All right, all right – it’s a goddamned disastrous, incredibly, horrifyingly shitty economy. There…feel better? Did I set the mood right?

The Feds lowered interest rates by half a percent this morning and countries around the world followed with their own rate drops. And surprise, surprise… the Dow is down 100 points this morning. I can tell you for absolute certain to stop watching the news. No more – if your flipping through the channels just gloss right on by. Okay, you can stop at the Spanish channel as usual, telling your wife and kids that it’s for educational purposes – but goddammit…NO MORE NEWS! Beside the rapes, shootings, car-jackings, murders, and babies found in dumpsters, now the nightly news brings you the Stock Market report – and ten minutes of that will get you dizzier and sicker than any psycho ride that the maniacs at Six Flags could ever dream up.

You need to start having some fun again. WE need to start having some fun again. And I’m thinking nationally sponsored play days for adults across North America. Like maybe the entire country stops on Wednesday at 2pm for a Beer Pong exhibition. Or mandatory poker tournaments at lunch. And in keeping with this blog’s recent hysteria, how about a nationwide Cougar hunt? If this inane little place could stir up that much excitement, can you imagine getting the heteros across America for competition that would be oh so sexist and oh so neat? We’d be like 12 year-old boys, oogling and drooling while the pup-tents in our chinos reside at full salute for days on end.

When was the last time you picked up a Frisbee? How about pissing off your neighbors by jumping in their freshly raked leaves? Wear a football helmet all day in work. Stick orange peels in your cheeks and talk like Marlon Brando for a week. Talk in the third person to everyone you meet – that always weirds ‘em out.

Practical jokes could be a nice diversion. Clog up one end of the drinking fountain in your office so the boss takes a shotgun water streamer up his shnaz. I’ve always been partially to whizzing into an apple juice jar and leaving it in the fridge for the taking. Come on guys, the more juvenile, the more fun. Squirt giant mouthfuls of whipped cream into the mouths of all the dogs in your neighborhood and watch them get carted away as the fear of some god-forsaken plague has hit rural America. And what could be a better laugh than the old flaming bag o’ dog poop for that neighbor who really needs a dose of burnt shit on his Nikes. God, that one is a classic.

The best practical joke…EVER… when I was a kid we lived in an apartment complex – the type where each building has four units with four doors across. Well, my dad was a high school teacher and one day a group of prankster students got him pretty good. All four doorbells rang one evening and everyone went to their doors to see who was there. When my dad opened our door, sitting there on the welcome mat was a full sized toilet bowl! It caused quite a commotion, or commode-tion, and half the neighborhood was outside our home, gawking and snickering. Then old lady Helen Bigbee decides to lift the lid. “Ahhhhhhhhh!…There’s a turd in there!” Yep, swear to God, the enterprising little bastids left the gift of nature for all to enjoy – a fresh, steaming load, courtesy of the local degenerate youths. You gotta admit, the kiddies should have got an A+ for ingenuity and a great practical joke for a “crappy” economy..

I think a truly great thing would be if the best comedians in the world got out there and did national tours – kind of like the old ‘entertaining the troops” mentality. Or a good rash of comedy movies to come out of Hollywood could be swell. We really don’t need Oliver Stone’s new flick about George Bush…do we? I mean righ now, when we’re already cranky and our collective fuses are frightfully short? We need to laugh, people, laugh and live for the day.

The point here is… again – none of us can do a damned thing about what’s going on in the economical world so we’d better make a vow to enjoy what we DO have in our lives. You’ve got to learn to live for right now – not for when things get better – but for RIGHT NOW – because RIGHT NOW is all you’ve really got.

Have a great day my peeps, and FYI…the chocolate in the candy dish is Ex-Lax.

Tommy Z.

JR CIGARS Blog With the Zman