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.
Category: My stories
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.
Catcher In The Lie
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.
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.