alling the jurors who acquitted Robert Blake last week “low-grade retards,” District Attorney Steve Cooley’s post-trial sour grapes rose to a level rarely seen in our modern, politically correct era Thursday during a 40-minute interview with reporters. Cooley delivering a rambling, profanity-laden tirade punctuated by “Fuck Yous” personalized for each member of the twelve-person jury, each one more cutting than the last.

“This was an open and shut case,” fumed Cooley. “What did they think, that Blake really forgot his gun in that restaurant exactly at the exact same time somebody decided to shoot his batshit grifter wife in the back of the head? I’ve heard little autistic kids come up with better lies than that. I hope none of those jurors have children, sheesh.”

“God! I can’t believe how stupid you people are!” Cooley continued, as if the jury was assembled in his presence. “What did I have to do, put a black cowboy hat on the guy? This was one evil, wife-killing dude! Was his wife not pretty enough? Maybe if the papers hadn’t used those pictures of Bonny shoplifting that watermelon we might have got some jury sympathy. I can’t believe they were all huge fans of Our Gang.”

“Did he really say ‘a pack of inbred monkey-fuckers’?” asked legal expert Chelton Baines. “I hadn’t heard that part. Wow, that’s strong language.”

After the formal interview ended, Cooley continued his onslaught over drinks with this reporter at a nearby bar.

“I swear, this human bungwipe made O.J. Simpson look like Tom Selleck in An Innocent Man,” griped Cooley further. “Or if you haven’t seen that, think of the guy from that Harrison Ford movie.”

“Did you see that juror in the first row? Was he actually eating paste during the trial? Somebody told me it was mashed potatoes, but who brings a jar of mashed potatoes for a snack? That guy was four genes short of a wardrobe, no doubt.”

An assortment of legal experts, however, contend that while Blake was definitely guiltier than a morbidly obese fox in a chicken processing plant, attorney Cooley may have, in legal terms, “screwed the pooch” in his handling of the prosecution.

“Aw, settle down, Steve,” countered Blake’s attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, in a separate interview not held in a bar. “The fact of the matter is, Steve bungled this case. Sure, MENSA wasn’t beating down these jurors’ doors, and many of them had to have basic legal terms like ‘trial’ explained to them numerous times, but I don’t think anyone was ‘clinically brain-dead,’ to use Steve’s term. I mean, what did he expect after parading all those junkies, snitches and piles of walking human shit up onto the witness stand? I’m surprised he didn’t subpoena Jose Canseco or Scott Peterson. What, were Benedict Arnold and the boy who cried wolf too busy to drop by?”

“Playing ‘Blame the Jury’ is the oldest cop-out in the Lawyer’s Handbook,” agreed smug attorney Nelson Arbuckle, waving a copy of the Lawyer’s Handbook. “Everybody knows the jury is just a blob of stupid putty that you need to mold into a coherent mass of guilty-voting.”

“Anybody who doesn’t know that doesn’t deserve to wear the Lawyer’s Ring,” concluded Arbuckle, brandishing a gaudy turquoise ring on his pinky finger.

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My dearest Deidrebane, it pains me acutely to have to write you this column and expose our personal goings-on to the somewhat wider audience of the world at large, but I can't find any of our personal stationary and I'm not about to go tearing up the entire house when the computer is right here.

Simply put and plainly typed, your new children have become a nuisance.

I can only assume these children were adopted by you on one of your recent humanitarian skylarkings, some time while my attention was turned elsewhere, say to the televised gladiatorial matches or to Bolivian chicken racing, whose season is now thrillingly underway. I know you claim these children to be the fruits of your loom, or loins, whatever it is you have down there nowadays, but needless to say, I find this to be horrifyingly implausible. To the best of my knowledge your plumbing has not been snaked in a generation. And word on the street is that things are drier down there than a jerky stand in the Sahara. For the sake of decorum, I shall fail to go into the gruesome details, though believe me when I say the word is out.

I can only imagine how our first wave of real children feel about this latest batch of imposters, suckling at their mother's dry, unproductive teat. Wherever they are, Deidrebane, out in the world making their fortune or spending ours, it is surely a sad day for them. If I could remember their names, I would send my condolences by post card or fruit basket, whichever we have in stock at the moment.

And no, I will not refer to these new hangers-on as "our" children. I fell for that trick once, many years ago, and shant repeat my folly. I'm quite convinced I never had anything to do with the first batch, and so I'm not about to piss my markings onto these latest home-invaders. These are your children, Deidrebane, and I've had enough of them playing "bakery" with my angel dust collection.

Firstly, there's the matter of your oldest new son, Montpellier, who I recently heard through the grapevine was kicked out of the Hentwistle Correctional Facility for Incorrect Boys. It had been my understanding that Hentwistle was nothing more than a nicely-named prison house, and if they're offering expulsion for misbehavior these days I fear for the message this sends to baddies and goodies alike. Montpellier must truly be a special child.

But the one sycophant I truly cannot abide is your new young son, Cartegney. This one is really the tops. Just last week he got into my gun collection, and you don't need a fertile imagination to discern what happened next. That's right; the child organized my guns by model number, then put them all away neatly in the gun safe! Now what am I supposed to do if I need to shoot something in a hurry?

I shall fail, I fear, not unlike your newest daughter Steenburgen when she tried to bake us an anniversary cake last week. You can say what you want, but if a child doesn't understand the concept of needing to bake the cake before hiding yourself inside, I say she has a valuable lesson to learn from the skin grafts. I know I've kept nothing but fond memories from the summer I spent as the Human Torch at a county fair in my youth, and not just because the unpleasant parts are either blacked out from my memory or masked by a thick curtain of Vicodin.

No my dear, these new children just aren't working out, and I think it's time they were sent back. Dig up your receipt and return them to the adoption cart at the mall or Kids "R" Us or wherever it was that you picked up these wayward moppets in the first place. I would rid our house of them myself, but my plot was already foiled by Cartegney, who informed me that the car I had loaded them all into did not have an adequate safety rating and regardless, he was too young to drive. So do what you must, Deidrebane. I won't have these precocious ragamuffins pointing out the folly of my planning. Now if you need me, I'll be in the den, watching the Crusades on pay-per-view.

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"It takes a nation of millions just to keep a shitty sitcom on the air."

My dad once told me, "Boy, it takes a smart man to get a job these days. But it takes a good man to…" At that point the dog had gotten firm hold of his throat and I couldn't understand what he was saying anymore, but it was probably something about a good man knowing when to admit he's wrong or something. That dog came out of nowhere, now that I think about it.

Dad was a grease monkey, but he preferred the term "motor-fixin' ape." That was as good as he could talk everyone into calling him anyway. He worked at the garage down the street, fixing in any broken cars they would bring in. Or not fixing them, if they were difficult or took a long time or something. He wasn't crazy. But my dad always used to say, "Son, a man with skills is a man who can…" Something. I don't remember the rest of it. I only heard the full version once or twice, usually some birds would crash into his head or a marmot would leap out of a garbage can and latch onto his goodies like a vise.

It doesn't really matter, because a man with skills is probably a good thing, is what he was meaning, and I don't have any. It's not a big downer to me at all. Some people are good at certain things, while I'm good at not being good at anything. It bothered me when I was little, then I started spending a lot of time in unventilated rooms that were just painted. Now I don't worry about anything. Maybe age makes you wiser. Budweiser. Sure, I could go for one about now.

The best thing about not being able to do anything is that nobody calls on you to do them a favor. No one gets pissed if you can't remember who called while they were out because they know your memory is shitty. No one asks to help you move once they know you drop stuff like it's chili pepper hot and their furniture is all expensive. No one asks you to cover for them if the boss shows up because they know you're not even good at lying. So if you see the bright side, it's better not being able to do anything.

I guess that's one thing I do well, see the bright side of everything. Like when life gives you lemons and you make lemonade, then you taste and realize someone pissed in your lemonade. I'm the kind of guy who says, "Well, now I know what piss tastes like so I'll never have to wonder." Then the kids tell me I spoiled all their fun and they won't sell me anymore lemonade, even with piss in it. But that's just more money I can spend on mouthwash. Always a bright side, dudes.

But if that's one thing I do well, now I gotta worry about people bothering me to do that. "Hey, Loser—I just woke up with a hobo's dick in my mouth. What's the bright side of that?" I've created a whole new avenue of work for just me.

Sometimes I really am a dumbass.

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