And if there are any guys out there currently doing a panicked double-take as they glance from this column … to the calendar … and back to this column … and then back to the calendar again, I’ll give you just a moment to brace yourselves for the inevitable backhand that’s coming…

…it may not come in the next 5 minutes, or even in the next hour, but it’s coming!

Not for nothing, but maybe you deserve a little smack across the face if you were somehow able to overlook Valentine’s Day in this day and age because it’s not like it’s a well kept secret or anything anymore! Now I’m not one to promote domestic violence in the name of heart-shaped boxes of chocolate, mind you, but I haven’t been able to walk through my favorite grocery store since Christmas Eve without being bombarded with cardboard Cupids hanging from the ceiling and eight different varieties of chocolate hearts eager to wipe out my New Years resolutions before I’d even committed them to paper!

Anniversaries and birthdays may be another story, but you’ve literally got a multi-million dollar industry pushing this holiday to the forefront – if you can’t manage to remember with red & pink on every end cap and 1-800 Flowers banner ads on every website you’ve visited for the last three months, then I just don’t know what else to tell you.

It’s no secret that the ladies look forward to this day – heck, I’d certainly have a little more spring in my step if I knew that I’d be getting showered with chocolate and flowers and cute, plush animals holding little signs that say “I Wuv You THIIIIIIIS Much!” from sun up until champagne down! There’s really no sense in resisting it at this point – Valentine’s Day has become a part of the social contract that those of us here in the civilized world are bound to, so unless you feel like packing a bag, leaving your iPhone behind, and moving down to South America where the law of the jungle trumps show your love with as many Reese’s Peanut Butter Hearts as your budget will allow one day out of the year, a single annual embrace of commercialized affection kinda seems like a small price to pay for keeping your dearly beloved off the warpath, now doesn’t it?!

It doesn’t even have to be all huge and extravagant – I myself got my wife a nice card and a bag of chocolates, she did the same for me, and we ended up just grabbing Chinese takeout for dinner before going to bed early without any sex whatsoever. Granted, we’re old and married and boring, so perhaps you would like some sex in exchange for that $2.99 bag of Cherry-Filled Hershey Kisses, but good luck getting any if instead you just end up blowing off the entire celebration without so much as an e-card and some leftover Christmas candy that just so happens to be wrapped in the same red foil that they use for Valentine’s candy…

Let’s be honest, men – our lady friends really don’t ask very much of us … wear pants when there’s company coming over, make an effort to pick up our toys when we’re done playing with them, and try not to embarrass them too much in public. It’s not like we’re being expected to sit through a night at the opera or learn Mandarin Chinese so that we can impress her father when he comes to the United States for the first time or anything! Just buy her one stupid, little box of chocolates and maybe a stuffed bear with a heart on it, and you’re golden for another 364 days – it’s really a pretty sweet deal, if you’ll pardon the totally intentional pun…

But on the plus side, if you missed out yesterday and are still looking to save a little face – if you act fast before the stores are all sold out, you can buy a great consolation Valentine’s gift today on clearance for 50% off!!!

Hey, I won’t tell her if you won’t…

I’ve said before that a humor columnist is never really not working because there are always new ideas to gather and random moments throughout our daily lives we encounter that would later end up making for a yet another really hilarious column about the exciting world of beet farming, but truth be told, everyone needs to take a break from it all sooner or later…

No matter how chaotic and uninterruptible the world around you may seem, with raging deadlines just as far as the Eye of Sauron can see, every now and then it’s crucial to take a moment to shake that old comedy Etch-a-Sketch clear and start a new, wiping away all of the worries about less than funny punch lines from your mind and leaving the distraught of low book sales from the previous quarter far behind you!

Also, sometimes these breaks have been known to involve margaritas and deep tissue massage, but more on that in a minute…

Whether it be a week, a month, or even just an afternoon to sit around and watch Game of Thrones all day and totally not think about writing, sometimes the very best that you can do to kick-start your creative process is surprisingly absolutely nothing at all!  For my own example – while you’re reading this right now, I’m actually out basking in the sun on a relaxing, 7-dayCaribbeancruise with my wife.  We’re having a blast, I’ve already won the limbo contest for the third night in a row, and I totally haven’t blown all of our Christmas money on slot machines down in the ship’s casino, either!

The point is that just like in any other profession, the writer’s brain needs some time off every now and then so that it doesn’t get so overloaded that it either thinks that everything is funny, or conversely, that nothing is funny anymore … both of which are pretty bad assuming that said writer’s target audience isn’t college stoners on a midnight quest for Doritos and/or the clinically depressed.  We all need a little time off every now and then to forget about life, the universe, and everything for a while, to let our minds wander freely without having to think about how to make a joke every time we see a funny name on the wine list (“Toasted Head – seriously?!”) or bear witness to a Homer Simpson-esque figure with seemingly no concerns whatsoever about getting stuck going down the water slide (“Mmmmmm – emergency diet!”).

As those who’ve taken it upon ourselves to entertain the masses with our unique brand of marvelous witticisms, we kind of owe it to ourselves and to our readers to take those well-earned vacations to theme parks and cruise ships and other exotic resort destinations each year, to drink those umbrella-laden tropical drinks and savor every last drop of that everlasting sunshine while we’re away so that when we do reluctantly return to the land of reader trending reports and book retailer return policies, we feel refreshed enough to be able to triumphantly take on our task of writing humorously about the likes of alligators and supermarkets and jolly, old St. Nicholas all over again!

And please note that if upon my return from my own current tropical getaway, you overhear me making mention of “just getting right back on the boat and taking another whirl,” know that my only intention really is to maximize my relaxation so as to be able to write even funnier humor for you.

Every massage, every snorkeling excursion, every trip up to the late night snack bar for just a couple more cookies before heading off to bed – all of these sacrifices I make for you because hey, these jokes about frog brothels and puppy piddle don’t just write themselves…

So many things to do when you move into a new house!  Unpacking all of your worldly belongings until your new home becomes just as cluttered as your last, learning the schedules for the garbage and recycling guys so that you don’t find yourself constantly hauling stuff back and forth from the curb for the third night in a row, building that first name relationship that every man should have with his local pizzeria.  And of course, how could we ever forget … meeting the neighbors?!

Granted, in this day and age apparently it isn’t as easy as just waiting by the door for them to come welcoming you into the neighborhood with a friendly face and a pie that amazingly wasn’t purchased at the grocery store for $5.99 on clearance!  Nowadays all of those other people are just as busy as you are and snagging them for the obligatory 5-minute meet and greet has definitely proven to be a challenge for me recently with my own household relocation.  Much like stalking a heard of wildebeest across the vast Serengeti plains of Africa, I’ve found that for now it’s easier if I just observe my neighbors from afar, with the intent of moving in for a more formal hello at a later date.

Today I’d like to share with you a few of my notes on the neighbors I’ve seen thus far …

The Forgetful, Old Lady with Her Tiny, Tiny Dog
She introduces us to her little dog, Tobey, at least twice a week, and though I’ve told her repeatedly that we ourselves have a loveable puppy, too, something tells me that with her forgetful shrug, she’s lucky to find her way back to her own house when they’ve finished slowly circling the block…

The Guy Who Just States Whatever I’m Doing When I’m Doing It
Sprawled out in his driveway when I see him, always eager to point out the obvious – “Just out walkin’ the dog tonight…” or perhaps “Gettin’ a little exercise tonight, I see…”  I like to think that nothing I could do in passing would phase his quaint, though technically accurate observations:

• “Givin’ your pet rhinoceros a little walk today…”
• “Just out jugglin’ some fire tonight, man – that’s cool…”
• “Gettin’ abducted by aliens – I guess I’ll see you later then, buddy…”

The Guy Who Leaves, Like, a Billion Signs Out For People to Stay Off His Lawn
Whenever I’m out walking my dog, we totally walk on it anyways.

The One Song AC/DC Guy
Maybe he owns a jukebox and is just short on change, or perhaps his straight-laced wife permits him but one rock ‘n roll tune from his younger years each evening – all I know is that one minute those four walls be a rockin’, and the next she’s as quiet as a baby … and that just seems a little bizarre to me!

The Guy Who I Can Only See Half of His Face When He Provides Me with Wisdom From Over the Fence
No, wait – that’s not my neighborhood, but I suppose if I could pick one TV neighbor from my childhood days to live next door to, being able to walk out back every now and then for some words of wisdom from my good, old friend Wilson of Home Improvement fame might help to keep me out of trouble!

Second choice – Cody from Step by Step would be pretty awesome, too, though I think the HOA might frown on his van being permanently parked in my driveway…

The Guy Who Takes All Week to Bring His Empty Garbage Cans Back In
What a jerk!

…unless he’s just been really busy working all sorts of crazy hours, not getting home until after the kids are already in bed, and then his wife wants to pick a fight with him about just wanting to watch The Tonight Show instead of going through a whole dissertation about how his crappy day was just the same as it is every day – then maybe we give him a pass this week…

The People Who Always Have Roughly 18 Billion Cars in Their Driveway
Either they just really, really like entertaining or they’re running a car dealership out of their driveway.

The question is, do I care more about getting invited to their next Friday night party or seeing if they can hook me up with a sweet deal on a late model Chevy Impala???

The People Who Are Perpetually Outside Talking
Maybe the locked themselves out of the house years ago and have just never gotten around to calling a locksmith, or maybe through a tricky real estate loophole they actually only purchased the driveway itself and not the rest of the home!

Either way, would it kill them to pipe the hell down between the hours of midnight and 9am?!?!?!

Will the author one day come to meet these exotic creatures in person, possibly inviting them over for a cup of tea and perhaps an AC/DC medley out of sheer pity???  Stay tuned to National Suburbanite Explorer to find out!

The Fourth of July can be a tough time to be a puppy.

I’m not speaking from my own experience, mind you – I’ve never eaten my dinner out of a bowl on the floor and I almost always go to the bathroom where I’m supposed to these days, but I do live with one of these four-legged folks and simply based on what I’ve been seeing with my own eyes over the last couple of days, I think it’s pretty safe to say that she hasn’t exactly been enjoying her best of days lately…

Maybe it’s because she’s spent approximately 45 seconds a day total not hiding in the back of our closet for the last week, or maybe it’s because whenever she does venture forth from her fortress of solitude in search of sympathy and sunlight, she takes on a shake to her walk that makes it look like she’s been licking the electrical outlets to bide her time in the closet!  And before you go thinking that this makes me sound barbaric and insensitive, let me tell you that I’ve never felt worse for my little puppy – even when she gets the hiccups – than when I watch her dive for cover like a war victim every time a random burst of color goes “Boom!” just outside of these four walls that up until now she’s been able to safely call home!

But what am I supposed to do – just walk around the streets at night and ask our neighbors nicely to refrain from the drunken pyrotechnics that they’ve been looking forward to ever since they spent their paycheck on $90 worth of questionable fireworks from a totally-not-shady-looking-at-all vendor on the side of the road last weekend?!

I wish that there was something that I could do because I can only imagine what fireworks might seem like to a dog … here she sees it as her #1 job to protect the inhabitants of our house from all outside threats, be they mailmen or delivery drivers or even merely those who dare to come within a few feet too many of our house as they walk their own furry, little monsters throughout the neighborhood … and yet the thundering booms as sparks fall from the clouds imply that she’s clearly out of her league to defend against the all out war that’s being waged just outside the front door!

Hell, when she’s locked inside that little crate of hers while we’re away, with barely enough room to curl up into a ball and cower until the bad noises go away, from her level it must sound like the entire house is under attack, and though she may be a tough little puppy versus the stray frogs and lizards that she encounters in the backyard, attempting to face down the fireworks herself would be akin to yours truly standing off against a Sherman tank in his bathrobe…

Like a shut-in waiting for the end of the world, all I can do is stand here on the sidelines and watch as my adorable, little puppy fears the nighttime walks which she once loved, refuses to lift her head for even the most decadent of doggy treats, and pretty much just wants to curl up into a ball and sleep until it’s all over – kinda of like when you have to spend Thanksgiving with your relatives, except that at least then you’ve usually got red wine and pumpkin pie to look forward to as Uncle Eddie breaks into his third story about that bitchin’ Mustang he drove his senior year of high school.  I do love me some fireworks, yes siree, but at this point if I have to start walking around the neighborhood with polaroids of the saddest, most frightened little puppy on god’s green earth to shove in the faces of each and every one of my redneck neighbors who still insists on celebrating their independence days after the fact, then as a proud dog owner who just wants his puppy to get back to stealing his slippers and peeing on the carpet like she’s supposed to, maybe that’s what I’m going to have to do!

Seriously – the 4th of July was TWO DAYS AGO!!!  Buy yourself a calendar, and maybe a frisbee or a croquet set or something and find a different way to enjoy the rest of your summer…

I’ve never really been known as a particularly tidy individual.

No doubt my parents can attest to the well known fact that a misplaced Lego is just about the worst thing that the bottom of one’s foot can discover in the middle of the night, and also that it’s a real pain in the butt to get Play Doh out of your brand new carpet.  The problem only worsened as I grew older and moved into my own apartment, which I was virtually free to clutter to my heart’s content, with only the scolding of the occasional girlfriend or out of town guest to guilt me into picking up my toys … and now that I’ve got an entire house of my very own to spread my general lack of cleanliness around?!

Forget about it – Mr. Clean ain’t never seen a single solitary moment of this guy’s precious time!

The thing is, it’s not that I necessarily enjoy living in a state of constant disarray like some adult-sized Oscar the Grouch in his house-sized trashcan, it’s just that at the end of the day when all is said and done, I’m inherently an extraordinarily lazy person and … well, I guess that’s pretty much about it!  I live my life by the mantra of, “Meh, I’ll do it later…” with later ranging anywhere from when pigs fly to when hell freezes over to even my very own personal favorite – when parachute pants finally make their long-deserved comeback and I can crack open that mystery box from the back of my closet without fear of retribution via mockery from my very closest of friends and family…

Now that would be rad!

Maybe if there just weren’t so many other things that I’d rather be doing than cleaning at any given moment – pretty much anything, really!!! 

Sure, I could take an hour and dust around the living room, but what about all of those episodes of Hardcore Pawn that are taking up valuable recording space on our DVR?

True, the bathroom counter really could use a good wipe down – no argument there, but is it worth the cost of not reorganizing my Lego Minifigures before the new series comes out next week??

And yes, the floors around here have literally never been vacuumed since we moved into this house more than a year ago, but let’s be honest – level 49 of Angry Birds certainly isn’t going to beat itself and at this rate if I don’t really hunker down and put in the extra effort, neither will I!!!

Besides, even if I do reprioritize these vitally important tasks in my daily routine so that I’ve got some time to scrub away in the bathroom or dust til I drop pretty much everyplace else … in just a few short weeks, what am I gonna have to show for it?!  Nothing!  No matter how much elbow grease and sunshine I put into cleaning, it’s only a matter of time before it all comes back with an unholy vengeance and if there’s one thing I hate more than cleaning, it’s cleaning the same thing more than once!

It’s not right, and I refuse to participate in a system that has me perpetually mopping the same floor over and over again just because time is a jerk when it comes to the removal of dirt and grime.  In fact, I want to implore all of you to throw your arms up in disgust at these archaic chores we call cleaning, for we’ve all got better stuff to do, or at the very least we’ve got other stuff to do, and we can’t be mucking about, dusting the same antique, hardwood credenzas every couple of weeks when there’s reality TV and general miscellaneous ridiculousness out there on the Internet just waiting for our clicks…

Just something to think about, folks … or I suppose you could always just keep on scrubbing and dusting and mopping and putting things away week after tedious week like a mindless zombie who’s not nearly lazy enough for his own good!  It’s up to you, really, but I, for one, would much rather spend my time doing just about anything that doesn’t involve rags and cleaning supplies and excessive amounts of elbow grease on my behalf.

Have fun with that mop if you must, but remember, I’ll be right over here playing Angry Birds when the fumes wear off and you finally come to your senses…

Sometimes you have to know what’s not funny before you’re ever able to sit down and actually write about the things that are…

That’s my theory, anyways, because let me tell you what a dead end, frustrating as you try to figure out where in the hell you can do a u-turn kind-of road that can be when you finally realize you’ve spent the last hour and a half stringing together a series of random ideas that truth be told just aren’t nearly as funny as you had originally thought!  Or maybe they’re funny all by themselves, but more in the vein of “I could post an amusing 140-character tweet about that!” instead of the “I could ramble on for 650 words…”-vibe that I’m actually shooting for with these weekly episodic anecdotes of mine!

And so because few things suck worse than discovering that now I get to completely redo one of the most mind-numbingly arduous parts of my creative process all over again, I guess you could say that over the years I’ve sort of worked out the following little “system” that I walkthrough in an attempt to avoid falling face first down such tumultuous rabbit holes on any given week:

1. Make a list with as many ideas as possible.
2. Cross out all the ones that aren’t actually funny.
3. Pie.
4. Write a hilarious humor column based on one of the ideas left remaining after step #2.

Believe it or not, that second one can often times be the hardest … although #3 ain’t exactly no picnic, either – do you have any idea how many different kinds of pie there are?!  And just like all of the countless varieties of delicious pie that a connoisseur like myself has to choose from on any given day, far too often it seems like those topics of potential funniness just seem to cascade themselves up and down both sides of the menu, each with their own alluring toppings and flavors, and sometimes it almost breaks my heart to have to scratch ones like The Serious Problem That Is … Bread Butts or A Column Regarding Nostril Maintenance off the list…

But a good writer has to know when to walk away from a good joke for the chance at finding an even better one.

You see, as a creator it’s easy to sink into the feeling that each and every idea is sacred, like a crisp apple pie just waiting to win a blue ribbon at the county fair … but the fact of the matter is, sometimes we accidentally buy apples that are too tart or sometimes we forget that baking soda and baking powder aren’t the same thing, and the sooner you get that through your thick, baker/writer skull, the easier this job of making delicious pies that everyone’s going to laugh their heads off about will be!  It’s ok to admit that a story just doesn’t have as much substance as you had originally thought, so instead of driving yourself batty trying to add even more ingredients to your pie in an attempt to salvage a little humor out of it, sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is just pitch that half-baked pie right out the window and start to work on a brand new pie that you can make even better than the last!

I hear that pumpkin pie can make for a surprising treat this time of year… *wink wink*

For every hilarious topic on your list, there are always another 10 that just aren’t quite there yet, and whether you choose to cast them off like a pair of old socks that’s devolved into something more holey than socky or simply set them off to the side to revisit again another day when you’ve got some excess creativity to kill and you’re not staring down the barrel of tomorrow’s deadline – that I’ll leave up to you.  Sometimes you can tune a fish but you can’t tune a bad joke, and sometimes you just want to finish this stupid column so that you can go have another piece of pie…

Hope this helps!

I need help.

And not the kind of help delivered to me twice weekly by a way-too-eager guy in way-too-tight spandex while we jiggle to music that hasn’t seen a radio dial since the days of the Carter administration, either…

Specifically, I need the kind of help that only my good friend technology can provide!

If you know much about me, you’ve probably come to deduce that I’ve always been sort of a technology geek in a big, bad way.  I’ve been playing around with computers since I was old enough to be intimidated by girls, I first set foot on the Internet back when there was hardly any porn on the thing at all, and nowadays you’ve probably got a better chance of sending me a message on my iPhone than by just walking up and asking me a question in person!  Technology and I have become very close friends over the years and it’s been able to help me through so many challenges thus far in my life, so it seems only fitting that I give the old chap a chance to take a swing at one particular problem that has been plaguing me ever since my metabolism left me for a younger guy at the senior prom…

I need to lose some weight, and after hard work and determination have gotten me minimal returns at best, I’m now turning to Mama Technology to help trim off some of these unwanted rolls in time for bikini season right around the corner, and it all starts with a couple of brilliant, game-changing inventions just. like. these…

The Time-Lock Fridge
Talk about a Smart Fridge, but instead of this ice box simply cataloging its own contents, monitoring temperatures, and phoning in an order to the grocery store when we’re running low on milk, its most important feature shall in fact be what I like to refer to as Anti-Snacking Mode – a configurable, password-protected setting that prevents the door from being opened altogether between the hours of midnight and 6:00am, which studies have shown to be the prime Window for Unnecessary Snackitude … at least in my case, anyways…

Auto-Go Running Shoes
No more, “I don’t feel like exercising today!” or “It looks like it might rain!” … if you’re wearing these shoes, you’re going out for that evening jog whether you like it or not!  Even the most ornery exercisers like myself will have no choice but to go with the flow as these fully automated tennis shoes take to the streets on a predefined schedule whether you’re actually feeling up to five miles tonight or not!

Personal Fat Transporter (PFT)
“Beam me thin, Scotty!”  Now I was never really much into Star Trek myself, but even I have to admit that the teleporter is a far cooler way of travel than actually getting in a much smaller spaceship and flying down to the surface yourself.  So we’re not quite there yet here in 2012, but let’s start small … maybe just beam a few pounds of fat from one place to another just a short distance away…

….like from inside my body to this conveniently placed garbage can sitting right next to me…

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the PFT could be the greatest invention the middle school science fair has ever seen!

Of course, there are a million other ways that science and technology could further improve man’s attempt to shed unwanted weight – Fat-Powered Nanobots, Zero-Calorie Pizza, a little something that I like to call The Jiggle-Master 5000 … really, should we expect anything less from the people who’ve already brought us Angry Birds and Angry Birds IN SPACE?!?!?!

That reminds me – better add Giant Fat Slingshot to the list, too … at least they’ve basically already got all of the work done on that one!

I really hope this guy turns out to be as good as they say he is…

I mean, who am I to second-guess someone with a PhD in carpet cleaning, but frankly I just hope that the poor guy knows what he’s getting himself into because for the love of all things freshly Febreezed are the floors around this house absolutely and unequivocally beyond disgusting!

Correction – if you happen to be my landlord and are reading this, the carpets are in fact in a perfectly reasonable condition with the normal wear and tear that one might expect to find just before refunding in full a tenant’s security deposit upon the end of their wholly fulfilled rental agreement…

But just to be clear to everyone else – it’s getting pretty bad around here, folks!  I mean, I suppose that’s to be expected when you’ve got a member of the family who’s still occasionally a bit confused as to where she’s allowed to go to the bathroom … our puppy, that is!  I thought we had gotten pretty skilled with the spray bottle of Wee-Wee-Be-Gone since inviting that fur-covered, little urine factory into our home a little less than a year ago, but these here carpets tell a much different tale … one of late night relief long after the missus and I had retired for the evening, and also admittedly just some regular, old half-assed attempts at cleaning up the ones that we did happen to be present for – no doubt right in the middle of when something important like The Simpsons was on TV, mind you!

I’m not here to point blame, though … there’s really not much use in that unless said puppy shows any inclination to push the steam-cleaner around by herself in the near future … but taking into consideration her somewhat skiddish-at-best behavior when she’s around our plain old, ordinary non-magically stain lifting vacuum???  Chances are she’s not going to want to be anywhere within a 10-mile radius when that thing starts going to town on her life’s work like a considerable security deposit depends on it!

Then again, I suppose if I had it my way, I’d rather be down at the local watering hole than dragging that thing back and forth until my feet are as pruned as that time I fell asleep in the bathtub for three and a half hours, too!

And what’s up with that, anyways?!  The only doctor who can offer his professional services and then once he gets here, expect me to do all of the heavy lifting while he just sort of sits around and hums a convincing melody!  If I showed up at the doctor’s office and he told me, “Alright, Mr. Sevener – now here are all of the tools that will be needed to take out your appendix … if you need me for anything, I’ll just be reading my book over here in the corner…” - that probably wouldn’t go over too well, and not only on account of my appendix no doubt rupturing in an explosion of whatever gross stuff builds up to lead a guy to have his appendix taken out in the first place anyways, either!

Nonetheless, I have faith that at the end of the day after the good doctor and I have toiled over carpets large and small together that our efforts will ultimately be triumphant because, well, I’ve just gotta believe because we really don’t have many other options!  It would cost far too much to AstroTurf our living room and my wife thinks that it might end up sending the wrong message to our perky, little puppy anyways.  Walking around on stilts to avoid the perpetual puddles of piddle is just unreasonable on account of yours truly having the balance skills of a rhinoceros on a surfboard at high tide.

Also, I really don’t want to just pay to have the carpets replaced because really, who even does that for places that they’re just renting, anyways?!

We’ve tried the rest, and so now I’m calling in the best.  I’ll see you bright and early in the morning, Rug Doctor!  I strongly recommend that you wear old shoes…

Ever notice how all of the best holidays also seem to have the best candy?

I’m not complaining about this, mind you.  As far as I’m concerned, a Valentine’s Day without chocolate peanut butter hearts and milk chocolate M&Ms in the coordinated reds and whites and pinks really isn’t any kind of celebration of love that I want to be a part of!  True love means occasionally catering to your partner’s greatest weaknesses by presenting them with a life-size chocolate replica of your first date together, or at the very least a nice, heart-shaped box delivered to them personally at work by a singing gorilla in a pink tutu…

But for me, candy and sweets have become such a holiday highlight that I’m to the point where I won’t even celebrate a holiday if chocolate isn’t somehow involved.  St. Patrick’s Day?  Nope.  Flag Day?  Boring.  Presidents Day?  Call me when Reese’s has a peanut butter cup shaped like Abe Lincoln’s head and then we’ll talk!

If they were smart, the people behind all of these annual celebrations that will hereafter be referred to as “the boring holidays” would take a clue from Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin for having the brilliant revelation that chocolate and candy and sugar-induced sweets could only help to make their festivities even more awesome than they already were on their own.  These revolutionaries were smart enough to realize that as much as people love presents and hide and seek and running around the neighborhood dressed up as pirates and dinosaurs in the middle of the night, there was still something even more that could be done to really push their respective days over the top…

Frankly, if you ask me, I think that teaming up with chocolate was probably the single best thing that the awesome holidays ever did for themselves because no matter if you accidentally get somebody the wrong Christmas gift or spell their name wrong on their valentine, at the end of the day chocolate is still the great equalizer because everyone loves chocolate and anyone who tells you otherwise is a delirious crazy person who clearly just needs more chocolate in their diet, possibly force fed to them if they insist on continuing with any such nonsense otherwise!

There’s a reason why this stuff is the go-to mediator for all of life’s little oops’ – chocolate contains a very special ingredient called deliciousness which chemically infuses with the brain to give its bearer what the scientific community refers to as “a pass” for whatever stupid grievances may have gotten the family SUV stuck in the decorative fountain at the mall in the first place.  Just offer up a pound of Godiva’s finest, wait 30 minutes for maximum indulgence, and then quietly look up the name for the local towing company while the wife is preoccupied none-the-wiser with chocolate’s divine decadence.  Just like magic, only you don’t have to wear a funny hat to use it … not if you don’t want to, anyways…

But back to the holidays, mind you!  As we wrap up this randomly necessary tribute to pretty much the greatest gift ever to find itself crammed inside a heart-shaped metallic box, let us be clear about one thing – it’s not too late for any of those “boring holidays” that want to redeem themselves and bring honor, and valor, but mostly just chocolate back into their celebratory festivities.  For chocolate is by no means a zero-sum game – in fact, chocolate only grows even more awesome with every elf, bunny, and lucky leprechaun that sign on for its mission, and there’s always room for one more mint, cherry, or peanut butter-stuffed tribute when chocolate comes to town!

So many holidays, so many possibilities … honestly, Mr.Lincoln – I dare say that a little milk chocolate might suit you just fine…

Holidays can be kind of a funny situation for us writers.

On one hand, they probably seems almost like a vacation of sorts because it’s not exactly uncommon for people like me to just kind of sit back, put our feet up, and let the ideas come to us in whatever order the calendar dictates when these days make their appearances on the horizon! You know as well as I do that with Valentine’s Day coming up in less than two weeks, it won’t be long before all of those puff pieces about diamonds and chocolate and stuffed teddy bears depicting even your partner’s most mundane of interests will be popping up on every news program, paper, magazine, website, or neural implant that you use to consume your media content these days.

Heck, this column right here was almost going to be about Valentine’s Day, except that it still seemed a little early and I honestly just couldn’t come up with anything original to write about anyways…

Because that’s the thing – although the theme may be safely in the proverbial bag as we approach those predetermined days on the calendar, there’s still that pesky, little matter of actually having something new to say that you haven’t already said in a multitude of different ways over the last three consecutive years.  That’s sort of the writer’s conundrum that comes along with holidays – they never really change, and so after a while you start to realize that you can only remind guys so many ways why forgetting the biggest, most romantic day of the whole year might be somewhat critical to the overall longevity of any relationships they’re enjoying currently or even would like to see themselves enjoying in the future!

After a while if you’re not careful, you usually just end up repeating yourself, which most writers tend to want to avoid … if they have any self-respect, anyways.  I myself still have a little left – I keep it in a tiny bottle on my dresser and try to only use it sparingly, but I think there’s still a few drops left in there that I’m saving for a particularly righteous day…

Of course, some are better than others – Valentine’s Day, Labor Day, Flag Day are all kind of one-trick holidays, frankly, but we still have a few good ones to lean on throughout the year like Halloween and Christmas.  As long as women keep dressing like hookers and candy keeps being delicious, All Hallows’ Eve will always be a ripe source of material for me, and as for Christmas … why, I could probably write an entire book about nothing but hands down the awesomest time of the year, and in fact I most likely will do exactly that before too long here!

That last one might be a spoiler – do me a favor and just try to act surprised when you finally see the announcement, will ya?

That said, it may not happen often, but if the writer is so lucky and brilliant enough to find himself writing about writing about the holidays, in that case all bets are off and really, then just about everybody wins!  The reader gets to enjoy something a little different that still brushes on the holiday at hand without having to drudge through the same old, same old yet again, the writer gets to maintain the dwindling shards of his own dignity just a wee bit longer by not repeating his same, sad old jokes about Cupid and Singing Gorilla-Grams once more, and hey, that one guy who really was about to take his life into his own hands by forgetting a Valentine’s Day gift for his leading lady still gets a friendly nudge to keep him from having to learn how to go grocery shopping and pick out linens for himself all over again!

Seriously, dude – you’ve been dating for how many years now? She will kill you and the judge will consider it “an accident” if you don’t at least bring the woman home a box of wine and some flowers and maybe one of those singing fish that you mount to the wall or something.  Nothing gets the ladies in the mood quite like Big Mouth Billy Bass and his lesser-known Rivers of Romance 3-disc expansion pack!

You know what – maybe I do still have a little Valentine’s Day wisdom left in me to impart after all…