Monopoly recently retired the iron game piece and replaced it with a cat.
Their second choice was a die-cast figurine of Adolf Hitler.
Why Adolf Hitler would be wandering the streets of Atlantic City, purchasing property and building hotels, I’m not sure.
But you’ve got to admit that if you had a choice between the iron and Hitler, you’d go with Hitler in a heartbeat, right?
In fact, coming in second place in that beauty contest may have been the motivation for Hitler to invade Poland and Czechoslovakia.
If only he’d have come in first.
So many lives needlessly lost.
Category: My stories
Barrow
I was thinking about gardening, when I asked myself “Why do they call them wheelbarrows?”
All wheelbarrows have wheels, so why not call them barrows?
Have you ever heard of a barrow? A barrow without a wheel?
I’ve never heard of one. Or seen one.
I looked it up. They’re called a travois. They’re carts that you drag behind horses.
You’d think they’d call them horsebarrows, but they call them travois.
Goddamned French.
However, now that I’ve brought up the subject, can you bring up a horse from the basement?
I’m out of wheels, and there’s gardening to be done.
Dan Mauer
The Revival Laws clearly state that it is illegal to revive a person against their will.
It is also illegal to revive a person multiple times.
So, the seven starving Dan Bauers locked up in my basement would score me several lifetimes in jail if anybody reported them.
Nobody will.
Instead, a select audience of his victims watches them with sick delight, screaming and yelling as the revived duplicates attack each other and suffer over and over again.
No man deserves such a fate… or fates.
Except this monster: Dan Bauer.
Maybe next time, we’ll place bets.
Watch… and win!
Fight Club
The basement was full of men, standing around a man who recited a list of rules.
Arthur was in the back of the crowd, and his ears were ringing a bit, so he misheard the rules.
“What was that second rule?” Arthur asked another guy.
“Same as the first,” the man grunted.
Arthur was going to ask what the first rule was, but the guy looked angry.
He decided to ask someone else.
“Don’t talk about Fight Club, he said.
Uh oh, thought Arthur, clutching his dice bag. D&D Club must be tomorrow.
Tyler Durden made him eat the dice.
Black Sheep
My youngest son turned 100 today.
I sent him a congratulatory message. The same I’d sent to all my other sons when they turned 100.
No reply.
He may have me blocked.
I ask my other sons to pass along the message, but they know it’s against The Privacy Law to relay messages from one person to another.
With every person wired together with each other, it was so easy to advertise and inundate the world with unwanted messages.
Hence, The Privacy Laws.
I was disconnected from the grid and isolated.
“Violator disconnect,” said a voice.
Damn ungrateful black shee-
Prometheus
While online dating sites constructed databases of compatible personality traits, Prometheus Industries collected data on organ compatibility for transplant purposes.
Every mail-in paternity check, medical biopsy, and blood test brought in more data.
Prometheus ingested every result and wove a complex web of names and organs.
At first, Prometheus offered up its data on voluntary donors to eliminate transplant rejections.
But after they demonstrated how successful their algorithms were, they quietly opened up the secret market to allow the wealthy and desperate to view donor resources not yet available.
Prometheus just offered the data. The illegal procurement agents operated independently.
Mean
I woke up feeling mean today.
So, I was mean to some oranges and squeezed them until I had juice.
Then I battered some pancake batter until I had pancakes.
The butter was whipped and tortured.
And I beat the crap out of a maple tree to make syrup before I chopped it down for firewood.
Grits? What the fuck are grits? Who gives a shit about grits?
When my breakfast was ready, I threw it all into the trash, and I went back to bed.
Maybe later I’ll order a pizza.
Don’t expect a tip, you stupid delivery boy.
Rose
A rose by any other name would still be a rose
And a nose by any other name would still be a nose.
Your nose knows that a rose is a rose.
What about toes?
Your nose certainly knows toes.
What about bows?
What about clothes?
Would a hose by any other name still be a hose?
What about those?
It’s time that we chose.
How many yeses? How many nos?
If you ask a rose, as it sits there and grows, will it disclose?
How do we know that a rose knows that it knows?
Do I? I suppose.
Covered
I took a girl to the fanciest restaurant in town, and we had the best wine and lobster meal we ever had.
The waiter asked us if we left any room for desert.
“Absolutely,” we both said.
He brought out the desert tray, but nothing looked appetizing at all.
“Perhaps you’d like to sample a little first?” he asked.
We did.
None of it was any good.
So instead, we went to her place and covered each other from head to toe in a shower of chocolate.
We completely forgot to get strawberries and marshmallows to dip.
Somehow, we managed.
Backwards
Dan challenged the entire company to go paperless by the end of the year.
He bought smartphones, laptops, and tablets for the staff, but they used those to play games and update their Facebook statuses.
He removed all the printers and copiers, so people would write down notes to each other.
Until he removed the pens and pencils from the building.
Employees were so resistant to change, they would take paper towels and toilet paper from the restrooms and smear them with blood and feces.
That’s when Dan quit and left. Because he was sick of working with crazy people.