Usually, The Girl Scouts sell cookies to fund their troops and overhead costs.
But the boxes of cookies don’t offer much of a profit margin, and sometimes people flake out on their orders.
Meagan, who has an Entrepreneurship badge, suggested that her troop sell something with much greater profit potential.
So, they did the market research and came up with a plan to sell titanium hip replacements to the residents of the nearby nursing home.
“Installation not included,” she said with a wink.
The troop giggled with her, and they went back to wiping the floors down with slippery Crisco.
Category: My stories
Air Force None
No, it’s not true that any aircraft that The President is on receives the designation of Air Force One. It’s the designation of any Air Force airplane.
For instance, the helicopter that ferries him from The White House to Andrews Air Force Base is Marine One.
And the hot air balloon that Professor Moriarty uses to take The President off to his hot tub and Texas Hold ’em weekends is just a hot air balloon.
The President’s a lousy gambler, and he usually ends up handing over a lot of money.
But he can never hand over Air Force One.
After Brown
After Encyclopedia Brown went off to college, the next kid to become the town know-it-all was Glossary Jones.
This kid knew a whole bunch of obscure terms and jargon, but he kept them to himself until the other kids would solve the mystery.
Then there was Footnote Martin. Every now and then, he’d make a comment about something, or provide some obscure reference that nobody had time to look up.
Finally, there was Almanac Lewis. He was always blithering useless trivia and weather tables.
“Just call the goddamned police,” people say now. “They’re incompetent, but at least they’re not annoying.”
The Empties
Every container full of stuff they send here, we have to ship back so they can send us more stuff.
Some, we fill with trash for recycling.
Others, we put coal or other raw materials.
And with the rest of the empties?
They call it human trafficking.
Fifty to a container.
Thousands of containers on a ship.
Sex slaves?
Organ donors?
Cheap labor?
No. Hardly.
They feed them to the Trakha.
It’s part of the peace treaty.
They give up technology. Chemical formulas.
And what do they do with it?
Make stuff. To sell to us.
Just for the empties.
She Lived Seven Days
Our baby lived seven days.
She never breathed on her own.
Seven days of tubes. And wires. And beeps.
So many beeps. And then.
She never breathed on her own.
When they asked us if we wanted to hold her, we just sat there. We said nothing.
They opened the glass door, pulled out the tubes, pulled off the tape, unhooked the wires, and took her away.
We watched without watching.
The Sisters Of Mercy came, and they asked us if we needed anything. Do we need anything, they asked.
We just sat there. We said nothing.
Just seven days
Free Brochures
When I was growing up, you could order free government brochures on all kinds of subjects.
Running a business. Nutrition. Car repair.
You name it, they had it.
All you had to do was write to Pueblo, Colorado, and they’d mail them. Free.
These days, you can download them from a website.
So, I did. And I read them all.
Thanks to the government, I am now 17 trillion dollars in debt, involved in two wars and countless other international disputes, and my home is constantly invaded by illegal aliens.
But, hey: I can change the oil in my car.
Candidate
Our modern word candidate comes from the Latin word candidatus, which means white-robed.
Back in Roman times, office-seekers covered their robes in white chalk to stand out in a crowd.
It’s certainly easier than filling out hundreds of forms and gathering up thousands and thousands of signatures on petitions.
We should return to the old style of politics. Instead of suits and dresses, put every one of these fuckers in robes and cover them with chalk.
About thirty or forty tons of it.
Then, pave it over, and let the good people of this country get on with their lives.
Nightmares and Nightmares
I never have nice dreams anymore.
Instead, I have the absolute worst nightmares.
I’ve stopped with the waking up screaming. Part because I’m too exhausted to scream.
I used to be inspired by my nightmares. I could use bits and pieces of them to create my stories.
But I don’t have any of those kinds of nightmares anymore.
It’s not what I eat or drink that’s causing it.
It’s just getting worse and worse on its own.
My doctor wants me to start taking pills. What if they make things even worse?
At least it inspired me to write, yes?
Gysin
Brion Gysin told everyone at the Beat Hotel that he could make William Burroughs vanish.
He rigged up a frame with cords, and he placed Burroughs behind it. Then he projected a photo of Burroughs on to Burroughs. The cords blocked some of the projection.
Gysin rolled the focus on the projection for a few minutes, which was hypnotic to the hotel residents.
Burroughs slipped away from his seat and left the room. It looks like he had disappeared.
The audience was stunned. Gysin smiled.
But Burroughs was annoyed. Applauding his disappearance?
He packed his things and left the hotel.
Singularity
Ray Kurzweil says that the singularity is near.
“So, Ray, where is it?” I asked him.
He stuck his hand in his pocket. “I swear, I just had it.”
He then searched his other pockets, the sofa, the refrigerator and the kitchen drawer. Twice.
“Shit,” he growled. “Help me look?”
We turned the place upside-down, but all we found was a handful of pocket change and a stray ketchup packet.
“Oh well,” he said. “Maybe I left it back home.”
We shook hands, and Ray began to fade from view.
BACKUP COMPLETE, said a robotic voice, and everything else vanished.