A rose by any other name is still a rose, but we knew her as Circe.
Whenever I was being an asshole, she’d call me an asshole.
And whenever I wasn’t, she’d still call me an asshole, because she knew it was only a matter of time.
She told me she was listening to all of my stories from the beginning. It gave her something to look forward to.
How do you respond to that? Their last months… weeks… days.
I know I wouldn’t waste my remaining time on that shit.
It must have been the morphine, clouding her judgement.
Category: My stories
Gnocchi
Some chefs make gnocchi, but I know a chef who makes gnocchi do tricks.
Most of the time, he makes the gnocchi do the standard tricks: sit, roll over, and play dead. Even shake hands.
But one day, he tried to make the gnocchi make gnocchi.
That’s right. Little food-based self-replicating Von Neumann machines, multiplying like bacteria.
Gnocchi everywhere, making more gnocchi, which were making even more gnocchi.
If he hadn’t have run out of potato flour, the whole world would have been overrun with gnocchi.
Which would gave been a tragedy, because his gnocchi tastes awful. Even in sauce.
Travel Writer
My friend Hope wishes that someone had told her as a child that she could be a travel writer.
Since my time machine is ready to test, I figured I could slip that into my list.
“I’ll take care of that right before I kill Hitler,” I said, and I flipped the switch.
Several time hops later, I found myself in Austria in 1900.
“Sie können ein Reiseschriftsteller sein,” I said to a young Adolf Hitler.
“Vas is das?” he said.
Uh oh. I got my list mixed up.
I’d better go back and stop myself from killing Hope.
Toaster Oven
The first house I remember had a kitchen with an oven and a toaster.
The same with the second house.
However, one day, the toaster shorted out, and it was taken away.
The next day, there was a toaster oven.
I asked what a toaster oven was.
“When an oven and a toaster love each other very much, they make a toaster oven together,” said my dad. “But sometimes, the toaster doesn’t survive the process.”
“Do a radio and an alarm clock make a radio alarm clock?” I asked.
My dad shrugged, and told me to get him another beer.
The Collection
I keep my knife collection in my back and my stamp collection on all these envelopes I keep filling with money to keep you from adding to my knife collection.
You bitch. You evil bitch.
How much is enough? How long do I have to suffer?
You never answer me. you just send another envelope to fill, so I know the answer: as long as I live.
Or, as long as you live.
Now, I keep my knife collection in your chest… your throat.
My last two stamps are over your eyes.
I am free.
… and another envelope arrives.
The Architect
The architect was known for designing absurdly tall buildings, but he was secretly afraid of heights.
Ribbon-cutting ceremonies for his completed designs were always held in the lobby, but he would find a reason to duck out before the trip to the observation deck or sky lobby took place.
“It’s past my bedtime,” he’d say.
His final design was so tall, critics joked that you could throw someone from the roof and be tried and convicted for murder before the victim hit the ground.
The architect was horrified, and threw out his Tinkertoys.
His mother grounded him for a week.
The Pet That Sucked
My first furry pet was a guinea pig.
I don’t know if it was a boy or girl. And I don’t remember if it had a name.
It lived in a monkey cage in the room I shared with my brother.
I wasn’t allowed to open the cage to pet the thing. And I have no idea who fed it, filled the water, or cleaned the cage.
It got out of its cage, cut itself on a sharp edge, and bled to death in a closet.
I cried a lot. Too much.
I shouldn’t have. It was a sucky pet.
ER
Poor people couldn’t afford to go to their family doctor for minor issues, so they went to the Emergency Room at the county hospital.
Then, they ignored the bill from the hospital.
The county funded a set of neighborhood clinics to deal with this problem, but people kept going to the ER.
So, the county stationed a guy with a sledgehammer at the door, and he only let real emergencies in.
“Doesn’t the Hippocratic Oath say that doctors can’t do harm?” complained a social activist.
“I’m not a doctor,” the sledgehammer-guy said.
And he brained the activist with his hammer.
Sing to the fish
Sally runs an aquaculture business.
She loves to feed the fish. And she loves to sing to the fish while she feeds them.
The food floats on the surface of the pond, and the fish rush to the surface to feed.
She tosses them food until they don’t rush to the surface anymore.
Then she knows they’ve eaten enough.
She doesn’t expect the fish to say “Thank you” or to compliment the chef.
All she wants the fish to do is eat, and be happy.
Oh, and not flop out of the crates on the way to the processing plant.
Ghost
I listened to the ghost of David Rakoff read his latest, final book.
David Rakoff is a brilliant writer, but he’s also a brilliant performer, so his audiobooks are what I get.
Got.
I remembered that his book was available as I left the office, but iTunes wouldn’t load it because I wasn’t on WiFi, and it was a large file.
So, I walked to the bus stop, waited for the bus, got on, and squeezed my way to the back door where I stood in the stink and jabber…
And then, home. Wifi.
Loading… loading… loading…
Speak, ghost. Speak.