I know a guy who’s in a church that protests military funerals.
They say that our soldiers die because of gays, abortions, and other things their church says that God and Jesus don’t like.
However, this guy is really lazy, so instead of actually going to Arlington Cemetery, he looks it up on his computer.
Then, he searches the map for the gravesite, loads the picture, and protests.
Right from his own living room.
He’s been trying to convince the other members of the church that this can save a lot of time and gas money.
I hope he succeeds.
Category: My stories
Alarms
All of the alarms went off at once.
Fire.
Intrusion.
Radiation.
Chemical leak.
Everybody panicked.
Except for me.
“The alarm system is malfunctioning,” I said, and I crawled into the access hatch.
Sometimes the organic components in the alarm systems get out of whack.
I pulled out two aspirin, crushed them up, and dropped the powder into the brain tank.
After a minute, the alarms stopped.
Then I checked the biofilters in the nutrient tanks.
Clogged.
I exchanged them with some fresh filters and put the clogged ones in the cleaning system.
“Just like changing diapers,” I grumbled, climbing out.
Oh By The Way
My least favorite words are: “Oh, by the way.”
Whenever someone says that, it means they forgot to tell me something important, and they’re about to make it my fault for not knowing about it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” is not the proper response to an “Oh, by the way.”
Instead, you should say “I’d like you to put your oversight in writing so that I can hold you legally responsible for any consequences that result from your failure to keep me informed.”
They never do.
This is why I record everything…
Oh, by the way, I’m recording this.
Cold Cat
Usually, the cats like to go outside and hunt. They come back in to get food, water, and use the litterbox.
But Bruwyn really doesn’t like it when the Winter chill comes.
Instead of going outside with Myst to hunt lizards, he stays inside and sleeps on the bed or curls up on the top of the chair.
Okay, so he sometimes goes outside in the cold, but he comes back inside quickly, and he growls angrily as he runs around the hall.
I grumble as I walk home from work in the cold, and know exactly how he feels.
Ducks In A Row
My boss keeps telling me to get all my ducks in a row.
Have you ever tried to get ducks in a row?
It’s hard. Really hard.
Ducks like to wander around, foraging for things to eat.
They only get in a row if they’re running away from something.
So, I unplugged my keyboard and phone and banged them together to scare the ducks.
Sure enough, they ran down the hall in a row.
Along with everybody else’s ducks.
Pretty soon, the halls filled up with scared ducks running around.
My boss smiled, and then went back to herding cats.
Vile
Ted’s smartphone was a cesspool of filth.
His browser’s bookmarks linked to the most hardcore and obscene sites on the Internet.
The music library was packed with rap that glorified gang violence, subjugation of women, and drug use.
And his collection of apps couldn’t be any more foul and putrid.
Ted was always on the lookout for more, so he fired up his smartphone’s genius feature to find new apps based on the rogue’s gallery occupying the memory chip.
The phone suggested one app.
So, he clicked the download button, and then opened it.
The app wiped the memory clean.
Outlaws
After every handgun massacre, there are calls to outlaw guns. And there are the counter-responses that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
The debate rages for a while, people get outraged over other things, and nothing gets accomplished.
So, I decided to break the cycle by outlawing signs that say I AM AN OUTLAW.
And sure enough, once those signs were outlawed, only outlaws had those signs.
Which made them really easy to to identify.
We rounded them up and killed them.
Sure, there were a few jokers and free-speech wackos with the signs.
Fuck those idiots.
Appointment
I have a doctor’s appointment today.
His staff takes x-rays of my elbow and then sticks me in a room to wait for an hour.
When I’m fed up with the wait, he comes through the door, pokes and prods me for a minute, and then I’m sent to the reception desk to pay and set my next appointment.
I took half a day off to do this. But if I had taken a whole day off, I’d have gotten wellness credit reimbursed on my paycheck for half the day.
My elbow is getting better. It’s my patience that’s broken.
The Brick
As part of my rehabilitation, I have a blue foam Lego brick to squeeze.
This builds up my grip strength.
However, it’s a lot more fun to throw my brick at people.
It’s like a blend of Angry Birds and Tetris.
And Lego, I suppose. Although what’s the point of having just a single Lego brick?
You can’t build anything with it.
I shrug, and look over my toy drawer:
A single Tinkertoy spoke
An erector-set screw
A piece of this
A piece of that
A pile of team-building pieces I never built with.
I squeeze the brick and laugh.
Meetings
For the past week, I’ve been stuck in meetings.
I haven’t gotten any work done at all.
So, my boss wanted to talk to me about it.
In a meeting.
After the meeting, the people I was supposed to meet with around then demanded that I meet with them about missing their meetings.
That resulted in meetings between them and my boss, then more meetings with me about the meetings.
I still wasn’t getting any work done.
In fact, I couldn’t remember what my work was anymore.
I called for a meeting.
Nobody showed up.
So, I took a nap.