Either I’m a giant Scrooge, or this is a giant racket.

Can someone please explain to me why, because somebody chooses to get married, or have a kid – two undertakings that are, with a few notable exceptions, elective activities – I am required by law to shower them with gifts?

Where is it written that I am compelled to reward people for managing to turn 13, or for getting through high school with that impressive 1.7 GPA, or for deciding to produce a short film about gay rodents? Aren’t these activities that should engender their own sense of internal pride/joy/accomplishment, and not require commemoration with online donations, Chipotle gift cards and training bras?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not always this cranky and cheap. Contract a disease, get hit by a bus, lose a loved one, find your home burned to the ground by a chain-smoking hobo, and I’m your man. I will throw money at you like twenties would smother the flames. People who are suffering through no fault of their own deserve all the love and support – financial and otherwise – we can give them.

And I can even get behind two twentysomethings who are coming together to form a household for the first time and really, truly need things like duvets and crock pots.

But this whole, “We’ve decided to have a mini-me and now you need to reward us for bumping uglies til the job was done” business, or the “This is our third wedding but, for gift purposes, let’s just pretend the first two didn’t count” nonsense, or the “Please give us money so we can do a project to further our own careers, but don’t expect to own a piece of it or anything” schemes are a crock.

I recently went to a gay engagement party for a friend and his partner. I love these guys – they’re funny, charming, kind people who I’m sure were not at all aware that their gift request could be construed as mercenary. But they do not plan to actually get married. They are in their 40’s. This is not their first time at the relationship rodeo. They both make six figure incomes. They already have two homes together. And yet, they asked that, in lieu of toasters, we give them money so they can make another $8,000 trip to the South Pacific – like the one they just had three months ago.

Several friends have asked me to contribute money to their personal creative projects – short films, web series, that sort of thing. In theory, supporting someone’s creativity is a beautiful thing. But I don’t ask people to donate money so I can take six months off to finish my second book.  Is it really appropriate to expect others to pay for your dream? I have a dream for ya – a dream that one day, I can give all my spare money to people with tumors, and crime victims, and families whose houses are currently floating around the Pacific ocean.

Oh, sure, I DO reward all these things. I buy wedding and baby and graduation gifts, and I give to people’s creative projects, and I do it all with love and good wishes and hearty congratulations.

At least, to their face.

But I’ll tell you, it makes me NOT want to invite any of these people to my bookstore events when my second book comes out. It makes me NOT want to ask them to take time out of their busy lives to come sit through a reading. And then stand in line for half an hour to have me sign the book. And pay $24.95 for the hardcover when they could get it for half that through Amazon.

It makes me NOT want to ask them to repeat what they all did, so very thoughtfully and generously, when my first book came out.

Oh, hell.

I sure would like to buy a graduation gift right about now. Is somebody looking to get hitched?  Anybody got a kid being bar mitzvahed?

Is male menopause a thing?

I had one of those mornings earlier this week where any sane person would look at me and say, “You best be havin’ a hot flash ‘cause child, you’ve lost yo’ mind!” (Apparently, all the sane people around me are Southern black maids from 1964.) I was cranky, spiteful and snippy.

Mind you, this unpleasantness was all happening in my car on the way to work, and I was alone and my windows were rolled up, so no one was the wiser unless they could lip read at 40 miles an hour.

But still. I was in a foul mood, and I not generally one to be grouchy.

You see, I’ve always been in the “You get more flies with honey” camp, although I would personally prefer a Shell No-Pest Strip with a bunch of dead flies stuck to it. My motto has always been ““Smile, and the world smiles with you”, even if I have encountered a few people who, while you’re busy smiling, try to wedge a turd into your mouth. 

So when I’m around other people, I always try to put on a happy face. But sometimes, when I’m alone, I just find myself in a really lousy mood.  Maybe I’m actually a horrible person, and this is some sort of chemical reaction to spending my public life trying to be nice all the time. Or maybe I just have stresses, like everybody else – a lawsuit that has dragged on for three years, an ailing mother, the feeling that an alternate me is living a much more glamorous life on another plane of existence – you know, the usual stuff.

But whatever the case, I gotta drag myself out of this sporadic morning morass.

Yoko Ono was on the radio the other day. She wasn’t singing – to the delight and gratitude of Americans everywhere  – but rather, talking about how she pulled herself out of her desperate sadness after John Lennon was killed.

My first thought was that she drove out of DespairLand the way most people do – via fistfuls of colorful anti-depressants. But they weren’t really a “thing” in 1980. No, the way that this BeatleBuster managed to climb out of the dumpster of depression was – I’m not kidding – by smiling.

Every day, she’d drag her ass out of bed and stand in front of the mirror…and smile. At first, she said, it felt super phony (of course, when you look at yourself in the mirror after age 40, what smile isn’t fake?). But as time went on, grinning into the mirror helped to genuinely lighten her mood. And she began to discover the enormous power of a smile.

Maybe I should try this in my car. Maybe, if I can smile for everyone else, I can smile for myself. Maybe, just showing a few molars in the mirror could lighten my heart and remind me how fortunate I am and how trivial my problems are in the grand scheme of things.

And most importantly, maybe then I wouldn’t have to worry that I’m undergoing male menopause. Because I’m way too young and moist for that.

Shut up.

Does anyone know how many people are murdered each year during home renovations? Offhand, I’m guessing about a million. And most of them probably had it coming.

My partner and I are remodeling a couple of bathrooms in our house. (If you saw them, you’d wonder why we waited this long.) To be clear: we’re not doing the work ourselves. Although I assisted my father in all manner of home building projects as a kid – “assisted” being a relative term since I mostly just sat on a cardboard box eating Ding Dongs and recapping episodes of Wonder Woman – this valuable how-to information apparently went in one ear and out the other, because I can barely turn a screw without requiring an instruction manual and emotional support. (My employees may disagree on my ability to turn a screw.)

And my partner, who actually has a lot more common sense than I do, is, in this case, also useless. We have to call a handyman to replace toilet seats and security light bulbs on the roof (the security lights are on the roof, not the toilets – never mind).

I’ve always called my other half a Useless Mexican, since he’s third generation American and speaks less Spanish than I do, but I now have to add Useless Home Renovator. Really, what’s the point of marrying a Mexican if he can’t build anything? (Oh, I’m sure he has any number of “Useless [insert noun here]” labels for me as well, but fortunately he doesn’t blog, so it takes him a lot longer to spread the slurs around.)

But I digress.

The irony of this situation is that not only are we not doing the work ourselves, but we haven’t even begun the actual demolition and reconstruction process. And that’s usually the point – when people have to shower in the back yard with a hose, or scrape tile dust out of their crack – that they begin to scream and cry and consider the legal ramifications of shooting someone with a nail gun.

34 times.

No, in our case, it has been the process leading up to the point where construction begins that has been fraught with challenge. Because redoing a bathroom from scratch requires agreement on décor style, layout, tile, lighting, vanity and fixtures. And each of those elements, I have discovered, gives the other person a delightful, even welcome opportunity to comment on who you are as a person.

And who Sandy apparently thinks I am, as a person, is a bully.

Now, don’t misunderstand. It’s not that I want my way, come hell or high water – I just want my way and I want everyone to be happy while I’m getting it. Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to expect that others just sit there and shut up and let me make my exquisite design choices? I have extraordinary taste (just ask me), so they (my partner) can rest assured that the room in question will be handsome and tasteful, if they (my partner) would just back off and let me pick everything out. It’s really the outcome that will make everyone the most happy.

And by everyone, I mean me.

You’d better start drawing the police tape around us now. You can find the bodies buried under the beautiful new tile.

It’s me, again – Otis, your highly evolved and wondrously humble link to the exciting world of angelic/human intervention. I say “intervention” because, much like that A&E show with the soccer mom crackheads, we spirits spend most of our time trying to get you people to STOP doing things. Amazingly, you all don’t generally seem to have a problem getting off your butts and doing stuff, it’s just that you always seem to be doing the wrong stuff – like bath salts or liters of vodka or barfing up your lunch. I don’t know what is in the water down there, but you guys seem to LOVE making yourselves feel like crap.

Okay, that’s not true – I DO know what’s in the water. I know a crapload of stuff, I’m just trying to be modest and make you feel like I’m on your level so we can bond. Truth is, of course, that I’m not on your level, but I once was, although that was thousands of years ago. (Actually, time doesn’t really exist, but I’ll save the quantum physics for a slow news day.)

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Since I’m new to this blog and you may be new to the whole concept of angels, or spirits, or really any life form beyond those badly designed human ones, let’s start from the top.

Oh, before I get into the whole Guardian Angel business, I should probably mention that Eric, the guy who normally writes this blog, thought I was being really presumptuous when I criticized God’s creation of humanity.

“Are you kidding me with this?” he said when he read my comment. (I post these blog entries for him to read before they’re released to the general public so that he can feel like he has some control, which, trust me, he’s really big on.) “You can’t go around criticizing God’s creations, that’s super arrogant.”

“Sure I can,” I responded. “He appreciates the expression of opinions. Up here, disagreement is exhilarating. Besides, I’m only criticizing the human body. What a piece of crap.”

“Criticizing God’s work just makes you sound snotty. And jealous.”

“I’m not jealous of those second-rate spacesuits. Those things suck.”

“Spacesuits?” Eric said.

“Well, that’s what human bodies basically are – containers that hold the spirit. And I’m sorry, there really should be an exchange policy, because those things wear like shit.”

“Stop being crude.”

“You say shit all the time.”

“I’m human,” Eric replied. “You’re supposed to be more evolved, or whatever.”

“It’s just language. And frankly, the word communicates rather effectively, doesn’t it? Look at a 90-year-old human body and tell me that thing purrs like an 18-year-old’s. It doesn’t. That is some f’ed up wear and tear.”

Eric harrumphed. “I give up.”

“By the way,” I added, “remember what I said about God wanting you guys to call him Lloyd?”

“I can’t,” Eric replied. “It just sounds weird.”

“Weird, shmeird,” I said. “You’re only upset because it takes all the air out of cuss words. Lloyd-damn just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?”

“I don’t say that word.”

“Yeah, you’re saintly,” I chuckled. “You should be sitting at the right hand of Lloyd.”

At that point, Eric closed the blog, so I’m not even sure if he read the rest of my entry. So, as a professional courtesy, I’ll save the rest for next week. Lloyd knows, Eric will have something to say about it.

This website has a “guest blogger” in residence for a bit. (It’s hard to say no to someone who can watch you go pee.)

See the entry below.