First and foremost, please accept my apologies here in advance for any whoopsical wordplay that may occur throughout the duration of today’s column.

Did you see that? Whoopsical?! That’s not even a real word! It’s kind of a goofy hybrid between whoops and whimsical, and it might be worth adding to the dictionary because it is kind of a fun word to say, but nonetheless in the meantime whoopsical is not a word! And frankly, that’s exactly the kind of thing that I’m talking about!

I’m not necessarily proud to admit it, but today’s humor column comes to you a bit loopy, a bit trippy, dare I say a bit high … which might be a lot more fun if it wasn’t for the horrendous mind-numbing, tear-invoking, humor-columnist-crippling pains that are currently cascading throughout my back. And I can’t even say that it was caused by a really cool reason like climbing mountains or wrestling grizzly bears, but apparently office chairs can be just as brutal as forest bears because according to my dear, old doc, just sitting around, doing what I do everyday is what did me in this time…or my back, rather…

Now the good news is that not only are my wounds healable, but even more importantly in the meantime the doctor was kind enough to hook me up with some really good painkillers! Hey, if I were him, I wouldn’t want to have to worry about me bugging him at three o’clock in the morning about how much it hurts, either. That’s what he gets for daring to have a last name, knowing that I have extensive access to yellowpages.com…

Of course, being all hopped up and happy as I write this, my big fear is that this column is going to become one of those things that you have to be all hopped up on painkillers yourself to enjoy. Actually, that’s a fear that I have even when I’m not under the influence while I’m dealing out the funny because let’s face it – the hopped up on painkillers demographic is an awfully small one to target, and even if you did bother, it’s not like they have any money anyways!

So with any luck, both for my own sake and from the looks of this column apparently yours as well, hopefully these little spasming back troubles of mine will be relatively short-lived and soon I’ll be able to return to the land of those who are only medicated on the weekends, and even then via cocktails instead of prescription painkillers. In the meantime, I think I’ll manage with a minimal amount of pain – these pills seem to tame the back hate to a level tolerable at least enough where I can surf the Internet and watch TV, which is pretty much what I’d be normally doing around here anyways! I probably won’t be out driving my forklift or kicking it around with the good, old wrecking ball anytime soon, but alas, these are the kinds of physical sacrifices one must make when they’re flying high in order to narrowly avoid severe and horrible pain!

Have a whoopsical day!!!