You probably get seven or eight of those coupon packets in your mailbox every other day, like the Czar does. The Czar recently returned to his Muscovy home, having been living out of the Castle for the last several weeks, and got caught up on a mound of mail.

Fact is, there is a really phenomenal pizza place near here that puts coupons in all these mailers with varying expiration dates. So the Czar collects them, because the pizza is ridiculously inexpensive, and the coupons are for free delivery. Perfect. Now, mind you, this isn’t that crap pizza you get all over the US, or even the fattening, largely inedible stuffed pizza we force onto tourists but never actually eat ourselves: this is the real Chicago pizza you don’t find North of the Loop. Unless you ask.

Well, we digress. Point is, the Czar likes to go through the coupon packets and pull out all the coupons for this particular place. No, don’t write in and ask where it is. You know enough about the Czar already.

We digress again. So, we are going through these packets, and two things seem to have gripped the marketing world in mortal terror:

1. Leaves. Specifically, leaves in gutters. Can you imagine anything so horrible? Right now, millions of leaves are jamming up your gutters, crushing, collapsing, until under their combined weight they ignite into a superheated plasmoid mass, or—worse still—form a neutron star. Of course, you could be foolish and get up there on a ladder once a year and scoop ‘em out, but that is just plain idiotic. Don’t you know what happens to people on ladders? They fall, usually to their deaths, often landing on others, killing them, too. One guy in Des Moines climbed up on a ladder, and half the county was instantly struck dumb and blind! Why would you do this to yourselves, your loved ones, your neighbors? No, you should install a leaf guard over your gutters, and sleep perfectly knowing full well that your house can now withstand an EF5 tornado.

2. Air Ducts. God help you if you neglect a thorough cleaning of your air ducts every week. Oh, sure, the fact that heavily pressurized air goes through there and basically blows out all the dust weekly means little when you have to look into the face of a mother and tell her than her entire family has pneumoconiosis, lupus, or syphilis they contracted from an uncleaned air duct. You need to have your air ducts cleaned. If you do not, entire hordes of Roma gypsies, Irish tinkers, and Yukio Mishima readers will quickly gather in there, setting up entire communities, with microeconomies, eating your garden, and stealing paper clips from your desk drawer. It’s that serious. Here is a picture of a dust mite, enlarged to dinosauroid proportions, crushing homes and pooping out noxious chemicals all over our community’s clean water supply. “Unleash the Dust Mite Kraken,” shouts some Titan, as flaming apocalyptic debris rains down on what used to be your leaf-guarded guttered home. You do have leaf guards on your gutters, don’t you? Because you really should.

Thank goodness for the pizza coupons. The Czar has neither leaf guards on his gutters nor thoroughly clean ducts. For the record. He loves living on the edge of madness.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.