Ah, Bert.
Knew the guy since, hell, All our lives. Work, Army, college, school. First thing I remember is Bert and me, playing in the dirt in our back yards.
Damn, I feel old.
Yeah, I’m the executor of his will (which reminds me, I’m making you mine, okay?)
Problem is, halfway down it, he asks to be buried with his trumpet.
Trumpet? What trumpet?
You remember any trumpet?
I don’t.
Seventy years, I knew him. No trumpets.
Piano, sure.
Maybe it’s a typo.
Piano. Trumpet.
See?
We’ll bury him with his piano.
Here’s a shovel.
We’ll dig over here.
Stamp
I can’t remember the last time I needed a stamp.
I pay my bills online with online banking.
I send electronic cards to most people. Okay, some merit actual cards, but postage is prepaid by Hallmark now.
Heck, when was the last time I needed a letter at all? Those are also electronic messages, through my email or via a phone or some instant messenger program.
Oh, now I remember: I had a cut on my finger, and I didn’t have a bandage.
Then, I fell asleep, and someone dropped me into a mailbox.
Clunk.
LET ME OUT OF HERE!
The Music Of The Stairs
The music teacher in my high school was rather avant-garde.
Instead of learning to play our instruments in the traditional sense: blowing into them, stroking them with various implements, or smiting them with mallets in some semblance of rhythm and meaning, we tossed them down a flight of stairs to listen to the odd beauty of the cacophony.
The school administration tolerated his madness, and since the instruments were already in bad shape, tossing them down stairs was significantly less expensive than repairs.
It was when he filled in for the drama teacher than they had to let him go.
Tough Break
They say Harvard is tough, but I learned medicine at the Jersey School For Doctors.
Doc Fontanelli asks the class what’s the difference between a twist, a sprain, dislocation, and a break.
The students, they all got their combs out, did their hair, checked the cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves.
So Doc grabs Vinnie by the arm with both hands, gives it a yank, and Vinnie goes down with a yell.
“That’s a dislocated shoulder,” says Doc.
He proceeds to twist Vinnie’s elbow, sprain his wrist, and break his nose.
“The nose ain’t a bone,” moans Vinnie.
A plus.
Fluffy Cat
Fluffy doesn’t look as much like a cat as what a cat might cough up.
He’s all fur, and unless he’s walking around, it’s hard to tell one end from another.
We’re not too sure how he sees through all of that.
And when it’s dinner time, he waits until we’ve left the kitchen before he goes for his bowl.
We find him in the strangest places.
The sink. A punchbowl. Inside a boot.
We thought about getting Fluffy a companion, so we picked up one of those hairless cats.
They sleep curled together, Yin and Yang extremes of hair.
Delay
Howdy, y’all.
I broke my elbow today.
Orthopedic surgery is scheduled for tomorrow.
They will reset the bone and put some pins in there.
So, the Weekly Challenge will be delayed by a day or two.
Thank you for your thoughts and patience, and the next Weekly Challenge topic will be “broken.”
I’ll post a formal Topic post once I am semi-functional and back home.
Keep Sharp
Legend has it that the Grim Reaper sharpens his scythe by the light of the moon.
Bull.
First off, he’s got a whole set of scythes.
As for sharpening, he’s too busy. So he drops some of them off at my store every week and I handle that for him.
Sometimes, it’s a rebalanced handle. Ergonomic grips. Or reinforcing the blade mounts.
Nothing’s worse than having a blade come loose in mid-stroke.
He swings, he misses. That’s what you’d call “A brush with Death.”
With rotation and maintenance, it won’t happen again.
My service is a cut above the rest.
Half
The optimist thinks the glass is half full, while the pessimist thinks the glass is half empty.
Me, I drink everything out of a shot glass, and the bartender is always around to slide more my way, or he leaves the bottle there and we settle up the tab at the end of the week.
It doesn’t matter if the bottle’s half-full or half-empty either. The bartender keeps more in back, and his distributor runs an all-night liquor store a block away.
One time, all the shot glasses were in the dishwasher.
Except for the one in my pocket.
Cheers!
Shiver
I go down to the vault, turn off the lights, close my eyes, and meditate.
The robotic forklifts use magnetic guides on the floors and on the shelves, so they don’t need light.
Nor do they need to beep when the lights are off. If there was a person down here to warn, the lights would be on.
Their motors and lifting forks sound strange in the dark, shifting crates from the loading dock to the shelves, and then from the shelves to the showroom conveyors.
We keep it cold down here.
I shiver until I have achieved total peace.
Artists
We name our office printers after artists.
Matisse was very slow and you can see the dots in the rendering.
Pollock was just downright messy, leaking ink all over the place.
Van Gogh would cut off every so often.
Warhol never got many print jobs, but it served as an excellent copier.
Renoir’s colors were far too bright, and it cost us a fortune.
Breughel and Bosch were a nightmare to set up and keep running.
And the less said about Mapplethorpe, the better, okay?
In the end, we gave up and sent all of our print jobs to Kinko’s.