Happy Easter to all! Hope it’s a good one, if you celebrate it. If you don’t, you’re only really missing having to reach for the 2-liter Pepsi over a gigantic lamb body part. We’re spending this Easter with the woman’s family, which secretly depresses me, but not to the point where I’d once again use the excuse of this probably being some sick old person in my family’s last Easter and thus getting a pass to stick with what I know. Whatever, Sopranos is on tonight.

What you see above is the official giant inflatable Marshmallow Peep, which I’ve now left plugged in outside of my parents’ house as a sort of reminder to all my siblings who will be visiting there today that I am much cooler than any of them could ever hope to be. With the Peeps People now realizing the cultural phenomenon they’ve created, it’s opened the floodgates for more Peeps Action than anyone would’ve ever predicted — and I think that a 3′ inflatable yellow chick Peep just might lead the parade of new products. Bought this beauty for just fifteen bucks at Party City, and to be honest, I would’ve paid twice as much because, Jesus Holy Mary, INFLATABLE GIANT PEEPS! At fifteen bucks, I only expected the barest of bones, but was happy to learn that the official Peeps seal of quality extends not only to their many edible products, but all of the toys, doodads and INFLATABLE GIANT PEEPS of Peepsdom.

Thing comes with a plug that keeps your I.F.P. perpetually bursting with air, and it’s the kind of decoration that’ll make even the lousiest Kraut at your party flash bright teeth.

Between the Peeps, the fact that even Mounds and Almond Joy have created Easter versions of their chocolate bars and my unending obsession with split-apart plastic eggs, I think I’m going to toss aside any reservations I had about the holiday and spend more time writing about it next year. When I started the site, there wasn’t a terrible amount of truly interesting Easter candy — now it’s right up there with Christmas and Halloween, if not even more so. Somebody’s been paid off.

Course, there’s one tradition I’d never skip out on — the coloring of the Easter eggs. Last night was spent making eggs pretty with two of my visiting nephews, and we were charged with making eggs for every child in the family who is going to be at my parents’ party this afternoon. I’m kind of glad I won’t be there, because we made some seriously sick, ugly and vile Easter eggs. Almost every egg is dark and monstrous, abstract, cracked and appearing like we-the-artists had channeled Edvard Munch. I can’t say I’m proud of the fact that my four-year-old niece is going to receive an Easter egg based on Freddy Krueger this afternoon, but Will Smith don’t need to Fred eggs to Easter them, so fuck him, and fuck you too.

I did make a few prettier eggs…

Found a few packages of “Nerds Shrinkles” several months back, and they’ve really been the only reason I’ve looked forward to Easter since. Based on the candy brand’s big-nosed mascot creatures, the kits provide an easy method of winning every Easter egg art competition in the country with as little fuss as possible. Each kit comes with an assortment of plastic egg slipcovers that perform very Shrinky Dink-esque magic tricks when placed in boiling water.

The package suggests letting them sit in the boiling water for three seconds, but they shrink down and glue themselves to eggs the second they hit the hot steam. It’s a lot of fun, but I’m wondering how fruitful this is since most kids aren’t allowed to fuck around with pots full of boiling water. At least, that’s what Bugs Bunny used to say in that old commercial.

End result: Mega awesome Nerds eggs.

With one experiment marked as a success, I went after another. The backs of each Nerds Shrinkles package included a cutout coupon for a forty-cent discount on any regular sized box of Nerds candy. The coupons are from 1986, but they’re clearly marked with that heavenly “no expiration date” tag. So, while at the grocery store picking up all the things we promised our families we’d bring today, I gave it a shot, and…it worked! Easter really is a time of miracles, or time for miracles, whichever sounds righter and corrector.

I hope your Easter is merry. Discuss your own celebrations in the comments.

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!