I got this in the mail today. It was postmarked 1958, so that’s some pretty lousy postal service service. I couldn’t make out what the address was supposed to be, so I don’t know why it came to me, but I’m not going to put the envelope in the blender just because of that.

So, I opened it up. It turns out that the letter isn’t for me. The strangest thing is that it seems to be describing things that will happen 10 years in the future. Ten years from now, not from 1958. I don’t know if these things were originally 57 years in the future when the letter was written, or if the 1958 postmark is a side effect of whatever weird temporal distortion time travelling mailbox the sender used.

Unfortunately, the letter isn’t going to make me rich in 10 years. It’s all things like, “The average temperature on July 14, 2015 in Akron, Ohio will be 77 degrees.”

And, “The number of people who will stub one or more of their toes in zip code 10044 during Thanksgiving day 2015: 4″

I’m going to try sending a letter back asking for lottery results or other more useful things, but I have a bad feeling that it might take 20 years to get there. Stupid time travel mail delays. How am I going to get rich off of secret insider trading with my friend from the future at this rate?

Lift the bird bath. What do you see underneath?

• If you see an old, yellow mask that’s been there for thousands of years, you’ll probably have 6 more weeks of winter.
• If you see a miniature oak tree and some even smaller baby oak trees, winter will be ending early for you.
• If you see a cat that’s been waiting there and trying to catch birds, you’ll have a winter filled with cold and snow and that sort of thing.
• If you can’t pick up the bird bath because it’s too heavy, your winter will pretend to end early, starting tomorrow, but it’ll be a trick. Winter will actually come back colder and meaner than ever 2 days later. Sorry about that.
• If you find a tornado, your seasons might wind up being backwards this year. You should also consult a few fortune cookies.

Glad to help!

I don’t know about Thursdays. They just seem superfluous. When I’m elected president, I might wage a War on Thursdays and see if we can’t eliminate them once and for all. But that probably depends on what the polls say. Polls and advisors and pundits, those are the things that will really drive my Thursdays agenda.

But hopefully people agree with me about Thursdays, so we can go ahead and just get rid of them. Does anyone out there really like them? I don’t hate them or anything, they just seem unnecessary. As long as you, the people, are with me, or at least not violently against me, we can go forward with my Thursdayless agenda.

The agenda looks something like this:

9:00 am — Get rid of Thursdays.

9:15 am — Lunch

That’s it. Simple times. Vote for me!

Mr. Guffger drank his tea. Boy, did he like tea. He drank the tea until he was out of tea. That was a sad tealess time for Mr. Guffger.

He had no choice but to join the army at that point. His drill instructor once offered him tea, and he jumped and cried because of his tea-joy. The drill instructor was only being a big meanie, though. He didn’t have any tea for Mr. Guffger at all.

That night Mr. Guffger escaped and went AWOL. He wandered through the countryside, completely lost, until one starless night he wound up at an abandoned cottage.

“Those abandoned cottages sometimes have abandoned tea inside!” he said to himself, and to anyone else nearby who might be listening.

Was there anyone else listening? Maybe. That would ruin the story if I told you, though. Wouldn’t it? I think it would.

The inside of the cottage had no tea. But it did have a bag of Mr. Guffger’s sanity.

“Hey! I’ve been looking for that!”

He took the bag of sanity and brewed himself a hot cup of sanity juice.

The end.

Oh, and no, there wasn’t anyone else listening to what he said outside the cottage. Aren’t you glad I waited until after the end to tell you that?

Can you feel it? The energy in the air? The anticipation in the water? The excitement in the mud?

No? Get with it! Feel it! Now!

Still not getting anywhere? Try our 6 week course: Untangling Things That Are Too Tangled For You. Not only are results guaranteed, but we’ll pay you if it doesn’t work out.

(Note: results are not guaranteed. The phrase “we’ll pay you” is intended to indicate that our corporation will “pay you a nice compliment for taking our course”, and is in no way intended to imply any financial renumeration in the event of unsatisfactory performance. In the event that the course fails to meet your expectations, please try purchasing another one. Sometimes the second one will work better than the first. The second course’s results are not guaranteed either.)

Come on, what are you waiting for? It’s 100% risk-free!

(Note: course is not 100% risk-free. There is a substantial risk that you will not obtain anything valuable from it, and therefore will experience a net loss of money and time. Approximately 100% of people who take the course feel unsatisfied and poorer for the experience.)

Call now! Operators are standing by!

Am I the only one that’s ever wished for a helper cat while grocery shopping?

Why can’t they just provide a big pen filled with cats and kittens near the entrances. You walk in, you have your shopping carts, baskets, and helper cats.

Maybe charge 50 cents to use one of them for a shopping trip to help pay for their food and kitty maintenance. It would be well worth it. You guys would wander through the aisles. You go to pick up a gallon of millk, and have the cat grab a pack of bacon while you do that. You’d at least come close to chopping the shopping time in half.

And then you’ve got your own store expert there with you, in the shape of a cat. You don’t need to hunt around to figure out where they keep the bags of charcoal, since the cat knows. He can dash off (weaving between and under crowds of shopping carts), grab that bag of charcoal without having to waste time wondering where it is. He runs back with the charcoal, and you’ve saved yourself a good five minutes there.

To be honest, I have no idea why stores aren’t doing this already. But at this point I’m going to go ahead and patent this. The patent office will give a patent to pretty much anything these days. Even though this isn’t an invention, and shouldn’t be patentable, I’m sure it will work out.

If you run a store and are interested in setting up a cat shopper program, send me money and I’ll let you.

I rode on the goat
He took me to the market
Since I needed milk

Then he took me back
To my milk storage building
Where I locked it up

But not before I
Used just a bit to have a
Bowl of cereal

Thank you, Mr. Goat
My cereal thanks you too
Since I’m eating it

Do you believe in Thursdays. You should. The Thursdaycat wants you to believe in them. If you don’t believe in Thursdays, how can you believe in Thursdaycat? That’s the kind of thing he’ll say if you try to argue against Thursdays.

That’s fine. Just be careful. If you keep arguing, he might attack with his Thursdayclaws and Thursdayteeth. Bad attacking times ahead. Stay clear. Yield. No turn on red. No parking after 9:00 am. Etc.

I need lights on my arms. Small little lights that will light up things that I put my arms near. Doesn’t it always seem to happen that you are around something that’s too dark, but you are able to put your arms near it?

Yeah, I know, I know. Sometimes you just wouldn’t be able to get your arms there anyway. Or sometimes you’re somewhere and everything is far too bright, and the last thing you want is more bright-making equipment being used nearby.

But do some counting. Some dark/arm math. It has to be something like 93% to 94% of the time that the dark-arm situation described back in paragraph one (above) holds true. And in all those cases, small flashlights embedded into your arms would be a miracle cure to the excessive darkness. It would be like a light buld and an arm, all rolled up into one convenient device.

I’ll start taking orders for the Armlight Implanter 2000 now. That will give me the funding needed to invent the thing. Then I’ll send them to you. You can report back on how they work. Can you still move your arm after the procedure? Do you get electrocuted every time you try to wave to someone? Is the light implanted in the wrong direction, and it lights up your arm innards rather than the dark something-or-other that you were trying to enlighten?

These are the kinds of problems that I want to know about. Your money and product testing will let me perfect the Armlight Implanter 2500 — the next generation. Turns out the AI2000 had all kinds of problems. The AI2500 is where it’s at.

“Oh, I thought you lived behind door number one.”

“I do, but it doesn’t open. My door usage has to be through door number three.”

“But you just came out of door number two.”

“Yeah, that’s more convenient for when people come to visit. You can’t see door number three unless you already know where it is. First you have to learn how to see door number three.”

“Oh, yeah, I don’t see that anywhere.”

“That’s why door number two is currently in use for arrivals and departures. Use the VICTOR approach to door number two, unless you happen to know where door number three is.”

“Good to know. Do you want a pizza?”

“Pizza? I don’t think a pizza could fit through door number two. Is this a regulation-sized pizza?”

“Yes, regulation-ish.”

“Let me try door number four. Do you think it’ll fit through that one?”

“I think we might need to split it in half. Put half through door number 2, and the other half through door number four. If we do both halves at the exact same time, they should fuse together on the other side into one whole pizza.”

“I’m willing to try it if you are. I’m not going to wind up with tomato sauce on my hinges, am I?”

“No. No no no no no. Of course not. Don’t be silly.”

“Ok, let’s do it. Pizza transport go now!”

What happens next? No one knows. No one survived to tell us. Let that be a lesson to all of you: pizza is not to be messed with.