Category: My stories

They say that the grass is always greener on the other side.
The other side of what?
The other side of The Force?
Well, the good side of the force was in the Jedi Temple at Coruscant.
There wasn’t much grass on that planet.
Nor was there much grass on Mustafar, Darth Vader’s hideout.
What about The Far Side?
Gary Larsson drew it in black and white during the week, and only the Sunday editions were in color.
It turns out, they were talking about that movie The Blind Side.
Man, the grass at that rich private school was green.

We have an awesome back yard and patio, but the neighbor’s dog stares through the chain link fence.
When it does this, it looks creepy and judgmental.
So, we replaced the chain link fence with a solid wooden fence.
The dog still finds a way to get up on the fence and stare at us.
And it looks even creepier.
No matter how high we build the fence, the dog still manages to get up there and stare at us.
We moved to another neighborhood.
No back yard. No patio. No fence.
And, thankfully, no creepy dog staring at us.

There’s a difference between not liking a symbol and not liking the cause it represents.
I find the Isle of Man flag to be ugly, with its radial and rotational symmetry of freaky feet.
But as for the Isle of Man itself, I really don’t know much about it, nor do I care to learn.
Similarly, the Nazi flag also has rotational symmetry in the symbol.
It’s nasty. It’s sharp. And the people who use it are awful people.
I don’t care if it’s an inverted symbol for peace.
So, Clarence, these cookies are delicious, but I’m rejecting your design.

All the way back to the third grade, Miss Othmar’s class, you could see how Marcie would look at Peppermint Patty, calling her Sir.
Kids would talk, do horrible things.
You know how kids can be.
Patty may have been a tough tomboy in grade school, but when she got to high school, she started to blossom.
Marcie wasn’t cool with this.
Patty went on hormone blockers, had her breasts surgically removed.
She was scheduled for the bottom surgery when she found Marcie making out with Charlie Brown under the bleachers.
Patty killed them both with a field hockey stick.

I’m a technical writer.
But every now and then, I get asked to write marketing copy.
I’m not a marketing writer. I’m a technical writer.
My mindset is explaining things and teaching, not selling and promoting things.
The marketing people say give it a try.
So, I do. And it’s awful.
But we work on it together, and it comes out not half bad.
We do this again and again, and I feel myself change.
I fall to the floor, my body contorting.
The marketers howl at the full moon.
And I, the newest member of the pack, howl along.

If The New Yorker weren’t horribly biased, I’d imagine a cartoon where a reporter is poking her head into an editor’s office and asking if President elect is one word, two words, or hyphenated, and you see through the glass that the editor has hung themselves.
But The New Yorker is nowhere near that self-aware or capable of self-deprecation humor.
Hubris is funny, until it happens to you and your narrow world-view.
Besides, I’m sure some cartoonist has already tried to submit a cartoon like this.
No idea if the editor hanged themselves, though. But would you really be surprised?

So, the US Postal Service can deliver hundreds of fliers, pamphlets, letters, campaign posters, and other junk mail from every candidate, PAC, voter’s organization, and special interest, but they can’t deliver my ballot on time?
They claim it’s because of systemic delivery delays.
But if there’s systemic delivery delays, why is every flier, pamphlet, letter, campaign poster, and other junk mail being delivered before Election Day?
If there’s delays, this crap would still be arriving after Election Day.
Because it’s been delayed.
Everybody lies on Election Day.
And the lies are the only things that get delivered with any certainty.

So, the pandemic closed all the theme parks and the movie theatres.
People got laid off across the board.
But mostly the hourly workers, the people who do their best to help you forget the world for a while.
Waiters and waitresses, hotel staff, entertainers, shopkeepers.
The executives, on the other hand, gave themselves raises and retention bonuses.
All while begging for government bailouts.
They put together their reports to give to the investors.
All while the laid-off workers lined up at food pantries and toy donation lines.
Were they longer than the lines at the gates to the parks?

When the Union needed a place to bury all those dead soldiers during the Civil War, Lincoln had them commandeer Robert E. Lee’s house and estate so the enemy general could never go home.
Over the years, hundreds and thousands of soldiers and politicians and important people are buried there.
And then there’s the Kennedys.
Three alcoholic, drug-addicted date-rapists and the money-grubbing socialite that was already halfway out the door when the bullet splattered her husband’s brains across the limousine in Dallas.
An eternal flame burns at the site. The flames are much, much hotter where their eternal souls reside.

Whoever shot Ben and threw his body into the canal, we’ll never know.
He fell with a splash.
Ben floated downstream, and when he reached the High Bank Locks, the lockmaster took out Ben’s wallet, charged Ben the toll, and allowed Ben to float further downstream.
The lockmasters at Charm Fields, Fenton, and Greenmoor did the same.
Ben had just enough to get him to the river, and tourists took photos of him as he passed through Port Burke.
Eventually, the cops got involved.
Fishing him out of the water and arresting him for running the canal without a permit.