The warning label on that bottle of drain cleaner tells you not to drink it.
And they’re right.
You’re supposed to sip it. Savor it.
Oh, and let the bottle breathe, like a fine wine.
Some people season their drain cleaner with flavors like peppermint or lemon, but a true aficionado will take it straight.
Oh, that skull and crossbones on the label?
That’s just letting you know there’s lots of calcium in there. You know, for healthy bones.
It’s just that the government doesn’t put nutritional labels on drain cleaner.
Do I want some?
No. I only drink diet.
Category: My stories
The Walls Have Ears
“The walls have ears,” the nuns tell us.
They are the ears of bad children that talk in class and get dragged by the ear to Mother Superior’s office.
Most kids scream in pain and walk willingly, but the tough ones resist.
The nuns tug harder and… sometimes the lobe tears right off.
After the child is beaten into submission by a flock of nuns with rulers, the prize earlobe is tacked up on the wall as a warning to the rest of the children.
Unless the parents buy it back in the annual Ear Auction.
You know, for charity.
Stolen Dreams
Ever have your dreams stolen from you?
It happens all the time, I know, but what can you do about it?
Can’t call the cops. It’s not a crime to steal dreams.
Can’t file an insurance claim. They’re not covered by homeowner policies.
I tried to put up posters around the neighborhood, but all people called me about was a lost cat and how much I wanted for my lawnmower.
One guy insisted on giving me his credit card number and making me talk dirty to him for two bucks a minute.
And that’s how I got my dreams back.
Referrals
I asked the witch doctor, and he sent me to a fortune teller.
I asked the fortune teller, and she suggested I consult a mountaintop guru.
I climbed the mountain and asked the guru, and he handed me a Ouija board.
I checked with the Ouija board, and it told me to refer to the I Ching.
I tossed the bones and looked them up in the I Ching, and they said I should use a Magic 8 Ball.
I shook the Magic 8 Ball and it said “Answer Hazy, Try Again Later.”
That’s how much my employer’s HMO sucks.
Limber Me Timbers
When Jill finished her Phys Ed and Business degrees, she opened up a yoga studio.
Business was good, plenty of young mothers and forty-somethings needing to lose a few pounds, or keep pounds away.
Then, Wii Fit and other cheaper options came out, followed by the recession.
She tried pilates classes, but those didn’t draw.
“Try a GroupOn,” said a friend.
Half-off coupons brought in a wave of signups to her studio.
Then… disaster.
First day, the room was filled with buccaneers.
One waved a printout in his good hand.
“Yarrr, I signed up fer Pirates classes!”
Damn you, Autocorrect!
Radio Over Radio
I don’t listen to radio over the radio anymore.
I listen to it through podcasts and through audio streams on the Internet.
Although, if you think about it, that stuff transmits over radio.
Wireless travels by radio.
A different part of the spectrum. Different set of frequencies.
So, instead of listening to radio over radio’s radio, I listen to radio over the radio that radio doesn’t own.
Streams through the air.
Rivers of music and talk and news and hopes and dreams.
Through the air.
Radio. Over the radio, without radio.
I don’t listen to the radio anymore.
Over radio.
Ill Tempered Dreidel
“I spin my little dreidel
Without a whim or care
No truer words were spoken
Than “A great thing happened there”
I had a little dreidel
I made it out of clay
But the clay came from a golem
Whom the rabbi made obey
Sure, the golem was defeated
By the townspeople of Prague
And the streets were free of evil
Though the sewers all did clog
From the blood of all the victims
That the mighty golem slew
The lesson you should learn
Is to not piss off a Jew”
Rebecca smacked her husband.
“Did you teach him that?”
One Two
When I was a kid, I used to count out time using Mississippi.
One Mississippi… Two Mississippi…
Every kid in our town counted using Mississippi.
But kids in other towns counted out with Hippopotamus.
One Hippopotamus… Two Hippopotamus…
“It’s Hippopotami!” We’d tell those kids.
“No it ain’t!” they shouted back. “And besides that, there only be one Mississippi!”
We’d shout back and forth, sometimes a scuffle would break out.
These days, strolling through the Jackson Zoo, I like to visit the pygmy hippopotamus pond and watch them play in the reeds and mud.
I count them:
One Mississippi… Two Mississippi…
Into The Sunset
When my mother had surgery for a kidney tumor, dad and I sat in a large waiting room.
Well, I sat. He paced around. Or napped.
The chairs were comfortable, but couldn’t be moved. And the arm rests made it impossible to sleep across them.
There was no receptionist. Maybe if I grabbed her chair…
Dad got it, propped his feet up.
Stuck his tongue out at me.
The wall had a long mural, starting from a sunrise where children ran out and played, progressively getting older, until old people walked into the sunset.
Where the bathrooms were, of course.
Fast As Molasses
It used to be that people would say “slow as molasses.”
But not any more.
Just like all those rare plants in the Amazonian jungle yielding cancer-curing wonderdrugs, there’s a compound in molasses that, when properly refined and then hit with a particle accelerator, can be used to fuel a faster-than-light spacecraft.
That’s right. You heard me correctly.
Warp speed. Hyperspace.
And even with all that particle-accelerator science mumbo-jumbo, it’s still cheaper and more stable than what dilithium crystals would cost.
If they existed.
Just make sure you keep the molasses bottles well-marked.
Pancakes make such a mess in hyperspace.