Today, the Fourth of July, I wish a fond Happy Birthday to these United States of America, and hope that you are able to blow out all of the candles on your first blow. I sing this Independence Day — not the one with Will Smith — birthday song to you:

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!

There are several ingredients that you must have if you’re trying to throw a fun and memorable party. I will now list them here, in one convenient place, for your party-throwing pleasure. If you would be so kind as to invite me to your party, I would be most appreciative. If you use this advice without inviting me to your party, I might have to sit at home alone and cry. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you?

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.

“Stup!” he shouted.

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.

Poor Karl Rove.

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.

Join us! We are tintyping. We reject your plastic electronic computer keyboards which fatigue your fingers, rust your diners, and cause you to ceaselessly kowtow to Karl Rove.

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!

Today’s movie script, fresh off the cookie sheet that bakes movie scripts, is an educational film called How to Act in a Cafeteria. You can enjoy this script either through PDF form, or just by continuing to read on for the plain old web page version.

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.
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Some movie scripts are lifeless husks that must have life breathed into them by a God-like director. Not Driving With Socks; this screenplay just radiates energy and life and all of the other good stuff that a perfect script has. This, therefore, is clearly a perfect movie script. I can’t understand why it hasn’t been produced yet, but I’m willing to accept any and all offers.

And now, without further junk from me, the movie script for Driving With Socks. (Or, read the Driving With Socks script as a PDF file.)
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And now our feature presentation, The Rise of the Silkiest Saboteur. Some call it the greatest screenplay of all time, while others disagree and call it the greatest piece of writing — of any type — that has ever been created. Now you can be the judge. Read the script and state your opinion in the comments.
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Hark! The eldest housetop approaches.

“What do you want from us, oh roofen elder?”

The eldest housetop sayeth nothing, for it is but a roof and lacks vocal chords. But the ferocity of its opinions is evident from the angle of its shingles.

“Won’t you come and join us at our nightly feast, your roofen one?”

The eldest housetop slopes dangerously askew at such a brazenly inappropriate invitation, and the villager whimpers and scurries away to more comfortable, roofless quarters.

The eldest housetop scans the streets and ambles on down the road, flaunting his insulation and threatening to explode on other, lesser housetops that dare to get in his way. What does he seek? Is it eggnog once again, to stave off the harsh cold of winter? Or does this housetop have more spiritual goals in mind?

The world will never know, for the eldest housetop has learned many things over its lifetime. Such as origami, although that doesn’t make a difference here. But it’s also learned the value of privacy and secrecy, and this roof plans to tell no other person or housing unit anything about its plans for the night.

In fact, this housetop is so talented that it even gives us the slip. We have no idea where it went, and so can no longer follow it with our words and report on its actions. Maybe we’ll see it again some other night, but probably not. The great eldest housetop has escaped again, leaving us clueless and surprisingly lacking in origami knowledge.

Such is life, I suppose. One day you’re looking at the eldest housetop in the land, and the next day you’re besieged by Christians hurling missives at you while you’re innocently standing in a pasture, trying to chew your cud. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Yeah, we do too. Walk on, you butterfly of a roof, and do whatever it is you need to do. Just don’t come after us when things don’t go as planned. We’ll be far away, probably in Idaho or some place like that.

Dear Mr. Tiddlysmith,

I applaud your election campaign so far. It’s been 70% good, and that’s well done, sir. But, if I’m to be honest with you, it’s not all earlobes and monkeyboots. You have some important things that need to be fixed. Toughen up yourself, young man, and listen to my advice.

First off, your insincere nature towards geotaxation will be the death of your campaign. Do you really hope to unseat the major party presidential candidates with such a transparently aortic stance on geotaxation? The Armenians will eat your hat for breakfast. The villagers will burn you at the stake, all the while joking about the wood chipper down at the mill.

Dualism doesn’t suit you at all. Relocate your Sudanese friends onto your campaign right away, and relocate your existing position papers on geotaxation to the recycle bin. Such bird-like pecks of policy produce nothing but pat and unprincipled projects. No American citizen would ever dare vote for you, out of fear that you would actually implement some of your birdbrained ideas. They’re a lot smarter than you’d expect based on their looks and past voting record.

Yes amigo, besmirch your web site with such squalor if you must, but monolithic Hollywood will undoubtedly take their gigantic bottle of White Out and whiteout your whole existence. You think you exist now? Just wait until they’re done with you. Their CGI effects will amaze your friends and reduce you to a sniveling, crying little ant.

Don’t piss off the special effects teams, for they are Gods and will smite you down.

Might I recommend acquiring a falcon from Malta and wearing it on your sleeve at all times? Voters love Maltese falcons — almost as much as they love Burmese mastodons — and when your falcon flies over their heads, causing them to drop their hamburgers on the ground in wonder and “Oooh, look at that falcon,” your victory will be all but certain.

Don’t bungle it now. Your scrawny aluminum canniness is insanity. The new, plastic and falconized you is the future of America. Get out their and debate! Stump! Politicize the tiniest topcoat and the smallest dribble of pizza. It all matters in the grand scheme of things. Don’t be left crustless when the fat lady starts to sing!

I hope my advice helps. I will, personally, probably vote for Barack Obama. You, Mr. Tiddlysmith, just seem to easily influenced by random Internet discussions such as this one. That’s not something I want in a President. Unless you promise to only be influenced by me, darksoup.com; in that case, I will happily vote for you and cast Obama to the meditations of history, just like the Czech monks who tried to sell me that oddly rewritten Torah a few years ago. Haven’t heard from them lately, have you?

I rest my case. Let the monkeyboots return to politics. Bring the earlobes back to the caucus. Tonight we dine on Mr. Tiddlysmith’s victory over America! Go go gadget Tiddlysmith!