Well, guys, it looks like my luck has finally turned!

It looks like after sixteen months of living in a murky sewer pipe, subsisting solely on red brick and tattered goomba shoes, and renting out my Smiley-Cloud Buggy to student drivers, that the wheel of Fortune has finally spun in my favor!

Yes, sir, things are coming up Lakitu!

I have to admit, I was getting near the end of my rope. And I don’t mean this tattered rope that I use to fish for Bloopers, though it certainly has seen better days. I mean I was thinking about killing myself.

I know, I know. How could I? I’m not ashamed to tell you that after my wife kicked me out of our cloud house for not being able to support her and the kids, I thought about ending it all. I even thought about how I was going to do it: I would toss myself down one of the millions of unnecessary ravines we have in our Kingdom until I ran out of lives.

I thought about tossing myself beneath a Thwomp, too, but I had a second-cousin – a successful kart race host, no less – do that and live. He’s heavy-duty retarded now and lives with his sister. I guess that’s the shitty side of having a shell.

It doesn’t matter. The suicide option is officially off the table. When Mrs. Lakitu sees me soar into the driveway with this green juicy morsel in tow, she’ll have no choice but to forgive me!

Then the kids, if any of them are still alive, will follow suit. Everything will go back to the way it was. It’s a fresh start! A respawn!

Redemption, thy name is Green Mushroom!

Of course, a feast fit to feed all seven of my kids for a couple weeks isn’t going to solve all my problems. There’s still some patch work to be done with Ms. Lakitu – nothing a little Wiggler in her Dry Bones can’t fix -  and then the search for a real job resumes.

I used to have a great job. I worked at the Mushroom Kingdom Department of Sanitation. I made great money (3 coins an hour) with great benefits (I had my own Toad intern), but all that changed with that spiny-backed turtle-lizard socialist motherfucker King Koopa came to power.

That fire-farting piece of shit decided that our time-tested parliamentary system of government wasn’t good enough for us and that he should be the sole decision-maker. Really? We should take orders from some punk rock megalomaniac who calls himself “Bowser” and has seven illegitimate children?

(I still can’t believe we let this guy into office after how he pardoned Morton Koopa Jr. over those  rape charges.)

Of course, the people rebelled when they found out that he’d been using tax dollars to build giant flying buggies with clown faces painted on, but he sedated them by placing boxes filled with coins all over the city.

Genius, right? Everyone who can jump gets free money! Well, let me give you an economics lesson, Monty Mole: when everyone has money, money becomes worthless. And that’s just what happened. The economy crumbled like a bridge over hot lava.

The Kingdom made enormous big budget cuts. They had to. All giant board game parties were canceled, Peach’s castle was rented out to Fire Flowers Anonymous, and me and twenty-seven of my co-workers were unceremoniously sacked from the sanitation department with zero unemployment benefits.

How was I supposed to feed my family? I could barely afford to feed Toothy, the pet pirahna plant. We were forced to rely on our survival skills, of which I have none. I have tiny legs and the survival skills of a Shy Guy.

Again, it’s pointless to dwell on the past. The important thing is that we’re out of those dark times. There’s nothing but bright, happy days in my future once I get this green mushroom to my starving family!

Faster, smiley-cloud, faster!

Man, this thing is a piece of crap. It’s one of the older models, which tend to drift in and out of reverse for no reason. It’s no fun when trying to avoid a pack of Bullet Bills, and makes it really hard to parallel park.

There it is! I can see my neighborhood coming up in the distance. There’s my house! The lawn is a little ratty and our flagpole could use a good scrubbing, but it still looks like home to me.

Nothing can go wrong now!