Category: My stories

So, we all know where North is.
And where South is.
East, you can always keep going East.
Same with West.
But where is the top of the world?
Because there is no actual top and bottom of the world.
Or is that true?
It isn’t, okay?
Anywhere you sit when you’re feeling great, really.
Everyone who sits while feeling great is sitting on top of the world.
Except for Don.
He’s not a happy guy.
He’s always sitting on the bottom of the world.
We don’t like Don very much.
So, we tell him to stand up and leave.

I am a computer programmer.
I develop applications for companies.
But they have privacy policies with their customers, so I cannot see their raw data.
So, I developed a parallel universe.
I pull the data from that parallel universe.
Because the data is identical to the data in our universe, I have all the conditions necessary to test it.
Then, I delete the data and hand over my application.
And I hand it to the company in the parallel universe.
Sure, I get paid twice for the same work, but, sadly, I also have to pay taxes in both universes.

I saw Ken Nordine in a documentary of Tom Waits.
I looked him up… and… he’s dead?
Did I know that before?
One of the down downer downsides of having memory issues.
You forget that cool people died.
And, man, Ken Nordine was cool.
The Word Jazz guy, very cool.
But I guess, in a way, it’s a good thing, not knowing. Not remembering.
Because in spite of his having died, he’s been alive to me all this time.
And, just like my having forgotten he had died before, I will forget again.
Alive, until, again, I learn he’s not.

The good thing about having a laptop is that you can take it with you and work from anywhere.
Of course, you need cords for it.
Power cord. Network cable.
An external keyboard or trackpad.
Spare batteries for all these things.
So, it’s inevitable that you forget something important when you pack up.
Or forget something important when you’re finished there and pack up to go home.
This is why I always have spares of everything.
Except that I pack the spares.
And, of course, forget them.
Oh well. I just need spares of the spares.
And not pack them.

Freddy always went to his favorite restaurants.
But when a favorite restaurant would close down, he’d go another of it’s kind, but he never liked the new place.
The problem was, he’d always order “The Special” or “The Combination Platter” or some generic label for a dish.
Which he liked at his favorite restaurants.
But if his favorite Italian restaurant closed and he ordered it at a new Italian restaurant, The “Special” was something else.
Like spinach linguine instead of a sausage calzone.
When he was down to one favorite restaurant, he bought it.
“Don’t change a thing,” he said.

I’ve always wanted an electric car. Eco-friendly.
But we don’t have an outlet at home near where I’d park it.
There’s charging ports at work, though.
But what if I change jobs to a place without them?
So, I went with a plug-in hybrid.
It has enough electric range to get from home to work and back.
And a enough left over for a few errands on the weekend.
And then, the pandemic hit.
I work from home now.
And I’ve only filled up once i five months.
In light of the situation, I’d say that’s eco-friendly enough for me.

I hate it when the condiments slip out of a burger bun.
What a fucking mess.
Squeeze an overloaded burger too much, and everything spills and leaks and falls all over.
So, I switched to using pita bread pockets for my burgers.
I cut an opening on the side, lay the cheese on the burger, slide in the burger, and put in the condiments.
Then I close up the pita pocket and eat the burger from the cut end.
Nothing spills out, and it all tastes great.
But don’t tell me that a calzone is just a sealed pizza wrap.

I was an interrogator.
They’d put a subject in a room, handcuff him to a table, and then I’d take over.
I’d bring in a manual typewriter, feed a sheet of paper into it, and ask questions.
All the while, I’d type in my notes.
Some of the subjects, they didn’t want to talk.
Or they’d yell at me. Or pray over and over loudly.
I’d stay in there, drinking my water, and just waiting them out.
Eventually, they’d talk. They’d say everything.
Then, I’d put the paper in a folder, pick up the typewriter, and bash in their skull.

They say you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
But you can kill it and chop it up and put the pieces in a blender and pour it back in.
Yes, genies are bigger than the bottle, but they managed to fit in there before, and they will again when you pour them back in.
There are perfectly rational explanations through physics.
Genies might be low-density creatures, who compact easily.
Or the inside of the bottle may have neutrino star material with a highly-localized gravity field to compress the contents.
Or, yeah, it could just be fucking magic.

You’re welcome to tell me anything you want to tell me.
Directly. You to me. Nobody in between.
Anonymous, relayed criticism is meaningless and cowardly.
If anyone has an issue with anything I do, they are welcome to tell me directly.
I’m not hard to find. Especially if I’m on their friends list.
Don’t have the courage to tell me directly?
Then you don’t stand behind what you say about me.
Just empty words without a name. Meaningless noise.
From a nobody.
Why should I listen to a nobody?
Might as well just listen to the wind through the trees.