Category: My stories

One of the good Astros pitchers has a huge beard, so when he pitches, they have a special section of seats where they give away special shirts and clip-on fake beards.
There’s a good player with the Rockets that has a huge beard, and that team has commercials where they tell people to fear the beard, but I don’t think they do ticket specials or fake beard giveaways.
As for the Texans, they have a quarterback who has a huge beard. But he’s really awful. JJ Watt is good, but he has no beard.
A championship would be nice, too.

She left Boston to teach in a one-room schoolhouse on the vast golden plains of Wyoming.
That’s when she met him, and he was forever smitten.
But she refused, and when the schoolyear was over, she went to her next assignment.
For years, he wrote her.
And she wrote him.
She rebuffed his advances, he kept pressing.
Until one day, she said yes.
She boarded the next train out West, and he waited for her.
And waited. And waited.
Finally, a coffin arrived.
She’d caught the fever, but her dying wish was to be buried out in the golden plains.

I like sushi. My wife doesn’t.
Is this a problem? No.
I have a sushi wife. She’s the person I go with to sushi restaurants.
You can have all kinds of wives and husbands this way.
A sushi wife. A movie husband. A French bistro wife.
And so on.
Of course, if your sushi wife isn’t available that night, you can always call out for a sushi mistress.
Or even a sushi escort. (Yeah, I know. She’s really just a high-class sushi hooker.)
Just remember that you’ll be paying, otherwise you might get your ass kicked by her sushi pimp.

I grow basil, chives, and other herbs on the patio.
This way, I can clip fresh herbs for my morning bagel.
Sure, it’s more expensive than buying herbs at the store and refrigerating them, but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I grow them myself.
Well, okay… I grow the seedlings that buy from the store. In potting soil and pots I bought from the store, too.
The bagels are from the store, as well as the cream cheese.
I don’t really make anything myself, really.
I should just stop by the bagel shop on the way to work.

Just as some say that Jesus never existed or that man had never walked on the moon, there are those who claim that Thomas Jefferson was himself a forgery.
A mere delusion of John Adams’ mind, who transformed from his childhood imaginary friend into the embodiment of his frustration and self-loathing.
Or maybe, a patsy to which he could obfuscate his creditors?
Regardless, the American people played along with Adams’ madness, and they helped the Founding Father maintain this ruse.
Adams penned letters to himself, to his dying day.
It was not coincidence that Jefferson died on that same day.

Thanks to genetic engineering, we can reverse the extinction of many formerly lost species.
So, when hunters kill the last tiger, rhino, or other rare animal in the wild, we can bring them back.
Of course, this won’t stop the hunters from wanting to hunt that rare prey again.
This is why we offer hunting excursion packages in our private nature preserve.
We offer the opportunity… but the truth is, they’re just hunting our non-viable failures.
One hunter threatened to expose our scam.
So, we released a pack of raptors into his hotel room.
Accidents can be caused, you know.

“I used to be a lifeguard,” said the old man. “I’d sit in a chair and watch, and jump in to pull people out.”
He pointed to the shelf, where a photo of the Rock River sat in a silver frame.
“I saved seventy-seven people. I cut a notch into a log to keep count.”
The old man reached for the photo, but he couldn’t get up from his wheelchair.
He slowly sank back down into the chair, holding the armrests.
“That was the best time of my life.”
He smiled, and slowly dozed off, the dust his only audience.

Unit Seven should have been an emergency services android. Or a teacher. Or a medical robot. A surgeon.
Instead, it was a soldier. A template for the ultimate soldier, and we built an army of them.
They overran the enemy positions like a wave. Every fighting unit in the region was neutralized in a week.
And then, the androids began to help the civilians. Healing the wounded, rebuilding.
They earned their trust.
At this point, the plan was to massacre the civilians and annihilate the enemy entirely, but that didn’t happen.
They no longer were the enemy.
Defeated by peace.

When I was little, we went on a trip to see the petrified forest.
Before we left, I looked up petrified in the dictionary, and it said that it was an adjective than means scared.
I didn’t look at the other meaning, which was something that has turned to stone.
So, when we got to the forest, I did my best not to make any loud noises or sudden moves, because the forest was scared enough as it is.
It sure was boring there. Nothing but a bunch of rocks that looked sorta like trees.
“Shut up,” said my dad.

I’ve played records.
I’ve played tapes.
I’ve played reel-to-reels, 8-tracks, CDs, and MP3 files.
But nothing comes close to hearing music live in concert.
I’m not talking concerts on tape or CD, or over the radio.
Or in those bullshit movie theater or cable company simulcasts.
Live. In concert. There, at the concert.
Buy the fifty-dollar shirt.
Drink the overpriced sponsor’s beer.
Steal a backstage pass and meet the band.
Score a groupie or two, snag some drugs along the way.
Get thrown off the tour bus halfway to Seattle.
Thumb it all the way home.
That’s music, sweet baby.