I submit for your approval the following essay written by me a few days ago at work. I was tired and in a mood. But alas gentle reader everything I say is true to how I feel.

Chickens are stupid. They get up way too early. Why any sane creature would crawl from the comfort of their warm cozy bed before late morning without threat is beyond me. But I’m nocturnal so I’m biased.

Getting out of bed at 6:30 in the blessed AM on a day that temperature outside is only 19 degrees Fahrenheit is, I believe, cruel and unusual punishment.

What’s great about the morning anyway? It’s dark and cold. Use just left a state of existence where you believed you believed you could fly and make sweet love to lots of really attractive people to enter another state where you just realized you have a pimple on your butt. Why must reality be so real?

Breakfast is horribly overrated. Now I just confess I do love the foods usually associated with breakfast. I just prefer to eat them for lunch and dinner. You see though my body and what’s necessary of mind to make my body function may be roused alongside the poultry, my stomach is more belligerent. My tummy refuses to conform to the man and his ways.

There’s nothing on TV in the morning. Unless you’re infatuated with Katie Couric, not that there’s anything wrong with that, morning TV is annoying. All morning TV is insipid at best. Regis, Kelly, Dr. Phil, Oprah, the entire cast of The View all can go very far away. I find it vaguely disturbing that these clowns are making millions and yet we argue about funding PBS. Of course I’m enough of a realist to realize that the bar for television is set somewhere in the vicinity of a snake’s ball bag. But still can we do no better than this mindless prattle? I know TV as a general rule sucks but morning TV is especially mind-numbingly bad.

Morning radio isn’t much better. Why radio programmers think wacky DJs are a good thing is one of life’s great-unsolved mysteries. I seldom if ever feel anything even remotely resembling wacky. Even when I’m at my closest to feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed I feel nary a twinge of wackiness. So I have very little use for silly shenanigans before I’m even coherent. Mercifully the good radio stations play music to ease my transition from comatose to incoherent. There is nothing like good music to change your outlook on life. A particularly energetic number can even make my morning mood, to paraphrase the great Canadian band Rush.

Speaking of the band Rush that makes me think of that blow hard Rush Limbaugh and that makes me think of talk radio and that’s another thing I avoid in the morning or for most of the day really. I will admit that occasionally listen to Randi Rhodes and Laura Flanders on Air America because they’re amusing and chicks with attitudes are kind of sexy. But as a rule I avoid talk radio. Most of the hosts are morons who spout the party line and are usually horribly rude. The people that call in to these shows are, I shall say this in the most polite manner I can muster, lunatics. “President Bush is the greatest president ever!” “President Bush is Satan incarnate.” “President Bush is really a Martian.” This is not what I need to hear in my morning haze.

I know loads of people who just love NPR. As much as I want to like NPR it’s just too damn laid back. I swear we could cure every kid with ADD by just having them listen to NPR. It’ll do more than calm them it’ll put them into a coma. I know that the pharmaceutical companies will never ever go for it. Sedation is not what I need in the morning.

You’d think being such a white-hot lump of apathy in the morning I’d be a caffeine addict. I’m really not. I do have a deep affection for iced tea, but I almost never drink it in the morning. I enjoy a soda from time to time but it would make me want to puke if I drank one before noon. Coffee is just flat out gross. The few times I have consumed it I had to mask its flavor with so much sugar and cream-like substance that it looked and tasted like really sweet wet sand. The odd thing is coffee smells really good but it tastes lousy. That’s just not right. It reminds of when I was a wee lad. The cocoa powder in the cabinet always smelled so good. So one day I took a spoonful of it. I don’t believe I will ever forget that day. The taste was the absolute opposite of the smell. The smell was sweet and rich. The taste was redolent of old dirty underwear. This is how I feel about coffee.

I knew I was going to have bring these people up and I really don’t want to. I find them to be despicable. Outside of rapists, murderers and corporate criminals I find them one of the few people I’d ever consider putting to death. I even hesitate to mention them aloud. Gentle readers please brace yourselves. I give you, God have mercy, perky morning people. Why these people even exist is beyond my tenuous grip on reality. What mutant chromosome these people have that makes someone perky at all much less before noon is confounding. Good Lord in Heaven, I find nothing for irritating then when I’m standing there in my morning lobotomy induced haze and some perky little ray of sunshine walks up and try to get me all perky to. God, I could just choke them until they are sixteen shades of purple. Now chickens I can forgive for being morning creatures. I mean they’re diurnal animals. It’s their nature to rise with the Sun. So they are forgiven. Plus they are just so tasty. I have a hard time hating anything delicious. Anyway, perky morning people are evil. They are sent here by Satan to cut my life short. I figure the stress these idiots have caused me has taken at least five years off of my life. So I seldom seek or welcome the company of strangers in the morning. Lest they be that most foul of demons, perky morning people.

I’m going back to bed.