November, my best tweet month ever

It was about half way through the month when I realized I was on a Twitter tear. I was coming up with about seven or eight bursts of wit each day. I think it was my best month of tweets I’ve ever had. Here are about 50 November originals so you can decide for yourself.

Follo here at 8days2amish if so disposed

• News report says New Delhi discount days failing to drive sales the way experts predicted. Know what that means? Goodbye rupee Tuesday!

• Imagine how much more advanced humanity will be when we select mates based on intelligence instead of how nice one’s ass looks n tight jeans

• Seems a conflict of interest to me, but if you Google "earth" you get Google Earth.

• Big storm last night. Rained cats and dogs. Yeah, it was a real downpurr.

• In my lifetime, I’ve been in maybe 100 ranch homes, but only two of them have been on actual ranches.

• I wonder if one dimensional people have less difficulty with those hard to reach itches.

• If a trophy wife can’t be described as statuesque then she isn’t really a trophy wife.

• In the future we will live in smart structures that will shrewdly detect energy needs, flaws, security, etc. They will be Sherlock Homes.

• I have no job, no insurance, rising credit card debt. I tell ya, when it comes to nothing I got it all!

• I believe I'm a good father but I know I could be an even better one if only there were some financial incentive.

• General Sherman was right. War is hell. But without 'em, watching History Channel would be mighty boring.

• Scientists working to save dwindling bee popul. Prediction: Soon America will be over-run with swarms of super bees requiring bee bounties.

• All you need to know about the superiority of fruits to vegetables is that salads needs salad dressing and fruit being fruit is just fine.

• This is just a guess, but I'll bet llama farmers refer to llama mothers as mmamas.

• Until the league welcomes at least one single-legged player, it to me will from now on be the National Feetball League.

• Daughter, 13, loves her new Vera Bradley handbag for its colors and evident cheer. Got to admit, the thing's got pursesonality.

• Beards are becoming so popular I predict soon we’ll start to see enterprising single women massaging Rogaine into their chins.

• I like to buy used books and imagine I'm having a conversation about it with all the previous readers.

• Sometimes adult entertainment titles come unbidden to me. Just happened again: "Pornochio." Now if only I could think of an unusual physical oddity . . .

• Petty pretensions becoming so common in America I'm expecting to see bald eagles with hairplugs.

• If two of them are contact lenses, shouldn’t just one be called a len?

• Most people never wash the bottom of their feet. Here’s what I do: slop some shampoo on the shower floor and dance! Dance! Dance!

• Why are there locks on the lobster tank where I shop? If I'm a shoplifter, a live lobster is the last thing I'm stuffing down my pants.

• If they’d have lived during Roman times, Augustus Caesar would have referred to Moe, Larry and Curly in Latin as “Tribus Stooges”

• I’m sorry “concentration camp” has negative connotations. I’m often so distracted I could use a couple of weeks in a concentration camp.

• Once they teach you to strike while the iron is hot, is there anything left to blacksmith school? Student loans must be minuscule.

• In order to generate more positive workspace vibes, I will henceforth refer to my "office" as my "onnfice."

• Leonardo Da Vinci understood how terminal velocity could allow man to fly. Fred Duh Vinci has no idea what any of that means.

• I'm all for the sneeze-in-the-elbow movement, but have to think it's been dreadful for people who enjoy square dancing.

• Instamacy is a mutual attraction so powerful it causes consenting adults to leap into bed moments after first locking eyes.

• I enjoy hanging with drunks ‘cuz you can tell same joke same way five times in one night and it’s always hilarious. Not so w/sober wife.

• It would be more accurate if Aerosmith was called Hairosmith.

• I’m pretty sure I’ll be disappointed in the answer, but one of these days I’m going to see if the nation of Turkey has a national bird.

• To many users, prescription drugs are the wheels on all the emotional baggage that help them get through life’s airports.

• If I were an eligible single man eager to get married, I'd be very discouraged by the news that Charles Manson can find a bride and I can't.

• Man, the only animal who spends most of its time stationary on its butt, is also the only animal to spend billions each year on footwear.

• I so love the word "hanky-panky" I'm devoting weekend to finding useful meanings for hinky-pinky, henky-penky, honky-ponky & hunky-punky.

• By their very definition, definitions are the most meaningful things in the world.

• In the beginning, there were no words for in the beginning.

• Can anyone explain why in San Francisco there's a big orange bridge right where everyone told me to look for a golden gate?

• Forget chicken-&-the-egg. To me the most enduring question known to man is, "Who let the dogs out?"

• Your life is all the stuff that happens between the time you’re doing all the stuff that winds up on you resume.

• Do rhetorical questions during a conversation annoy me? Yes, they do!

• Every coach and every player on every NFL team says exactly the same thing. Rejoice, America! Our football has achieved parroty!

• Can't prove it, but I'll wager Superman was the first person to ever say, "I see London, I see France ..."

• It would be cool if Mars rover has a bumper sticker that says "If you don't like Hank Williams you can kiss my..." w/ pic of a donkey.

• I'm thinking of changing my pic to a baby shot, but not my baby shot. Like a really beautiful baby. Like baby Rachel McAdams. Who'd know?

• Lyme Disease leaves victims chronically fatigued. Lemon Lyme Disease leaves victims chronically fatigued sourpusses.

Related . . .

Oct. ’11, my 1,000th tweet

Feb. ’12 twitter round-up

An '11 Thanksgiving salute to Servicemen & women and the great Ray Davies

From 2011, the sentiments haven’t changed even a little bit. Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!

(794 words)

I advise you to start tomorrow, as I do every Thanksgiving, by playing the 2006 Ray Davies song, “Thanksgiving Day.”

We can argue all day and night about our favorite Christmas songs, there must be a million of them, but there’s only one Thanksgiving song.

And I mean that. Can anyone name even one great traditional Thanksgiving song?

Leave it to an Englishman to write the song about one of our most authentic American holidays. Be sure to download it as soon as you finish reading this. I promise to keep it holiday snappy.

The song’s got it all. The poignancy, the longings, the Greyhound rides home, the hearth, the family dysfunction and in the end the euphoria of my very favorite holiday.

I’ll be thankful tomorrow for Ray Davies.

And I’ll be thankful for the U.S. Marine Corp and all who serve.

We were in Washington, D.C., over the weekend where I went to write a story about the lavish Christmas festival at the Gaylord National Hotel (and, man, I’m thankful I get to do cool stuff like that as part of my job).

The place was crawling with Marines in their dress blues. The hotel was the site of their annual ball.

It diminishes me even further, but I get kind of squishy whenever I’m around a serviceman or woman, especially a Marine.

I’m grateful for their service and they are just the most impressively composed human beings on the planet.

I’ve never seen a Marine in action, but I imagine they could overwhelm most any enemy merely with manners and posture.

I understand they teach other more lethal things in grueling boot camps, but if someone told me it was 13 weeks of manners and posture I’d believe it.

It’s like they are constructed with steel spines that make slouching physically impossible. My body would assume a natural slouch if it was suspended from a noose.

I was in the company of about 100 other journalists who, like me, stood around slouching for hours at a time waiting for someone to bring us something free.

I’ve never seen a more vivid mingling of the givers and the takers.

I’m sure if I’d have spilled a free bourbon a Marine would have sprung from the rafters and thrown his medal bedecked jacket over the puddle to assist my wife and daughters over the floor hazard.

I don’t know how to say thank you without sounding cliche or maudlin, so I just tried to make eye contact and say, “Happy Holidays,” hoping it would convey so much more.

But that, too, has pitfalls, as I learned on the elevator.

We got on together in the lobby. I asked this man who does so much for me and our country to do one more thing. Could he please push 15?

Guys like me can’t do anything for ourselves.

He was wearing a Steeler jacket. Eureka! I could make Pittsburgh small talk!

If my room had been on the 353rd floor it might have given us enough time to strike up a real friendship.

But we had a very friendly chat, enough so that when the elevator floor bell rang I felt comfortable looking this strong, proud man eye to eye and saying, “Happy Holidays” hoping he’d know what I really meant was:

“Thank you for all you sacrifice for me and my loved ones. Thank you for the friends you’ve lost, the tears you’ve shed, and the enemies you’ve killed. I hope your holiday season is filled with love, joy and a peace that’s so often elusive to warriors like yourself. And I hope the Steelers we both cheer act like United States Marines and kick the asses of their every opponent clear through to the Super Bowl.”

It was perfect. He knew exactly what I meant. The door opened and I gave one last firm nod and gathered up my stuff.

Damn. Wrong floor.

He was too gracious, of course, to point out I asked him to push 15 and was exiting the elevator on 11.

But to ride four more floors in awkward silence risked ruining the perfect micro-conversation.

So what did I do?

I marched right the hell out that elevator door like I knew where I was going, leaving this Marine to logically conclude I’m an idiot.

That's okay. I’ll bet the nation is full of slouching idiots like me.

We have to wait around 364 days until the one day comes when we feel comfortable saying a truly heartfelt thanks.

So Happy Thanksgiving to all our servicemen and women, their families, Ray Davies and to each and everyone struggling to get along in this great, big beautiful land I’m forever thankful to call my home.

Is beer-fed turkey for the birds?

(676 words)

I guess it’s another triumph for relentless beer shills that Thanksgiving has somehow become what many consider a drinking man’s holiday.

Many of my friends have told me they are looking forward to a big meal followed by a day of binge drinking and watching hours and hours of professional football.

I’ve never felt that way about Thanksgiving. I love the big meal, but would often rather watch a good family movie with the kids than get drunk and watch two teams I don’t care about playing a game that’s becoming increasingly boring to me.

This is another example of how I’m way out of step with the mainstream American male.

Heck, just last week I learned I’m out of step with an increasing number of mainstream American turkeys.

It turns out even the turkeys are getting drunk for Thanksgiving.

That’s not all. They’re getting drunk all year round.

I saw a news story about Joe Morette’s Henniker, N.H., turkey farm. He’s been feeding his turkeys beer since 1993 when he serendipitously spilled a brew and noticed the turkeys enthusiastically gobbling it all up. Of course, you could say that about anything turkeys consume.

Gobbling is just what turkeys do.

But Morette swears the beer makes the birds fatter and more flavorful.

I can generally attest to half of that. I’m friends with many men who’ve been guzzling beer since at least 1993 and they aren’t the least bit bony.

I don’t know how they taste and it’ll take me being on the losing end of the zombie apocalypse before there’s even a chance I’ll find out. That may not happen even then. I’m sure even as a zombie, I’d be a pretty picky eater.

PETA, of course, says it’s cruel to give the birds so much beer.

I wonder if PETA would protest if Dave, the owner of The Pond, started giving us regulars free beer.

I read the whole story hoping to learn what kind of beer the turkeys prefer. That would be very important to me.

I’d be impressed if the turkeys took to Heineken, Bass or LaBatt’s, three of my favorite imports.

As far as domestics go, the closer to home the more impressed I am. So I’d take any turkey that drinks Duquesne, Yuengling or Straub. Penn Brewing in Pittsburgh makes some great beers and I think a bird that had spent a couple years of drinking Penn Pilsner would be delicious.

Anything would be preferable to those beer-colored waters the national brewers are always scheming to shove down our throats with stupid “fast-pour” bottles and cans.

Me, I spent yesterday brining our turkey. Brining is an overnight soaking technique that infuses each bird with with moist flavors. I used to use a recipe that included vegetable stock, sugar, salt, rosemary, sage, thyme and water.

It did the job, but it didn’t have any zing that made it special.

This year, Val got a good brine recipe from a friend that included bay leaves, peppercorns, sugar and kosher salt.

I took that and then commenced to freestyling. It may be politically incorrect to say so, but on this Thanksgiving I sort of went off the reservation.

I added heaping mounds of fresh rosemary, marjoram, basil, and thyme along dripping dollops of honey to the water-based brine.

Then, with Morette as my inspiration, I began to consider a booze option.

Beer was too pedestrian. I didn’t think wine would work either.

I needed something more assertive, something robust yet graceful.

Yes, I needed bourbon.

So I took a shot and enjoyed it so much I figured the turkey did, too!

And not just any bourbon. Yes, on this Thanksgiving, I bathed our farm-raised turkey with something that would certainly tickle its feathered soul.

I gave our turkey Wild Turkey.

And it’s the premium stuff, the delicious Rare Breed. It’s pricey, but worth it for a refined gent like myself.

It’s my go-to bourbon.

I’ll let you know if the bird turns out to be as tasteful as the man who brined it.

Related . . .

The true story of the Pilgrim turkey rapist

Talkin’ turkey (the Republic of)

My filthy, unbidden dream

(726 words)

I dreamt about an old buddy of mine the other night and the dream was so vivid I felt like calling him up the next morning.

I didn’t because I thought me telling another guy I’d dreamt about him would have been creepy.

And it would have been, especially if I’d told him about what happened in the dream.

The two of us were road tripping in some convertible. It was a big, cherry red Cadillac. We were sipping beers and cranking tunes as we drove along the sun-splashed dunes.

Nothing wrong with any of that. We both had all our clothes on and in dreams you can still drink and drive without having to worry about getting pulled over by what I guess the band Cheap Trick called the Dream Police.

What was creepy is we’d stop at these road side carnivals and they all had tent shows and at every one we’d get out and I’d go in and there’d be some naked old babe in a bed beckoning me to join her.

And dream me, bless his heart, jumped right on in.

In real life, I gallantly help old ladies cross the street. In my dreams, I jump into bed with them and screw ‘em giddy.

I’d look back and my buddy would be sitting there with his beer, smiling and encouraging me. He’d wink and give me the thumb’s up.

Then I’d bid them each a fond adieu and me and my buddy would drive down the beach to the next tent show where the same thing happened all over again.

Then I woke up.

What would some dream analyst say about all that?

What would my cheerleader buddy say? He’d either be so creeped out he’d never speak to me again or maybe he’d invite me over for a night of beer and granny porn, which I’d refuse on the grounds that that would be too creepy.

How much of our dreams are a wish and how much are just a dream?

I’d love to spend a day driving up and down the coast playing tunes and drinking beer with my old friend. That would be a blast. We’ve done it before and I hope we one day we get to do it again.

You could say it’s a dream of mine.

But that part about bedding a bunch of willing Betty Whites? Where’d that come from?

I wonder if my inner me is getting even for all the pranks I used to play on an old bartender who fancied he had a layman’s gift for dream analysis.

He believed he knew precisely what it meant if you dreamt of bowls of fruit, schools of fish, long-barreled firearms or trains going through tunnels, etc.

And it all meant you were really dreaming about sex.

He was maybe history’s only Freudian bartender.

He believed a friend of ours was thinking of leaving his family because he had the hots for some cute waitress.

I told him the guy told me he’d dreamed he and this girl had been riding ponies on the beach and the two of them were waving to his family who were out in a storm-tossed boat and that a killer whale was circling the boat and that the whale was wearing a sombrero.

I concluded the story, as I always did, saying our buddy told me if I told the bartender about the dream he’d deny it.

And deny it he did, thus confirming to the bartender my story’s authenticity.

It was all very entertaining.

I’m sure one reason every dream aspect held some relation to sex was because sex was about all this elderly bartender thought. Even in his 80s, calling him a dirty old man didn’t do him justice.

He was downright filthy. He died a few years back. I still miss him.

I’ll never forget the times he’d either outrage or delight much younger women by telling them that while he could no longer cut the mustard he was still more than capable of licking the jar.

Filthy, indeed.

I wonder what he’d have said if I’d told him I was dreaming of driving up and down the coast boinking random bunches of grateful grannies.

I think he’d tell me to get my own damn dreams and stop stealing his.

Related . . .

I like dreamin’

Of death and dreams

Let's move nation's capital to Kansas!

In 2005, I launched a movement to, for reasons social and financial, relocate our nation’s capital from Washington, D.C., to Lebanon, Kansas, the exact geographic center of our polarized nation.

Eight years later, not much has changed. We are still mired in gridlock and my many grand movements are still met with reactions ranging from indifference to ridicule.

But one thing has changed.

Today I can blog about it!

So here’s the story I submitted to various prestigious publications in 2005. No one saw the merits of my genius. In fact, I don’t remember anyone even responding.

Perhaps you’ll see the benefits. If so, please feel free to share the story with friends and any influential legislators.

And here’s a tip: you might be wise to start buying real estate in Lebanon while it’s still cheap.

Here’s the story, dated and typically error-ridden as it may be . . .

(756 words)

The Beltway gridlock has the nation mired in another series of seemingly insoluble problems. From saving social security to excessive fuel costs, the politicians we look to for creative leadership appear incapable of divining the answers that will move America forward.

That’s why it’s time to think outside the box or, more precisely, outside the Beltway.

It’s time to relocate the nation’s capital to Lebanon, Kansas, the geographic center of the contiguous United States.

Sound preposterous? The Founding Fathers didn’t think so.

Washington, D.C., became the nation’s capital because its location was a logical compromise for legislators who’d have to ride horses and bone-rattling buggies over terrible roads for long distances. The shores of the Potomac made perfect sense 214 years ago when our infant nation of just 13 states clung to the east coast. But even as manifest destiny pushed our population ever westward, our capital’s location has remained stump stubborn while the country moved farther and farther away from it.

Consider the majority of our illustrious state houses. When given opportunities to settle in more renown marquee cities like St. Louis or Chicago, Missouri and Illinois bestowed capital status on the centralized, if unremarkable burgs of Jefferson City and Springfield. Same goes for capitals in lunch bucket towns like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Columbus, Ohio, and Lansing, Michigan.

The move would spark an immediate and enormous savings in congressional travel expenses. Gas prices would plummet. Taxes could be slashed.

Better still, the move would instigate the purification of a political process that seems irrevocably poisoned in swampy old Washington.

When the conservative stalwart Wall Street Journal savaged Republican Majority leader Tom DeLay for a series of alleged ethical lapses, it seemed to imply the fault wasn’t DeLay’s inability to tell right from wrong, but instead stemmed from a foul-smelling infection thriving inside the Beltway incubator.

“In Beltway-speak, what this means is that Mr. DeLay has an ‘odor;’ nothing too incriminating, nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse. The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself.”

The Journal makes Washington sound like a fraternity house where prudent guests wipe their feet on the way out.

All of which brings us to bucolic Lebanon, Kansas. For those who think there is no center in our polarized political world, it’s time to consult a map. You’ll find Lebanon, pop. 273, at the exact center. That only 273 out of 308 million Americans can lay claim to true centrality points out the scope of the problem.

No politician in the past 30 years has won high office by boasting of being a Washington-insider. That little conceit will end when we move the capital to Lebanon.

“You can’t get much more outside than Lebanon,” says city clerk Connie Herndon. “We’re 60 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart.”

Yes, utter desolation. Congress will be free from the pesky distractions of Gucci-hooved lobbyists, $700 wine-drenched dinners at The Palms, and the comely hookers, mistresses and interns who’ve reduced so many would-be statesmen into fondling fathers. What does Lebanon offer?

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Herndon says. “It’s a farm community of old farmers who work during the day and stay in at night. The only thing that qualifies as entertainment is a local choral group who gets together and sings patriotic songs.”

Hmmm. Sounds like red meat for a Red State.

“Well, the year before they sang popular songs from the ‘60s.”

Perfect. A bipartisan glee club capable of swinging from The Stones straight to Sousa.

Of course, some things won’t change. Lebanon is the very heart of the heartland. It is farm country and that means manure. Sorry Wall Street Journal. It’ll sometimes stink in Lebanon, too. But at least the fertilizer in Lebanon is used to nurture farm produce and won’t wind up being broadcast on C-Span.

Moving the nation’s capital out of Washington and to farm country will no doubt be dismissed by some as, well, a corny idea. But it’s worth a try. Clearly, the Beltway is broken. It’s time America made a statement that would show we’re going back to the grassroots of our democracy. Goodbye Beltway.

Hello Bib Overallway!

The new capital will start off with one impressive surplus. The farm town will be so awash in fertilizer the local glee club will be performing patriotic ditties above the fruited plain in hip waders.

Talkin' Turkey (the Republic of) on Thanksgiving

(624 words)

This is the time of year I always find myself wondering if the Republic of Turkey has a national bird. 

I’m sure I’d find my wondering betrays a vast ignorance about a proud and noble people, residents of a staunch NATO ally and a bastion of secular democracy in a Middle East that seems forever enflamed by tyrants driven by deadly religious passions.

Only an idiot would sit down at grace every year and distractedly wonder during the blessing if the turkey is Turkish.

But I cannot escape the thought.

I dream of one day taking the kids to Turkey and promising it’ll be just like the summer we went to Hershey, only with Thanksgiving themes.

“We’re going to spend a couple of days at the Cranberry Sauce seaside resort before heading to the Stuffing Mountain Range. And I hear nearby Mt. Mashed Potato is great this time of year so we’re taking all our ski gear.” 

There’ll be pleasure boating down the Gravy River, sight seeing through Carrot Forest, and you’d have to think there’d be a dandy amusement park in Candied Yam Land.

To me, the nation’s name presents a classic chicken-and-the-egg question. Which came first: turkey or Turkey?

I encourage you to look it up because I won’t.

I’m charmed by the idea that the two are related and researching things like origins might demolish some of the naive pre-conceptions.

I like believing I could go to Turkey and greet the natives by saying, “Gobble! Gobble!” and they’d find it so original and hilarious, they’d say, “Gee, are all Americans as funny as you? Because if they are, we love America! USA! USA! USA!”

I wonder what people in Turkey think about Thanksgiving and I wonder if they eat turkey in Turkish restaurants in downtown Istanbul. I doubt it and I wonder how many businessmen got off planes with their mouths watering for a turkey dinner and left exasperated after a steady diet of pilav and lamb kebabs. 

Certainly some of them have access to Food Network programming, which for the next few days will be all about turkeys and Thanksgiving. 

So some people in Turkey will see smiling Americans of various ethnicities talking about how much fun it is to roast turkey, deep-fry turkey and shove various side dishes up turkey butts.

Much could be lost in translation. It all might sound completely different to people who live in Turkey.

It might sound like a declaration of war.

I know many U.S. patriots would go straight to DEF-CON5 if we saw a broadcast of a voluptuous dark-skinned woman saying, “First you want to tie America up, pour seasonings on it, fill its empty carcass with stale bread and then shove it in the pre-heated oven for four hours. When America’s cooked, slice it up into succulent pieces and feed it to your children. Oh, and be sure to thank Allah for all the America filling up your bellies!”

So being diplomatically-minded, I’m just trying to get out in front of this because I can imagine one day people in Turkey will become furious when they realize people in America have one day a year where everyone celebrates eating turkey.

There’s no reason to believe political correctness stops at our shores.

So this Thanksgiving, there should be some sort of educational outreach to reassure the Turks we are talking about consuming a delicious native bird and not one of our most essential  allies in a region vital to our national interests.

And I hope any Turks reading this will take no offense at my simple-minded jests.

The last thing I’d want to do on Thanksgiving is ruffle any Turkey feathers.

Related . . .

The true tale of the Pilgrim turkey rapist

Greensburg B&N book signing Friday w/ all my Inverted Jennys!

(727 words)

Pack up the sleeping bags, the inflatable air mattresses and your long john jammies. Temperatures are expected to dip below freezing tonight and that cement sidewalk can chill your bones.

What’s the occasion?

I’m signing books Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble!

What? You were expecting Springsteen tickets?

Other writers may post Facebook notes politely asking friends to share news of their book signings and maybe make time to stop by.

That’s not good enough for me.

I want riots, stampedes, hysterical teens dancing on flaming couches.

And what do I intend to do to warrant such newsworthy commotion?

I promise to wear all those crazy rubber band bracelets my daughters have made for me the past three months.

And nothing else!

Fear not. The girls are so industrious with their looms not a speck of flesh will be exposed. I’ll look like a rainbow-colored Michelin Man. You can toss me off the roof and I won’t stop bouncing until I’m clear past the Red Lobster.

Any other reason why anyone should show up?

Yes! The store has about 30 collector’s edition copies of what will go down in history as the “Inverted Jenny” of “Use All The Crayons!”

The Inverted Jenny is the famous 1918 postage stamp that featured an upside down airplane. The image represents the most famous mistake in stamp history. One mint-conditioned rarity in 2007 was auctioned for $977,500 or about what every single Forever Stamp today would need to sell for the USPS to turn a profit.

As I’ve mentioned, the book’s done so well that the publishing entity gave it a second print makeover and is lavishing it with more than $4,000 worth of marketing and promotional oomph. It’s being entered in award contests and presented to top book buyers who’ll decide if it’s worthy of national distribution.

The biggest change is apparent on the back cover bio that hypes all the magazines for whom I’ve written. All the changes turned out to be very painstaking. That’s why I was so deflated when they sent me for approval the very first copy of what the “new” book.

See, I’d added two lines. The first line immediately after the listed magazines is: “He’ll write for anyone who pays him.”

Somehow the key second line was not there. That line is: “He is a PROSEtitute.”

I was crestfallen because the first doesn’t work without the second. Without the punchline, the first line makes me look like a money-grubbing hack, which I most definitely am not, even though my wife, I’m sure, wishes I were.

This pushed back the book’s re-release by about two weeks.

But the Greensburg Barnes & Noble sells so many copies of the book -- and the fact leaves me overjoyed -- an order for 30 snuck in between corrections.

Thus, my Inverted Jenny.

I’m not saying it’ll be worth $977,500 in year 2108, but there’s a chance it’ll be worth maybe double what 24 used copies are right now being offered for on Amazon.

So that means one day the books could be worth two pennies!

The book has come so far in just one year -- and thank you one and all for helping make that happen.

Just last year I was actually including in promotional material the line, “I can’t promise you’ll enjoy “Use All The Crayons!” but we’re pretty sure it won’t make your head hurt!”

Now, thanks to so many of you, I simply tell people that everyone loves my book.

Saying so used to make me uncomfortable, as it sounds so conceited. No more.

Now I know I’m merely telling the truth.

So everybody, one and all, please stop by and buy a book for a friend. They’ll love it, I swear. Or maybe stop by and say hello.

And I have one additional request: Everyone bring along at least one nimble friend named Jenny so I can stand them all on their heads.

I’ll post the picture on my website over the caption, “Chris Rodell and all his inverted Jennys!”

It promises to be another triumph for what was one of the world’s most rejected books and further evidence that with a good idea and the support of friends and loved ones it’s still possible to turn the book industry on its head.

Related . . .

Bar book signing!

Arnold Palmer NOT attending my book signing

How I became a PROSEtitute

Mom’s coming to my Lebo book signing!