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.

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear America
Happy birthday to you

From your shining blue seas
To your genetically enhanced trout festivals
Your birthday will seize the imaginations of lesser countries
But not of greater countries
Since they couldn’t care less

From your fields of wheat
To your meals of sheets
From your rocket’s red glare
To your Victorian goblets of Buddhist mercy
Your birthday is a fun day

Happy happy happy happy happy happy birthday
Your childlike mothball factories are awesome
And your ceramic rodent lawn ornaments are awesome, too
But nothing is as awesome
As your birthday day to me.

(Repeat)

Come on everyone, sing along!

And now, with just a little further ado, the most important ingredients for a fun party:

• werewolf liver
• poisonous nicknames (e.g., “Molly”, or “Nevermore”)
• sneeze syrup
• millions of molecules of mermaid milk
• a titlark
• no scythes
• antisocial thermostats
• 1/2 cup sugar
• junkie squids
• a dash of garlic
• chocolate chip blue jeans
• Paula Abdul
• a representative from the Wildcat Wrestling Federation (WWF)
• one gravity
• a noisy and nebulous night

If I hear — and I do have my sources — that you have thrown a party using my ingredient list (or any portion thereof) and have not invited me, my wrath will be biblical and swift. There will be no cookies or ice cream in my wrath, it will instead be all wrathy and mean. That’s right. Mean.

You can leave your party invitations below in the comments. If the comments are so fully packed with existing invitations that you can’t squeeze yours in — and I expect that to be the case within a few short hours of posting this — then feel free to send me a postcard invitation instead. I accept invitations of all kinds.

Why should I stup now? This neighborhood has to be the least stuppiest place I’ve ever seen or imagined. And trust me, I’ve been around. I spent a month in the lair of the breakfast puma, constantly hiding from his enraged Rice Krispies tantrums and his Count Chocula killing sprees. But I would much rather stup in the breakfast puma’s lair than stup here.

After all, here the astronauts can see me.

Here the mongoose eggs all look translucent in the streaky light.

Here a flank steak can beat up a filet any day of the week.

And still his shouted “stup!” lingered in the air. I poked at it with my umbrella, but all I could do was dent it; its inherent stuppiness was still quite evident. No, this hovering, lingering word would require extra ammunition.

This word would need to be doused in a 50-50 mixture of alcohol and holy water, and then set on fire. This word needs to be burned to a crisp until all that’s left is the lone descender from the bottom of the “p,” which would then fall to the ground and disintegrate like a cell phone in a hockey rink.

No Stanley Cup for you, you unwanted exclamation! I banish you to a soothing land of milkshakes and backrubs. No, wait! That’s all wrong! Cancel that order! I meant to banish you to a meatmall land where you are always the cowbell and never the cow.

“Ha!” I shouted in reply, after I burned and banished his word. I was victorious once again.

There he was, innocently sitting on his couch and watching the American Idol results show. He had no idea what was about to befall him. He was pure and innocent as driven snow, uncorrupted and virginal.

And then disaster struck: David Hernandez was voted off.

Karl Rove just sat there in shock. David Hernandez, that sweet gay stripper? How could the people of America vote him off of American Idol so coldheartedly? Didn’t they empathize with David’s secret dreams and desires? Or was Karl Rove the only one who really understood him?

Either way, Karl Rove was still in shock. Tears started welling up in his eyes, although he tried to put on a brave, strong face around those teary eyes. But nobody was tricked; they easily saw how deeply this vote had affected poor Karl Rove.

What they didn’t know was how Karl Rove would react. Would he just sit on the couch and cry like he did when Saddam Hussein stopped returning his phone calls? Or would he turn green, grow disturbingly steroidial muscles, and start smashing things with his hulking grunting sounds that always scared the working class? Everyone enjoyed watching the working class huddled scared in their hovels, but if they had to vote, they would vote for the quiet, crying Karl Rove.

How did he react? Who will go home next? Will William Shatner crawl out of Ryan Seacrest’s shirt pocket and devour the entire audience? You’ll just have to tune in to find out. FOX, Tuesdays. Be there or be The Incredible Hulk.

Tintyping is the future. It’s a future where all the diners are rust-free, Karl Rove is ignored, and your fingers lovingly caress that tin keyboard every hour of the day. That tin keyboard that lets you tintype with reckless abandon, throwing away the ancient plastic keyboards of your great-ancestors.

If Groucho Marx was still alive today he would certainly be a tintyper. If the ant from Pixar’s A Bug’s Life ever started his own web site he would create it with a tintyping keyboard. If spacewomen from the future landed on Earth and started sending out harshly worded memos — as they are often wont to do — they would type up those memos on tinboards (Tinpedia asserts that “tinboard” is an acceptable shortening of tin keyboard.)

I can’t vouch for licking a tin keyboard. Best to just restrict yourself to typing on it. I’m sure Cory Doctorow has one by now, securely hidden somewhere within his cape.

Get yours today! It’s the perfect St. Patrick’s Day gift for that special someone in your life. Don’t terrorize them with continued harassing phone calls and by stalking them on Facebook. No, show them how you really feel by forcefully welcoming them to the tintyping revolution. It’s like the Ron Paul revolution, only with even more blimps!

The choice is yours. Choose wisely, for your decision may alter the course of history, much as the improper cafeteria behavior in this screenplay does.

               INT. CAFETERIA

               It's a cafeteria.  People in suits are getting their lunches.
               NEVERBOB walks in and stands in line at the buffet.  Suddenly
               he spots NEVERKATE over by the salad bar.

                                   NEVERBOB
                         Neverkate!

               Neverkate looks around, confused at first, but then she spots
               Neverbob.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         Neverbob!

               Neverkate and Neverbob teleport their bodies over to a point
               halfway between Neverbob's buffet line and Neverkate's salad
               bar line.  They each extend their hands in a ritual greeting
               to each other, and then stare into each others' eyes for one
               or two hours.

                                   NEVERBOB
                         Did you get that thing I sent you
                         last week?

                                   NEVERKATE
                         The one with the ancient Latin
                         engravings on the front?

                                   NEVERBOB
                         No, the one that was suspended in a
                         jellied gefilte fish broth.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         Oh yeah, that one.  I enjoyed that
                         one quite a bit.

                                   NEVERBOB
                         Great!  I'm glad you liked it.  I
                         had it imported all the way from
                         Pittsburgh in an alabaster handcar.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         It was well worth any expense that
                         you might have expended.

                                   NEVERBOB
                         Great!  Glad to hear it.

               With their societal pleasantries out of the way, Neverkate
               and Neverbob proceed to rummage through each others' food
               trays, searching for illicit substances or stray duck eggs.
               Neither finds anything improper, of course.

                                   NEVERBOB (CONT'D)
                         Your food is acceptable to me.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         As is yours, to me.

                                   NEVERBOB
                         Let us lighten our shoes by seating
                         ourselves upon a chair
                             (pointing towards a
                              distant planet)
                         Maybe a chair over there somewhere.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         Unfortunately, I do not have the
                         time to consume these food items.
                         I merely came here to participate
                         in the ritual of cafeteria line
                         standing.  Please excuse my
                         inexcusable rudeness.

               Neverbob kneals down on the ground, embarrased beyond belief
               at his immense faux paus.

                                                          SMASH CUT TO:

               EXT. SPEEDBOAT - DAY

               NEVERBOB is racing along the clear, blue water on a
               speedboat.  He appears to not have a care in the world.  He
               looks 20 years younger than he did under the harsh
               fluorescent lights at work.

                                                          SMASH CUT TO:

               INT. CAFETERIA

               Still knealing on the ground, with his vision of speedboat
               happiness still churning around in his brain, Neverbob
               condenses his body to the size of a pea.  Not only the size,
               but also the shape and color.  To an uneducated observer,
               Neverbob might have actually turned into a pea.

                                   NEVERBOB
                             (in pea form)
                         I hope you can find a portion of
                         your heart device that can forgive
                         my verbal trespass.  I offer myself
                         up to be eaten by you for lunch as
                         penance.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         Thank you for your hospitality.  I
                         will not eat your pea self at this
                         juncture.  I have a camel upstairs
                         whose humps are filled with
                         chocolate, and those will provide
                         sustenance to me during my long
                         journey through the paperwork of
                         the soul.

               Neverbob, thrilled to hear this, turns back into the size and
               shape of a normally shaped and sized Neverbob.

                                   NEVERBOB
                         Please exhume my humiliation from
                         my heart, and weld it to the disco
                         ball in the sky, where it will
                         refract light for centuries to
                         come.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         I can do this for you.

               Neverkate proceeds to extract Neverbob's humiliation from his
               heart, and welds it to the disco ball in the sky.  The light
               refracted through the newly humiliated disco ball is
               beautiful and inspiring.

                                   NEVERBOB
                         I love you, Neverkate.

                                   NEVERKATE
                         Don't make me turn you into a
                         cloud.

               The sun breaks through the walls of the cafeteria, just so
               that it can set over the happy couple.

                                                         FADE TO BLACK.