When I’m at the computer and Oscar is in the office, he likes to observe. Yesterday, I looked over and thought “Now, that’s a handsome pose.” so I took a snapshot.

Then, I told him “OK, let’s try a ‘cute’ one.”

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 Here in Ohio, we are going on our fifty-seventh straight day without sun. We got sleeted on yet again last night, so the roads are a little dicey. On the rural route to work this morning, I was traveling a bit under the speed limit. This didn’t suit the local man driving the red Camaro behind me. He was practically in my trunk the entire time he was behind me. When I turned off, Camaro guy dramatically swung around me and floored it. As I watched him speed past, I said aloud “Jesus, Johnny Camaro. Sorry to have held you up!” (As I’ve mentioned previously, I talk to myself in the car fairly often.)

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We were hammered with every type of frozen precipitation overnight, so I took my sweet time getting into work, what with the sweeping, scraping, defrosting, etc. I needed to get some cigarettes on the way in, so I stopped in at the local Gas & Smoke. Due to my latent homosexuality, I grabbed a Starbuck’s Mocha Frappuccino on my way to the counter. Also due to my gayness, I am a Barack Obama supporter. I’ve got a bumper-sticker on my car and a button on my coat.

The previously very chatty clerk glanced at my button, then looked at me. No “What can I getcha?” or anything. Having been through this portion of the transaction several times before, I took the lead.

“Yeah, I need a carton of Winston Ultra Lights, soft pack.”

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–My pal Cookie turns forty today. I’d wish her a happy birthday, but she’d likely grumble and grouse that there’s nothing happy about it. So, join me in wishing her a birthday: “Birthday, Cookie!”

–Remember back in the eighties when Ronald Reagan single-handedly defeated communism? That was awesome. Well, guess who just defeated Fidel Castro? No, not Father Time! George W. Bush, that’s who! Way to go, Dubya!

– My editor recently accepted a piece by an author named Broarke. When he sent me the manuscript, his email read simply “BROARKE!” My editor is a funny guy.

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Around 1996, I was recently divorced and sharing a house in Dayton with my father, who was also recently divorced. It was a sitcom come to life. We salved our psychic wounds with alcohol and misogynistic rants. “Women!” “Who needs ‘em?” “Not me!” “Me, neither!”"Get me another beer while you’re up.”

I was working fifty hours a week on a Lowe’s loading dock for an annual salary of $19,000 (which works out to less than six dollars per hour after taxes. Nice.) Out of nowhere, my grandmother sent all three of the grandchildren a check for $1000.00. I was eager to buy a computer and try out The Internets, so the following weekend, I went to CompUSA and bought a Compaq Presario 166mhz Pentium with 32 megs of RAM and a 2 gig hard drive. I also bought a sweet 15″ monitor. After I signed up with MindSpring, I was surfing the Internet at 32 kilobaud a second.

I knew a girl at Lowe’s who was computer savvy—far more than I was, anyway. She was a bit pudgy, had bad skin and glasses. She wasn’t disgusting by any stretch but she was no beauty queen. Why do I mention this? Read on. She recommended that I download a program called ICQ. (I Seek You. Get it?) According to her, ICQ would enable me to speak to people all over the world through my computer. It seemed interesting, so I told her I would. She gave me her ICQ user name and told me to message her once I was up and running.

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“Why should I vote for Barack Obama?” you may be asking yourself. Why not let the man himself answer that question:

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