A madman killed John Lennon.
Another tried to kill Ronald Reagan.
And then another attacked an actress and killed her.
They all had my book.
They all said to understand what they did, read the book.
What I put in there.
It was the truth about the phonies.
Not the evil these people did.
Their evil. They murdered. Murdered.
Not me. They.
That is the truth.
No, I have not stopped writing.
I cannot stop writing.
Writing the truth.
But I can stop publishing.
Because phonies will read my writing if I don’t.
And they will murder. They will kill.
Category: My stories
The horse and the men
For centuries, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse owned just one horse.
This arrangement worked out great for when there was just War or Death doing on, but sometimes there were two or three of them on that horse.
Or, when things were particularly bad, all four.
Not only was the load unbearable, but as civilization spread and got more complicated, they had a lot more ground to cover.
The lone horse didn’t particularly like that arrangement, so the gang got three more horses.
Nowadays, they each have several horses. And they’ve hired a full-time vet, trainer, and stable manager.
I was born in pizza…
These days, passwords can be hacked easily. If you use the same password everywhere, a thief can roll up all your accounts.
Thieves will also try to social-engineer the security questions. It’s not hard to look up your mother’s maiden name or the city you were born in.
A security expert says that you’re supposed to choose counter-intuitive answers to these questions, such as “Pizza” for your mother’s maiden name, or for where you were born.
Which means that the Indian at the call center will scratch their head in confusion as they sell your information to a Russian hacker.
Dance There
She said she wanted me to take her dancing, so we put on our dancing shoes and we danced all the way to the dance hall.
By the time we got to the dance hall, we were exhausted and sweaty.
“Want to dance all the way home?” I asked her, panting heavily.
“No,” she said, fanning herself with a dance card. “Call a cab.”
So, I called a cab, and we went back home.
“That’s a wrap,” I told the jazz quartet that follows us everywhere.
“Good gig,” they said. They put their instruments away and went out for coffee.
Beater
Philosophers like to ask which came first, the chicken or the egg.
But Molly wants to know which came first, the chicken-beater or the egg-beater.
“There’s no such thing as a chicken-beater,” I say. “Who’d want liquefied chicken in a milk carton?”
“I guess that means the egg-beater came first,” says Molly, grinning.
After that, I spent thousands of dollars on chicken and blenders, trying to invent the chicken-beater.
Eventually, I came up with an odd, viscous slurry of chicken meat.
McDonalds bought the patent, which is why you’ll never see me eat their McNuggets.
(I prefer to drink them.)
Basement sleeper
If I fall asleep, I will fall asleep.
And I will stay asleep until the alarm wakes me.
I don’t wake up with the sun because I put my bed in the basement. And I have a backwards schedule. I work at night, and sleep during the day.
It’s cooler down in the basement. Darker.
And when I wake up, I can run my undies through the clothes dryer so they’re nice and warm.
I have to take them off again when I go upstairs and have shower and a coffee.
And again and again at work.
But stripping’s fun.
Home Invasion
The woman upstairs is doing her Jane Fonda tape again.
She stomps around, goes for water.
Then one two one two one two.
Half an hour of that, then moving furniture back.
Four in the fucking morning.
But you get used to it, right?
I baked her a cake.
Yeah, she needs to lose weight, her doctor says, but a little won’t hurt.
She’ll burn it off.
She starts her routine again.
One two one two one.
Thud.
Try burning off the poison, bitch.
The TV stays on.
Shit. Didn’t think of that.
Maybe I’ll stay in a hotel tonight.
The Phone Book
They say that Jackson Bart’s voice is so smooth and deep, people would pay to hear him read the phone book.
So, he did. He toured the country, reading the phone book.
He filled coffeehouses, bookstores, and Hard Rock Cafes. Pretty soon, he booked arenas and stadiums, and he sold those out, too.
That’s when the phone company stopped printing the book. Instead of recycling unused books, they didn’t print at all.
Jackson tried to read online listings and his iPhone contacts list, but it never was the same.
Now, he reads numbers in bathroom stalls as he cleans toilets.
Lemons
Dave planted a bunch of lemon trees a few years ago.
Now, he’s got more lemons than he knows what to do with.
He gives them away to his neighbors, but there’s still a lot left over.
He can’t sell them. Otherwise, he’d have to deal with all kinda of government paperwork and crap.
So, he held a contest. How many lemons can you shove up your ass.
A few crazies showed up. So did the local news station.
And an ambulance for Dave, who was declared the winner.
If life gives you lemons, wash them before you make lemonade.
Riding
I know a guy named Yankee Doodle, but instead of riding into town on a pony, he liked to put on a gag costume that made him look like he was riding on the back of an old Russian woman.
At least I thought it was a costume. Only when I got a closer look did I realize that it was a real old Russian woman that he was riding.
“Seriously?” I asked him.
He nodded.
I sighed. “No more driving drunk?”
He nodded again.
“Okay,” I said. “You can have your license and keys back.”
“Spaseba.” said the woman.