Uncle To The 26th Power

Pull my finger: Something tells me that at least one of these guys is somebody's

batshit-crazy uncle. So this is what I have to look forward to.

Greg:

I'm going to tell you something that may surprise you. These letters that I write to you are not private. In fact, they are "posted" on a "blog" called "Dear Gregory" where literally "hundreds" of "people" "read" them.

Now let me tell you something that will surprise you even less. Our niece Morgan gave birth yesterday at 5:10PM to our newest grand-niece, a linebacker of an infant girl (8 lbs. 10 oz., 21") named Mina. That brings our nephew/niece total to 26. We are now uncles to the 26th power.

Just stick with me. All of this seemingly disparate information does have a singular point.

Back to the "blog" issue. Last month, I installed sophisticated tracking code on this blog which enables me to see exactly how many people are reading it and exactly wherefrom. It also tells me which installments get the most "hits". (Ask me to slow down if all this heady technical jargon is too "much" for you.) What I have discovered from reading the data produced by my new analytics tool is that people everywhere simply love farts. As a matter of fact, people love farts five times more than they love philanthropy. Here's my proof. Of all the letters I've written to you, the one about farts scored five times as many page hits as the lowest scoring page (which was essentially about philanthropy). And the "fart" entry set an all-time record for number of hits from any entry point - and - and - it was read worldwide. Wimbledon, Valencia, Madrid, Paris, Budapest, Beijing - all God's chilluns love they farts. Yes they does.

However, people read about farts much more quickly than they read about philanthropy. People spend about 3 minutes ripping through an installment on farts, whereas they spend a dawdling 16 minutes on installments about philanthropy.

OK, so - how does this figure in with the astounding number of nieces and nephews we have in common? Lord knows I can't even remember most of their names. Who are they again? Let's see if I can keep a running total - John's kids: Gabe, who has four kids, so that's five; Camiya plus her three kids - so that's nine - Brendon has two...or three? - I'll spot him one, so that's thirteen total now for that one sibling. You've got none, so that's easy. Sgt. Rock's kids: Phaedra - fourteen - Alowan - fifteen - Morgan plus one - sixteen, seventeen. And our sister - she has ten. Whoah, that's twenty seven! But that takes into account Brendon's extra mystery kid that I may have just made up (let's call him Shmendrick), so it may just be 26 after all. Well, anyway you slice it, that's a buttload of kids. It's like somebody got out the baby hose and sprayed it in every direction.

So with that many nieces and nephews of ours crawling the planet, it's a pretty good bet that some of them read this blog. And if they read this blog, then according to my fancy new analytics tool, they love farts.

Here's a tip, kids, if you're reading this: don't tell anyone we're related. You know why? I'll tell you. One day you're going to be somewhere, maybe somewhere far away, maybe some place where they read this blog, like China. And you're going to be in a Starbucks in Beijing and some guy is gonna come up to you and he's gonna say (in Chinese), "Hey, do you read 'Dear Gregory'?" And you're gonna say, "Read it?! I'm freakin' related to that guy!" And then all of a sudden the guy's gonna point at you and scream "You love farts!" And then pretty soon everybody in the place is going to be screaming "you love farts!" in Chinese. And you're gonna feel pretty crunchy. And then they're going to put you in a labor camp where you'll be forced to build the Victory Over The Fart-Loving Roundeye Memorial Dam. And that'll pretty much be it for you. Done deal. Game over.

Look, all of this may sound like lunatic ravings to you and there's a very simple reason why it does: because it is. But every little kid out there needs to have a crazy uncle who spews rambling, nonsensical yarns to the point of glossolalia, don't you think? A friend of mine had an Uncle Carl who used to raid buffets at the funerals of complete strangers while wearing a Santa hat. Nobody said shit to Uncle Carl and he was always well fed. Never had a grocery bill in his life. People gave him a wide berth and a bottle of suds and let him be. I learned from Carl's example that pretty much anything you want is attainable, provided you're willing to compromise a big, thick slice of your dignity to get it. I always wanted an uncle who was about that nuts. Then one day I looked around at a crowd of my nieces and nephews who were laughing their fool heads off because I had my suit on backwards and was talking gibberish, and you know what I realized? I realized that crazy old Uncle Carl was me. (Only thing missing is the Santa hat. -Ed.) So yeah, with 26 (27?) nieces and nephews, I figure I have to be able muster up enough crazy to go all the way around.

I'm rambling now, but like I said, that's exactly what crazy old uncles are supposed to do. They're supposed to ramble and tell fart jokes. So far I'm doing pretty damn good, dontcha think?

Pull my finger,

-Thaddeus