Category: My stories

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
When life hands someone lemons and they wait until they’re rancid and putrid before they dump them in your lap, make lemonade.
And then, make them drink it.
Oh, and rub the rinds in their eyes, too.
If they keep their eyes closed, slash their fingertips with paper and rub the lemon on them.
Maybe with a little salt, too. Salt and lemons.
If the lemons are shrunken and hard, put them in a sock and beat them with the sock.
That should make it easier to rub their eyes with the lemons.

Charlie played the Birdland.
Everyone then played the Birdland, but Charlie, he played it best.
And he played, man did he played.
He had himself a wife, a girlfriend, and a lover.
Charlie played with Monk. Charlie played with Miles.
Billie and Basie, Quincy and Sammy. And the Duke.
Charlie played with Coltrane. Coltrane!
We’d sit there, drinks all around.
That was the night she shot him.
The wife? The girlfriend? The lover?
I dunno, but she done shot him.
She shot him dead, right there on the stage.
I picked up his horn and played.
Didn’t miss a beat.

Infamous Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel died today.
Despite absolute proof that he lived, I deny that Ernst Zundel ever lived.
Show me photographs, show me documents, show me video.
I’ll still deny that he ever lived.
Dig up his body, dump him out on a table.
Nope. He never lived.
Should you find some form of irrefutable evidence, okay, I’ll concede that he lived.
But not to the extent that he lived.
Not seventy-eight years. A lot less. Maybe seven or eight.
Or even while still in his infancy, mirroring his moral infancy.
But, privately, I’ll deny he ever lived.

Nobody likes a war more than a leader with low poll numbers.
Rattle a few sabres and launch a few air strikes, and the people cheer.
“He’s doing something, unlike that other guy,” they say to the pollster.
And the numbers go up… until they realize that the threat, real or implied, still exists.
So the numbers drop again.
That’s when the leaders call for war.
The numbers shoot up, way up.
So do the ratings. And the body counts.
Want to stop war?
Lie to the pollsters. Say everything’s great.
And declare war on the real threat: the pollsters.

Muhammad Ali said that he could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
When bees sting, they eviscerate themselves, leaving behind their stinger and a large portion of their guts.
Soon after, they die.
This is why I’d watch every Muhammad Ali fight.
I’d watch for him to throw a punch and leave a carpet of ropy, bloody intestines on his opponent.
Then he’d stagger around for a while before collapsing to the canvas.
His trainers, rushing into the ring, desperately stuffing his guts back into him, duct-taping the wound closed.
And the referee, shouting, counting to ten.

I really like loose leaf tea.
I tried ball infusers, but they were a pain.
I tried clamp infusers, but they are sloppy.
Now I use twist-top bucket infusers. They are great.
Dump the tea in, not as much of a mess.
And I can put more in there, because I use a really large mug for tea.
My instinct is to be annoyed at having wasted my money on the other infusers.
Instead, I will treasure the process of experimentation and exploration.
Learning what works well, and what doesn’t.
The journey has its price, but it has its lessons.

Every month, the Klansmen went out to the woods, parked their pickup trucks, got into their robes, and had their cross burning ceremonies.
As usual, nobody stood guard over the trucks.
I went from truck to truck, photographing license plates and texting them to the sheriff.
He looked up addresses in the database.
All over town, houses and businesses caught fire.
Leave it to the firemen to know how to cover their tracks.
The ones who were insured, Ted the Insurance Guy would delay their claims.
I got in my car and drove back to town, smelling smoke and redemption.

Long ago, we’d go to The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
I loved the Mathematics Exhibit, which demonstrated all kinds of principles of mathematics.
One of the displays had a large Moebius strip, and a red arrow ran along the twisted loop to demonstrate that the geometric construct had only one side.
“Let me demonstrate with my belt,” said a man. He took off his belt and gave it a twist. “See? It’s a Moebius strip.”
It was when he pulled down his pants that my parents realized he wasn’t a volunteer, and they shouted for museum security.

After the storm passed and we went back to the flooded remains of our homes, the mayor thanked municipal work crews and asked the governor to declare a disaster for federal relief dollars
“Why didn’t the storm drains work?” people asked.
It turned out that the contractor was the mayor’s cousin, who wasted the inflated budget on “planning” instead of actually clearing the drains and sewers.
So, when the mayor and his cousin went out to their favorite strip club, I poisoned their drinks.
You’ll find their bodies in the sewers.
If you ever bother to clear them, of course.

After the hurricane, the community came together to clean up and rebuild.
Donations of food, clothing, and supplies came pouring in.
It took a while to get the logistics going.
For example, Stan over at the local pet shop had been wiped out, but he let folks buy bags of food to donate to the rescue shelter and folks in need.
“When the supplier comes, I’ll deliver them.”
The donations came pouring in.
Three weeks later, when the shelter said they’d never received anything from Stan, folks went looking for answers.
Stan had skipped town, never to be seen again.