Brad McConahay

Okay, it’s still a month before summer officially begins, but this spring already feels an awful lot like summer. And even though I’m highly adverse to hot weather and I totally miss NFL football, these are not my main complaints.

It’s the sounds. I hate the sounds of summer. People run lawn machinery almost constantly. Lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers. One neighbor shuts down, another immediately starts up.

And the car stereos … whatever happened to the “$500 loud stereo fine” street signs? Those signs are long gone, but the noise is worse than ever.

I mean, if I really wanted to feel the bass from other peoples’ stereos, I would’ve stayed in an apartment. With the thumping car stereos, now it’s like I’m trapped in an apartment where I can’t even pound on the wall.

And then … you’re finally enjoying a relaxing weekend evening, lounging in the yard or on the porch – even the lawn-mongers are respecting this time of weekend. But as luck would have it, the neighborhood kids always pick this time to assemble down the street to play hoops. Which, of course, means they continuously scream at the top of their lungs. Why can’t they congregate in a nice quiet neighborhood crackhouse instead? Say yes to drugs, kids, nice quiet drugs…

Oh well, I’ve officially become one of the ill-tempered ogres I used to hate when I was young. But I don’t care … STOP IT!

This is a moronic ode to the unimaginitive hacks who come up with the headlines for Michael Jackson stories…

Jacko’s backo, and he’s whacko. He’s smokes tobacco and cracko, and shoots the smacko until he has a heart attacko. Then he has a snacko, like maybe a Big Mac-O, a lunch packo, a stacko of flap jackos, or Tacko Bell. He’s got a real knacko for letting a quacko hacko his olfacto – you’re on the right tracko if you think he hates being blacko. And he doesn’t lacko a racko to hit the sacko with his packo of little victims… er, friends.

For christ’s sake, you hackos, get a new headline gimmick. It wasn’t clever in the early ’90s, and it isn’t now.

I’m not a religious person, but I wonder if it’s wrong to pray for bad things to happen to bad people. I’ve heard Howard Stern do it, so it must be okay.

In particular, I want bad things to happen to people from SCO and the RIAA. And preferably in public where everybody can see what happens to people who have no soul.

Oh, I don’t mean anything horrific like wishing disease or poverty upon them or their innocent families. After all, who really needs that kind of bad karma? I just mean little things, like maybe they stub a toe really hard, or their cable goes out for a week, or maybe a freeloading relative that they hate moves in. Whatever.

Anyway, next time you’re within physical striking distance of an RIAA or SCO employee, just give ‘em a good hard smack to the back of the neck to remind them that they serve absolutely no purpose in society and that if they all disappeared tomorrow, not only would nobody miss them, but the world would be a better place.