Every now and then, a visitor to the Holy Land will lose their mind, act like they’re Jesus or some other holy figure, and cause a ruckus.
Experts call this Jerusalem Syndrome, and it’s usually just some other condition like schizophrenia or paranoia manifesting itself.
And then, there’s the times when a visitor to Graceland will lose their mind, act like they’re Elvis or Priscilla or The Colonel, and cause a ruckus.
Experts call this Nashville Syndrome.
Well, publicly.
Amongst themselves, they stick out their tongue, roll their eyes, and wiggle their finger next to their ear.
Experts are pricks.
Category: My stories
Morley’s House
Old Man Morley built himself one of those underground houses.
They say that’s better cooling, but it’s not good for lighting.
He put in a skylight in the living room. and there were solar panels and fiber optics to carry in sunlight.
And he had some plasma televisions here and there for scenery.
The energy savings he had from building underground was more than offset by the energy costs of the televisions and lights.
And a security system to deal with the tourists, of course.
Trick or treaters would bang on the skylight, demanding Snickers.
Morley turned out the lights.
Where do you get your ideas from?
Where does Victor get his ideas from?
He gets his ideas from the well in the woods.
Armed with a sword, he goes there every morning with a bucket.
Along the way, he dumps out any bad ideas left in the bucket.
Then, when he gets to the well, he sends the bucket down and pulls it back up with fresh ideas.
The problem is, those bad ideas find root in the darkness of the woods.
And they grow… and grow…
One day, a bad idea whispered in Victor’s ear…
“You don’t need that sword.”
We haven’t seen Victor since.
Sodastream
I bought a sodastream a few years ago for the office.
A coworker and I made Italian sodas every few days.
Then, the coworker left, and the pandemic hit.
And I didn’t pick up the sodastream until I left that job two years later.
The bottles were missing. The canister was out of gas.
So, I swapped the canister for a fresh one, got some flavorings, and picked up replacement bottles.
The bottles didn’t fit in the machine.
They were shaped for a newer version.
I had to order the old style bottles.
All this to save money on sodas.
Pillowcase
There are so many different pillows on the market.
Feather pillows, cotton pillows, foam pillows, and so on.
Some are hypoallergenic. Others draw heat and moisture.
They’re stuffed to varying degrees of firmness, too.
The same variation goes for pillowcases.
Cotton, silk, special fabrics.
They all serve their purposes.
And each has their special laundering instructions.
Would you combine a memory foam pillow with a silk pillowcase?
Hell no.
So, forgive me, warden, if I continue to complain about the pillow and pillowcase quality here.
And the laundry.
But this kind of shit got me here in the first place.
She sat alone
She’d been alone for years.
She thought she’d never find someone special.
And then, he showed up.
He was perfect.
Handsome, strong, patient, understanding.
Too bad he wasn’t real.
She’d dreamed him up.
And even though she could see him, hear him, feel him…
He wasn’t real.
But it didn’t matter.
She went to dinner with him.
She went to the movies with him.
She did everything with him.
And when she introduced him to her parents, and he got down on one knee, she said yes.
Two days later, he sat by her hospital bed, holding her hand, smiling.
Summoning marks
I don’t think of them as Registered Trademarks or Copyright Symbols anymore.
I think of them as demonic R’s and C’s that some angry intellectual property lawyer’s wizard summoned from Hell.
Thankfully, they used the proper magic circles to bind those monsters and prevent them from running amok.
The problem is when they summon a regular Trademark Symbol from Hell.
That TM shows up without any protective circle.
Sometimes, they use protective parentheses, but that leaves the TM two avenues of escape.
I don’t feel so bad about a intellectual property lawyer getting slaughtered, but the wizard didn’t deserve it.
Clubbing
Shelby loved to go clubbing.
The more exclusive the club, the better.
A bodyguard at the door.
Checking a list. On a clipboard.
Or some app on a tablet, a finger to an earpiece.
That was a good sign.
Then a roped-off section with another bodyguard.
Down a flight of stairs, or up a glass elevator.
Up a mountainside, or a cavern only reachable with scuba gear.
Blindfolded and shoved in the trunk of a limousine.
And then, the greatest of all clubs.
Nobody knew its name. The city. Or the country.
Shelby searched for years, but never found it.
Madden
John Madden had three rules for his team:
Be on time, pay attention, and play like hell.
And his players were on time, paid attention, and they sure played like hell.
One of the Madden rules wasn’t “Wear a suit and tie on the plane.”
He said that kind of crap never won a damn game, so he didn’t care what they wore as long as they wore their pads and jerseys on the field.
As long as they were on time for the flight.
I wonder if Madden’s Raiders still alive will wear suits and ties for his funeral.
School supplies
I started with a simple 8 crayon box.
I saw other kids with 16 crayon boxes and felt jealous.
So, I got one.
The next day, all the other kids had 24 crayon boxes.
When I got mine, they all had 32 crayon boxes.
The next day, they had 64 crayon boxes.
With built-in sharpeners, no less.
The 72 box came in a neat case.
The 120 box was made out of rich Corinthian leather.
And 152 box had a combination lock and alarm system.
We all still drew like fucking idiots.
And the crayon company got richer and richer.