In addition to a digital photo frame, I’ve mounted a laser pointer to the brace on my arm.
I can turn it on and wiggle it, to make the cats go crazy and chase it.
It runs on a pair of AA batteries so it lasts a long time. And the switch is a toggle, so I don’t need to hold down the button to keep the laser on.
I had a good time with it, until I fell asleep with my arm pointing out the window, flashing into the cockpits of airplanes landing at the airport two blocks away.
Category: My stories
Negativity
After years of negative ads the citizens were so disgusted with politics that when Election Day rolled around, nobody showed up at the polls.
Not even the poll workers.
The media weren’t surprised at all, since they were so disgusted by the negativity, whoever hadn’t gotten time off for vacation or a faked-up medical emergency ended up chasing other stories besides the election.
Absentee ballots were completely absent.
Even the urban churches filled their buses with the faithful… and drove them to church to pray.
Washington and every state office was closed.
And people pretty much got along as normal.
Statistics
You know how statistics show that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to be used on a member of the household than to be used in self-defense?
My cousin Fred lost his job a year ago. Since then, instead of searching for a job, he’s been on my couch, watching TV and stinking up the place.
Doesn’t help with the chores, either.
I can’t argue with statistics, so I shot him. 43 times.
Of course, I said it was in self-defense.
(Because you can’t clean a gun and have it go off 43 times accidentally.)
Darts
For 4 generations, my family’s company has made the best darts and dartboards in the entire world.
I was hoping that my son would carry on the family tradition, but he’d rather throw darts in the pubs and drink than run the company.
So, while he threw away his future in the pub, I was out looking for a buyer.
Eventually, I got an offer from a big gaming company that ran their divisions separately, and I felt they’d maintain the quality that our name stands for.
As for my son, he’s a bartender now.
But I never drink with strangers.
Addict
When you’re an addict in Vegas, you need to be a little bit more specific about “going to see your dealer.”
Are you looking to score some coke or heroin, or do you have a table at the casino?
Maybe your dealer is your dealer, and you’re scoring drugs at the table.
This is a really dumb thing to do, because there’s the pit boss, watching over everything, and the cameras watching what they don’t spot.
It’s one thing to comp a customer free drinks, as long as the cash goes to the casino, and not into the dealer’s pocket.
Tea Time
It doesn’t take long to make a fresh pitcher of iced tea.
I strip 8 teabags from their packages, drop them into a pitcher, and then put a kettle of water on the stove.
Turning the dial to High, I walk into the living room and sit for a while.
I guess this is the superstitious part of me, not watching a pot because a watched pot never boils.
I wait 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 15 minutes…
No whistle yet?
I go back into the kitchen.
Great. I turned on the wrong burner.
I guess those pots don’t boil either.
Choice
It’s not easy for a person to cook with their arm in a sling.
Visions of setting my left arm on fire convince me to stick with simple foods, like carrots and hummus.
Yogurt, too.
But I find myself unable to choose from the many flavors in our refrigerator. The pain meds make it hard to make arbitrary decisions like this.
I stand there, confused, and getting hungrier… hungrier…
I reach out and freeze.
“Close your eyes,” a voice says.
So, I do.
And I pull out a yogurt! Success!
Uh oh.
Now I need to pick out a spoon.
Paper or Plaster
Every time I go grocery shopping, it’s the same damn question:
“Paper or plastic?”
Plastic’s good for putting the scooped-out clumps of kitty litter into.
But the kitties like to play in the paper bags.
In the end, I settled on paper. The baskets on my bike are large enough for one paper bag each.
The one time I got plastic, I couldn’t fit all the bags into the baskets.
With one bag dangling from my right hand, I fell and broke my left arm.
I use a plastic bag to keep the cast dry in the shower.
Memory Of Jasmine
I love to light incense.
The more aromatic it is, the better.
I watch it twist and curl into the air, spreading trails in an alphabet only known to the gods and the mad fools who follow them.
Today, I light a stick of jasmine, and I can remember when our fence was covered with vines and white star blossoms.
The red tip glows brightly, consuming the incense slowly, dropping ash into the groove of the wooden holder.
And then, the tip goes dark.
The smoke trails vanish, and I’m left with the memory and scent of tiny white flowers.
The Cruelest Puzzle
Vindal Mumford was a famous puzzlemaker, so it was no surprise that his will was in the form of an intricate puzzlebox with no apparent solution.
Experts examined the box for weeks, twisting and turning it and subjecting it to x-rays and other modern scanning technology.
But the box was still impenetrable and unsolvable.
Weeks… months… years went by, but no solution to the puzzle was ever found.
Not that Vindal left anything to be won by the solver of his final puzzle.
There’s not much money in creating problems without solutions, you know.
(Unless you’re a politician, of course.)