Whoa, did time just slip up there? Seems like just yesterday I punched a stegosaurus in the knee and stole his roller skates. I attribute my lapse of several years to a bad taco.

The Blogosphere is indeed a changed place. For one thing, it's no longer called the Blogosphere, outside the hipster subculture. That's another thing that's sprung up, those hipsters. Let me tell you, I was decrying the mainstream zeitgeist when those sheeple were still in light-up sneakers, waxing their cowlicks for the third grade class photo. And what did it profit me? Self-satisfaction isn't very satisfying if you can't throw it in the faces of all those who irk you, past, present, and future. It's the future irkers I really can't stand; they sit in potential judgement, and always will.

So, how about that weather? Here at Roboshrub Incorporated we're doing our best — our absolute, level best — to contribute to global warming. When our founder's great-great-great-great-grandfather, Hiram Plutarch "Radical Rex" Roboshrub, left the company to his grandson because his son was an unreliable, amoral crackpot, his dying words were: "By golly, I sure love Venus. Try to make Earth more like it, won't you?"

At the time it was thought that beneath its bright clouds, Venus was a woodland paradise. Now we know better, and we've answered Radical Rex's cryptic clarion call to chlorinate the chaotic oceans. That's why it was just so disheartening when that pesky polar vortex slithered across my America like a snake on a skating rink. Fortunately, my Director of Heat assures me that global warming just means more extreme weather, not perpetually warm weather. I disputed that, and immediately hired a new director who has vowed to change the climate to be more favorable to my viewpoint. It's already working, if my divining rod is any indication.

In conclusion, hello. It's been great seeing you people again — except for you (you know who you are), but I've got to run. They're opening a KFC in my honor in Beijing, and if I'm late I won't get a free biscuit. Parting advice: keep a sweater nearby at all times, especially the beach. And get a haircut, you hippie.

You’ve got big feet — admit it. And it’s hard to find the time to care for those feet right and proper, is it not? Are you constantly shuffling, trying to circulate blood through those podiatric pests? Do your footfalls get heavier over time, the stubby toes of your youth gorged to a pasty and callused husk as those sub-abdominal albatrosses fatten themselves?

“Just once,” I’m sure you say to yourself while on line at your local grocery store, “just once I’d like a cashier to tell me I have the feet of Baryshnikov.” Yet you’re willing to suffer your hooves because nobody has presented you with a viable option for long-term foot maintenance. Feet age and mutate. They adapt, growing like goldfish to meet their accommodations.

Wearing bigger shoes only exacerbates the situation. Larger socks blind the foot, but the resulting shrinkage in offset by sock costs. A certified doctor at the prestigious National Institute of Socketry recently released the results of a 2007 study confirming just that. Faced with such justified scientific pessimism, you might feel helpless. Yet, one must resist the urge to cover one’s ears and stare down angrily at one’s ever-enlarging feet. There is hope!

Our solution comes from a more controversial field of discovery. While researchers are still analyzing star charts and tiny light bulbs to determine how the universe started, a long-discredited theory underpins our newest product! “The universe is, always was, and ever shall be.” — this was the mantra that echoed the halls of higher thought until the better part of a century ago. Today we realize that this is obviously false, having asked God directly. However, the concept of persistence — of a universe unaffected by the passage of time — was so intriguing that one of our own staff managed to scrawl out a design of a product to achieve such an effect, shortly before the unfortunate soul was disemboweled by his future self.

Presenting the Static State Stockings: you put your feet in, and they cease to exist in our universe! “Cacklin’ cobras!” you’ll cry as these cotton coverings cup the corns of your chitinous clodhoppers, coupling creature comfort with cosmological conniving and careful, competent craftsmanship. What you’re feeling isn’t warm or cold; neither soft nor scratchy; there is no pinching, and no slack. You are on a plane beyond pedestrian clamminess, and your copilot is a lifetime warranty card.

Once the leg staples are permanently affixed, your lower extremities are forever shunted to a parallel reality where they, frozen in time, will no longer interfere with this season’s fashions. This will also increase blood flow to the face and hands, causing intense swelling and the growth of unicorn horns, which four of seven Minnesotan cattle masseuses agree is medically acceptable. You don’t have to take “no” for an answer — demand that your doctor stuff your stocking this year with a pair of Static State Stockings.

Static State Stockings contain 32% cotton, 4% nylon, 2.5% wool, and less than 1% copper. The remaining percentage is vacuum. WARNING: do not, under any circumstances, turn your Static State Stocking inside-out or throw them into the ocean. Roboshrub Incorporated is not responsible for Static State Stockings lost at public laundromats. Consult Steven Hawking before use.

If you are receiving this post, then I have failed to create an adequate tale of hardship and eventual triumph this month, due to forces beyond my control. As I write, the remnants of Hurricane Irene, and the infrastructure left ragged in her wake, conspire to again blot out the flow of satiating electricity that courses through this hungry keyboard.

While the sporadic loss of power is not as troubling as having an uneven hot dog to hot dog bun ratio, I have always balked at the hulklike fury of those insolent Atlantic hurricanes. I'm sure that whatever I come up with next will be... oh, potatoes! The hurricane found where I live! I must flee!

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