Category: My stories

Molly’s father founded AutoMan industries.
AutoMan robots are everywhere these days, including the mansion that Molly lives in.
Robot butlers, robot maids, robot nannies, and robot teachers.
And, most importantly, robot guards.
When they built AutoMan robots that could fix other robots, pretty much all that’s left job-wise is to design more robots or go into the arts.
A lot of people are out of work because of AutoMan, you know.
Angry, bitter people.
They break in to the mansion, trying to kill Molly.
But they only destroy her robot decoy.
Molly watches a monitor as the incinerators turn on.

Every Summer, Albert’s family would go camping.
And they took Albert’s cousin Bobby along.
Bobby had issues. Serious issues.
He went to a special school, well, more like a prison.
Whatever Albert was doing, Bobby would be there.
Throwing rocks at birds Albert was watching, ripping up interesting plants, rubbing poison ivy in Albert’s face…
Laughing all the while.
“Stay here,” said Albert, walking away.
But Bobby would follow him, causing more problems.
That night, Albert zipped Bobby up in his sleeping bag and dragged it on the fire.
Albert ended up in Bobby’s old room at the school.

Who’s the actor with the most credits?
Mel Blanc. The voice of Bugs Bunny and so many other cartoon characters.
Some guy in Bollywood has the record for actual appearances in film.
Then there’s Bill Mungo.
Casting agents went out of their way to cast Bill Mungo.
He was paid to be in hundreds of movies and television shows.
But every time, ended up on the cutting room floor.
Appearances? Zero.
He made a good living from it, enjoyed a long retirement, and he died.
When they did an autopsy, he fell off the table and on to the floor.

Danny started his first tattoo parlor in a run-down strip mall.
He did good work, built a reputation.
Used his savings to buy the strip mall, had it renovated.
Scrubbed, painted, resurfaced and lit the parking lot.
Classy and upscale.
One morning, he went to work and someone had tagged his window.
It took an hour to scrape and scrub off.
Camping out that night, he caught the tagger.
“Man, I have a right to share my art!” was the tagger’s defense.
So Danny knocked him out, put him in the chair, and covered his body with his own art.

Carole Lombard’s final film was To Be or Not to Be.
The producers removed her line: “What can happen on a plane?”
A month earlier, she had been doing a tour of the country, raising money for war bonds.
Carole’s plane went down outside of Las Vegas.
Everyone on board died.
Carole, her mother, the crew, the soldiers with her.
That can happen on a plane.
Clark Gable, her husband, flew to Vegas and waited for her body to be recovered.
They say she was pregnant.
Not to be, I suppose.
But I prefer Mel Brooks’ version of that film.

So, I like fancy soaps.
Ones that smell good and look good.
There was this shop at Disney World that had cool art soaps.
I bought a bunch of them.
But eventually, I used up the last one.
So, I looked up the store web site, and ordered more.
And they arrived.
Three days later, I get an email asking me to review the soap.
Six bars in 3 days? Seriously?
So, I said I loved them.
They were easy to carve into guns, and helped me escape from prison.
And where can I go to thank them in person?

My phone sends all callers to voicemail.
The ringtone is an empty sound file. So, it’s silence.
The carrier transcribes all my voicemail automatically and sends me a text.
Why call it a phone at all?
And since I rarely leave home, I rarely use the cellular capabilities, so why call it a cellular device?
Considering all the dumb answers I get from Siri, I ‘m not calling it a smartphone.
It’s just a thing that I use. While in my car.
My car has no keys. Just a fob and a pushbutton engine.
I should invent some new nouns.

A while back, I bought one of those tabletop gardens.
The one you can grow herbs in, such as lavender or flowers or basil.
A coworker had died, so I dedicated it as his memorial garden.
I wanted fresh herbs for my morning bagel at work, so I bought more gardens.
As coworkers died, I’d dedicate the gardens to them.
Eventually, I had enough gardens to maintain a supply of basil and chives for the bagels.
This Sunday, a coworker was murdered. But all the gardens were already dedicated.
So, I wiped off a name and replaced it with his.

Walter saw the good in everything.
Even in a horrible situation. Or in horrible people.
He wasn’t dumb. Just a little naive.
Always shocked and disappointed when the worst revealed itself.
He was gifted with perceptiveness. Good an anticipating things.
Maybe he wouldn’t be a leader, but he could find leaders and work through them.
That’s how he got by in the world.
Not like Rasputin and the Tsar, or Cassandra the ignored prescient, but more like an angel of a man’s better nature, whispering into his ear.
At the end of the day, clutching his teddy bear, falling asleep.

The Market rose, The Market fell.
But The Corporation kept growing, no matter what.
They always beat The Market.
Literally. They sent out goons with clubs to beat The Market.
They beat The Market into submission.
Then, they crushed The Competition.
They sent out large bulldozers and steamrollers to crush The Competition.
After that, they gobbled The Competition up.
Going out to the crushed bits of The Competition, putting napkins in their collars, and gobbling it up.
They cornered The Market, pushing The Market into a corner.
Which was easy, since they’d beaten The Market into submission a while back.