Things You Might Hear Me Say to Subtly Remind You That Today Is My 40th Birthday

1) Just think, in exactly 40 more years from today, I'll be twice as old as I am. Today.

2) It was a night, much like this one, exactly 40 years ago...

3) Yes... I understand... I'm sure I can have another 40th birthday... sometime... in the future.

4) Man! If I had a doughnut for every birthday I've had in my life, I would have 40 doughnuts right... about............. now.

5) Do you see that little girl over there? Yeah, that one. Well, guess what? It's her 6th birthday today. We share birthdays, that little girl and I do, and she was born on my 34th birthday.

6) You know, I think I'm just going to head down to the store and pick up 40 birthday candles or something.

7) I wonder what it will feel like to turn 41? Guess I'll figure out exactly one year from today.

8) I don't know, just can't stop counting to 40 today for some completely weird, non-guilt-inducing reason.

9) (coughs, with the cough sounding suspiciously like the word "forty") Sorry, I've just been coughing up a lot of my exact-age-as-of-today lately.

10) Well, I mean, wouldn't you be pissed if they cut an hour out the day that happened to be your 40th birthday? I know I am......... I mean, would be... possibly, you know... if?

11) Yep, just another day... my 14,610th day, to be precise. That's all. No big deal. What? No, no... don't get up. I don't need any help subtracting 10 leap days from 14,610 and then dividing that by 365 to come up with a number like... well, somewhere really, really close to 40.

12) Wow! If Elvis were still alive, I'd be 40 today!

Being a Curious Inspection of Random but Interesting Points along My Own Personal Temperature Scale

At 0 degrees Brendon, I exist.

At 43 degrees Brendon, I can melt cheese in my hair.

At 17 degrees Brendon, purple looks good on me.

At 151 degrees Brendon, regret becomes desire.

At -19 degrees Brendon, I obsess about cans of all types.

At 2 degrees Brendon, I become completely Brendon - otherwise referred to as "Absolute Brendon."

At 303 degrees Brendon, I will tell only lies.

At 96 degrees Brendon, hamburger is suddenly much less of a helper.

At 72 degrees Brendon, the room will rotate approximately 72 degrees.

At 999 degrees Brendon, I look good on purple.

At 102.9 degrees Brendon, I will bring you more rock and more talk.

At -62 degrees Brendon, I mow the lawn without leaving a number where I can be reached.

At 8 degrees Brendon, lists make themselves up unbidden.

At 00 degrees Brendon, I cancel myself out - "double-aught Brendon" syndrome.

At 27 degrees Brendon, a skeleton crosses the stage, and now the danger starts.

At 5 degrees Brendon, blood will cover the streets, children will lie down with dirty plants, the end of times is nigh!

At 13 degrees Brendon, I can melt ice simply by removing it from the freezer and staring at it.

At 44 degrees Brendon, I finally get a chance to prove what a plucky second-stringer can do out there, coach!

At 255 degrees Brendon, I will sneak my finger into your nose.

At -X degrees Brendon, I might feel a little negative and ex-y.

At 1007 degrees Brendon, I dine on stars.

At 50 degrees Brendon, puppets lose their voting rights.

Some Metaphors for Love That Didn't Make the Cut and the Reasons for Their Exclusion

Here's the original list: Brendon Writes New Metaphors for Love

And here are those metaphors that were left off the original list for the reasons specified in parentheses.


1) Love is the ultimate four-letter word.
(The exact number of letters in "love" are still being counted by professional lingual accountants.)


2) Love is a stranger with candy.
(It could also be a stranger with broccoli or a trumpet. You never know unless you ask every stranger personally.)


3) Love is a snorkel breaking the surface for the breath of life.
(Too heavy-handed. Also "snorkel" is a word that cannot ever be taken seriously in this context. Snorkel, snorkel, snorkel!)


4) Love is a raindrop on the tip of your nose that tickles and taunts until you tongue it to your mouth, and it tastes like sweat, not rain, and you realize that you are inside, at the dance, next to your first date, and you probably smell horribly, plus he or she has now seen you lick some of your excessive and foul sweat from your own nose.
(Let's just say this was excluded for very good reasons.)


5) Love is a thought about a feeling about your behavior thinking that it might mean you're acting like you feel like you're in love.
(I'm not sure this is a metaphor. I'm not sure what the hell this is at all.)


6) Love is a mighty train that you never see coming even though you are standing right in the center of the tracks, and it's perfectly flat all the way to the horizon, and the engineer is blowing the horn non-stop, and I know you have very good hearing, and the damn thing is moving, like, maybe, what? Ten miles per hour? But do you move? Noooo! You just fucking stand there, because you're a huge fucking moron, and... move! MOOOOOVVVE! You stupid fuck! WHAT is wrong with you?! Fine! Fine! FINE! I hope you are fucking crushed by the train of love! See what I care! I hate you so much!
(That one just got too personal. Huge train wreck.)


7) Love is the explosion within that doesn't make you run for the toilet or splatter viscera everywhere.
(Probably not safe for children.)


8) Love is a grape.
(My psychologist tells me I need to stop personalizing my passion for grapes. I love grapes, but grapes do not love me back. Nor are grapes love themselves. This is a difficult task for me given that I never go anywhere without a bunch of ripe, succulent grapes in my underwear. Out of respect for my therapist, however, I left it off the original list.)


9) Love is kind of, well, sort of, you know, ummm, that one time, remember?
(That so very completely was not love.)


10) Love is a footprint on your heart left by the barest tread of an angel.
(Fucking nauseating.)


11) Love is steam.
(That's what I thought, and now I'm writing this from the burn ward. Stupid steam. Looked like love.)


12) Love is patient and kind unless it's TIME TO GO, and I told you that a half-hour ago, and I'M WAITING, and WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING NOW, and I bet you'd be one of those idiots who would just stand there on the tracks and do nothing while a train came right towards you!
(Much too honest, not oblique enough in its message.)

Brendon Writes New Metaphors for Love

If there is one topic that no one, and I mean no one, writes about, it's love.

How do we learn about this powerful emotion if it has been banished from our literature, our glossy magazines, our televisions, our narcotics packaging? I am here to break through this taboo.

America, we must talk about love!

I will start the conversation with some helpful ideas about what love is. Since it is, in at least ninety percent of all situations, an intangible phenomenon, I will write of it metaphorically - relating love to some other concept, idea, object or fluid that the reader may find more easily understandable.

Let's start, shall we?


1) Love is like a metaphor that is a simile.

2) Love is a beautiful creature that walks right into your heart and sits there, occasionally farting.

3) Love is a stupid tree, like the stupidest tree you can think of, and then one that's somehow stupider than that stupidest tree, that's what love is.

4) Love is an uninvited guest who stays at the party too late not having even brought a bag of chips or anything.

5) Love is an audacious 'postrophe.

6) Love is the lackluster serial killer of rationality.

7) Love is a fire, burning deeply and forever inside you, no matter how much whiskey you pour down your throat to extinguish it.

8) Love is an itch that you just gotta scratch, eventually leading to an infection which will probably require emergency medical services which are prohibitively expensive for most people.

9) Love is a banjo or an oboe or a mouth harp or a theremin or a tuba but never all five at the same time.

10) Love is the last word of the last page of your favorite book, especially if the last word on the last page of your favorite book is "love."

11) Love is a two-dimensional heart shape that doesn't really look like the real human heart which I don't think looks so much like love as it does a softball in cherry Jell-O.

12) Love is bacon unless you're a pig, then it's a lot of bacon all at once.

13) Love is an alien being that the government will try to cover up.

14) Love is the disgusted fascination of popping a zit.

15) Love is a close call in a game that you argue about with the officials until you get your way, and it causes you to win the game, but then you realize that, even if you were right all along, you would have been better off losing the game anyway.

16) Love is the lonely sea, but not the gross, polluted parts of the lonely sea - the nice parts.

17) Love is a flower, and don't even try to pretend it isn't, you cynics.

18) Love is a theoretical subatomic particle encircling the human heart, and the only way to prove it will be to stick two lovers in the Large Hadron Collider and smash them directly into each other at nearly the speed of light in temperatures approaching absolute zero.

19) Love is a zombie who can juggle.

20) Love is not only like a red, red rose; it may actually be the red, red rose, though many argue that a red, red rose is only a very red flower.

21) Love is the why, but not the how, the which, the where, or the who. It is also 35% of the what and a smidgen of the therefore, but it is all of the why.

22) Love is a bank robbery from which the cops chase you, and then they catch you, and they smack you around for a while, and then you say, "Wait! That wasn't a bank robbery! That was love!" And then they let you go; because it was love, and they can't charge you with that.

23) Love is a gun especially if you're into the kind of love where someone might get shot at any moment.

24) Love is a circle with an infinite radius and a diameter almost twice as long as that.

25) Love is the word which puts it in direct competition with the bird which had been the word for quite a while until love came around and starting clipping its wings.

26) Love is a waterfall which dries up to reveal another waterfall, which also will dry up to reveal another waterfall, which will also eventually dry up to reveal another waterfall, which will run dry as well, and behind that, there'll be a few more waterfalls, but when the fifteenth or so love waterfall dries up, you'll see a cave. Go to it. Careful! The rocks are still wet. The cave is too small to enter, because of the decreasing size of the nested waterfalls, but kneel down. Dig your arm around in the tiny cave. Love is in there somewhere. Keep reaching! Just do it! Watch out for snakes.

27) Love is all the letters of the alphabet, especially "o" and "e" and "v" and another one I can't remember right now.

28) Love is the scent of fresh strawberries on naked people.

29) Love is a syrup that you've never tasted, but that you hear tastes like love syrup which you understand is not as obscene as it sounds.

30) Love is a number I'm thinking of between one and one hundred that rhymes with "nifty tricks," and if you figure it out, don't tell anyone, okay?

31) Love is the trajectory people are always falling in.

A Complete Listing of Everything That Is Overrated

1) Overrated

That covers it.

Some People Jesus Knew and His Nicknames for Each of Them

1) Paul, the Assyrian Butcher - "Chopper"

2) Seth, the Mangler - "Sir"

3) Pontius Pilate - "One-termer" or "Dickface"

4) Richard, the Church-builder - "Ricky Tabernacle"

5) Josephus of Sycophantya - "Leech"

6) Peter, Andrew, James the Greater, James the Less, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, Thaddeus, Simon & Judas Iscariot - "J-Crew and Mr. Squeals"

7) Madeline of Judea - "Bubbles"

8) Prophylus, Elegant Dancer of the Times - "Space Cowboy"

9) Bob of Nazareth - "Doppelgänger" or "Team Player" or "Sucker"

If You Go Beyond Bed and Bath...

Scientists have long speculated that, when travelling the limitless mallscape, which is expanding without cease at the speed of credit, humanity may encounter worlds of goods which mimic our own, but embody some strangeness or other dimension that we cannot perceive. One flamboyant and well-decorated hypothesis proposes potential worlds beyond not only the bed but also the bath.

While not without some virulent detractors, the theory has attracted attention for its radical assertion that what we see of retail may not be all there is. So what might exist beyond the bed and the bath?


1) The Infinite Kitchen

2) The Foyer Horizon

3) Crate & Anti-Barrel

4) The Uncertainty Den

5) Garage of Ten Dimensions

6) Wormhole / Playroom

7) Schrödinger's Stairs (which can possibly be used to ascend and descend simultaneously)

8) Pottery Singularity Barn

9) The Five-Season Porch

10) Pantry Constant

11) Orange Julius

Poker Hands of the Utterly Despondent

1) Pair of Tears with an Ace kicker

2) Straight to the Knife of Hearts

3) Flush, Two high

4) Full House, Doubts over Thoughts

5) Two Threes or not Two Threes

6) The Gravedigger Special, one Six of Deep

7) Five Kings of Impossibility

8) Four of an Unkind

9) Despair of Nines

10) Empty House, Nothing over Aught

11) Treble Troubles

12) Roil Flush

13) Zero of Hopes High

14) Four Jacks - the Jack of Asses, Jack of Shame, Jack of Dread, and Jack of Pain

15) Straight Flush of Empty Suits

The Title of This List Is the Title of This List

1) This should have been number 5.

2) Started out well, but I opted not to include it in this list.

3) Yeah, I don't know. Probably not.

4) I think this is the best point in the whole list.

5) This is where number 1 was going to be, but I ended up putting number 5 here instead.

6) Funny, funny stuff.

7) I reached a little too hard for this one.

8) But I made up for it with the subtle wordplay and unexpected drollness of this.

9) I'm not even sure what this one means, which is humorous in its own way.

10) Unnecessarily harsh critique exposing old emotional wounds in the author.

11) Apologizing all around, otherwise known as compensating for primitive prejudices laid bare by number 10.

12) There is a point here, but not in this part of the list which is, all of a sudden, full of unprovoked cursing.

13) This one is more the sentimental favorite.

14) I chuckle to myself.

15) It ends abruptly. More so than you had anticipated, but that's basically the definition of ending abruptly, of course.

(extra spaces to denote a greater passage of time in the progression of the list)

16) The list makes a surprise comeback.

(amazing guitar solo plays in your head)

17) The actual end is here.

(The guitar solo may still be playing in your head, but it can no longer legally or comedically be considered part of this list.)

Why Women Should Be Allowed To Ski Jump In The Winter Olympics

Right now, women are not allowed to ski jump in the Winter Olympics.

That's wrong!

I am proposing that all women be allowed to ski jump in the Olympics from this point forward.

(Truth be told, I'd like all women forced to ski jump in the Olympics. Just a very specific power trip for me, I know.)

Listed below, dear reader, find some of my reasons for overturning the Olympic ban on women's ski jumping.


1) Research shows that women are just as stupid as men. Some are stupider.

2) So many of the "Magical Fairy"-themed ski jumps which dot the global landscape are shunned and left unused by men.

3) Anything which puts healthy young women in full-body spandex needs to be encouraged.

4) When the ski jumpers screech "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...," it will sound more gender-appropriate.

5) Provides deep cleansing action for troublesome pores.

6) Should prove that hot pink is the most aerodynamic and uplifting color, as has long been predicted by aerocolorological engineers.

7) Mattel has millions of "SkiJump Princess Barbie" units to move in anticipation of the demand.

8) Head replacement surgery has made great strides in gender equity over the past twenty years.

9) On paper, it may look more dangerous than other Olympic sports in which women participate, but the ski jumping is actually done on snow - not on paper.

10) Top-heavy jumpers should tumble cartoonishly through the air, if my knowledge of cartoon physics is accurate.

11) Having your face removed by snow-friction is empowering.

12) To prevent them from ski jumping in the Summer Olympics, a far more dangerous situation.