THINGS I HAVE AGREED TO DO DURING A LONG NIGHT OF DRINKING

1. Buy someone's pickup truck
2. Take a month-long trip to India
3. Quit my job to start an advertising firm with two other guys
4. Play in a fantasy baseball league
5. Attend a Bruce Hornsby concert
6. Move to New York City and start all over
7. Paint someone's kitchen
8. Adopt a puppy
9. Invest in a chain of for-profit haunted houses
10. Start a really kick-ass kickball league. You know, one that wouldn't be lame like all those other kickball leagues.

A MAN ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN THE GAME OF RACQUETBALL TO HIS KITTEN, MISTER SNEAKYPANTS

Okay, the first thing is the racquet. They have gotten bigger and bigger over the years, but I prefer something medium-sized, because you get better control … No, Mister Sneakypants, NO! -- that’s not a mousy! NO! NO! pay attention to Papa … um, so anyway, you get better control, which is very important when it comes to ball placement. Okay, so grip you racquet … where is your racquet? In the lounge? Why did you leave it in the lounge? Sigh. I'll call Carla and see if she can run it in here. … (On cell phone) Carla, this is James. Someone left his racquet in the lounge. Can you run it over to court 10? Oh, you're a doll. Thanks! (hangs up) … For now, take mine for a sec. Okay, grip it tight, but don't strangle it. There, you almost got it. God, that's sooo cute! Wait, lemme take a picture with my iPhone. … Got it. Okay, the game starts when you serve against the front wall. … Please, Mister Sneakypants, I'm talking now. Focus. Bounce the ball once, then hit it. I want you to try it … Bounce the ball … Bounce the ball … COME ON NOW! BOUNCE THE BALL! … damnit. Oh hi Carla! Thanks so much. Mister Sneakypants, tell Miss Carla thank you. … thaaaank yeeeeew … you can do it -- thaaaaank yeeeeew. Fine. Be that way. He was just doing it yesterday. Well, toodles. Gotta finish the lesson. … No, Mister Sneakypants, don't go with Miss Carla. … Close the door Carla, quick. Thank you! … Now bounce the ball once, and hit it against the front wall. Some people call it the back wall, which can be confusing, but I consider the wall behind us to be the back wall. It's just semantics. Now, your serve must hit the front wall and bounce beyond … Mister Sneakypants! This is not bath time! You can do that later. It's not like you've ever broken a sweat … Don't sneer at me. As I was saying, the ball must land beyond that red line to be a legal serve. Otherwise, it's a fault. You get two faults per serve, then it’s a point for me. Beyond that, it's pretty … Are you sleeping Mister Sneakypants!? We agreed that you wouldn’t do that. Well, I wasn't the one who stayed up all night watching "Meerkat Manor" on Tivo. … Oh, don't cry. I'm just trying to help you stay active. There. Now you've got me crying. Oh, Mister Sneakypants. I'm sorry. I can never stay mad at you. (in baby talk) Who wants some ice cream? Who wants some ice cream? Me too! … Let's just play a quick set and then we'll go get some ice cream. Best two out of three, first to 15 wins … Are you remembering any of this, Mister Sneakypants? Look over here, Mr. Sneakypants …

AN OBSESSIVELY FRUGAL PERSON SITTING NEXT TO YOU AT THE LICENSE BUREAU WANTS TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE MANY PATCHES ON HER JEANS

I noticed you're reading the Utne Reader. I'm a big fan, too. Did you know that you can get free copies of magazines from the recycling bin at the library? Yes, they do archive the magazines, but most people don’t know that they get two copies of every issue, and recycle one of them. They do it every Friday around 10 a.m. It’s around back by the loading dock. My husband and I save about $200 year on magazine subscriptions that way. People are so wasteful. You’d be shocked how much money we waste on things like magazines and name-brand oatmeal. Over the course of a year, you would waste $15 buying Quaker oatmeal versus the generic brand we get over the Internet. Yes, the Internet. Go to this website: www. frugalshopper. uk. com. /food/ 9=sqvl%%87&879/ulischmelzer.html. Got that? Let me write it down for you … there you go. It combines the buying power of thousands of thrifty shoppers with the lower labor costs of the former Soviet bloc. Yugoslavian oats are every bit as nutritious as American oats, but cost one-fourth the price. They come in barrels, but we have a huge basement so storage isn’t a problem. Sure, it’s a tradeoff, but it is so satisfying when you can look at your bank account and see all that money you save. That’s why I’m here, actually. We saved enough money to buy a used van for our frequent trips to the slaughterhouse up in Indianapolis. You can buy an entire cow there. We butcher it ourselves, and use whatever we don’t eat to barter with our neighbors. That’s why I’ve never had to pay cash for daycare for any of my kids. Do you eat out a lot? That is such a terrible waste! Every time my husband talks about out for a fancy restaurant dinner, I suggest that we go to the grocery, buy a couple nice lobsters that are just about to expire – that’s when they mark them down, you know – and make an evening of it at home. What’s more fun – dinner at some stuffy restaurant, or a night at home enjoying a meal that you prepared for only pennies on the dollar? And clothes! Can you believe what people spend on clothes? I’ve been wearing this pair of jeans for seven years, and they look great, don’t they? I patch them with fabric from old sofa cushions that people have thrown away. We never buy new furniture. You don’t need to! I make slipcovers from surplus military tents. “Surplus” is a misnomer; most of that stuff has never been used. We re-did our kitchen cabinets entirely with Vietnam-era ammunition crates. I don’t tell everyone that – I’m afraid Ikea will steal the idea! Speaking of magazines, did you know that you can make new insoles for your shows with old magazines? Fashion magazines are the best – the glossy paper holds up better. Hey, they’re calling my number now. It was nice meeting you. If you’re interested, there’s a frugal lifestyles meetup once a month in the basement of the Unitarian church. This week we’re getting together to update 2007 calendars into 2008 calendars. Bring you own tape and scissors!

AN OVERLY TALKATIVE AND SOMEWHAT UN-SELF-AWARE 13-YEAR-OLD BOY DESCRIBES THE FILM "THE NATURAL" TO HIS FATHER DURING A LONG CAR TRIP, CIRCA 1984

"I think you would like 'The Natural.' It's about baseball. Robert Redford plays this baseball player who is really good. His name is Roy Hobbes. One time, he, um, strikes out Babe Ruth at a county fair, um, only it's not actually Babe Ruth, but a character called 'The Whammer.' He's played by the guy from 'Walking Tall.' So, anyway, Roy gets to the major leagues, but he's old and no one thinks he's any good. Then this guy on his team gets killed when he runs into a fence. Has that ever happened? It would be really weird if it did, don't you think? So, um, anyway, Roy gets his chance, and he's really good! He uses a bat he made himself when lightning struck a tree in his yard when he was a kid. Sorry, I forgot about that part. The bat is called 'Wonder Boy.' So he gets to be a big star, and he falls in love with this woman played by Jessica Lange. But, um, there's this old guy who wants the team -- they're called the New York Knights -- to lose because then he gets to take it over. But Roy keeps hitting home runs and the team keeps winning. But then at the end, he's up to bat in the bottom of the ninth, but he ... every time he swings, he hurts his side ... oh, I forgot. Earlier in the movie, when he was a young baseball player, this woman shot him and he quit playing. So that’s why he is so old when he, um, finally gets to the major leagues. So he's batting in the bottom of the ninth, and it looks like he hit a home run, but it was a foul. And he broke his bat! So he ... so the bat boy brings him the bat he made with Roy earlier in the movie. Roy goes back to the plate, and there’s, like, blood on his shirt and the umpire looks worried. Then Roy hits a home run and it hits the lights and this shower of sparks hits the field as Roy runs around the bases. It's a very good movie. I think you would like it. Oh, and it wasn't Jessica Lange, it was Glenn Close. She was in 'The World According to Garp.' Have you seen it? ..."

AM I IN THE MAFIA?
In these hectic times, what with work, the kids and your work on the Romney campaign, it's hard to keep everything straight. You misplace your keys, forget to thaw the roast, even forget that you've joined La Cosa Nostra. We can't help you find those keys, but we can help you figure out whether you're, as they say, "mobbed up."

Do I wear a pinky ring? 90% chance

(Exception: I'm the Pope: 34% chance)

Do I drive a Volkswagen Jetta? 0% chance

Does my MySpace profile list "arson" among my interests? 87% chance

Do I like Death Cab for Cutie? 13% chance

Do I keep an ax, a shovel and a .38 in my trunk? 99% chance

Is my favorite movie "The Remains of the Day"? 28% chance

Do I keep $10,000 in cash in my freezer? 60% chance

Is my Cadillac Escalade registered in the name of a deceased pipefitter? 82% chance

Do I know the names of at least two people on "The Hills"? 2% chance

Do I collect the skim from the Saturday bingo game at St. Theresa's? 88% chance

Have I read "Love in the Time of Cholera?" 17% chance

Do I spend most of my afternoons at the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy? 58% chance

Do I drink Mike's Hard Lemonade? 9% chance

Does the butcher give my mother a free Christmas ham every year? 45% chance

Do I have an image of Al Pacino in "Scarface" tattooed on my calf? 58% chance

Is my favorite meal braised tofu served with broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, cauliflower and zucchini? 4% chance

Do have a man named Jimmy the Nose stored in the freezer in my basement? 100% chance

MY LEAST FAVORITE SCENE IN THE 1988 ACTION FILM "DIE HARD"
John McClane yelps into his walkie-talkie, alarming the cop on the other end (whose only chracter description in the script was, apparently, "fat and black"), for he believes for a moment that the terrorists have brutally murdered his new friend. Instead, McClane is upset over the fact that a Twinkie he found somewhere in the building has gone rancid. The cop (a.k.a. the dad on that Urkel show) responds hilariously by lovingly ticking off the list of Twinkie ingredients ("...enriched wheat flour, riboflavin, yellow dye no. 5...") in a way that no one -- NO ONE -- would ever do in a similarly tense and potentially apocalyptic situation. Here is how I have improved this scene:

McClane: Yelp!
Coppy McCopperson: McClane! What's wrong?
McClane: I just bit into a 10-year-old Twinkie.
Coppy McCopperson: Stop eating Twinkies and get the fuck out of there!!!!!

(end scene)

YOU ARE SO FUCKING ANNOYING AND I THINK I HATE YOU ALREADY

I know what lol means. You don't have to put "laugh out loud" in parentheses next to it in your e-mail.

ASK ABE

Dear President Lincoln: The panhandlers in this town are out of control! The other day, one of them yelled at me when I wouldn't give him a dollar. I was so rattled that I couldn't finish my mochaccino. Won't someone please do something to stop this menace?
One of the unintended consequences of our glorious, as-God-intended victory in the War Between the States was the flood of shell-shocked veterans and dislocated refugees that poured into our cities. Being a humane society, we did not shunt these people off to prison or drown them in the river, as was the fashion just a decade before. Rather, we spared no expense to create magnificent workhouses where these poor souls found shelter, nourishment and respectability as they worked 12 hours a day making barrel hoops and mop handles. I remember well the grateful looks on their faces as they pressed against the glass, eight and nine deep, to get a glimpse of my carriage as it passed. Solving the problem isn't so simple for your generation, as the do-gooders have made it impossible to do anything but hand out hugs and sandwiches, obligation-free, to these wretches. How appalling! Just because you live on the street doesn't mean you own it.

21 THINGS ABOUT 21 PEOPLE
NUMBER 4

It's in someone else's hands
Now
This old house
That he rebuilt
Watched over
Painted
Roofed
Repaired
Used stronger wood than needed
For children who never quite appreciated
Like children do
He walks through
Touches the woodwork
Admires the floors
Appreciates the changes not made
To his handiwork
Gives his silent approval
And closes the door behind him

ASK ABE

My wife and I have split up, but I’m convinced that it was a bad idea. How can I patch things up?
I know your plight very well, fellow traveler. Lost in the shuffle of history is the fact that Mary once threw me out of the house for a month — we had been arguing over the interpretation of Psalm 131, I recall — and I was forced to win her back. If the cause for your rift is Bible-based, the simplest route back to the marital bed is to concede the point and move on. Have you found new lodgings? Proximity being vital, I urge you to find room and board near to your lady, the better to avail yourself to spontaneous wooing. Once her daily habits have been established, make it a practice to present yourself whenever possible. Unlike the great hunters of the plain, you need not hide in the bush — she is not an elk to be stalked. Rather, put on your finest morning coat and greet her as she walks outside to fetch the newspaper or leaves to do her daily market rounds. A lady also enjoys sentimental gestures. Perhaps a bouquet of periwinkles lodged in her windshield wipers, or a love poem discretely inserted into her mailbox after her bedroom lights blink off for the night? She needs to know that you’re not going anywhere.