For her two hundredth birthday, Syrine threw herself a mermaid party.
The surgical alteration tanks grafted on the fish tails and gills with precision, nanobots coursing through their bloodstreams.
For hours, she and her friends swam in the orbital colony’s water basin, circling and playing.
They returned to her home and had themselves changed back in time for the dinner celebration.
Mermaids. Centaurs. Winged angels.
Although the angel configurations couldn’t actually fly, even with low gravity zone assistance.
Swimming was flying through water, wasn’t it?
She flexed a prawn’s tail in her fingers, twisted it, and took a bite.
Delicious.
Category: My stories
Sitcom Dreams
For a while, it seemed like every stand-up comedian got their own sitcom.
Then, they all got talk shows, and celebrities were so worn out running from show to show, they had no time or energy to do all the stuff that made them celebrities in the first place.
The guests dried up, the audiences dried up, and finally the advertisers dried up.
The comedians lost their talk shows and tried to get sitcoms, but the sitcoms were all replaced with reality shows.
So, they started their own comedy clubs, and the young comedians flowed in… with their sitcom dreams.
The Language of Ice Cream
My car got a flat tire right outside of an ice cream shop.
Is this the universe’s way of telling me that I should have ice cream?
You know, Galileo said that the language in which God made the universe is mathematics.
What if he was wrong? Maybe the universe was written in the language of ice cream?
If so, ISO-639 should include a language code for ice cream: ic.
And you could tack on dialect codes for different flavors, such as ic-rr for Rocky Road.
A rocky road that flattens your tire in front of an ice cream store.
Scandal
Scandal! Scandal!
The mayor denied the allegations, while the line of accusers got longer and longer and longer.
“Resign!” shouted the city.
“Charge me!” shouted back the mayor.
But they never did charge him.
Instead of going to the police to file charges against the mayor, more and more people went to the media, filling the airwaves and newspapers and websites with even more allegations.
Eventually the list of accusers included everyone in the city… except for the mayor.
The mayor, disgusted with the city, resigned.
People lined up early to make allegations against the next mayor.
But nobody ran.
Sick
I hate being sick.
If I’m going to take time off of work, I’ll go to the museums or to the Galleria or to a baseball game or somewhere ANYWHERE instead of sitting at home.
Oh, sure, I like a nice long hot bath, but there’s only so long you can soak.
Books? My eyes get tired quickly when I am sick.
Podcasts and music are just annoying when I am sick. And television is worse.
So, I try to write. But it all turns out about being sick like this worthless piece of crap.
I’ll just take another nap.
Surviving
You know how child actors turn out badly?
Well, that Peppermint Lane show was one of the worst for the kids who starred in it.
Instead of going to school, they had tutors on the set, but they were paid to give the kids passing grades.
All they knew how to do was be a child actor. And that doesn’t last.
Some got into drugs and alcohol.
Others lost their money to greedy parents and turned to crime or other ways to get by.
The puppets made it into museums, or on toy store shelves, envied by the surviving few.
Towel
Every summer, my parents sent me to a daycamp.
Once a week, we’d go out to the local pool.
I’ve always hated swimming and water. I’d just stay on my towel, but now and then, the camp counselors would pick me up and throw me in the pool.
I’d try to run from them, but they always got me. Everybody ganged up on me.
I hated it.
One time, I forgot which towel was mine.
We had to wait until everybody got their towels.
Logically, mine was the last one.
Doesn’t matter. I wished they’d have hung themselves with it.
Arts
The National Endowment For The Arts was founded to foster artists of all kinds.
Except one: con artists.
So, The National Endowment For Con Artists was started to foster them.
From all across the country they came to apply for grants: con artists, frauds, bamboozlers, and hucksters.
Some flew in from other countries with false documentation and credentials. When you think about it, faking up citizenship papers is a good test for your con artist skills.
In the end, the Endowment failed, because nobody on the board could agree on a definition of “legitimate” con artist with a straight face.
Break
My wife is going out of town to visit her sister.
The last time she visited her, I went out on my bike to get groceries.
On the way back, I fell off my bike and broke my elbow.
This time, I’m not going to ride my bike.
And I’m not going to go get groceries.
Instead, I’m going to hole up in the living room and order pizzas for a week.
There’s no way I’ll break my arm now. As long as I don’t trip over empty boxes. Or violently piss off a delivery driver with a crappy tip.
150
Sesquicentennial is a silly-looking word, but we here in Ocean Falls take everything serious.
Miss Liza has been teaching the schoolkids to count to 150.
That counting came in handy for the whipping of Fred Murks, the town drunk. The kids counted out loud with every crack of the whip.
Except for Little Fred Junior. He screamed in horror at the sight of his father covered with gashes and blood.
Fred only took seventeen lashes before dying.
“There there, Little Fred,” we said.
And then gave him a bottle of gin.
You know. So he can practice. For the Bicentennial.