1. You people. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and resolved to walk away from the spiritual colonoscopy that writing these pages has become, vowing to rid my life of emoticons and asspotatoes in favor of more spiritual pursuits like sleeping in until 7:00 a.m. and devoting my computer to the exclusive purpose of screening Internet porn. But my curiosity inevitably got the best of me and I would continue to lurk on the social network only to be overwhelmed by how vacuous you people actually are. If it wasn’t Crispy Bacon posting detailed descriptions of offering up a stool sample at his thrice-daily appointment at Kaiser, it was Misty LaRue inquiring if Angie’s List could help her locate a contactor that could saw off the handcuffs from her four-poster bed that the homeless guy she met at the alley behind Seven-11 was still locked to. And of course everyone had to pipe in with their feelings of irretrievable loss over the tragic passing of Donna Summer, a singer who last recorded a song that registered on my awareness radar around 1978 and even then I found her Disco-beat caterwauling to be annoying. Without my stern voice of reason to take you people to task, your cyber-world had descended into an insane chaos which would turn any innocent, defenseless soul who was unfortunate to stumble onto it into a raving lunatic after a few minutes of taking in dozens of posts ordering them to re-post a post stating that they knew someone who had survived cancer so that the re-posted post had spread across Facebook like the cancer that their buddy had survived. So, as a public service, I have decided to re-open the Enemies List offices and contribute a list once a week every Friday, just to keep you people in line. Otherwise, when you morons get your jollies by posting Star Trek-themed YouTube videos or photographs of vegetables that look like penises on my Facebook wall, there won’t be any means to bring you to justice. And if that happens, the terrorists will have won. Or at the very least, the idiots.

2. The pigeons on my balcony. One of my very few posts on the social network during my self-imposed exile was to disclose that one of the flying excrement machines which inhabit the skies around my condominium building like the cast of Hitchcock’s The Birds had built a nest on my balcony. In a desperate attempt to scare the pigeons away, I purchased a plastic hawk at a local hardware store which was guaranteed to put the fear of God into the feathered plague-carrying bastards. But instead of being intimidated by the polyurethane predator, the pigeon mocked us both by building a crude shelter of twigs, leaves and some of the many discarded condom wrappers left in the parking garage and deposited a hefty white offering from its germ-ridden anus. The only difference between this white dropping and the metric tonnage of pigeon feces that already coated my balcony was that it was an egg that was incubating a baby flying feces machine. Torn by the conflict of my respect for all living things and my hatred of pigeons, I made the mistake of posting my quandary on the social network for advice on what to do. To my horror, you people responded with a sugar-coated avalanche of tearful missives about the sanctity of motherhood and what a cruel bastard I would be if I did anything to interrupt the innocent joy of this young family. That’s all easy for you to say, but you don’t have to deal with the mountain of achromatic solid waste that gives my balcony the appearance of a plague-infested winter wonderland. But rest assured that Mommy and her egg are doing fine, as are the murder of pigeon cousins, aunts, uncles, and well-wishers who have dropped by to leave their good wishes along with a hefty load of bleached poop. They haven’t determined who the daddy is yet, but they’re figuring out who gets the good news by sifting through the DNA samples that have been deposited on my bedroom window sill.

3. Glenn “Piece of Shit” Simon, who posted a link to an article about Enemies List favorite Mara Marini that his alma mater the American Academy of Dramatic Arts had posted on Facebook, adding that his niece was graduating from the same institution that week and sadly concluding that he was “older than shit.” As someone with a balcony full of shit, much of which is only a few minutes old, I can assure Mr. Simon that the thing about shit is that it doesn’t matter what age it is, it is still shit. In fact, having stepped in shit on numerous occasions when taking my beloved Pug Winston out for a walk and encountering a fecal brick left by the pet of a dog owner without my sense of civic responsibility and plus-size collection of plastic bags, I can tell you that it is far more desirable to come across old shit, which is not only devoid of the pungent aroma acquired from having recently taken a journey through the large intestine, but has developed a pleasantly rock-like texture that doesn’t cling to the treads of my Nikes; as opposed to young shit, which is like coating the bottom of my shoes with repulsive glue-like goo. When it comes to a shit like Mr. Simon, I can only say that I knew him when he could have been considered young and know him still as he is preparing to be inducted into the AARP Hall of Fame. The one constant he has maintained through his decades of alcohol addiction and tragically failed relationships with various members of the female sex is that his status as a piece of shit has never wavered. And unlike the shit that I have encountered in the park, he has lost none of the horrific stench or ability to cling to my shoe like industrial-strength adhesive that he possessed when he had just been delivered from God’s colon.

4. Kim Kardashian. After I read the interview with Ms. Marini mentioned in the previous listing, I noticed a link to another article in the website which reported that Ms. Kardashian was continuing her desperate appeal for mass attention by getting buck-naked and posing for the cover of a publication called W Magazine. I have never heard of W Magazine but I have heard of Kim Kardashian, although I couldn’t begin to tell you why. Aside from the fact that she is a daughter of one of the lawyers who defended O.J. Simpson, I have literally no idea what she has accomplished to win a spot in my range of consciousness. I can say that if she is willing to descend to stunts like showing off her body in print just for a headline on some obscure website, it not only indicates how pathetic her need for the spotlight is but how pathetic our collective obsession for the female form is. It’s like those offensive Svedka Vodka ads which depict a bunch of dancing robots, all of whom have been endowed with the bare minimum of female physiology to be worthy of our attention while always making it clear that it is nothing more than a machine who can’t threaten us or challenge us. Ms. Kardashian’s W Magazine spread (an apt term if there ever was one) makes me feel like she is perfectly content to be regarded as a similar machine, as long as she is oiled with enough mass adulation to make it worth her while. But as any Ray Bradbury novel will tell you, robots can only mimic human behavior; they can never possess a soul.

5. Robin Fogelson, who proudly announced “I’m getting a new car! Well, new to ME, anyway. A used Honda Element will be mine in a couple of weeks as soon as Ja’Son Fogelson finds the perfect mix of low price and low mileage.” Mrs. Fogelson has obviously drank the Kool-Aid that her husband has been desperately trying to make her swallow, that any of her objects of desire can be considered “new” as long as one of its previous owners (and there could be thousands of them) wasn’t her. If Ja’Son has played his macho head games correctly, this can translate not only into high ticket items like automobiles and dental plates, but everyday household items like sticks of chewing gum and feminine hygiene products. The Fogelsons will save so much money by acquiring “new” possessions like slivers of soap found in public restrooms and Kleenex retrieved from shopping carts that they’ll be able to afford a dream car like a 1989 Geo Metro. The thing probably won’t be roadworthy, but at least the Fogelsons will enjoy the status of telling the other passengers on the bus that they just purchased a new car.

Have a great day, everybody! See you next Friday!

Me and a typical childhood pal

3. My other former co-worker Michelle Sadikoff, who made the announcement that she required the services of a graphic designer to create a logo for a new business venture. This put me in something of a quandary because the good news is that I am familiar with a highly-skilled graphic designer who excels at logo creation. The bad news is that it is my other former co-worker Biff Wellington, one of the pieces of fecal matter that I have been accumulating as described in the previous listing. My problem is that if I pass along my recommendation to Ms. Sadikoff of his graphic design ability, I am fulfilling a social obligation of helping out a friend (or, more accurately in Ms. Sadikoff’s case, someone I find moderately less annoying than most people I know only because I haven’t seen her in a while). But if she hires Mr. Wellington based on my recommendation, it will make it that much less likely that I will achieve my dream of seeing Wellington die a horrible death from starvation and lack of shelter. But I have decided to take the high road and not only give Mr. Wellington my endorsement for the job, but make it my mission to find him as much work as possible. I’m only hoping that it turns out that someone can die a horrible death from carpal tunnel syndrome.

Your faithful author displaying a Church Plate. Not shown: Jerry Winsett

4. My old drinking buddy Jerry Winsett, who posted on my Facebook wall “You still owe me a Church Plate. I’m just saying.” Mr. Winsett was referring to the championship trophy of the baseball league I used to run in which owners drafted players generated from a computer program, after which I would spend my summer drunkenly playing the games and making up insulting newsletters insinuating homosexual scandals between the owners and their players. The winner of the championship series won the coveted Church Plate, a black dinner plate which had a crudely printed certificate glued to it with rubber cement. Mr. Winsett’s team the Jacksonville BVDs (whose players consisted of porn stars with names like Dirk Diggler and Pat McGroyn) won the series in 1998 – a dark time in the evolution of the league as it was the period when I was eschewing computer games for the more fulfilling pastime of round-the-clock masturbation. As a result, I never bothered making the Church Plate for that season which should have gone to Mr. Winsett. Most men could overlook the slight of not being handed a two dollar plate from Wal-Mart with a photograph of early New York Mets icon Marv Throneberry glued to it, but Mr. Winsett is not most men and has been hounding me for the trophy ever since. What Mr. Winsett doesn’t know is that for sentiment’s sake, I continued the league long after its ownership disbanded and his team won a second Church Plate in 2008. I’ll send him both if he promises to get his nipples pierced and hang them as baubles.

5. My old high school chum Reese Timm, who posted on his Facebook wall this cast photo of a production we appeared in of Carlo Goldoni’s 18th century classic farce A Servant of Two Masters which took place so long ago that I think it may have been the play’s world premiere. The cast included myself as an ancient old coder who wears a beard and a codpiece (a role I now assume in real life), Mr. Timm as a character who attests to being heterosexual despite a smoldering effeminacy and a fondness for wearing bright pink (a role he now assumes in real life) and Kiki Wistone Award winner Kiki Wistone as a smoking hot piece of tail who tries to get by in life by acting like a man but isn’t fooling anybody (a role she now assumes in real life). The rest of the cast was populated by various flotsam and jetsam who my pre-Alzheimer character probably had no memory of ever setting eyes on before. And as you probably guessed, those people have now assumed that role in real life. We must have been really into Method Acting.

1. A theatre producer of my acquaintance, who intoned “Dear actor I’ve never met emailing me for a job: please enclose a headshot and resume or demo reel. I’m not going to hire you based on the fact that your domain name has the word ‘actor’ in it.” As someone who has been on both sides of the casting couch, I would advise my colleague to not be so quick to dismiss what is contained in the header of an e-mail when determining who he is going to hire. When I am casting one of the many video projects I shoot out of a garage in Van Nuys, let’s assume that I receive two e-mails from people seeking employment. If one is from PizzaDeliveryGuy@
gmail.com and the other is from Actor@gmail.com, the latter is going to have a leg up because of his clever marketing (unless I am casting the role of a pizza delivery guy, which is a character that appears in at least fifty percent of my movies). Even more likely to get my attention is Actress@gmail.com, still more likely is SmokingHotActress@gmail.com, and almost certain to get a part is SmokingHotActressWhoWillHaveSexWithYouIfYouGiveMeAPart@gmail.com. I do agree with my colleague that I will ultimately require seeing a demo reel before the applicant gets the job, but she can usually just supply me a link to Lapdance.com to see her in action. Of course if she does that, her e-mail address is going to be SmokingHotActressWhoWillHaveSex
WithYouIfYouGiveMeAPart@Lapdance.com, in which case there’s no need since I guarantee that I’ve already seen her work and probably have several of her headshots already. I inevitably require a fresh one in any case because the ones currently in my collection are too sticky, but that’s because of my fondness for peanut butter and nothing as sordid as what you perverts probably have in mind. There’s nothing sick about having a fetish for looking at pictures of women covered in peanut butter.

2. Famed accordionist and sometimes-actor Tom Ashworth, who announced that he was “Carving a wooden dildo for rehearsal and learning Lady of Spain on the accordion for a video shoot…odd day even for me.” Mr. Ashworth did not disclose what he was rehearsing that would task him with the creation of walnut phallus, but I can only assume that it was for the same project for which he was learning Lady of Spain. Since he ranks as one of the most famous accordion players in history (along with Myron Floren from The Lawrence Welk Show and the peanut vendor on Disneyland’s Main Street) who could play the song in his sleep, he is obviously being asked to hold his instrument in some perverse position while doing unspeakable things with the dildo. The only remaining question is why Mr. Ashworth is carving his own scrotal representation rather than being provided with a sturdy polyurethane dick by the well-heeled producers. The obvious answer is that he will be inserting the dildo in such an unwholesome crevice that it will need to be easily be disposed of at the commencement of shooting. The only other reason I can think of is due to Mr. Ashworth’s advanced age and the unreliability of air pumps and Viagra on the rapidly waning flow of blood to his nether region, this was the only way he could be certain of fulfilling his contractual obligation of getting wood.

Carol Potter and your faithful author in “Twelfth Night”

3. Carol Potter, who celebrated a birthday yesterday. I first met Ms. Potter when she played Viola and I played Feste in an expensively designed production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night which was staged in a theatre in Hollywood that was constructed as a exact replica of a cardboard shoebox found under a freeway overpass. What confused me about the experience was that I remember it taking place around two and a half years ago, but my research staff (some of whom are fired) have informed me that the show was actually produced some thirty years ago. This news has caused me to be even more impressed with my acting ability than I was previously, since I couldn’t possibly be more than 31 or 32 now and must have been an infant when I took on the demanding Shakespearean role. As a birthday gift to Ms. Potter, I’m going to say that she was only 5 when she played Viola while the other actors were old codgers even then, which explains why they all look like the Crypt Keeper now while we still have our youthful sex appeal even as we have to adjust our hernia trusses before we can ascend a flight of stairs.

4. Glenn “Piece of Shit” Simon, who wept that he was “Sleepless after seeing The Exorcist on the big screen tonight. In the Q&A that followed, director William Friedkin said it could never be made the same way today. Something about CGI, explosions, and a superhero exorcist with a letter on his chest. Funny and sad at the same time.” I was frankly surprised that Mr. Simon was so disturbed by the film that it would interrupt his night-night. I have seen it twice in my life; the first time immediately after it came out when I was a boy and I was so terrified that I slept with the lights on for two weeks. Then I saw it again in my late teens in a re-release and I thought it was so ridiculous that I wet my pants laughing at it (although that may have had something to do with the twelve pack of Budweiser I snuck into the theatre). I’m not sure how I would react now to the sight of someone vomiting pea soup as their head spins around and they viciously curse at me, but if my weekend excursions to Tijuana with Mr. Simon are any indication, I’ll just walk into the lobby for some cheap tequila and try and haggle down the prices of the nearest streetwalkers until the puking is over.

5. Diana Burbano, who asked “Where the heck can I go to find a cool, hep-yet comfy sofa that won’t break the bank!!!???? Help?”  Ms. Burbano came to the right place, because whenever I walk my beloved Pug Winston through our neighborhood, I inevitably see two or three abandoned designer sofas waiting to be snatched up by whatever third-worlder drives by with a pickup truck and a pregnant girlfriend to help him move it. Ms. Burbano’s requirement that the sofa be “hep” (a rather desperate colloquialism which typically signifies that whoever speaks it is the polar opposite of it) couldn’t come at a better time, since everyone with taste in interior decoration (personified by me and everyone who likes the same kind of stuff I do) agrees that the hottest trend in sofas, futons and chaise lounges be that they are spattered with blood and vomit, have at least one cushion missing and cannot be placed levelly on any floor regardless of how many playing cards you stick under the feet. It is also currently de rigueur that a fashionable settee reek of dog urine, but Winston usually sees to that just before it is hauled away.

1. My nemesis Misty LaRue, with whom I visited the famed Huntington Gardens and Art Gallery in San Marino, California. As we sat on a veranda overlooking the stately scenery, each of us had our own ideas on how to improve the grounds. I suggested that the view could only be enhanced by a larger-than-life nude statue of myself towering high above the other sculptures that dotted the landscaping. Ms. LaRue agreed only that the grounds could be enhanced with more nudity, especially if the figures’ pubic regions were sculpted with the lush grass that sprouts from Chia Pets. We finally compromised and I commissioned a twelve foot tall marble effigy of myself in all my nude glory, with my hair, signature goatee and luxuriant thatch of pubic hair all made up of the famous Chia grass found in only the classiest and most sophisticated twelve year old boy’s bedroom. What’s more, the Chia artisans have been challenged to construct an exact replica of my tragically misshapen genitalia fitted with a state of the art hydraulic fountain that emits a geyser of carbonated sugar water every hour on the hour. The curator at the Huntington Gallery has surprisingly not yet returned any of my phone calls inquiring where this magnificent gift will be installed on the grounds, so if I don’t hear anything by end of day Thursday, I’m going to have my operatives (some of whom are stone masons) break into the grounds at midnight and mount the thing in the foundation in front of the gallery while the security staff is having their nightly Miller Lite and hashish brownie break. The plumbing is so complex on the fountain that once it’s in, it will be impossible to remove it without physically tearing down the building, so I hope they like where we’re putting it. They needn’t bother to thank me, though. It’s my gift to the world of art.

2. Strangers who post comments on my Facebook wall. The social network has expanded its ability to irritate me by not only allowing the nudniks who have somehow pierced my outer circle to make comments upon the flotsam and jetsam I display on my profile, but permitting acquaintances of those nudniks who I am blissfully unaware of to also scrawl cyber-graffiti on my page if I make the mistake of tagging a mutual buddy. This occurred last week when I made another awkward attempt to suck up to actress/bikini model/emoticon tester Mara Marini by including her in one of my typically ingenious Photoshop illustrations that I cull together during that blissful window of time between draining the final dregs of vodka from the bottle and waking up in a pool of what I can only assume is my own vomit. To ensure that Ms. Marini is aware of my pathetic stab at receiving a few vector-rendered heart icons from her, I include a sycophantic tag that she is included in the image to notify her of the attention. The only problem is that Ms. Marini’s total number of Facebook friends is roughly equivalent to the population of Guam, every one of whom is also notified that their platinum-haired idol has been tagged and who also want to suck up by commenting on her image. This occurred during this unfortunate incident when one of Ms. Marini’s Uriah Heep-like admirers decided to refocus the Mara spotlight away from my efforts and onto herself by using the stage to compliment Ms. Marini on her recent appearance on the NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation. The problem with that is when you post something on my Facebook wall you are entering my house, and any stranger who staggers in and starts running their mouth is playing a game without first knowing the rules. So as soon as this outsider pecked her brown-nosing comment onto my wall, I immediately informed her that the only attention-seeking snout on my Facebook profile aimed at Ms. Marini’s backside would be mine, and this interloper could throw a metaphorical cock block on someone else’s line of scrimmage. No sooner had I posted the response than the offending comment was deleted, its author no doubt having retreated to a safer corner of the social network that isn’t as reminiscent of Lord of the Flies. If she was offended by my response to her comment, she has no one to blame but herself. You can’t expect to drop a turd in the middle of a stranger’s living room before introducing yourself with a bottle of wine and a Hallmark card featuring a picture of a kitty stuck in a tree. It’s no less annoying than the deuces dropped on my floor by the people I already know, but at least the wine takes some of the sting out of my having to see it laying there.

3. The fore-mentioned Mara Marini, who reprised her role as porn star Brandi Maxxx on Parks & Recreation. This episode depicted Ms. Maxxx taking part in a debate among the candidates running for the city council of the fictional principality that the show takes part in, and while Ms. Marini contributed her usual charismatic and professional depiction of the character, I was shocked that Hollywood producers have such little imagination as to cast a performer with the stature and versatility of Ms. Marini in a role as tawdry as a porn star. I have written literally hundreds of scripts with Ms. Marini in mind, and I am confident that she can play parts as diverse as a college freshman who is unable to pay her rent and must plead with her heartless landlord (in a role written for myself) to find some other way for her to work off the debt, to a snobbish cheerleader who is required to report to the gruff and unforgiving coach (another part that I am in negotiations to portray) to face discipline that will change the course of her stuck-up behavior. Ms. Marini’s agent has repeatedly refused to pass along the material to his client, for reasons that I can only assume are based around the projects not having the lavish budget of a Parks & Recreation with the only payment promised to Ms. Marini being a deferred profit share after the gross ticket sales reach breakeven at three times the cost taking twenty-five percent of income as an overhead charge, and a complimentary Brazilian wax prior to filming. I have pleaded with her management that roles like Brandi Maxxx are done with a paycheck in mind, but the lead in a project like Spanking the Naughty Cheerleader comes along once in a lifetime. Her agent is playing hard to get with logistical maneuvers like restraining orders and raids from the vice squad in a transparent attempt to drive up her price, but I have high hopes that Ms. Marini will forget about monetary gain for once and do this project as a labor of love. I already have interest from a film festival much like Sundance to screen it. It’s actually called Lapdance and it’s a website that charges a thirty dollar monthly membership fee, but even high art doesn’t come totally free.

4. My Communist buddy Tarta Smithers, who pondered on her Facebook wall “Can you jet-lag a rooster?” I assumed that a neighboring fowl was waking Ms. Smithers up earlier than she would like with its unwelcome cock-a-doodle-dooing and advised her to pay it a midnight visit armed with a rock and a pillowcase to cart away the body. The best part is, under most circumstances she would need a bag of quicklime to dispose of the evidence. In this case, she only needed a frying pan and half a cup of Crisco. Ms. Smithers quickly replied that there was no offending chicken in her life; she was merely wondering if she kidnapped a North Hollywood rooster and flew it to Italy, would it start crowing at 2:00 pm. I was shocked that for all her bleeding heart ranting, Ms. Smithers was in favor of animal testing and I refuse to be party to her mad scientist cruelty. I believe that all creatures great and small are a gift from our divine Creator and it is mankind’s job, as caretakers of God’s planet, to protect his feathered and furry creatures from harm. Except for the rodents I coax up my large intestine during anal play, I mean. Sure they all die within fifteen minutes, but the desperate scurrying they do while they’re up there is totally worth it. But I do wonder if the thrill would be longer in another time zone. I’ll have to take some gerbils to Italy and find out.

5. My college buddy Karen Sheeler, who celebrates a birthday today. Ms. Sheeler hails from the urban metropolis Bakersfield, California, where I once joined her on a trip to when we were university students. I recall paying a visit to the local movie palace where the less-than-sophisticated patrons talked throughout the screening, although that didn’t matter much because the film being shown starred Rudolph Valentino and the little dialogue contained in the teleplay was communicated through title cards. But what Bakersfield lacked in contemporary pop culture influences it made up for in religious zeal, as I learned when a local spied the circa 1982 Casio digital watch on my wrist and had me hauled before the town elders to be tried as a witch. Fortunately, Ms. Sheeler came to my defense by warning the council that if any unpleasantness befell me, she would no longer run moonshine for them past Boss Hogg in the General Lee. That assuaged the elders who permitted me to leave Bakersfield, provided that I promised not to use my satanic hand clock to cast any black magic spells on the township as I made my way past its borders. I agreed to the edict and will always be grateful to Ms. Sheeler for saving me the fate of being hurled into Justice Lake to see if I would sink to the bottom (proving my innocence) or float (proving my guilt, for which I would be stoned at the following Sunday’s prayer meeting / bear baiting). Happy birthday, Karen. Another year may have passed, but at least you’re living in the right century now.

1. Film director Tim Burton. The death of Dark Shadows star Jonathan Frid led to a spirited discussion in the comments area of these pages about Mr. Burton, who (if movie previews are to be believed) directed a film version of the beloved horror soap opera that appears to be cinematic fecal matter at its most corporately mass produced level of appalling crap. From Alice in Wonderland to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to a remake of Planet of the Apes which was so bad that it would have us believe that Marky Mark could knock out a 350 lb. gorilla with a single punch and tried to top the original’s unforgettable finale at the Statue of Liberty with one that was so stupid and inconclusive that it seemed like he realized at the last minute that the script lacked an ending so he reached up his large intestine and pulled out whatever he could grab hold of, Mr. Burton has traded in the youthful promise of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and Edward Scissorhands with heaping upon heaping of self-derivative predictability. It doesn’t help that he inevitably surrounds himself with the same tired repertory company, inevitably headed by the once-interesting actor Johnny Depp in a characterization of tiresome self indulgence. Both Mr. Depp and Mr. Burton need to take a vacation to a location far outside their comfort zones if they ever plan to do interesting work again, although the quarter billion dollars that Dark Shadows is likely to pull in doubtless means that they will content themselves for their next project with a remake of Mad Monster Party or a movie version of the late night horror movie TV show Fright Night. It will feature Mr. Depp as Seymour, Helena Bonham Carter as Vampira, and me playing the part of the bored guy in the audience who feels like he’s seen it all a million times before.

2. Kiki Wistone Award-winner Kiki Wistone, who continued the tradition of posting images of foodstuffs that look like penises on my Facebook wall; this time sullying the good name of egg shells. The offending illustration was captioned “Relax, it’s just egg shells,” as if the idea of associating my reputation on the social network with the outer casing of a chicken embryo that looks like a wang was any less objectionable than making me synonymous with the wang itself. The truth is that anyone who visits my Facebook wall will think of me as a wang because my wall is littered with pictures of foodstuffs that look like penises. This is especially true because Ms. Wistone used a picture of brown egg shells, which for some inexplicable reason appear to have much wider girth and greater length than the white grade-A’s that I use to poach and eat with toasted white bread to make my unexciting , though nonthreatening breakfast every morning. I can admit to fantasizing about devouring the brown eggs that Ms. Wistone’ teases me with, but I’m a timid eater and I’m afraid that they would be either be too much for my narrow gullet or else I would become so addicted to them that they would take advantage of me and spend my life savings on drugs and gangsta rap CDs because I would do anything to have their gelatinous white discharge fill my mouth every morning. The most I’m willing to do when I’m out of town is occasionally go down to the supermarket on the docks and pick up a bag of wheat rolls toasted a dark nut brown. It gives me the walk on the wild side I yearn for but I still have the security in knowing that my loaf of Wonder Bread is waiting for me in my refrigerator back home. It may be cold, boring and even a little stale, but at least I can spread mayonnaise on it without worrying that the bowel movement it results in will be harshly judged by society because of its parentage.

3. Speaking of bowel movements and the Kiki Wistone Award, my arch-nemesis Misty LaRue with whom I dined on Saturday night. As I was desperately trying to come up with any topic that might deflect the conversation from Ms. LaRue’s favorite theme of what a moron she considers me to be, I mentioned Ms. Wistone’ recent tribute from the Southern California Fast Food and Botchulism Association of creating an award named after her that honors heroism and would be given in perpetuity to whatever employee they need to throw a bone to in lieu of a raise in salary. Ms. LaRue expressed admiration at Ms. Wistone for being such a pain in the ass that someone would name an award after her to finally get her to shut up about how unappreciated she felt, and lamented that there was no Misty LaRue Award. I placated my companion by informing her that not only was there a trophy named after her, but that I bestowed it every morning to the most annoying thing in my life when I flush the toilet. Ironically, the most consistent winner of the Misty LaRue Award is Misty LaRue herself although sadly, there is no trophy to decorate her mantel with because it is inevitably sent into the Los Angeles sewer system at the close of the ceremony. If she insists, I suppose I could retrieve the award for her and bestow it to her in a private presentation later on, but I think by that time it may be a little too gamey to put in her display case. I guess I could have it bronzed, but that seems a shame since my exotic diet frequently cranks out a keepsake that displays hues throughout the range of the visible color palette. And if I’ve had corn as a side dish, the trophy looks like it’s covered with cute yellow polka-dots.

4. The evil genius Lars Fargo. After we dined, Ms. LaRue and I attended a cocktail party hosted by Mr. Fargo in which he served rum drinks infused with so much fruit-flavored corn syrup that they are as likely to cause diabetes as they are liver damage.  But Mr. Fargo is a responsible party-giver and to insure that his guests don’t get inebriated, he puts out a lavish spread of hors d’oeuvres to soak up the alcohol and Hawaiian Punch being offered. His favorite finger food is bowls and bowls of sweet crunchy morsels which he tried to pass off as exotic candy but which everyone in attendance immediately recognized as dry breakfast cereal. Surprisingly, all the guests became addicted to the offerings but we quickly discovered that while certain types of wine go best with chicken, beef and fish, some cereal went better with the fru-fru cocktails being handed out than others. For instance, Zombies tasted best with a terrifying box of Franken Berry. A Pirate’s Treasure went well with Cap’n Crunch. A Rock Lobster was delicious with Fruity Pebbles. But there were some cases where the drinks and cereals were not well matched. At one point in the evening, Mr. Fargo served a rum drink called a Limey Cocktail. When I swallowed handful of Lucky Charms with it, a bomb went off in my stomach and I soon found myself with my head in the toilet puking up pamphlets demanding Irish independence. It wasn’t as bad as having a bottle of Pinot Grigio with a dinner of roast beef, but it did put a damper on the evening.

5. Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who cautioned “BestBreakUpExcuses:  You just got a tarantula tattooed on your shoulder…and I’m scared of spiders.” Like most stylish men of my generation, I am covered from head to toe in body art and can attest to Ms. Marini’s warning that it does sometimes signal the end of a relationship. From the obligatory hairy tarantula on my left ass cheek to the Proctor & Gamble logo on my inner thigh that I got as part of my initiation ritual during my brief flirtation with Satanism, any woman who fantasizes of a fling on the Jonny Fun Ride must accept the fact that she is going to have to submit to an eyeful of some pretty disturbing ink whenever I take off my shirt or air out my banana hammock after one of my frequent bouts of explosive diarrhea. Without question, the tattoo which has caused the most of my would-be paramours to say sayonara is the artist’s replica of my tragically misshapen genitalia on my chest. I had it put there as a public service so that when a woman is rounding second base with me, she’ll have a reasonable idea of what’s waiting for her when she tries to slide into home. If the sight of a repulsively-shaped penis strewn upon my chest is too much for you to bear when I take off my shirt, we should call it quits now. Because you’re going to be looking at the exact same thing as soon as I take off my pants.

1. Dark Shadows star Jonathan Frid, who passed away yesterday at the age of 87. I was one of the legions of kids who would rush home after school to have the bejesus scared out of them by the vampire Barnabus Collins and wasn’t surprised to learn, when I used to live with a woman who was once the actor’s personal assistant, that he was just as scary in person (albeit for reasons that I won’t sully his memory with on these pages). What I remember most about Mr. Frid’s personification of Collins was that he never had anything more than a tenuous grasp of his dialogue, and what seemed like a pause for dramatic effect in my preteen viewership was actually the actor desperately trying to remember what his next line was. Fortunately, since Dark Shadows had to pad out ten minutes worth of plot into five half hour episodes a week, the writers would help Mr. Frid out by having the characters repeat statements nine or ten times within the course of a scene so even if he didn’t get it right the first time, he’d be saying the line again a couple of seconds later. But even with Mr. Frid’s shaky recollection of the script, he was always a memorably chilling presence as Barnabus Collins and I mourn his passing along with his legions of fans. In a way, the timing is perfect because he just missed the opening of the new Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp as Barnabus and Mr. Frid playing a cameo; presumably as a character who has a shaky grasp of his lines. The previews for the thing look embarrassingly awful and I suspect if Mr. Frid had to sit through it, it would have killed him anyway. Not that it mattered; he always did his best work as one of the living dead.

Dick Clark in his heyday (L) and shortly before his death (R)

2. Broadcasting legend Dick Clark, who also kicked the bucket yesterday. I remember when Mr. Clark was hailed as the perennial teenager and how, even in his 60’s, people marveled at how he maintained his youthful appearance. Then, I guess the portrait he had in his basement that aged instead of him caught fire because he had a stroke and suddenly looked and sounded like the Crypt Keeper. All of our bodies are going to betray us sooner or later and I admired Mr. Clark’s courage in trying to carry on after his stroke, but I’m only being honest when I say that it depressed me to see someone who was once a symbol of agelessness counting down the dropping of the ball in Times Square in a voice that sounded like I do after drinking two bottles of vodka and being up for 72 hours straight. I found a sad irony in having another year slip from my grasp while looking at a dude who was the living embodiment of time being out to flatten all of us eventually. So while I wish Mr. Clark a peaceful eternity and a joyous flight to his well-earned cloud in heaven, I can’t say that I’m sorry Ryan Seacrest will be playing a solo act this New Year’s Eve. The only thing that he symbolizes the death of is quality in broadcasting.

3. Stephanie Fredricks, who cried out in anguish “Duncan Hines just came out with a bunch of new frostings so now I have to kill myself.” It always surprises me to discover what obstacle life throws at the frail entities that make up humanity that cause them to lose hope and draw a close to their veil of tears. For some, it is the diagnosis of a horrific disease that will soon tear apart their bodies from the inside. For others, it is the inability to cope with the myriad of struggles and failures that Jehovah inevitably sets in our path. For Ms. Fredricks, it is the unthinkable idea of having to limit her intake of high caloric pastry toppings mass-produced by a subsidiary company of Pinnacle Foods Group, LLC. Lest anyone think that I am disparaging the cause of Ms. Fredricks’ descent into despair, let me assure you that I have nothing but compassion for her plight. For I, too, have a sword of Damocles constantly swinging over my head that causes me to consider if it’s all really worth it: the idea that God will get hammered one night and crap out a bunch more Stephanie Fredrickses to taunt me with. That’s why I started a letter-writing campaign for Duncan Hines to come up with more varieties of frosting. If we are suddenly overwhelmed with an infestation like that, we’ll want to have the means to thin out the herd.

4. Josh Helmuth, who also disclosed his deepest fears by stating “Alright. Here we go. Tonight will be a good night’s sleep. No dreams about bad hair cuts or zombies….. or the Cubs winning the series…” When I heard that statement, it occurred to me that I’d never seen Mr. Helmuth with a decent haircut and I suddenly understood why. If he stopped frequenting zombie barbers for whom he has to be constantly squirming in the chair as they try to devour his small brain as they do their work, he could probably walk away with a far more symmetrical look than the Pablo Picasso-inspired `do he currently sports. The problem is, it’s nearly impossible to find a barber who won’t turn into a zombie as he listens to Mr. Helmuth drone on about his man-crush on Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer or his theories on why the Chicago Cubs never make it to the World Series. My advice to Mr. Helmuth is to try zipping it as the barber is doing his work. He may finally end up with an attractive haircut and he won’t have to sever the stylist’s head from his body to escape the barbershop with his cerebral cortex still attached to his brain stem.

5. My former co-worker Nicole Dean. Yesterday was National High-Five Day, which caused me to reminisce about Ms. Dean as that display of machismo was her favored means of indicating satisfaction with any given circumstance. The only drawback to winning her approval was that she would reward you with a collision of such unbridled force against your open palm that bones would be shattered and ligaments would be torn free of their encasing sockets. To make matters worse, Ms. Dean would exhibit a sadistic glee at my obvious physical agony at encountering her brutal show of endorsement as if to indicate she was not only pleased at whatever I had done to earn her coveted High-Five, but that she had proven that she was more of a man than I was in the process. If she wanted to do that, she could have saved me some pain and just had us whip our respective junk out for comparison. In fact, she could have just had me do it, since one look at my misshapen genitalia would make even the daintiest of women realize that they have a leg up on me in the masculinity department. It would have been just as humiliating but at least it wouldn’t have affected my sex life. After all, I have lots of other options besides my penis but if you take my hand out of the equation, I’m left with nothing.

Happy Friday, everybody. Be kind to each other today!

1. Ann Romney, wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who has been playing to the hilt an Obama aide’s poorly-phrased accusation that she “never worked a day in her life.” The propaganda council at Fox News predictably leapt on the statement like a pack of starving feral wombats on the corpse of a homeless street urchin, weeping that Mrs. Romney belongs to that noblest of noble professions, a stay-at-home Mom. Hey, nobody will argue that being a parent isn’t a hell of a lot of work, but it isn’t a vocation that requires you to fill out multiple H.R. and tax withholding forms and figure out how to divest your 401k. To be a successful stay-at-home Mom, you’re either going to need a life partner who financially supports you or else be born into enough wealth that you can hang around the house with the kids so that you don’t have to obsess about the pile of bills filling up the mailbox. Lacking those, you’re going to have to fill a position that requires real stamina: a working Mom (meaning someone who works as much as she has to, not as much as she wants to). The Romneys’ net worth is estimated at well over $200 million, which is a far cry from the earnings of the old woman who lived in the shoe so Mrs. Romney might want to consider sticking her Mother of the Year trophy in the closet and shutting the fuck up about what a noble creature she is for raising a brood of kids in a house full of nannies and upstairs maids. I have never had kids myself and in the immortal words of Butterfly McQueen, I don’t know nothing about birthin’ babies. But before Mrs. Romney moans to the world about how hard she works, she might want to take a peek at some of the other people on the assembly line to determine just how cushy she has it.

2. My mono-ped buddy Kiki Wistone, who was given an award by the fast food chain at which she was once employed that will henceforth bear her name and be given annually to some lucky recipient. Ms. Wistone was cryptic about what criteria future winners of the Kiki Wistone Award will be honored for but since the trophy is named after her, I can only assume that it is some combination of hopping and posting irritating photographs on some superior person’s Facebook wall. The staff of the Enemies List congratulates Ms. Wistone on her honor but regret that it was overshadowed by the news of her winning an even more prestigious tribute, the first-ever Jonny Award for lifetime achievement. Ms. Wistone will be feted at a banquet serving asspotato casserole and vodka where speaker after speaker will rip me to shreds (with Jaz Davison being sure to contribute the first and last comment, and Crispy Bacon piping in to make an unrelated statement about his latest trip to the doctor and/or current fantasy about deep-fried food). Late in the evening, Ms. Wistone herself will finally come to the podium and be given a beautiful gold statuette depicting a nude figure of myself, my misshapen genitalia proudly on display. The Lady of the Hour will then give a heartfelt two hour speech describing how she got me into Gloria Stuart’s 100th birthday party and finish up with a PowerPoint presentation of pictures of vegetables that look like penises. The night will conclude at the skybar as guests tell their favorite Kiki Wistone stories while I vainly try to pry open a window so that I can jump to my death rather than listen to you people yammer. It will be an unforgettable evening for Ms. Wistone and the rest of us, even though I will spend the following day at BevMo stocking up on liquor in an attempt to try.

3. My beloved Pug Winston. Like many obsessive pet owners with too much time on their hand and a social life that tops out at letting loose a snort of recognition at my mailman during those awkward moments when we encounter each other in the lobby, I made a Facebook profile for my obese bundle of love. But as I was perusing it on one of my frequent jaunts to the Social Network yesterday, I noticed that while Winston and I have 48 mutual Facebook friends, he has a total of 55. I began to obsess over who this surplus of 7 people was that Winston somehow hooked up with independently of me. I pictured him putting up profiles on dating sites that cater to perverts with bestiality fetishes and hosting wild parties while I was out having my genitalia de-loused or cleaning viruses off of Misty LaRue’s computer that she picked up on iffy Judaica websites. I finally realized that the 7 extra friends Winston totaled were from profiles that other desperately lonely pet owners had created for their mutts and then sent friend requests to Winston. So I’m not going to worry about it unless Winston’s friend total comes close to surpassing mine. I’d hate to have him tell me to make myself scarce on Saturday night because he’s hosting a party and a lot of his friends don’t care for me. I’ve noticed that the mailman almost never snorts back.

4. Famed accordionist Tom Ashworth, who posted on his Facebook wall this photograph of himself playing a U.S. Senator on a television show that I’ve never heard of called Scandal. Readers of these pages know that one of my favorite pastimes is taking digitized images of the irritating people in my life and placing them in compromising positions through the magic of Photoshop. I have been doing this for decades and when the new world of the Social Network opened up to me with its galleries upon galleries of people who get on my nerves, I was like an obese kid in a candy store. The problem is that most of the pictures available to me depict my targets happily smiling during their storybook wedding or dream vacation. When one of you nudniks offers up a picture like this one, where the subject looks like he was introduced to stand up and give a keynote speech at a banquet just as he suffered explosive diarrhea from the under-cooked Mahi Mahi, the question isn’t if I will use the picture in a compromising situation, but how. I don’t know yet when you will next see this picture of Senator Ashworth on these pages, but it challenges me to place it in as humiliating context as possible. The gauntlet has been thrown.

5. Robin Fogelson, who exclaimed “I am a fully functioning adult, yet I have to admit that I was very excited while on Pottermore last night that the Sorting Hat put me in Gryffindor. VERY excited.” I am delighted to hear that Ms. Fogelson is fully functioning because anyone who has glimpsed the air pump and bottle of Viagra on my nightstand knows that I do not enjoy the same condition. But as to her being an adult, that is another matter altogether. Adults drink martinis and smoke Camels and have affairs and worry about their cholesterol level and compare life insurance policies to get the best rates. What adults do not do is get excited about the Sorting Hat putting them in Gryffindor. I know plenty of adults and I can safely attest that Ms. Fogelson does not fit within their ranks. And for that, I congratulate her. Adults are far too boring to ever be considered for Gryffindor. They all get stuck in Slytherin.

1. My old college chum Larry Zerner. Today is Friday the 13th in which all manner of unpleasant occurrences happen. The worst thing I inevitably experience on this date is to be reminded of Mr. Zerner’s existence since he starred in the cult slasher film Friday 13th 3-D. I have only a sketchy memory of when the film premiered but I believe it was directed by D.W. Griffith at the dawn of World War I, which means that I have had to endure almost a century of reporters dragging Mr. Zerner out of his crypt on this day to reminisce about the film because the hacks are too lazy to sniff out any real news. If anyone thinks I’m just jealous because Mr. Zerner is getting the attention that should rightfully go to me, I can only respond that you’re damned right about that. Everything is going to even out when my epic romance Monday the 29th is finally produced and I’ll finally have my own date to be at the center of. It’s the story of a paunchy, bespectacled middle-aged man with a goatee (which will be played by myself after an exhaustive casting search that took place in my living room) who is brought together with a gorgeous, 20 year-old lingerie model for a series of anonymous and graphically-filmed sexual encounters they have as a result of their constantly bumping into each other at Monday night screenings of slasher films featuring a Larry Zerner-like horror star. The only thing slowing down its production is that the studio is insisting I cast Mr. Zerner in the role of the horror icon, which is forcing me to rewrite the thing with the new title February 29th. That way, I’ll only have to be annoyed by interviews with him once every four years.

2. Speaking of horror movies, Glenn “Piece of Shit” Simon, who posted on his Facebook newsfeed the cryptic status that he “was at Arclight Sherman Oaks,” a movie theatre that charges up to eighteen dollars for admission for films that will be consigned to the dollar bin at the DVD section of Target in less than six months. Mr. Simon’s obsessive Facebook followers demanded to know what cinematic masterpiece was being screened to him, to which he finally responded that it was Date Night and he had taken his main squeeze to the new horror film Cabin in the Woods. The movie is supposed to be pretty good but for the life of me, I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than sitting next to a drooling “Piece of Shit” Simon as he carefully positions a popcorn bag with the bottom cut out in the center of his lap and spends the entire film pretending to yawn so that he can stretch out his crocodile-textured arm to land wrapped around his date’s shoulder. I’ve been to a few movies with Mr. Simon and I can advise his girlfriend that when he tells her that there is a gummy worm at the bottom of the popcorn bag if she’ll only reach down and grab it, it’s not as sweet a treat as he makes it out to be.

3. People who are happy about the rain. It is that rarest of rare things in my home town of Los Angeles, a rainy day. It is such an unusual phenomenon in this dessert community that my acquaintances on the Social Network have already made numerous announcements about how happy they are about it. Anyone who makes this pronouncement to me needs to remember one thing: that I cohabitate with a Pug. Pugs were made by the divine Creator to produce two things: love and fecal matter. When it is raining, they will continue to shell out love but don’t even pretend that you are going to get them to release the glorious contents of their bowels in the great outdoors. That means that today I can either look forward to enjoying a fifteen minute window of dry weather that I can drag Winston into and pray that he is in the mood, or else play out the scene in Caddyshack in which a candy bar is floating in the swimming pool where Winston’s digested Alpo plays the candy bar and my shag carpeting plays the pool. Anyone who thinks that’s something to be excited about can come by my place with a bucket and a mop later this afternoon.

4. My former co-worker “Biff” Wellington, who continued the trend of posting pictures of foodstuffs that resemble male reproductive organs on my Facebook wall. Mr. Wellington took it up a notch by treating me to what appear to be a warming tray of catheterized penises floating in brown water at a serve-yourself buffet. I don’t know what buffets Mr. Wellington frequents that would have catheterized penises on the menu, but the fact that they turned the water brown indicates that they were obtained by a pair of tightly clenched buttocks ripping them from a owner who didn’t realize what he was getting into when he agreed to walk on the wild side of anal R&R. I further observe that one of Mr. Wellington’s defining features is one of the most muscular derrieres that I have ever seen on a human being, so I can only assume that his posting the picture means that he is finally pursuing his dream of entering the restaurant trade. If that’s the case, I suggest you turn down any invitations to tour the kitchen. Mr. Wellington is a stickler for fresh ingredients and tonight’s fling at the glory hole could result in your being tomorrow’s bangers and mash.

5. Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who enthused “I’m SO happy that was just a creepy dream!!!!!! That’s one way to wake up…stoked your life is way better than your dream. Phew!” Ms. Marini did not provide details on what her nightmare was about, but just as she was posting it I was awaking to the most pleasant dream where I was in a committed relationship with Ms. Marini and that she had consigned herself into accepting my tragically misshapen genitalia and sexual perversions as her lot in life. It occurred to me that what for me was the most blissful sleeping fantasy would be for her a horrific nightmare that would require years of therapy to blot out of her consciousness. If there has been some kind of cosmic hiccup that has resulted in our sharing the same dreams, I agree that while her life is much better than her dreams, mine is far worse so I hope that the next time we’re sharing the dream where I’ve nagged her into satisfying my obsession with autoerotic asphyxiation, she’ll just go ahead and let me accidentally hang myself. Horror movies have taught me that if you die in your dreams you actually die, so I think it would be best if we just got it over with for me. The idea of my waking up to more pictures on my Facebook wall of foodstuffs that look like penises is too horrible a nightmare to have to endure.

1. Enemies List favorite Mara Marini, who (while shopping at an establishment called Beach Bunny Swimwear) happily exclaimed “Bikini season coming up! Yay! #MyFavoriteTimeOfYear.” I’m sure many of my readers envisioning themselves walking along a lonely beach and encountering Ms. Marini in a two-piece thong would happily agree. But what you haven’t taken into account is that one of my few character flaws is a propensity to place wagers on sporting events that I have neither any knowledge of nor the fiduciary means to pay off if I lose. Fortunately, the bookies with whom I associate are a lively bunch and rather than shattering one of my body joints which I may need if I ever decide to re-up my gym membership, they are content to allow me to pay off their bet by placing me in any number of humiliating predicaments for their amusement. One of their favorites is to have me display my sagging posterior on a crowded beach in a bikini that was intended for someone with the face and figure of Mara Marini. Luckily for me, Beach Bunny Swimwear caters to the West Hollywood transvestite crowd so they have pink butt-floss bikinis in size XXXXL. That means you can look forward this summer to seeing me parade up and down the Venice waterfront looking like a hard-boiled egg with two rubber bands wrapped around it. I still owe money on an ill-advised bet for the Miami Dolphins to win this year’s Super Bowl.

2. Stephanie Fredricks, who asked the question “Does anyone else have an ex that feels the need to text or email them once a year to apologize for the way he was over 10 years ago? No? Just me??” I do not have that experience, but I have enjoyed the attentions of an ex who would contact me from time to time to try and wring an apology out of me. The fun began when we were in couples therapy (which is a device created by yentas to hurl as much emotional fecal matter as possible on the life mate they currently have their talons sunk into until he cries “uncle” or suffocates from the stench) and the first words out of her mouth were “my goal for this is to get you to admit that all of our problems were your fault.” Regrettably, she never attained her goal even when our sessions declined into hysterical voice mails she would leave me at 2:00 in the morning so that they would be the first thing I would hear when I came into the office to begin my workday. Between those and the 10,000 notes she left hidden in my condo just before she moved out which were designed to put puncture wounds in my heart (and which occasionally still pop up unexpectedly when I am looking for spare change behind a sofa cushion), she doesn’t need to call me once a year to remind me what a bastard she thought I was. The occasional vivid nightmare after which I wake up screaming is sufficient.

3. My old buddy Jerry Winsett, who reminded me of a baseball hat that I gave him for his birthday one year that immortalized Palace Productions, an imaginary studio that we concocted which produced some of the more fanciful movie plots that I would devise and make Mr. Winsett listen to in exchange for my buying him Denny’s Grand Slams. Anyone who is a faithful reader of these pages won’t be surprised to learn that my storylines were of an adult nature with titles like She Pirates (female pirates on the high seas) and She Privates (a group of female army recruits mistakenly invade Las Vegas); youthful hijinx which Mr. Winsett had outgrown some twenty years before I forced him to put up with them for free pancakes (a juvenile phase that I am tragically still mired in). The disconcerting thing about the photograph was that I have no memory of giving Mr. Winsett such a present or when I would have had occasion to visit the Palace Productions gift shop (in those pre-Internet days) to purchase it (especially since the studio only existed in my twisted imagination). I only wish that while I was there, I had picked up a DVD of She Privates. I would have liked to have known how those female recruits carried out their mission after their uniforms had been torn off in their initial assault. I never got past that part in my story description before Mr. Winsett shot maple syrup up my nose.

4. Kiki Wistone, who continued the trend of sullying my Facebook profile page by posting photos of farm produce that look like penises. This time it was a potato in the shape of a mighty wang, lovingly held by a female hand that suggests the tater had been spending time in her root cellar, if you catch my meaning. I’m still unclear what it is about my character that forces the desperate yentas in my life to taunt me with images of vegetables that look like male genitalia, especially since my own misshapen penis looks more like an old curly fry dripping in chili (at least if I’ve spent a night by the docks). But if it makes Ms. Wistone and her yenta cohorts fell better about themselves to get my attention with images of phallus-shaped Idaho spuds, they are welcome to do so. In fact, if they want to drop by the house tonight I’ll bring out the sour cream and butter and we can get nasty with it.

5. Bro David, who posted on his Facebook wall a link to a Wall Street Journal article listing the best and worst jobs to have based on the criteria of physical demands, stress, work environment, income, and hiring expectation, with the best being software engineer and the worst being lumberjack. But such lists fail to take individual circumstances into account that make their conclusions meaningless. Say I land my dream job as a software engineer for an outfit called Yenta Software Engineering. The pay is great, the work is easy, and it makes few demands on me physically. The only problem is that the rest of the staff is made up of Mara Marini, Stephanie Fredricks, Jerry Winsett, Kiki Wistone, and Bro David. I’ll even throw in the evil genius Lars Fargo and the Jabbering Jewess Misty LaRue as my direct supervisors to make it clear that I am employed at the earthbound equivalent of the 7th circle of hell. On paper, I have the best job in the world but the reality is that I am either going to walk into work one day with a sub-machine gun to take out the entire office or else pack it all in and become a lumberjack. It may be a crappy job but at least redwood trees don’t post pictures of potatoes that look like penises on your Facebook wall.