
                         Now that's what I call a canyon!

               As he stares down into it, TRIG PALIN floats up next to him,
               but seems much more interested in McCain than in the
               spectacular, sunrisey view in front of him.  After McCain
               ignores him for several minutes, Trig finally has to speak.

                                   TRIG PALIN
                         Hey man, have you seen the
                         clockwork potatoes that are growing
                         down there?

                                   JOHN MCCAIN
                         I have not, my dear Trigonometry
                         Palin.  Can you tell me more about
                         these clockwork potatoes?

                                   TRIG PALIN
                         No way, you'll just get your old
                         person scent all over them and
                         they'll never let us make clockwork
                         french fries out of them after
                         that.

                                   JOHN MCCAIN
                         This is true, my old person scent
                         does seem to seep into everything I
                         go near.

                                   TRIG PALIN
                         Damn straight.

               A closer look at McCain's FINGERNAILS show that they're
               dripping with a nauseating mixture of sweat and old person
               juice.

               Then, out of nowhere -- a CRACK of THUNDER and an electrical
               SIZZLE permeates the air.  JOE BIDEN has appeared.

                                   JOE BIDEN
                         Did someone call for potato curing?

                                   JOHN MCCAIN
                         Not I, kind sir.  My fingers may
                         drip with my old person essence,
                         but those potatoes had it coming.
                         Why, back in Vietnam, I fought
                         potatoes three times their size!
                         They think they can beat me, but
                         they don't know who they're talking
                         to.  They probably think they're
                         talking to Dan Quayle!  Well, let
                         me tell you something...  I'm no
                         Dan Quayle!

                                   JOE BIDEN
                         I can believe that.

                                   TRIG PALIN
                         You know, I wouldn't mind if you
                         cured one of those potatoes for me.

                                   JOHN MCCAIN
                         No!  Blasphemer!  Ye shall be cast
                         out into the fiery pits of the
                         Grand Canyon for daring to summon
                         the potato powers of Joe Biden!  It
                         cannot be!

               John McCain raises his arms to the sky and casts Trig Palin
               into another dimension, using only the power of his mind.
               Trig disappears in a blinding FLASH of purple light.

                                   JOHN MCCAIN (CONT'D)
                         Thank Jesus Christ our Lord and
                         Ghost that he's gone.

               Biden's eyes grow as large as guitars at Trig's unexpected
               transdimensional voyage.  He's suddenly not so sure what to
               make of McCain; is he a mere crazy kook, or is he an all
               powerful wizard from the future?

                                   JOE BIDEN
                         I'll just go somewhere else now and
                         pretend that you're not a wizard.

                                   JOHN MCCAIN
                         That, my ancient acquaintance, is
                         an excellent idea.

               Biden summons another bolt of lightning to carry him home to
               the clouds, leaving McCain alone to continue gazing into the
               depths of the Grand Canyon and wonder if he should get new
               dentures before the Barack Obama debates or not.

                                   JOE BIDEN (V.O.)
                         And that was the last we ever saw
                         of Trigonometry Palin.
                         His cousins, Calculus and
                         Basketweaving, always spoke of him
                         with reverence and potatoes.  John
                         McCain, on the other hand, denies
                         all knowledge that he ever existed.

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.