Category: My stories

Snow White woke up naked, sticky and sore under a pile of snoring dwarves.
Thank God I’m on the pill, she thought. Even if these little perverts spent more time in each other than me.
She crawled out of bed, showered, and tried on a robe.
Too small, she thought. So she wrapped herself in the drapes and washed her clothes.
Get dressed, grab some food, fill a bag with the gems they brought back from the mine, and hit the road before…
“Good morning,” mumbled a voice from the bed.
She sighed.
She’d try to wake up earlier tomorrow.

When Quadrillionaires get bored, you get The Grand Maze of Titan.
Terraforming robots turned the entire moon into a mind-bogglingly complex global maze.
And not just on the surface. The entire moon was permeated with tunnels and passages.
For years, brave adventurers would compete to solve the maze.
But a moon-sized maze is simply impossible for a human to solve. Not enough water, food, oxygen, energy, and time.
Drones and robots now swarm through the passages, mapping their routes and trying to work out a solution.
They rest on the surface, charging themselves before another dive into the twisted darkness.

Just as space travel opened up the asteroid belt for mining operations, faster-than-light travel opened up the galaxy.
Hundreds of billions of worlds out there, waiting.
The inhabitable ones became colonies.
The uninhabitable ones could be harvested for resources.
Or used for massive, bizarre art projects.
Release enough Von Neumann self-replicating robots, and you can make anything on a planetary scale.
Some purists call it cheating, because robots make the art, but others said they’re as much a tool as a paintbrush or a hammer and chisel.
Nothing’s worse than a critic who drops a meteor on your canvas.

The owner of the company told the executives that there needed to be more fun in the office.
“How much fun?” the executives asked.
“More,” said the owner.
So, the executives told the managers that there needed to be more fun.
They worked up a set of forms to track the fun, and metrics to measure whether individual and departmental fun goals were being met.
Every floor had a Fun Enforcement Officer, who went around shouting at staff to have more fun.
The staff responded by putting fun designs on their cardboard boxes as they packed their shit and left.

The Metric System is evil.
Probably the work of The Devil, if you ask me.
In fact, we named our son Miles because we hate The Metric System.
The same reason why we named our next son Stone. Stone’s a measurement of weight.
Then came the triplets: Rod, Cord, and Peck. Look those up.
We loved to watch them play in the yard with their dogs Furlong, Fathom, and Fluid Ounce.
Because that’s what life’s about, right?
Enjoying your time with your family.
And when we’re not busy denouncing The Metric System, we, the Van Meters, are all about family.

The Olympics are supposed to be about good sportsmanship, fairness, and competition.
But the Russians dope up their athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.
And many Muslim athletes refuse to compete against Israeli Jews.
So, the Mossad came up with a new medal: The Big Concrete Block Medal.
They pick up the unsportsmanlike asshole or cheater, and they give them the medal.
Then they take them out on a boat, and drop them in the water.
And click a stopwatch.
They struggle, splash around, but eventually, they all go under.
And don’t come back up.
*click*
“A new record,” they say, laughing.

You used to have to make cheese and macaroni with your own cheese and macaroni.
Then, Kraft came out with that blue box kit.
You know, the one with the orange powder.
Add your own milk and butter.
Now, if you don’t have your own milk and butter handy, you could use a Velveeta or Cracker Barrel kit.
Or one of those special Kraft kits.
Those have orange cheese goop in them.
Better yet, just get the Stouffer’s or other premade frozen macaroni and cheese.
Or go to a restaurant and order it.
That’s what kids menus are for, right?

A fishmonger trades in fish.
A slaver trades in people.
So, who trades in mermaids? A fishmonger or a slaver?
They’re half-fish, half-people.
But then, are you trading in mermaids as a commodity, or are you representing them as an agent or employment facilitator?
The rates are nearly the same, but the results are somewhat different.
After all, you don’t drag your new VP of Sales out of her saline tank and eat her.
Unless, of course, your sales are down for the budget year.
Then, go ahead. Eat them.
Beats firing them and paying out a large severance package.

I never liked the idea that if Life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade.
You shouldn’t wait for Life to hand you lemons.
Nobody goes around handing out lemons.
Instead, you’ll probably get handed some handbill for a protest, or some guy dressed up like a hot dog will hand you coupons outside of the James Coney Island.
Or, if you’re in Vegas, a hooker’s kid will hand you an ad for his mother.
The sidewalk’s littered with those ads.
Me, I never wait for lemons. Life’s too short, man.
I go to the grocery store and shoplift them.

Okay, so your team threw you under the bus.
At least they threw you under a bus.
I mean, that’s public transportation, right?
Was that bus running on clean-burning diesel or compressed natural gas, or some other lower-carbon footprint power source?
It would have been better for the environment if they had thrown you under an electric vehicle.
Or, I suppose, a human-powered vehicle, such as a bicycle.
Under a bunch of jogging humans would have worked, too.
Although if a bicycle or joggers had run you over, you might have gotten someone else hurt.
We couldn’t have that happening.