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The boss’s son got a Mohawk haircut yesterday. After inspecting the results, I decided to google some background information. Turns out, the origins of this popular hairstyle are not nearly as clear cut as you might suppose.

The earliest known Mohawk was found on the headbone of an iron-age Irish “bog body” known as the Clonycavan Man. Modern paleontologists were very lucky to discover this well-preserved haircut. I mean, what were the odds that an ancient Irishman would go down to his local pub-henge for a pint and then fall into a body-preserving peat bog on his way home?

Okay, maybe luck wasn’t a factor.

An interesting aside here: scientists examining Clonycavan Man found French plant oil and pine resin in his hair. As you undoubtedly know, these are the two primary ingredients in a modern hair-care product called Aqua Net®.

After the Iron Age, the Mohawk moved to colonial America. It did not, however, become a member of Mohawk nation. Early French explorers who reported seeing Mohawks wearing Mohawks probably saw Wyandots wearing Mohawks. This is an understandable mistake. Today, French explorers searching for Celine Dion and Michael Bublé concerts often mistake the Mohegan Sun Casino for the Foxwoods Casino.

In the modern era, the Mohawk has been worn by many celebrities, including the boss’s son. Mr. T wore it in all three of his popular roles — Clubber Lang in Rocky III, B.A. Baracus in The A-Team, and Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, in Hamlet. All members of the seminal punk band The Plasmatics wore the Mohawk. None of them ever fell into a bog, either, although Wendy O Williams did fall into the mosh pit.

Well hello everyone.

First, I would like to apologize for my recent lack of blog posting (unless this lack of posting was good thing, in which case I would like to apologize for this apology).

Somehow, over the course of time, I convinced myself that blog posts should be “interesting,” and that if they could not be “interesting,” they should not BE at all. Kay-rist, what was I thinking? Blogs are all about uninteresting posts. Blogs are places where our low expectations are NEVER exceeded, where unnecessary exposition ALWAYS fails to move the plot forward (largely because there is no plot to move), and where the blogger (me) supports every ridiculous point with three examples separated by commas. This last thing, I promise you, I will do AT LEAST ONCE in every paragraph.

[Applause.]

My friends, if a Tolstoy novel is the tumble dryer of language, then my blog is the lint trap. It is a place to collect the stuff that clings uselessly to the useful (but damp) stuff, a place to use annoying acronyms like LOL and BOM and BYOB, and thirdly in this list of THREE SUPPORTING EXAMPLES, a blog is a place to use bad metaphors without shame, particularly those which compare the literary arts to common household clothes-drying appliances. Oh, hell, I don’t even know if that dryer bit WAS a metaphor, and I don’t care, because, dammit, I’m a blogger! Yeah!

[More applause.]

Settle down now and pay attention. I want to tell you (in excruciating detail) about my formative years. Long ago, before my hair fell out, I was a boy without a blog, a boy scratching boring stories into the dirt with a pointed stick. . . .

I’m holding a scratch lottery ticket in one hand and my cellphone in the other hand, and I’m steering the JesusChrysler with my knees. I can’t see the road because I’m tailgating a garbage truck.

It’s a TrashCo truck. Paper is flying from it’s back end and fluttering down around me. Apparently, TrashCo removes paper from the bin at the end of your driveway and then recycles it onto the streets of your neighborhood. No matter. It takes more than fluttering paper to stop a JesusChrysler.

At the traffic light in the center of town, the truck turns right and I turn left. Before I can straighten the wheel, I hear a pop, and my right front tire starts flopping like Manu Ginobili. I limp into Jimmy’s Gulf station.

Jimmy is an experienced auto mechanic. He explains complex problems in terms the average guy can understand. “Cars do two important things,” he tells me. “They go and they stop. If your car stops going or stops stopping, then you’ve gotta bring it to me.”

“But if my car stops going, how am I supposed to bring it to you?”

Jimmy ignores the question. With a pair of pliers, he extracts three nails from my flat tire. He says, “Dick Dastardly & Muttley used to pull shit like this in that Wacky Races cartoon. It’s a simple but effective way to eliminate tailgaters.”

“Those guys quit the cartoon gig,” I say. “They’re driving a TrashCo garbage truck now.”

Jimmy patches the tire and gets me back on the road. As I resume my commute, I wonder how many other law-abiding tailgaters will be sidelined by TrashCo today. Anyone could fall for their junk — the fluttering paper up high, and then the tack attack down low. They got me—I admit it—but it wasn’t because of their little distraction. I was much too busy with my phone and my lottery ticket to fall for a cheap stunt like that.

Kevin Bacon has zero degrees of separation from himself. If you ask me, that’s a little to close for comfort.