As I go about my day, giving judo chops to the elderly and juggling my busy schedule of posing nude for numerous magazines and instruction manuals, I sweep away all of the years and years of expensive therapy and think back to my childhood. Long before finding the Hodgepodge Society, I would spend my days with my family, working in a sulfur mine in the badlands of Pennsylvania. My Mother was a saint, taking time out from mining the precious sulfur (PA's chief export at the time) to raise my brother and me and teach us the ancient arts of kickboxing, haiku poetry and microwave cookery. My Father was a strapping man of virtue true. He had made $450 million dollars after inventing the pacifier for babies (before that children were punched directly in the mouth to silence them), but he burned his fortune in a huge bonfire in the front yard of our shack after learning that Benjamin Franklin was, in fact, not a president. But through all of the arson and the lawsuits and the false imprisonments, my father always had a nugget of wisdom to pass on to his children. I'd like to share a small portion of these shiny nuggets (Dad calls them “Brain Babies”) with all of you:

Always keep a nickel in your boot. That way, when the Spanish come to claim your home, you'll at least have 5 cents to your name.

The one thing you can't trust more than a narcoleptic leprechaun is your Uncle Leroy. He's been a' stealin' my erotic novels!

When I was a child we didn't have weapons grade plutonium to make ourselves sandwiches! We had to use plain old gray matter, plucked from the heads of drifters. We called it Hobo Butter.

We can have fun on a rainy day. Just hand me that shovel and sit around in a circle. We can play Duck, Duck, Coma!

There are only three things you need to be happy in life. A good home, a good woman, and a solid gold jetpack that will take you to Mars where you can be king of the Martians and no one there will care if you opt not to wear any pants on a Sunday. That's why it's the Lord's day!!!

Aint' nothing can cure a cold better than sitting in a tub full of grits while your mother and I watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kan in the other room.

God makes earthquakes because you won't stop thinking about that pretty girl in your class.

If you don't take care of a vole infestation in it's first week, then you can just kiss Easter goodbye.

It doesn't matter what you do with your life, just so long as you don't need to borrow my Vespa.

Go to school, study hard, and get straight A’s and THEN we'll talk about the release of your puppy.

You'll never make a Scotsman do your taxes unless you make him a proper brunch.

Make sure you've always got at least one communicable disease. I can't tell you how many jaywalking tickets that's gotten me out of.

If there's one group of people you can't trust, it's cereal mascots. Capn' Crunch raped my lawnmower!

There's only one woman in this world worth lusting after...and that's your mother....and if you go near her I'll kill you 17 ways before you know you're dead....that woman's mine.

As long as you've got a handgun and a pocket full of subway tokens, fun is NEVER far away.

And there is so much more. My childhood was a blessed one, full of magic and dreams and sleepless nights where all I can do is scream to keep the shadows from choking me to death. If only I could go back in time and relive those magical days in that infernal sulfur mine. {sigh} Memories....

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