Joey M: Your blog has been a little sparse lately.

Me: Yeah.

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Come back, Athens, I didn't mean what I said!

I'm hitting a snag with developing comedic material. A stand-up comic can work for an entire month at various clubs and night spots and come out with only 5 minutes of usable material. Essentially, jokes are re-told and refined until they become reliable enough to include in an act.

I don't like re-telling jokes. I don't even like repeating a joke I just made for someone that might not have heard it.

And I'm very paranoid that I may just be covering old ground. I was eating a bowl of Cocoa-Puffs last night and I began to lament the loss of the really cool prizes that would come in cereal boxes.

So I look inside the box and printed on the cardboard is a coupon that you can cut out and send to Betty Crocker to get your very own shiny new pair of scissors. Actually, it was a whole set. You would get four pairs of scissors by sending in this box top.

What a wonderful idea. Let's feed the kid a cereal that is the nutritional equivalent of a grande mocha double latte and then hand him a pair of scissors.

No, wait, let's give him four pairs of scissors. Yes, yes, he can hold on in his right hand, one in his left, I guess he can carry the third pair between his teeth. Hmm...where to put the fourth pair?

I know! Just jam the fourth pair directly into his eye. That'll save the kid a lot of unnecessary running around.

I hope the prize in the next cereal box is an eyepatch.