Some of you may have noticed that my byline – not to mention my biting satirical wit – have been conspicuously absent from the site for a couple of weeks. You may have seen spelling and grammatical errors in sharp decline as a result. You may also have noticed that I have been largely ignoring your various pleas for technical assistance. Let me explain what I’ve been doing instead: nothing.

Sometimes a guy just needs a break. The pressures of managing a moderately-trafficked satirical website can be colossal, the pressures barely endurable, as I’m sure you can all imagine. It takes an individual with nothing less than Herculean levels of fortitude and super-human intelligence to do what I do. Those spelling errors and stuff? They’re because I don’t type with my hands. I type with my mind.

But even those of us so naturally given over to leadershi due our vast wealth of insight and expertise need a moment from time to time to collect our thoughts. And, also, when you go to spend a holiday in Florida with your family and suddenly your mother wants to pay for all your shit again and there’s a beach and a pool and bong-like containers filled with a cool, fruity concoction that so lowers your inhibitions in social situations as to earn you a trip or two to the free clinic, well, needless to say one is not compelled to spend a whole lot of time installing Wordpress plugins in that scenario. Though maybe it would have better if you had.

In any event, I haven’t been blogging. But that certainly hasn’t stopped me from thinking about blogging and, of course, thinking like a blogger. So, join me after the jump while I go thru some of the stories I set aside during my, you know, break or whatever, in the style that not only made a man out of me, but likely put me on a DHS watchlist as well: the round up. Oh, and if there’s a problem with your fucking gravatar, send me an email.

• Hey, you know what’s like way less complicated than destroying Afghan poppy fields? Not destroying them. [Raw Story]
• Listen, 60 is a hard birthday for everyone, but at least you can look back on a prosperous life making the world a better place for all peop – well, at least you can look back on a prosperous life. [Guardian]
• John McCain, it turns out, is one of those douchebags who voted for Nader. [Huffington Post]
• When millions of lives hang in the balance in the critical days after your country has been ravaged by an indescribably destructive act of nature, there’s an old saying about letting foreign aid workers in to do their thing: better late than never. [AP]
• There’s a very subtle distinction between merely taking money and accepting a bribe. It’s very complicated and we’re not going to get into here, but look, best to leave the politics to the professionals, mmkay? [Reuters]
• It’s real considerate of Cindy McCain to look out for her money’s privacy. After all, when vacationing in a Camen Islands tax shelter, who wants to be disturbed? [Seattle Times]
• And for those of you who take great comfort in your daily routine, here’s the same story you’ve started your morning with every day for the past four months. [AP]

I’m off to Syracuse University commencement so as to be present when they bestow the Wasserstrom Award for, I think, having sex with an astonishing number of graduate students to this year’s recipient. I think I’ll be back before June.