Let’s go back in time and kill Hitler.
I have a gun.
You have a time machine.
There’s nothing on TV.
And it’s raining. We can’t go out and play.
Unless.
Is the time machine fully charged?
Good. I’ve got bullets for the gun.
Dad left them in the drawer with the gun.
So, we can go back to Germany and kill Hitler.
What?
It’s just a time machine?
It doesn’t travel?
Then we can’t get to Germany to kill Hitler.
Besides, the rain’s stopping. And the worms are coming out of the grass.
We’ll kill them instead.
Stomp! Stomp!
Category: My stories
Germophobe
Every flight’s got some kooky, obsessive germophobe who wipes their seat down with antiseptic spray, and then lays a towel on the seat before they sit down.
They usually wear masks and gloves, and they like to bring their own beverages and snacks.
Man, they bother me.
I like to fake a sneeze or a cough in their direction, just to get them all freaked out.
However, one time, a sneeze got out of control, and I ended up vomiting on the guy.
The airline suspended me for two weeks. Pilots are supposed to say hello, not barf on passengers.
A tale of two guys
It was the best of tricks, it was the worst of tricks.
Sidney Carton could pass for Charles Darnay, and the others thought he was going to trade places with the doomed Frenchman.
Lucie would get her husband back, while Sidney would lose his head.
“Am I really going to do this?” he asked himself, facing the moment of truth.
“Hell no,” was his answer, but he said it in French with his impression of Darnay’s voice.
Then he had himself smuggled out of the prison as Darnay.
Lucie wasn’t fooled one bit. But she grew to love him anyway.
Fuckup
Dave is a total fuckup. No matter what you hand him, he fucks it up.
And then, after he fucks up, he finds ways to make other people deal with it.
Sometimes, he leaves his fuckups on the doorstep. Then he rings the doorbell and runs like hell.
Other times, he dumps his fuckups in a neighbor’s trashcan. That way, he won’t be fined if the fuckup has a car battery or some other hazardous material in it.
He’s so good at getting rid of fuckups, we tried to put him in charge of it.
Yup. He fucked that up.
Starring: You
If you like offbeat theater, then Ambrose Phillip Glossky’s “The Funeral” at The Don Travis Orpheum on Main Street is the show for you.
It’s a one man show, starring you. In a casket. The audience is the cast, coming to your funeral.
Don’t get up for a bathroom break, though. The cast might shout ZOMBIE! and shoot you in the face with a shotgun.
It’s the hottest ticket in town. Literally. The ticket is made of Tungsten, and the blacksmith in the box office super-heats it to a mind-boggling two thousand degrees.
On second thought, let’s go see Wicked.
The Itsy Bitsy Disaster
The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout.
Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.
The rain washed out the bridge to the mainland, too.
National Guardsmen quickly evacuated residents with boats.
But the rain kept coming, and they used helicopters to pull people off of their roofs.
When the rain stopped, it took a while for the water level to drop.
A few houses had caught fire because of gas leaks.
Locals were allowed to return to salvage anything they could.
One guy clutched his chest and dropped dead.
Heart attack? No. It was a poisonous spider bite.
Cat routine
Even though I wake up early and have plenty of time to get ready in the morning, I find myself frittering and wasting time until I have to rush out the door.
So I prepared a routine and wrote it up on a dry-eraseboard tacked to the refrigerator. And every evening, I lay out everything I need tomorrow: vitamins, fiber chews, clothes, coffee pod and cup, and so on.
And it still doesn’t work. Because one of our cats usually sleeps on the clothes pile, and I end up playing with the cat instead of getting my morning routine started.
Dedication
There’s a lot of people I should thank for my stories. And there’s a lot of people who expect to be thanked for them, too.
I must admit that some of those people who expect to be thanked have been invaluable in inspiring my stories.
Especially the horror stories. Because they were total fucking assholes.
So, when I published my first book, I put a line on the dedication page with “sign your name here” under it
The good people can sign their name there. The bad people can sign their name there, too.
I’ll just write more stories, okay?
Designer
Ted wasn’t just a designer. He was a famous and successful designer.
Ted’s doorstops were the best doorstops available. They performed great and looked great.
Same with his potholders. And his toilet brushes. And countless other helpful accessories.
They were best-selling products.
When he was called the best designer in the world, his closest rival called bullshit.
And he designed the perfect door, which didn’t need a doorstop. A pot that no longer needed a potholder. Self-cleaning toilets.
Every one of Ted’s designs were now useless.
Manufacturers ignored the rival. Because they could sell the crap products AND Ted’s junk.
Harryhausen
The Find A Grave site has no information about the legendary animator Ray Harryhausen.
Why the mystery?
Well, when Ray died, his colleagues wanted to pull out his bones and replace then with a poseable metal armature. That way, they could create stop-motion puppetry animation with him.
That’s disgusting, I know. And terribly inefficient in this age of computer-generated special effects. They could just create a digital Ray Harryhausen.
But you just don’t get the same impact with CGI as you do with a practical puppet. It isn’t too real. It’s fantasy.
The cops arresting them for grave-robbing?
Too real.