Category: My stories

McDonalds used to only serve breakfast until five minutes before you got there.
Now, they serve breakfast all day long.
But not the entire menu. Most locations don’t have enough grill space for it all.
So, one restaurant serves pancakes. The other makes hash browns.
The one that does Egg McMuffins does eggs and muffins, too.
You have to roam from store to store to get your entire order.
The entire nation, driving in their SUVs, like nomads and hunter-gatherers.
Searching for the ever-elusive hash browns and breakfast burritos.
Sit by the soda fountain, wait with spears poised to strike!

Never get an apartment near the parking lot. You’ll hear car alarms go off all night.
Never get an apartment near the dumpsters. You’ll hear the clang of people throwing out garbage.
Never get an apartment near the laundry room. You’ll hear people kick the machines and yell.
Never get an apartment near the rental center. You’ll hear people beg for an extension on their rent.
Never get an apartment near the basketball court or pool. People party there all the time.
Never get an apartment. Just rent a house, if you can’t afford to buy one.
People suck.

My favorite restaurant
Had a salad bar
A great salad bar
But they had to get rid of it
Too many salads
Drinking themselves under the table
That’s what an endless salad bar is
After all
Salads drinking
And getting drunk
Drunk salads
Driving home
Getting into wrecks
Widowed salads
Left to raise their baby lettuce
Without their breadstick winners
Suing the restaurant
It’s not their fault
Fucking lawyers
Ruining everything
Then they come here
To this restaurant
Order a salad
And bitch that the salad bar is gone
They should drink
And drive
And wreck
And die
Fucking lawyers

Curious George isn’t the first monkey owned by The Man In The Yellow Hat.
Bobo liked to chew on electrical cords.
Poppy got into the medicine cabinet.
Cheetah attacked a policeman during a walk in the park.
Tipsy was really nice, but suffered from a rare genetic disorder that caused him all kinds of chronic problems as he got older.
The Man In The Yellow Hat backed over Tipsy with his car.
He says it was an accident, and he loved Tipsy, but chimpanzee medical bills can cost a fortune.
So, be curious, Curious George, but don’t be a dick.

The Eighty-Five Chicago Bears.
Greatest team ever.
Heroes forever.
But bodies, broken by battle, don’t last.
Their commanders fall to dust.
One day.
Mike Ditka will die.
And when he gets to Heaven.
To face his maker.
God will stuff him into a football.
And hand him to Walter Payton.
Who will run the ball in for a touchdown.
On every play.
In the Super Bowl.
Every Super Bowl.
Past, present, and future.
Call his number.
Put four men on him.
Five. Six.
All eleven men.
Every man you can throw at him.
Touchdown. Touchdown.
Payton scores his touchdown.

The cubit is the distance from the bottom of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.
This was an ancient Egyptian unit of measurement, along with the finger, foot, fist, and spam.
But surveyors had different body measurements, so measurement was a somewhat inaccurate science.
Standardization came when the pharaoh insisted that the measurements be based off of his body measurements.
However, it wasn’t easy getting time with the pharaoh to measure land or cloth.
And he tended to execute surveyors who dragged him around in the mud.
So, they found a similarly-built surveyor, and dragged him around.

It’s fun to jump on the bed.
Like a trampoline.
That’s why we do it.
It’s not fun to jump on the chair.
Chairs break and fall apart.
That’s why we don’t do it.
It’s not fun to jump on people, either.
They tend to scream and bleed and get really messy.
But they break in to our homes.
And jump on our beds. And chairs.
Leave! Jump on your own beds and chairs!
Police just catch them and release them.
They break in again. And jump on our beds.
So, we jump on them.
And they bleed. And bleed.

When I was a kid, if you needed to get your teeth straightened, you had to get braces mounted on your teeth.
Rubber hands and a headgear assembly controlled the tension, and every month you’d go in for tightening and adjustment.
Now, you can get your teeth scanned, and they’ll 3-D print a series of clear plastic guides that align them.
No more painful mounting and twisting of the braces.
No more disgusting rubber bands.
No more ugly headgear.
And no more picking up spy signals from outer space.
My orthodontist smiles, says “Da! Is good?” and offers me vodka.

What good is a bodyguard
When you’re staring at a body on the floor?
She smoked, she drank.
She fucked around.
She took pills, she shot herself up with all kind of shit.
Tattoos to cover up the worst of the needle tracks.
The scars. The bruises.
Cameras everywhere, sucking it all in.
The famous singer, who didn’t sing.
Everyone, shouting her name.
She’s not moving. She’s not breathing.
Wake up. Wake up.
The bodyguard shoves the cameras aside, lets the stretcher in.
Covered with a sheet, loaded into the ambulance.
Oh no.
You couldn’t protect her from herself.

I wake to the smell of hot buttermilk biscuits.
I open my eyes and see black silk.
A blindfold.
“Open your mouth,” you say.
A piece of warm biscuit on my lips, my tongue.
I chew slowly, tasting it.
Dribbles of butter on my lips, my chin.
I lick them off.
Your finger, dipped in jelly.
Grape jelly, you pull your finger back out.
Another finger. Strawberry. Blackberry.
Another piece of biscuit.
Then, a dribble of gravy.
HOT! It’s hot!
You dribble it down my chin, my neck, my chest. Burning.
I tug at the ropes, as you laugh.