You know, with all the media hype about catholic priests and the boys who love them, an important fact has been getting overlooked in the public dialogue: Presbyterian ministers give the best head.

Yeah, I'm back. There's a good reason why I've been gone so long -- I had to quit drinking. Doctor's orders. I don't have any health problems, he just thinks I'm an asshole when I'm drunk.

I do one more.

Another reason for my extended absence was due to the mistake I made of going back and rereading a dozen or so of my columns. It seems I suck about 80 percent of the time. Why make so much effort when I'm only batting .200? Why not quit and go on the Bob Uecker circuit, where I can at least sit in the front row? Why not go back to producing music, where Uecker references go largely unexplained and mainly untolerated, and where if you get bogged down in a baseball analogy and can find no dignified means of escape you just slap in a guitar solo?

I do one more.

A few weeks ago, I rented Horsefeathers, the Marx Brothers movie. Guess what? Groucho sucked 80 percent of the time as well. Sometimes it got ugly. During one hotel scene, a woman wearing a sweater enters the room with a block of ice and Groucho says, "So. Trying to pull the wool over my ice, huh?" Spare me.

I do one more.

Yeah, I was beginning to remind myself of the old poet who used to show up at the Chicago House in Austin for the poetry open mike and stretch his five-minute spot to 17 minutes, rambling on and on in the miserable-ass prose he was trying to hawk as divinely-inspired. I was the bartender and moderator of the open mike, but every time I gave him the get-the-fuck-off-stage sign, he'd smile and wave while assuring me he was about to conclude with his favorite catch phrase:

I do one more.

Still, I missed out on some great stories while I was gone, including the winter Olympics. Too bad. I would have written about Rulon Gardner, the Greco-Roman wrestler who won a gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics by defeating Russian champion Alexander Karelinn. Not content with his 15 minutes of fame, Gardner tried to upstage the winter competitors by getting his fat ass lost in Wyoming. NBC reported that the corpulent farm boy "found himself alone in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization." Give me a break. That's everyone in Wyoming.

I do one more.

I also missed the trial of the Texas woman who drowned her five kids because she forgot to take her medication. Hey man, I'm pro choice, but that was just plain sloppy.

I do one more.

Yesterday, I helped terrorists smuggle explosives into Third World countries. Thanks to me, innocent people were gunned down in the streets, and battleships were deployed off the coastline of the Persian Gulf. I also helped finance the sale of Cuban cigars to fat bald men. What did I do, buy drugs? Fuck no. I filled my truck with gasoline. Both tanks.

I do one more.

Worst of all, I missed writing my annual Easter column. Too bad, because I think I finally understand the symbolism behind the crucifixion. It's not about the redemption of human pain and suffering. It's about God on a Stick. Makes sense. If you're going to have a personal savior, you better make damn sure he's portable.

Yeah, I could have written about so many things during my three-month hiatus. Lack of material wasn't my problem, it was lack of motivation. After watching my mom die last summer, having my step-dad die this winter and learning my brother would be shipped to Botswamma (or wherever... it's classified) I pretty much stared into space for a few months. It's a war zone out there.

Hey, it's not like I make money writing these rants, so there wasn't a lot of pressure from family and friends to get back in the saddle. More commiseration about my plight, really. "How do you do write that stuff every week?" Which really translates into, "Why do you write that stuff every week?"

I really don't know why I do this. Probably because I can. And I don't know how long I'll do this, either. Probably until the system throws me off the new all-AOL/MSN-only Internet. Beyond that, there is absolutely no game plan. It's week-to-week. So tell your friends about this site while you can, because who knows when it'll be swallowed up into the great dot.com abyss. Stay tuned while you can.

And I'll do one more.