*bleep*

*blorp*

Oh, hey!  I’ll be with you in just a…

*zap*

Damn it!  Level 5 is just too freaking fast – who could possibly play that?!

Sorry about that, and my sincere apologies if I seem a little, well, distracted, but I’ve just been really into this game lately.  And no, it’s not the latest Mario game to come out for the Wii or some never-ending role-playing game that will have me earning experience points for three months before I even come close to facing up against the Dragon Master King!  I almost feel a little bit silly even bringing it up, but nonetheless, as of late instead of any of those perfectly normal video game-related addictions, these days I’ve found myself getting sucked into something on a much smaller scale, but don’t let that 3.5-inch screen fool you – in a matter of only a couple of days, I think I’ve lost more sleep playing these stupid, little iPod games than the entire first month that we owned our Wii!

…and not for nothing, but I got damn good at bowling during that month…

Regardless, those endless nights spent bowling and golfing and admittedly awkwardly playing tennis into the wee hours of the morning have been a thing of the past ever since this new-fangled time-waster from Apple found its way into our home.  I suppose from a purely technical standpoint, the thing actually belongs to my wife, but you know what they say – while the cat’s away, the mouse will stay up far later than it actually should playing stupid games on the cat’s new iPod when realistically it should be in bed so that it can get up at a reasonable time and try to be productive the next day…

Anyways, it all started one particularly quiet night when I found myself with a suspicious amount of idle time on my hands.  You know the scene – the house was in tip-top shape with dishes washed, clothes laundered, and the floors all shining with a fresh coat of wax, all of my writing was completely caught up weeks before any upcoming deadlines, and I had just finished my daily exercise routine of 45 push-ups, 110 sit-ups, and a refreshing 95 minutes on the treadmill!  There was nothing left to do that night but sit and silently reflect about life, the universe, and everything … that is, until I saw it laying there on the table, with its alluringly shiny touch screen and seemingly endless supply of 99-cent time-wasters just waiting to entertain me with one clever strategy game at a time.

They started innocently enough – just tap the blocks whenever you have at least three in a row … simple enough, right?  Well, two and a half hours later and a high score of nearly 2,000 points to show for it, I know that I for one couldn’t have been more proud … but all in the same, there were still plenty of other tiny icons left in the menu to remind me that I still had a long way to go … and thus go I certainly did – card games, pinball games, games with ridiculously small tiles that I don’t see how anyone without a freaking magnifying glass would ever be able to read!  I played each and every one of them with squinted eyes and not the foggiest idea of how late it was getting, and it wasn’t until nearly an hour had been spent in the dead of night desperately trying to find subtle differences between a pair of photos and not winning a single game that I was finally able to tear myself away from its obsessive grasp long enough to convince myself that at my age, 5:45am really is a time for sleeping, not gaming…

Of course, as you may have guessed, while I’ve since then miraculously managed to keep subsequent late night iPod benders to a minimum, that’s certainly not to say that time hasn’t been spent in increments of hours toiling away where blocks and lines are concerned.  And sure, I do have a new personal best of 4,517 points in Line Up Pro that’s really going to add that missing bit of flair to my resume, but nonetheless the sane part of me does find itself rethinking this whole iPhone obsession thing … as if cell phones and texting aren’t distracting enough behind the wheel!

Oh, who am I kidding?!  I’ll only play when I’m stuck at red lines … just for a minute or two at a time … I can always put it down any time I want, right???

Please Note: Despite said hilarious undertones, Comedic-Genius Media does not condone playing Line Up Pro or any other entertainment applications for the iPhone while driving – that’d just be crazy! At least have a passenger take the wheel during the really fast parts so you can just juggle between the pedals and focusing on your game.  Play safe, folks…

I knew I forgot to do something over the last 6 – 8 weeks…

But here we are now, right on the heels of summer, and with June literally right around the corner at this point, I guess all I can say is really … what’s the point?! I mean, if it was still March and the idea of cleaning up the house in preparation for a long and eventful year was something more than merely a pipedream amongst the perpetually lazy, then one might still be able to rustle up enough effort to warrant putting down the remote and digging out the ‘ole feather duster for a weekend or two. It would almost seem sacrilegious to try and make up for all of that lost cleaning power now, here on the cusp of summer when scrubbing and sanitizing should be the last thing on a person’s mind.

Besides, if you ask me, and I’ll presume that you did on account of your eagerness to sit and read this instead of actually doing something productive with your day, I say that the act of mass cleaning once a year is overrated anyways. Sure, when you’re as lazy as I am the other three seasons out of the year, the prospect of redeeming oneself by saturating the house from top to bottom in Comet and Formula 409 may seem worthwhile, and who knows, you might even be able to have houseguests over without having to listen to “Ewww, gross!” and “How long has that been back there?!” But all in the same, I’ve always been a firm believer in the concept of “No pain, no pain…” and when it comes to spending an entire afternoon dusting … well, let’s just say that I can think of just about anything that would be a more enjoyable use of my time than feigning off the killer dust bunnies that reside behind our living room sofa.

Whatever you do, do not keep your feet on the floor while watching movies at our house into the wee hours of the evening…

Of course, despite my bitter hatred for all things cleaning-related, one other thing that I’ve picked up on over the years is that what goes around, comes around, and I know as I type this already that my lack of said dusting and disinfecting desires are more likely than not going to come back to bite me soon within the next couple of months … no doubt in the most literal sense imaginable! The way I see it, the consequences for my inaction are dismal at best:

• Didn’t spray around the house’s perimeter for bugs.
  The invasion is swift and well-executed, as everything from lovebugs and spiders to fire ants and even the common cricket team up to storm Casa de Sevener, crawling over anything in their paths and generally giving my wife and I the heebie-jeebies whenever we try to sleep at night.

• Didn’t go through all of our old junk to discard what we don’t really need.
  One day I open the front door to find that I’ve won The Materialistic Man’s Sweepstakes, which entitles me to one of anything I’ve ever wanted in the whole universe, but only if I have room in the house for it. After a quick tour of the house to check the closets and spare bedroom, I begin to weep as the Prize Patrol shows themselves to the door, leaving without ever even having to open their truck.

• Didn’t scrub the corners out in the shower.
  Eventually the mold growing in the cracks and crevices spreads onto the floor and makes it really slippery, from which I slip and fall. It ends up hurting pretty bad.

• Didn’t toss out the “questionable” foodstuffs from the refrigerator.
  Again, the invasion happens when I least expect it, however this time it’s in the form of that creepy ooze that came out of the bathtub in Ghostbusters 2. An evil conglomerate of bacterial hate from beyond the crisper, this deadly blend of yogurt, long-forgotten fruit and vegetables, and something that we’re pretty sure at one time was leftover taco meat flows with the slow precision of the most putrid slug on the planet. If we had any pets, chances are we wouldn’t after this beast makes its rounds.

• Didn’t dust whatever it is that you’re supposed to dust when it gets dusty.
  Thanks to a lack of supervision by yours truly, the dust bunnies begin to multiply at a freakishly impressive rate, much like regular bunnies tend to do, except that these ones are made of dust and really know how to agitate a guy’s allergies. Of course, they’re also curiously hungry for blood, so now there’s worry of both sneezing uncontrollably and getting eaten when coming over to our house for dinner, both of which makes our friends and family a little uneasy.

I’ll think you’ll agree that it looks like I’ve got quite the dangerous summer ahead of me, but then again, that’s the price one pays for the luxury of not picking up a feather duster all spring. Will it be a worthwhile slacking in the end, or will you read the in headlines mid-July about the brilliant humor columnist whose life was tragically ended by a deadly run-in with a gang of rogue dust bunnies and their newly-formed rancid refrigerator blob alliance? Only time will tell, but for now…

…wait – did you hear that gurgling sound coming from the kitchen?

A buzzing sound from the air conditioning vents?!

They’re early.

It’s getting a little crazy around here!

I mean, I know this time of year is a pretty big deal for the manliest of the men…and women…who’ve been anxiously awaiting this weekend for the past four months one Sunday afternoon at a time, but right now you can’t even walk into a grocery store without getting assaulted by ten foot tall stacks of beer cases shaped like the Lombardi trophy, surrounded at its base by enough Limited Edition Super Bowl-Sanctioned Dipping Chips to feed a small army. And that’s just in Anytown, USA – here in Tampa as the hosts of Super Bowl XXIXXIYVVI, people don’t just have Super Bowl Fever – they’ve got the full-blown Football Pneumonia with a side order of Obsession! This morning I accidentally made a right turn onto Touchdown Boulevard and was stuck in traffic for, like, a year and a half…

Of course, I know that this game is a big deal for some people, like the fans, the players, and the guys who own the strip clubs within a stone’s throw of the stadium, but just between you and me, it’s a zany good time that I, for one, have kind of a tough time embracing because frankly, I just don’t really care for football all that much.

I know – big surprise from the guy who’d rather reformat hard drives or catch-up on Battlestar Galactica forums into the wee hours of the afternoon than actually go outside and do pretty much anything with a ball!

Now I probably shouldn’t say that too loud around here – I’d probably get extradited or punted or something – but the truth is that even growing up as a young lad back in the day, I really didn’t care much for football then, either, unless I was playing Tecmo Bowl on my Nintendo, and if my memory serves I really wasn’t even all that great at that, either! Sports in general were a thing that required…hmmm, how do I put it…physical ability, which being the kid who could save the princess on Super Mario Brothers in less than 27 minutes, I’m sure it’s not that much of a shock that I didn’t have more experience tossing the old pig skin around out in the backyard. Hey, somebody had to protect the fair citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom and those “guards” the princess had sure weren’t stepping up to the task…

So mind you, I suppose that certainly tends to beg the age-old question – what exactly is a totally-and-entirely-disinterested-in-football-kinda guy like me to do when he finds himself completely and utterly Gatorade-drenched in football fanatica here in the heart of it all only days before the big game? Do I hide in the house, close the curtains, and dig out my old copy of Tecmo Bowl in a vain attempt to feel at least somewhat sporty over the next three days? Maybe just tune in during halftime to watch good, old Bruce rock out American style, then catch the best of the commercials on YouTube Monday morning? I guess as a last ditch attempt, I could always just sit back, put on an old DVD or find some non-football-related reruns on TV, and quietly wait as this, too, shall eventually pass. Besides, before we know it, the celebrities and wanna-be celebrities and even the wanna-be wanna-be celebrities will have all retreated back to Hollywood, New York, and suburban Rhode Island, the massive game day potato chip displays in all of the grocery stores will be replaced with St. Patrick’s Day novelties (or Halloween candy, in Wal-Mart’s case), and finally, after what already seems like far too long, I’ll thankfully be able to walk down the cookie aisles of said grocery stores and be able to purchase Oreos that aren’t in the shape of little footballs.

Don’t let the steroids fool you this Sunday – sometimes it really is the little things that count!

Does it make me a bad person to wish that an alligator would mysteriously eat my neighbor’s cat in the middle of the night?

If it helps, there’s a possibility that it might not even actually be my neighbor’s cat, but simply a stray that no longer has a home and hence, no longer has feelings. You know, kind of like the homeless people that you pass every day driving home from work but never toss your spare change because you know that they’ll only spend it on drugs and booze anyways…

I think it pretty much goes without saying these days that I don’t really care for cats, although I’m going to keep bringing it up anyways for emphasis. As far as I’m concerned, cats are pretensious, self-centered, and despite the family dog, who proudly bears the title of man’s best friend and would gladly endure a terrible foot odor just to bring his owner his stinky slippers each morning, your cat really doesn’t give two shakes of the dog’s tail about you. Look at your dog from across the room and chances are his thoughts are something like, “Hey buddy, can’t wait to go down to the fishing hole with ya tomorrow!” whereas catch a glance from a cat across the room and it’s more along the lines of, “I’m better than you, and when you go to sleep I’m going to poop in your sock drawer…”

And just to clarify, though, for me it’s not even an issue with all cars – when I see a lion or tiger in the zoo, those are pretty cool because while yes, they do still give off that same I’m better than you vibe that your average housecat exudes, for all tends and purposes those larger cats actually are better than me! The average Bengal Tiger weighs two or three times my weight, is likely a whole lot more lean than myself because I’ve yet to see a tiger lounging around munching on doritos into the wee hours of the night, and it could likely shred me to pieces in a matter of minutes … I have no problem admitting a creature like that to being better than me. But a scrawny, little thing that just lays around the house all day, leaving behind a mess of hair and crap for me to clean up … not so much…

Hence the reason why when I started noticing a strange, black cat poking around our patio in the evening hours, my first instinct as a supporter of the Everglades was to put those mighty lizards to work reducing the annoying cat population. And just think, with each feline, errr, donated, that’s one less alligator in Florida going to bed hungry tonight … and really, in the end isn’t that what it’s all about?

I’m sorry if this brilliant, seemingly foolproof plan upsets the two or three fans of these snobbish felines out there, but we really don’t have any other choice. I’ve tried dealing with them in other “more civilized” ways – sending them up in a balloon or way out west, for example, but the darned things just keep coming back! One time I even devised a particularly clever idea to send one to the man in the moon – I really thought that one was a goner, but well, you know the song…

So ultimately I suppose I’m always open to your suggestions, but in the meantime if you happen to see any gators just waddling across the golf course near our home, let ‘em play through, will ya? They’re working for me now…

No cats were harmed during the making of this humor column, but tomorrow is another day.

I’ve been having some weird dreams lately.

And no, not the kind that make your significant other go “Ewww – you pig!” before committing you to a week of sleepless nights out on the couch … although those are certainly fun, too! No, instead we’re talking more along the lines of those dreams that you try to repeat in your head over and over again as soon as you wake up because really, even in your dreams, just how many chances do you get to chase that ex-girlfriend who ripped your heart out back in ’97 through Times Square while riding on a purple dragon whose voice sounds surprisingly like Samuel L. Jackson’s, emphatic vulgarities and all?! So far I’ve gotten three of those awesomely bitter flights … well, technically four, but during one she managed to lose us by taking cover amidst the middle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade so that one sort of ended on a sour note. It was particularly sad to see Snoopy get caught in the crossfire that night, but we all know that some breakups can be ugly…

Of course, it’s not always flying dragons and flaming insurance mascots that float through this warped mind in the wee hours of the night. Sometimes I find myself swimming with orcas in the Sea of Gibraltar or bungee-jumping off the Eiffel Tower during the largest fireworks display that the City of Paris has ever seen … boy, was that one to wake a guy up in a cold sweat! But as life-threatening as so many of my nighttime stories seem to be, I guess I should be fortunate that dreams tend to deviate as far from normal, everyday life as they do. As much as I could do without waking up every twenty minutes because I’m being chased through the mall by velociraptors on what began as a mild-mannered trip to buy some hazelnut-scented candles for Mother’s Day, it sure beats eight to ten hours of aimlessly wandering the aisles of my local Wal-Mart Stupid Center because they keep changing the shelf-placement of the canned beets on me! Now that’s what I call a real nightmare!

You’ve gotta admit, though, as much fun as it can be to see what sort of bizarre, candy-coated dream world your mind will send you plummeting through each night after you’ve gone through a carton and a half of Ben and Jerry’s and finally concluded that there’s absolutely nothing worth watching on TV after The Late Late, Even Almost Early Show, it would be pretty sweet to get to pick our own adventures … even just every once in a while. And not simply for those adult encounters – you know, with tax forms and liability insurance and other things that grown-ups like to do – but what if, for example, I got to pick which kind of dragon I would be chasing poor Stacey* on through the streets of Lower Manhattan (* heart-breaking ex-girlfriend’s name has been changed to leave all of my ex-girlfriends guessing … right, as if they’d start reading my columns after we broke up!). I could fly on the shoulders of Xavier, the gold dragon, whose metallic armor blinds our enemies (well, mostly traffic copters in this particular scenario) as we soar through the streets in pursuit of justice and my I Love the ‘80s CD collection that “Stacey” conveniently “forgot” to give back. Or perhaps I would choose to mount Harvey, the aggressive blue dragon who leaves a trail of death and destruction nearly as shocking as the slew of frat-bound losers that Stacey went through after tossing this Dungeons & Dragons-loving dork to the curb when she found out that we both had very different ideas of what role playing really entailed…

So maybe my dreams are simply a front to seek a fiery revenge on those members of the opposite sex who have betrayed my honor and trust in the past, but ultimately I think that’s ok because if you were to consult any of them on their own favorite dreams along those same lines, while they might involve chasing me around on unicorns with big, sharp horns on their heads (the unicorns, not the ex-girlfriends, mind you … although…), I can assure you that in none of those scenarios would it be very likely that we’re just playing tag, if you know what I mean!

Still, as far as I’m concerned, the deadliest game of tag is still considerably more inviting than that Wal-Mart dream where the only thing falling faster than the prices are the sanity levels of the happy Wal-Mart zombies. Maybe if the big blue started selling dragon food, you might be able to peak my interest for a couple of winks, but what are the chances of anyone willingly eating food that came out of a Wal-Mart Sewer Center?!

Something tells me that I’ve got to stop watching fantasy movies this close to my bedtime…

We’ve been over this once before…

…and yet apparently my pleas have fallen upon deaf ears, possibly because those listening also happen to live next door to me and thus also find themselves plagued night after sleepless night by these insidious creatures who strive to drive us all insane with their incessant croaking and chirping into the wee hours of the night. Sadly, it seems that things have unbelievably gotten worse since we last visited this topic roughly a year ago, leading me to wonder if the frogs in question actually read the column that I wrote about them last year or even more curiously, how does a frog go about getting Internet access, anyways? I’ve had a hard enough time getting my own Internet access upgraded, and I’m a people, but I think we’re getting off track here … which is exactly what they would want us to do!

Allow me to backtrack just a tad for those joining us fresh off the street who might be too lazy to go back and read last year’s column on their own free will … slackers. Right around this time a year ago, I had a bit of a run-in with a rather large and rather boisterous amphibian that just so happened to have taken a fondness for a patch of grass just outside my bedroom window. As it turns out, this time of year also happens to be when animals of the frog variety put to use months of practicing Barry White impressions and stocking up on those fancy, red wines that their female counterparts love so much, for it is officially mating season for the frogs and if you thought it was unbearable having the moves put on you by random drunkards at the local drink hole, then you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve been serenaded by a few dozen of the horniest frogs this side of the swamp…

My problem, however, has apparently grown exponentially since last year, as while then I only found myself faced with one particularly giant and obnoxious, horny frog, clearly the word has spread because the wilderness surrounding my humble abode has been overrun with, at my best guess, no less than 10,000,000 frogs – all very horny – and all without any equivocations about announcing their frog lust for all of the world to hear … with their primary target simply being anyone in my general vicinity who ever wants to sleep again! I don’t know how they did it, whether they have an Internet mailing list that they all watch to keep up on the latest horny frog news or perhaps they carry cell phones – lord knows there can’t be any humans left on the planet for companies to market them to – but seriously, it’s like the Million Frog March outside my home once sundown hits and at this point I’m well beyond having any plausible idea of what to do … that is, besides just up and moving, although with my luck at this point I wouldn’t put it past them to follow us to our new, frog-free sanctuary, too. I’ve even considered joining up with the witness relocation program, but the lady hung up on me when I calmly explained that I was just trying to escape from 10,000,000 horny frogs so I can sleep in peace.

I think, if anything, the moral that you can hopefully take from my ear-ringing plight is this – don’t mess with a horny frog – because if you do, that horny rage is just going to get thrown back at you 10,000,000-fold and then, really, what do you do?! I’ve asked around, but nobody seems to know how to handle 10,000,000 horny frogs – the animal control people won’t touch the issue, and more and more I’m starting to understand how God came to choose frogs as one of his plagues on Egypt … horny frogs are simply not a force to be reckoned with. Mark these words – Scott 6:01:2007.

But what am I going to do, you ask because you’re all genuinely concerned about the well-being of your favorite humor columnist this side of Dave Barry? Well, clearly threats didn’t work and even if I wasn’t able to uphold my end of the ultimatum, I guess I can see how announcing that I’d like to enjoy my opponent’s legs with a side of butter could prove to be a standoffish and might provoke further actions. So this time instead of getting even more riled up and proclaiming that I won’t rest until my den is decorated with the heads of 10,000,000 horny frogs, and please note the emphasis on instead as I was just informed by my fiancée that she will have words for me if she ever comes home to find heads of any type decorating any room in our home, instead I’m going to attempt the route of the bigger man, or species in this case, and apologize.

That’s right, horny frogs of all shapes, sizes, and orientations – I’m sorry for any ill words that I may have uttered about your brethren and my desires to see them as part of an all-you-can-eat buffet. I mean you no harm and wish you the best in finding lots of hot, female frogs … or male frogs, whatever works for you … for your honorable mating season. And if you could find it in your little, froggy hearts to pipe it down just a notch so that I can get some shut-eye, too, well then that would be…

Wait, what’s that?! You did what with that cheeky, frog-shaped planter that I got this spring as a gift from my mother?! Oh, that’s just wrong, even for a bunch of surly, horned-up frogs. That’s it, I didn’t really mean the apology anyways and first thing in the morning, I’m calling that guy down at Asia’s Best Buffet to let him know where he can get enough frog legs to last him the rest of the summer! I mean it, you’ve croaked your horny croaks in the wrong guy’s backyard – this means WAR, frogs!

Ladies and gentlemen, hunting season is officially open. It’s going to be an interesting summer…