Jacob’s on Grant is my favorite restaurant.
What’s good there?
Well, it’s not on the menu. And it’s not on the off-menu menu, either.
But everybody ends up getting it.
It’s the radish that the chef cuts up like a flower and puts on every plate as garnish.
Seriously. I shit you not.
That radish is soaked in something special, because it tastes absolutely amazing.
Unlike anything I’ve ever tasted.
Whenever I go to Jacob’s and I see someone leaving a radish-flower on their plate, I ask them if I can have it.
Oh, and the salmon is okay, too.
Category: My stories
Polished off
Sally won a lifetime supply of nail polish.
So, she uses it to the maximum. She’s always painting her nails. And she likes to paint her nails all different colors.
White and red stripes like candy canes for the holidays. Or red and green.
Rainbows after the rain. Or a double rainbow, I suppose. One on each hand.
She painted her dog’s nails. Her neighbors’ nails.
Everybody’s nails.
Which violated the terms of the contest.
The cosmetics company hired some goons to rough her up.
One waved a set of pliers in her face.
“Let’s count to twenty,” he grinned.
Drive
Saturday.
We like to drive around the neighborhood, looking at houses and making disparaging comments.
This one has a crooked roof.
That one has wretched landscaping.
The lawn’s dying, too.
Over there, the house with a cracked window. Cracks in the driveway.
And a rusty mailbox.
Empty lots, we just drive past. Nothing to see there. Anymore.
A strip mall. New paint and signs, but a lot of empty storefronts.
Then a few more houses, until we get to the worst of the worst.
The absolute, rock-bottom worst.
I click the garage door opener, and we turn into the driveway.
The coffee tasted awful
My first CD-ROM drive came with a dictionary.
It included audio pronunciations of all the words.
I picked out a few hundred that sounded impressive, like emesis and mendicant.
Simple .WAV files. Easily copied to my hard drive.
Then, I put them in a WinAMP playlist, and they played one per minute.
The deep tones of the announcer filled my empty living room.
I added a virtual wind chime to clank and ting softly in the background.
One of my friends ran a coffee house. He had me plug my computer into his sound system.
The coffee still tasted awful.
Skyscraping the bottom of the barrel
I used to work for a television station.
They were in the network’s ownership group. Big markets got new equipment and they’d get cut-rate junk.
They’d only buy new equipment if there wasn’t any way to repair the old.
The station needed a new transmitter, but the network made them run on backup until another station needed a new one. Then they’d get their clunker.
After the World Trade Center fell, I wondered if they were going to salvage WABC’s transmitter from the wreckage, hose off the dead bodies, and refurbish the twisted hunk of metal.
I’m surprised they didn’t.
It’s Monday again
It’s Monday again.
Now Tuesday. Then Wednesday.
And Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday.
And it’s Monday again.
Over and over. And over.
Days, weeks, months, and years.
And years.
And then? What?
Retirement? A pat on the back for a job well done?
What then?
Golf? Shuffleboard? A garden?
Or just… nothing. No more?
And it’s Monday again.
Kids? Grandkids? And great grandkids?
Maybe they’ll name one after you?
And their kids will do the same for them?
Over and over, until you’re not even your own name anymore.
And it’s Monday again.
And it’s Monday again.
And it’s Monday again.
Aliens Aliens
When people say space alien, I want to smack them.
Where else would aliens come from?
Turns out, there’s more aliens out there than just space aliens.
Dimensional aliens cross over from other dimensions to ours.
And time aliens come from the future.
But, yeah, we got invaded by the space variety.
Didn’t last long, though. Fools thought they could breathe our atmosphere.
Nope. Couldn’t. Troop carriers landed and they all suffocated.
They didn’t start with an aerial bombardment, which was bad strategy, but polite. So we let bygones be bygones. New friends.
In case time aliens attack, you know.
Shot with an arrow
Tom knew the procedure by heart: When you’ve been shot through with an arrow, break off the end with the fletching and pull the arrow out by the head. Put pressure on both ends until medical assistance arrives.
So, when the professor shot him in the leg with an arrow, he broke off the end with the fletching and pulled it out by the head. Then he tore off a sleeve, bound the wounds, and applied pressure.
“Pass,” said the professor.
The medics injected Tom with the regeneration nanobots, and he watched the professor nock another arrow.
“Next!” he shouted.
Half to death
If you scare someone half to death twice, are they completely scared to death?
Of course not. Because if you scare someone half to death a second time, they’ll be three-quarters to death.
This brings up Xeno’s best-known paradox, which describes motion as a never-ending series of “You go halfway to your destination.” In the end, you never actually reach your destination.
Then he’d dance around and shout “IN YOUR FACE!” in Greek.
Because he was acting like a dick, Xeno was beaten to death by his fellow philosophers.
Not half to death. To death.
Don’t act like a dick.
Interesting
You’ve seen all the commercials with The Most Interesting Man In The World.
But did you know that he’s married?
You couldn’t tell from the commercials.
That’s because she’s The Least Interesting Woman In The World.
And despite the fact that she is with her husband in the commercials, she is so uninteresting, the editors cut her out of the commercial, or digitally cover her with a potted plant or a keg of beer.
Her cheating lothario of a husband stays because she’s got all the money.
And why he does the commercials. Just a few more, and he’s free.