Couldn't sleep the other night, so I wandered out to my very sad bookcase and bent down to fumble around in it in the dark. I've read everything in it a million times except for some inspirational book my mother had given me a few years ago. "DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts!" (Note hilarious pun). Part of the "Life 101 Series" and a New York Times BestSeller in 1974 or whenever the hell it was published.  Who is my mother to be dispensing inspirational advice?  I muse, but grab for it anyway.

I flip on the light and crack it open. "You are trudging along in life," it read, "lonely, but coping." Before I could even get a chance to argue the coping part, I see something black and furry launch off the adjacent page and latch onto my neck. I begin screaming hysterically and it responds by retreating into the depths of my wife-beater. I hurl the ten pound Let's Get Off Our Buts! into the wall, and it crashes through the sheetrock. Furry black thing exits my shirt and scuttles across my velour pants where it meets its (staged) death by my hand. It lies crumpled at my feet until I look away to regain my composure, at which point it springs back to life and begins running for the hills. I grab Let's Get Off Our Buts! and bludgeon him to death. Let's Get Off Our Buts! is now Let's Get Off Our Smeared Arachnid Carcass.

So two lives and a wall have been needlessly destroyed. Goddamn. See if I ever try to improve my situation again.