Monday, March 13, 2006

Moments before unconsciousness took me yesterday night, the Fairy Blogmother appeared in a shower of light, filled to bursting with wisdom and good advice.

“You know,” she admonished, “you could type Monday’s conversation on Sunday night.”

I nodded and pretended to listen.

“That way you’d be ahead, and come Friday you’d have something prepared.”

I chuckled and fell asleep. I think she was still talking.

The quest to stop biting my nails has taken a strange turn, in that I’ve been clipping them devoutly to ensure I’ve nothing to bite. The irony isn’t lost on me, of course, and I blame it on the Berenstain Bears. Yes, them. For some reason, during my Lent gone awry, I recalled a volume wherein Sister Bear overcame her nailbiting habit in a few dozen pages.

Those bastards. The only Berenstain lesson I’ve retained, after all these years, is any problem can be easily overcome in a neat, packaged way, usually in 30 to 40 pages. All you need is a positive attitude. There are other culprits, to be sure, and you know them. The Very Hungry Caterpillar? He was essentially hungover, and it worked out pretty damn well for him in the end. Goodnight Moon? I need to count the beige tiles in my bathroom and touch every corner in my apartment twice before going to bed.

Green eggs and ham, did those books do a number on the ol’ biscuit. But as far as the Berenstain Bears go, the obvious solution is to produce gritty, multi-volume works tailored to this generation. Ideas:

The Berenstain Bears: The Trouble with Lap Dances

The Berenstain Bears: Mama Bear Still Calls Me a Dumbfuck

The Berenstain Bears: Caught Papa Bear with a Grizzly Bear Who Definitely Wasn’t Mama Bear