THANKING THE PSYCHOTICS

Not much to tell you.

Like that's stopped me before...

Nobody showed up at our "bible videotaping" meeting last night.

Nobody but me anyway.

I sat inside the church for 20 minutes before leaving. The meeting was made in a fleeting moment..."Hey...can you be here next Tuesday at 7 p.m.?" "Sure." "Okay ... see ya then" kinda thing.

I didn't mind that they didn't show up but it did take about an hour chunk out of my night when I could have been at home watching the news and groaning.

I've got another meeting scheduled for tonight at church...supposed to discuss this new brochure that I had Mattie Gee working on. This girl at church wants to work on it a bit more...she used to work for CNN as a graphic designer and says she can really do a good job on the brochure so I gave her the stuff and told her to be my guest.

So she came over to the house afterwards and hasn't left since.

...Because .... mmmph... she's my ....GUEST!!!

BAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAA!!!

Oh, man!

(Uncle Bob wipes the tears of laughter out of his eyes)

I have SUCH a gift for really shitty puns...

I was awakened at 5 a.m. this morning by something other than Andy's screaming.

And that was...myself screaming.

Once again, a freaking Charleyhorse in the back of my calf attempted to shoot pain all the way through my body. I jumped out of bed and made a sound like a walrus receiving a root canal. I danced on my side of the bed until the pain went away.

Then I noticed my left elbow was SERIOUSLY hurting.

And it still is almost an hour later.

I don't know what I did to it in the middle of the night, but I'm barely able to straighten my arm out and the pain is spreading to my shoulder.

It feels like I took the bony tip of my elbow and just slammed it into the wall about 200 dozen times give or take a dozen times.

To quote Curly from the Three Stooges..."It hoits."

Of course...now I'm obsessed with twisting my arm all around and seeing if it can hurt more if I twist my arm around my head and stuff.

It does.

I knew it.

I shoulda been a doctor when I had the chance.

Late yesterday afternoon as I was talking to the Evil Boss Wendigo, my phone rang.

"I bet that's Mel," Wendi said, pulling herself out of the plush chair in my office and leaving the room as if Mel could smell her there over the phone lines.

I had heard about Mel. She's one of the company's salespeople who is currently working in Pennsylvania and whom I haven't worked with yet. Mel will talk your ear off. Mel's a bit strange.

I picked up the phone.

Mel.

The first thing you notice about Mel is her voice.

It's loud and it sounds like Kathleen Turner swallowed an electric can opener.

"Hello Uncle Bob...I'm your newest bestest friend in the world," she croaked.

Aw hell.

For the next 25 minutes, Mel told me her life story in a nutshell ... since we were new bestest friends in the world, I think she felt she needed to live up to her end of the bargain and get me up to date on her entire freakin' life.

She was a hippie in California in the 60s....but "never took drugs" she reminded me as she laughed hysterically.

Sure Mel. I never took 'em either. Those spiders I see crawling out of my armpits on occasion...they're for real and certainly not the byproduct of that bad batch of LSD that I didn't take 20 years ago.

It was nearly impossible to get her to hang up. Finally, I quit fake laughing after everything she said and sat there in silence. She STILL kept talking. I have a feeling it'll be easier to find bin Laden then it was to get this woman off the phone.

Finally, I interjected the phrase "I've got to let you go, Mel. Call me if you need anything."

So that's what started winding the conversation down. Five minutes later, she hung up.

I'm 90% sure she was drunker than Paula Poundstone at a frat party when she called.

Yep.

Like I told Wendi...that's one voice that will force me to cringe every single time I hear it from now until my deathbed.

Well, as predicted, our economy is going to hell in a handbasket. A pretty little handbasket with frilly bows and ribbons...but a handbasket nevertheless.

I was watching the news last night and something like 35,000 airline employees are out of jobs. By this time next week, the number should be 150,000.

That's astonishing, kids.

They said in a year's time...8 out of the top 10 airlines could be out of business.

That's even MORE astonishing.

A lot of us may find ourselves out of jobs and not able to get jobs anytime soon.

Insurance companies are going to have their hands full with all the damage in New York...having to dish out much more money than they ever expected which will bankrupt them.

The Pentagon will take $520 million to repair.

You and I are footing the bill for that one.

People are going to cut back on their buying and spending, which is going to cut back on other's making money.

This is going to make the Great Depression look like a picnic.

All because a handful of crazy lunatics hated America. They lived here. They slept here. They ate here.

And they still hated us enough to send our country into a tailspin that we may never get out of.

I wish we didn't have to go to war now. I want all those responsible and all terrorists in general punished.

But a war is just going to make everything worse.

Sadly, it's our only choice. I just hope that when we do our initial strike that it is with such force that other terrorists around the nation think twice before taking us on again.

Unfortunately, these terrorists don't care if they die. So mass destruction isn't going to deter them in their causes.

Thank you Osama. Thank you Saddam. Thank you Khadaffi.

Thank you for creating these animals and unleashing them on our world.

My baby boy thanks you too.