Aaron R. Davis

I have high blood pressure. It’s one of my many health problems. It’s also one of the things that makes it so hard to follow the news, because some days it really seems like news reports are specifically designed to raise my blood pressure.

So this week, for the sake of my blood pressure, I’d like to ask the following people to just give it a rest, already.

Herman Cain

Hey, run for president all you want. Keep assuming you’ll actually win, it’s kind of adorable. But your sexual harassment denials, hilarious as they are, are also pathetic and annoying. There’s a difference between being accused by one woman and being accused by five. I know it doesn’t hurt your poll numbers, what with Republicans hating women on an institutional level, but it is incredibly tiresome to hear you bleating your innocence like a pig stuck in the mud. One or two women accusing you is bad enough, but I’ll admit there’s room for doubt — when it gets to five, it’s symptomatic of a personal problem. All I know is, innocent people don’t pay out a year’s salary in hush money to people they didn’t harass. Also, you’re really demonstrating presidential class by attacking women who can’t defend themselves because of a judicial gag order.

Kris Jenner

First you go on and on about your daughter’s sham second marriage, insulting the collective intelligence of a nation that cares way too much about what the rest of Kim Kardashian does when her ass isn’t pointed at a camera. Then you publish a book where you try to convince people that you were a major part of the OJ Simpson story. Why would Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister come to you when your husband was defending OJ? Why do you need to drag the Browns through this again, anyway? Don’t you have enough money yet? You just bought your daughter a Range Rover for her sixteenth birthday, for chrissakes. Just stop talking for a goddamn minute, will ya?

Adam Sandler

That’s enough now. That’s more than enough. Just when I think I am at the depths of my hatred for you, you do something like Jack and Jill. Does anyone over the age of 12 actually think this asshole is funny anymore? And if you do, do you eat paste?

Brett Ratner

No one wants to hear about your penis. No one wants to hear about the chicks you say you’ve banged. No one wants to picture you naked. You’re very lucky to even be where you are; you’re a thoroughly unpleasant … let’s say person… and you make incredibly shitty movies. Stop trying to convince us you’re suave or that we should even know who you are. Stop. Talking.

People defending Joe Paterno

Because it comes down to this: guy didn’t do anything about a kid being raped in his locker room showers except tell his boss and then look the other way. Penn State students, get a grip. You attend an institution that covered up child rape. But you were upset that the people who covered it up got fired. Where are your priorities? If you’re defending Joe Paterno, you are not a good person. If you turned over a news van because you were so angry that a guy who didn’t report child rape to the police got fired, you are a terrible person. And if you were one of the people planking during the protest, just go straight to hell and plank in Satan’s asshole.

The Breaking Dawn publicity machine

Haha, Robert Pattinson was thrusting too hard. He’s a thruster. He was thrusting at Kristen Stewart. He really gets into sex. Haha, he’s so manly. Ugh. Whatever. Yeah, seize on that story in yet another misguided attempt to get me to believe Robert Pattinson likes girls. Or that Kristen Stewart likes boys. Still not buying either one of those stories, and the fervor with which they’re pushed every time one of these movies comes out is just insane. I cannot wait until these shitty Twilight movies are a thing of the past so these two can just go their separate ways, end their fake relationship and finally come out the closet and get some fresh air, already. Then Kristen Stewart can do something interesting and Hollywood can stop trying to convince us that Robert Pattinson is a leading man.

Parents who complained about Sasha Grey reading to children

Yes, she used to be in porn. No, she’s not going to infect your kids with porn cooties. Unless she was showing them porn or actually having anal sex in front of your kids, maybe you should shut up and worry about something that actually matters for a change. I know that parents are typically the worst people on the planet — they are, they ruin things for the rest of us because they want everyone else to take a role in raising their children — but bitching about how the girl you once jacked it to while watching her lick a toilet is now reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to your kids doesn’t absolve you from the fact that your kid is probably one of the quarter of American children who are functionally illiterate.

Nancy Grace

You’re just unpleasant. Turn it off, for a change.

Jay-Z

Seriously, making an Occupy Wall Street tee shirt so you can both exploit the people who are protesting against being exploited and turn a serious issue into a fashion statement is … What? Oh, he’s not selling the shirt anymore? Oh. Well, thanks for shutting up, Jay-Z. I appreciate that!

Frank Miller

This one hurts the worst. It hurts when people whose talent you respect fly up their own assholes and say stupid, arrogant things. Okay, Frank, I get that you don’t understand Occupy Wall Street. But your idiotic, establishment-defending, weirdly racist rant about the people in the movement was just unforgivably dumb. I hate people who forget their own blue collar background, assault their own fanbase, tell kids they should join the Army when they themselves never served in wartime and blame all of America’s problems on al-Qaeda. And you did all of that in just a few hateful paragraphs. It’s ironic that your first truly great work, Batman: Year One, was about fighting endemic corruption and crime in politics, as you now seem to be firmly against people who want to do the same. I shudder to think what you’d have Batman doing in comics these days. Cracking on a few protesters, I guess. Or killing Muslims, which seems like a never ending source of self-entertainment in your work nowadays. You’re pathetic. Go fuck yourself.

And as Tiny Tim observed, go fuck yourselves, every one.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

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Aaron R. Davis

Dear Kim,

What a week, huh?

After a couple of months of marriage, the checks all cleared and you decided it was time to call it quits. With the money banked from your big marriage special, you dumped your nondescript, bland husband and then were somehow surprised that the media was so interested in the latest plot development of someone whose entire life is lived before cameras.

I’m sure that really bugs you; people thinking that you only married for a TV show, just because everything else you do is for a TV show. Well, several TV shows. I used to watch them because, I’ll be honest, you and your family are hot, but after E! decided their channel should be Konstant Kardashians, I got incredibly sick of the whole deal. You may have the sexiest ass of any celebutard, but even for someone as shallow as I am, there comes a point when even that ass isn’t worth listening to the dumb shit you say anymore.

Speaking of saying dumb shit, you’ve really been fertilizing the media with stupid this past week. Well, you and your mom, running damage control. I know it seems unfair, but if there’s one thing that makes it sound like you only married for money and a TV special, it’s saying repeatedly that you didn’t only marry for money and a TV special. Your mom is trying to convince us that you didn’t make a dime off of the wedding, which is just getting sad now. Maybe if everyone had protested a little earlier, before the wedding, when every tabloid was saying that you were getting millions in endorsements and television rights, that might have sounded more believable. But since your job and main source of income appears to be starring in a reality show, it’s a little hard to buy it now.

And yes, even if all that money went into the wedding, it’s still profit. You profited off the wedding. And you’ll probably be able to deduct it as a work expense. Who says you’re not smart?

You can cry now about fairy tale weddings and how sad you are that love doesn’t work out — I don’t dispute that you know all about that, since this will be your second divorce — but anyone with a brain knew this was coming. Your family didn’t like him, but that’s just good drama for the cameras. What really sold it to me were the tabloid items, screaming at me in the checkout aisle of the grocery store, about how you were worried that your unemployed husband was freeloading. Honey, there’s an NBA lockout right now; your basketball player husband is essentially barred from working during negotiations. Classy move on your part. As classy as, say, keeping the ring, keeping the wedding gifts and pretending to be offended and astonished when the media doesn’t believe you’re a very private person.

(But seriously, you should probably give the ring back. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your husband didn’t pay for it, but come on. You were married for two months, and you already banked your profit and the money E! was probably holding back until the TV special aired must have cleared if you announced the divorce already. Give your husband the ring and let him sell it back and make the $2 million it was worth; guy’s on a lockout and could use the cash, and it’s not like you were married for years or even, you know, a year. Also, when talking about not giving the ring back, tell your mom to stop using the term “Indian giver,” especially during Native American Heritage Month.)

Where was I? Oh, right. That’s the thing, Kim. You don’t get to spend years on reality television — with no signs of stopping — and put all of your major life moments on camera, and then decide you don’t want to do it anymore just because you’re embarrassed. A Kardashian with shame? What would that even look like? None of us can imagine.

You made this deal a long time ago to sell your life to E! and you don’t get to just suddenly decide not to play along anymore because you’re upset that the media is asking you questions about why your second marriage failed and whether it had anything to do with the fact that you two seemed like you were only getting married for cash and a big two-part TV special. Sorry, but that’s how your job works, miss.

But my bigger concern is this: stop treating people like no one could be as smart as you and then getting offended when no one believes the lies. I think there are even people out there who would respect you a little more if you just said “I married some nobody for a TV special, made millions, and then dumped him when the checks cleared because it’s good television and there hadn’t been enough drama on our silly little shows recently.”

All of the damage control your mom is doing now just compounds the problem. Because the whole thing is so transparent, it makes your family look like the whores they are. And I mean literal whores, as in people who degrade themselves for money. And if the Kardashians are too obviously whores, people don’t want to watch the wide array of Kardashian programming that your mom keeps making sure to plug while she’s out defending you on the morning shows. No one’s going to want to watch Kendall and Kylie Take Dubai or whatever the hell she’s cooking up now. This one stupid overreach could be the end of the Kardashian Media Empire and your mom is smart enough to see it.

I wonder what you’re doing now that you’re “in hiding.” I wonder how much cash it will take to draw you back out, since I can’t think of much you wouldn’t do for the right amount of money. Are you talking to your mom about how right now, in the time of Occupy Wall Street, it’s probably not a smart business move to get people to feel sorry for you because you make tons of money doing nothing but being pretty? Are you talking about how the sympathy well is running dry for poor little Kim and her millions of dollars? Are you thinking that if Kourtney and Patrick Bateman ever do get married, televising it probably won’t be as lucrative? Or are you just wondering if your family would ever cut you loose to protect their own media deals? I’m sure your mom is thinking hard about whether having you guest star on the Kylie Jenner Sweet 16 birthday special is going to help the ratings or hurt it.

Those are the kinds of questions any business manager is going to face when family becomes business. You were a hot commodity for a few years there, Kim. Now, people are sick of feeling sorry for you and you look like you only care about money. Well, more obviously like you care about money.

Or maybe you can make another sex tape. I know you think you’re a respectable kind of whore now, since you’ve moved up to television, but you can always get back to your roots and people can remember why they fell in love with you in the first place.

Seriously, though, give the ring back.

Sincerely, etc.

Aaron R. Davis

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

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Aaron R. Davis

Over the weekend – a weekend where we should have all been thinking about the Great Pumpkin and contemplating how small fun-size candy bars have gotten – the northeastern US got its first taste of what’s looking to be one mightily pissed off winter.

There was, as we often see with first snowfalls, a lot of confusion and a general lack of preparedness, worse than usual because, let’s be honest, who’s really thinking of snow happening before Halloween? It’s a freak occurrence, and not something we tend to associate with late October. If you spend way too much damn time online, as I do, you saw a lot of reactions to the snowstorm. Out here in Farm County, Illinois, I count myself lucky that the worst thing to happen to me as fallout from the storm was having to hear folksy people say “nor’easter,” which for some obscure and lost reason is something that just grates on my already oversensitive nerves. I’m perfectly content to just be glad that there’s no snow here yet and move on.

Now, understand: I don’t say that to prove I’m some sort of enlightened person, sitting cross-legged with unflappable calm, coolly accepting what is with zen aplomb. (I don’t even know if that’s what zen is.) I’m not trying to be better than anyone. But if you saw any of those people online — the ones who live outside of the range of this weekend’s snowstorm — who took to their blogs to comment on the way people who had to deal with the storm reacted to the storm … well, okay, I am better than those people. I’m just going to say it. Because I wasn’t whining about how people had the audacity to complain about getting dumped with nearly 30 inches of snow just two days before freaking Halloween.

You’ve all run into these people, especially if you’ve ever read the comments section of, well, anything. There’s always that person: “I don’t understand what the big deal is.” “Why is this surprising?” “Is this really such a shock?” That person, man or woman, who is so much smarter than you, so much more thoughtful, so much more unflappable and prepared for life, that they have to take to their keyboards and bitch about, in this case, people bitching.

Taking my subject, an intense, unseasonable snowstorm, and going with that, these are the people who always rush to their blogs just so they can say “It snows every year, what’s the big shocker about that?” In this case, I saw a few variations of “It’s not that unusual to get snow in the northeast in October, damn! Everyone needs to calm down! How is this a surprise?”

These people, with their self-inflated self-image, right? Jeez, calm down everyone, it’s just a little snow, stop whining about it! You’re getting your silly tears all over my Buddha-like calm and my 19th-Century-explorer resolve. Stay firm and all that!

It’s one of the Internet’s standards: I’m going to whine about how your whining is ruining a few seconds of my very important day because I’m smarter than you.

Here’s what those whiners in the northeast had to deal with: nearly two and a half feet of snow in some areas, inaccessible roads, emergency services that were caught off-guard, nearly three million homes and businesses without power, suspension of public transit and a few deaths.

Jeez, stop whining everyone!

The self-righteous bloggers would remind us that snow is an annual occurrence. Unfortunately, so is their bitching about what they choose to see as whining, but which is actually justified worry about being cut off, being without power and heat and possibly dying.

Did you know that there were more people who lost power in Connecticut this weekend than during Hurricane Irene? Jeez, I hope none of those complainers relied on electricity to heat their homes. Well, at least they couldn’t get on the Internet and read people in their warm living rooms telling them to shut up about it.

And those people who were stuck in Boston when Amtrak stopped running and who wanted to just get home instead of being stuck on a track? Gosh, it snows, what’s the surprise here?

And what about those guys who are trying to plow the roads so people can get to work or check on cut off loved ones, but who had to stop because the snowfall was so heavy that tree branches were falling down and blocking them? Just do your jobs, guys, come on. You know the drill. Quit griping, already!

And then there was the 84-year-old man in Pennsylvania who was killed when a tree downed by the snow fell on his home. Or the young guy in Connecticut who was electrocuted to death by a falling power line. Or the people who died in traffic accidents brought on by sudden heavy snowfall in freaking October. Stop being so overdramatic guys, will ya? Good god.

Now, granted, there’s some good fallout from this. Sure, kids in the northeast won’t get to go trick or treating, but what they lack in collected candy they make up for in having Halloween off of school, and I’d like to think that’s the way things should be.

But I got to enjoy my Halloween with working heat and electricity and phones, completely free of snow and inconvenience and tragedy, so maybe it’s just going to my head. Instead of worrying about how I was going to not freeze to death, I got to wonder, seriously, did those fun-size candy bars shrink? Didn’t they used to be, like, half of a candy bar? Now they’re something like two-fifths.

No one I know died or was in an accident over the weekend. I didn’t have to wonder if my medical equipment was going to stop working while nearly three million people went dark, or have to brave a trip to the pharmacy past downed trees and power lines and nearly three feet of snow, or worry that the roads wouldn’t be clear before I ran out of food for my kids.

And if you didn’t have to put up with any of that, either, maybe you should just err on the side of shutting the fuck up before you pretend to know what anyone has to go through and how they should react to it.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

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Aaron R. Davis

A conversation between two working class men in Gotham City.

[Author’s note: for the purposes of this inane dialog, you have to keep in mind that, post-reboot, Batman’s only been around for five years, but has still had four different Robins.]

“I think there’s something off about that Bruce Wayne.”

“How do you mean?”

“What’s the deal with all the boys? Every time you turn around, he’s got another boy living with him. Don’t you read the papers?”

“You’re talking about his wards?”

“Yeah, his wards. Four of them in the last five years.”

“Actually, I think one of them is his son.”

“The youngest one. And where did that one come from? Who’s the mother? That kid just appeared out of nowhere. Though I have to say it’s a relief.”

“Why?”

“Well, obviously Bruce Wayne liked women at some point.”

“Of course he likes women. He’s a rich socialite. You see him out with beautiful women all the time.”

“Yeah, but it’s almost always someone different. It’s not like he’s dating anyone regularly. He just keeps collecting boys. What do you think he does with them?”

“I don’t know. Teaches them about business. Takes them on fishing trips, or something. What did your dad do with you?”

“He didn’t keep taking in other kids, for one.”

“So Bruce Wayne has a soft spot for orphans.”

“He sure seems to.”

“Ew. What I mean is, maybe it’s his way of giving back. He’s always involved in building projects for the city, so maybe it’s like charity for him. The guy’s parents were gunned down in front of him, after all. He’s an orphan, maybe it’s important to him to make sure other orphans have the same chance he did. Wayne was born into a shit-ton of money, at least he’s doing something with it besides buying basketball teams.”

“Hm. It just doesn’t look right, is all. Rich bachelor, all alone in that mansion with just his staff and a bunch of little boys. That mansion’s way out in the country, too. Awful secluded there. They could be doing anything.”

“Like what? Please tell me, what do you think is going on up there at the Wayne mansion?”

“I don’t know. No one would be able to hear you scream up there, though. Lots of land for burying mistakes, too …”

“Are you serious?”

“Well, I mean, what are those kids even called? Do you remember? I sure don’t. What if he gets frisky, accidentally snaps some kid’s neck during rough intercourse, and then just buys another one to replace him? Would anyone know other than the orphanage he’s obviously paying off?”

“Dude, that’s really sick.”

“But it’s a possibility! How does an orphanage even give one kid to a single man? When I was growing up there were news stories all the time about how people couldn’t adopt unless they were straight and married. Wayne could’ve just joined that Big Brother program or something. Instead, because he’s rich, he gets these kids delivered to his home. It’s like his own personal puppy farm.”

“Okay, you have to stop talking now.”

“It reminds me of how L. Ron Hubbard used to live on that boat in international waters with all of those little boys …”

“So you think Wayne is an eccentric and he’s running e-meters on these kids?”

“You know that’s not what I think.”

“It’s not any more ludicrous than what you already think. Maybe he just wants to be a father and decided the moral thing to do with all of his privilege was to take in kids and give them a real shot at a decent education.”

“I guess that’s possible …”

“See? You just want to believe the worst in everyone.”

“Well can you blame me? In this city?”

“I guess not.”

“It’s weird, is all I’m saying. Untoward. If he wasn’t rich, if he was some hoarder living in Crime Alley or something, the state would’ve taken all those kids away, if they ever let him have them in the first place.”

“The state or the Batman.”

“Hey, what’s the deal with the Batman? There’s something off about him, too.”

“Well, it’s not the most stable guy in the world who dresses up like a bat and runs around punching people.”

“No, no … it ain’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Okay … what’s the deal with the little boy?”

“Oh, come on, man. Him too?”

“Well, there he is, getting shot at by cops, and there’s this little boy in tights flipping around. You have to admit, that’s bizarre! What kind of morals does the Batman have if he’s throwing some kid into harm’s way?”

“Well, yeah, okay. I admit, that’s kind of weird.”

“Some people say Batman is some kind of super cop out there doing things the cops can’t legally do. So he’s doing dangerous stuff, man. And he’s doing it with a little kid in a bright red costume? What do they call that kid?”

“Robin.”

“Robin. Jeez, they should call him Human Target. The Batman’s in the shadows while the kid’s the one in the crosshairs. It ain’t right.”

“Hm.”

“What else does he need that kid for? Unless he’s going all Bruce Wayne on the boy.”

“Oh, Christ, I thought we were done talking about that.”

“Well, think about it. Why all the grown men with their little boy partners all of a sudden?”

“Maybe Robin is Batman’s son.”

“The Batman puts his own son in mortal danger? That’s not a well-adjusted dad.”

“I think the bat costume’s a dead giveaway on that score.”

“Haha, yeah. Do you suppose that if that Robin kid bites it he’ll just get a new one? I mean, say that kid gets kidnapped by that Joker fella and beaten to death, do you think Batman goes out and finds a new kid to put on that costume? I mean, we’d never really know the difference. Hell, he could probably get the Bruce Wayne Special, since the city’s just giving these kids away.”

“Maybe that’s what Wayne is doing up in that secluded mansion in the country: training Robins for the Batman.”

“Hey, maybe!”

“Jeez, I was kidding.”

“But it’s like I said: lots of room up there, no one around. Hell, for all we know, Bruce Wayne could be the Batman!”

“That’s just ridiculous.”

“Why? You never know what anyone’s capable of. How many people thought that Gacy was just some quiet painter who dressed as a clown at birthday parties? They’re still digging up bones at his place.”

“So, Wayne is a child murderer, a child rapist or the Batman?”

“The fuck should I know? Maybe he’s all three of those things.”

“Look, break’s over. Time to go back to work and stop talking ever again about Bruce Wayne. Okay?”

“Alright … I’m just saying, one day someone’s going to excavate that Wayne place and find bones. Bones and bat costumes.”

“Shut up, please.”

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

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Aaron R. Davis

Autumn is officially here. It’s been my favorite season ever since I was a little kid: the leaves change, the air is crisp, everything is pumpkin-flavored, the new TV season starts and we count down to America’s best holiday, Halloween.

But, as you may have gleaned from the title of my column (or a couple of years of reading it), I’m cynical even about the things I love. So, as an antidote to my usual fawning over the season, I’m willing to admit that I take the good with the bad. As every silver lining has a dark cloud, so too does every seasonal grandeur come with an utter annoyance.

Inconsistent weather.

Are we still allowed to say Indian Summer, or is that not PC anymore or something? I haven no idea what’s PC and what isn’t these days. But either way, it’s Indian Summer big time right now, and I hate it. Just two weeks ago the low was 32. I broke out my jacket, bought some new pants and started wearing layers. I was glad to do it. I like wearing layers, and I’m sick of the air conditioner both adding more money to my electric bill and cutting me off from the fresh air. Yesterday it was 85 and totally stagnant. No breeze, just sweaty heat. Ugh. I even shaved my head the other day (poor impulse control, don’t ask), and I was still sweating from the heat. It’s October, damn it! Enough with the summer temperatures!

College kids return to town.

As I’ve complained about on many occasions, I live in a college town, right across the street from the stadium. Now, football season is something I’ve learned to endure, especially since my apartment property managers put in newer, thicker windows. But I still hate the college kids. They drive too fast, they walk across the street in clusters regardless of whether they have the right of way, they take too long to learn where they’re going and they have parties. A seemingly unending amount of parties.

Now, I may be a cranky old man, but I understand the idiot need kids have to congregate and drink and listen to shitty music. But, dude, when it becomes four in the morning and it’s still going on, yes, I’m going to call the police on you. I just am. On principle. I’m trying to sleep and you are making it impossible. 2 a.m. is pretty much the threshold for me. After that, you are subject to my crankiness. Oh, and pro tip? When you decide you’d rather stand around in the parking lot or on the building’s back stairs, people can fucking hear you. And we don’t want to hear you laugh too loud in another miscalculated attempt to get laid, or hear your sob story about how your daddy left your mommy the week before Christmas. We just want to sleep and, somehow, standing right under our window doesn’t magically create a soundproof barrier just because you’re drunk.

Hipsters who refer to the fall as “hoodie weather.”

I hate hipsters. I actually hate hipsters more than I hate hippies, and I hate hippies as if they were a low order of insect. Stop piggybacking on my joyous season and trying to make it hip just because you get to dress more like your favorite soon-to-be corporate sellouts. Try enjoying something unironically for a change instead of just because it makes you look cool. I know, I know, the gay-hating Owl City douche bag has a scraggly beard and wears a hoodie, so this somehow validates you or something. Find an identity, assholes. And stop watching New Girl, you’re just encouraging it to stay on the air, and it’s awful.

The harvest is over, and only the hardier bugs survive.

And every single one of them wants to be inside my house right now. You know what especially sucks about the last gasp of warm weather? It’s hard to want to open up the windows and try to get a breeze going when seemingly every fly, hornet, grasshopper, ant, spider, box elder, Asian beetle and moth in the county is crawling all over the screens, trying to get at the cool air inside. Now that the crops in this farm county are being harvested, the bugs have to find somewhere else to go, and apparently the place to be is in town and on peoples’ porches. Until things really get cool in November, it’s going to be a carpet of insects out there, desperate to find a way in.

Having to think about Christmas during Halloween.

Look, I love Christmas, and for me, the more commercial the better. But when you go into a store in late August and see Christmas stuff being hauled in, it seriously just makes Christmas depressing. When stores decide that the Halloween stuff and the Christmas stuff can comfortably occupy the same aisle, that just pisses me off. Let me immerse myself in the comforting, candy-coated, red-dyed waters of Halloween before I start having to be reminded that I have no money and barely any job and can’t afford to do jack for my family for Christmas. Let me have a holiday I enjoy before the usual year-ending symphony of not feeling like I’m good enough, okay?

JesusWeen.

I don’t want to turn this into a religious rant, but it’s irritating enough hearing about the non-existent “War on Christmas” every year without having to get Halloween involved in some person’s genuine fear that a person might not be thinking of Jesus every second of every day. Now some people who have no concept of unintentional hilarity are pushing a Jesus version of Halloween which seems to really just be Halloween with Jesus shoved into it.

Dude, my advice would be to let this one go, especially since after decades of listening to you go on and on about razor blades in apples and poison candy and kids being sacrificed to the devil and other things that don’t actually happen on Halloween, you look like humorless alarmists. But if you really can’t be persuaded from this kind of embarrassment, could you at least change the name? “JesusWeen”? Really? Am I supposed to think of the Christian Rock-oriented indie covers band, or what a second-grader would nickname Jesus’ genitals?

And, dear reader, I will leave you with those words: Jesus’ genitals. Happy autumn!

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com