Listen, I don’t know if your appearances are tied to some sort of Halloween marketing ploy or if there was a convention called (that originated in the woods behind an apartment complex) that we weren’t aware of, but look, you’re freaking us out.

What’s worse, you’re embarrassing us.

This entire episode has been picked up internationally by the BBC, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and all the networks. And this, of course, is spawning copy clowns, because now there are upwards of a half a dozen sightings all over the place.

Here’s what’s truly mortifying to me. As a stand up comic, you and I are kind of related in a weird, ‘third cousin removed,’ sort of way, in that our professions are supposed to illicit laughter. But you’re not doing that.

OK, once: that letter from apartment management to residents that stated, “There has [sic] been several conversation [sic] and a lot of complaints to the office regarding a clown or a person dressed in clown clothing taking children or trying to lure children in the woods.” That slayed me because I’ve been under the lifelong impression that clowns are all actually persons dressed in clown clothing…but then, I only went to community college, so who knows? Anyway, it was the apartment management responsible for the laugh and not you.

And here’s the part that’s not funny at all: if it’s true you’re trying to lure little kids into the woods, let me just point a couple of things out to you. South Carolina, besides leading the country in houses being set on fire by giant deep-fat turkey fryers every Thanksgiving, also leads the country in domestic violence and murder against women, bullying, terrible roads and the worst drivers according to auto insurance companies.

So what you’re taunting is a demographic which includes many people incapable of articulating their anger, perhaps from a history of being bullied, who choose to vent with a weapon, instead, all the while chasing you in your size 20 floppy shoes, down pot holed roads at high rates of speed, into the woods where their neighbor/cousin/spouse will be happily waiting for your red fright wig to appear through the trees, from a deer stand about 20 feet up.

You think I’m kidding? One local reportedly already went after you with a machete before losing chase.

So knock it off, you hear? We’re done. Admittedly, we’ve enjoyed not having the lead story be about our presidential candidates for a couple of weeks, but now we’re done.

I’ve even started having nightmares. It began as a great dream: I was chasing one of you through my front field, tackled you, sat on your chest and pulled off your mask to reveal who you really were…

…a MIME!!! Shriiiiiiieeeeekkkkkk!!