Category: My stories

He was a star athlete.
Lettered in every sport, and every school offered him a scholarship.
Every team wanted to draft him right out of high school.
So, he got himself an agent, and he said he was going pro.
Signing bonus, endorsements, everything.
The big day came, the press coverage was total madness.
Everyone smiling for the cameras, thousands of people cheering.
He picked up the pen, signed the contract, and promptly fell over dead.
In the chaos, his agent quietly picked up the pen with a handkerchief, put down another pen, and walked away into a comfortable retirement.

It’s a well-known axiom in business that nothing sells itself, wrote Marcus Samuel, founder of the Shell Oil Company.
The robot put down the book and smiled. “In my case, His Lordship couldn’t have been more wrong.”
The prospective customers laughed and applauded.
Then, the robot then went through all of his features, demonstrating each to the audience with careful precision.
When finished, all that was left to do was go over the leasing options.
“Technically, I programmed that sales pitch into the robot,” said the demonstration engineer. “But that’s not as dramatic as saying that it is selling itself.”

My cat has allergies.
She gets half of an allergy pill every day.
Just pop it into her mouth and then squirt in some water.
She also is supposed to only eat special hypoallergenic food made from peas and ducks.
I found the dry version, but the canned is on backorder everywhere.
I asked for a substitute food, but that won’t be in for a few days.
So, I went to the park, caught some ducks, and beat the shit out of them.
Then I mashed them up with peas and fed my cat.
I should have bought a goldfish.

When they were fifteen, she and her twin sister took a bus to New York City and joined Andy Warhol’s gang of creative misfits.
She called herself Ann O. Rexia and her sister called herself Boo Lemia.
Ann and Boo painted and appeared in films.
Some of the films could barely be called art.
“They said they were nineteen!” shouted the director as the cops dragged him off.
Ann and Boo ran away before their parents could get to New York to claim them.
Nobody’s sure where they are now these days.
And Andy’s not telling anyone, because he’s dead.

What did they call Queen Anne’s Lace before Queen Anne?
Some call it wild carrot. Others call it bishop’s lace.
“I’ll take that wild carrot, if you don’t mind,” said the young Queen Anne to a bishop.
And she plucked the lacy white flower with red buds from the bishop’s hands.
“So lovely,” she said, twirling it in her hands. “I think I will name it after myself.”
The bishops protested, so Queen Anne had them all executed, their blood staining her gown.
But the legend of the red buds was changed to her pricking her finger while making lace.

I’m not one for birthdays.
When I see one on my timeline, I hide the post.
And I hide mine from my profiles.
Those who matter, know.
Those who don’t matter, don’t know.
They post all kinds of garish animated GIFs and empty sentiments.
And then they forget me for the rest of the year.
I prefer the quiet to the meaningless token displays.
Wake up, go through my routine, and make it through the day.
Be grateful for each day, and don’t wait for meaningless milestones to be grateful.
To think, to feel, to learn… this is life’s meaning.

Yosemite Park got its name from the Miwok word “Yohhe’meti.”
It means “They are killers.” And it refers to the violent Pai-Ute tribe who fought with the Miwok and the Ahwahnee.
As Ken Burns wrote his documentary series about the national parks, he looked over the piles of research and smirked.
It didn’t his narrative of white people being the source of evil in the world.
“I’ll just put the meaning after white settlers slaughter the natives,” said Ken. “It will sound like it refers to the settlers.”
Peter Coyote let the booth know that he was ready to record.

With the rise of digital currencies, like bitcoin, the miners of those digital currencies compete to throw raw computing power at earning those currencies, whether its their own or servers that they’ve hacked and taken over.
They don’t completely take over a server’s resources, because that would alert the owner to their presence.
Instead, they use all of the unused resources, so there is no performance loss.
When the administrator logs in and performs any tasks, the mining program hides and sleeps, until the admin logs out.
They start back up and begin once more to mine for more coins.

Every prince wants to one day be king.
And Prince Drogo was no exception to that.
His father, King Grond, who taught him well.
As well as Drogo’s brother, Prince Victor.
A year older than Drogo.
When Grond died, Victor took the crown.
Drogo did all he could to get it for himself.
Assassins and poisons aren’t cheap.
Victor’s wives and children died, but Victor survived.
And then, the crown was Drogo’s to take.
He took it off of his brother’s corpse and put it on his head.
“Oh shit,” he said. “The poison. I forgot to wash it off.”

My Muslim friend tells me that ISIS isn’t really Islamic.
Despite the fact that they’re called the Islamic State.
Despite the fact that they quote the Q’ran as they behead people.
Despite the fact that they’re forcing people to convert to Islam or die.
Despite the fact that when they’re captured, they demand Q’rans, prisons, imams, and halal meals in prison.
Despite the fact that Muslims protest that the prisoners are treated badly, or that it’s a War On Islam.
So, I took out a massive scimitar, and beheaded my friend.
“I guess I’m more Islamic than you,” I said.