Our meetings used to go on far too long and never accomplished anything. People would get off the point too easily, or get mired in conflicting agendas.
So, we hired a barbarian from the steppes of Turkey to manage discussions.
Ugdur doesn’t even need to reach for his flail anymore, let alone whallop anyone with it.
Just by raising his eyebrow, we put down our Blackberries, reach consensus quickly, and get back to work.
Sadly, we had to fire Ugdur.
Caught stealing office supplies, and he attacked the receptionist.
If you’re going to pillage and plunder, stick to the shareholders.
Category: My stories
Christmas Wish
It takes a lot of energy to make a wish come true.
The amount of energy depends on the wish.
Little wishes, a little bit of energy.
Big wishes, lots of energy.
Where does the energy come from?
From the mass of the star, of course, based on Einstein’s formula.
You know our sun is a star, right?
Scientists thought we could slow Global Warming by wishing the sun slightly smaller.
But something went wrong. We wished too much of it away.
So, go ahead and sing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”
But not like you really mean it.
Elephants
Kelly searched the classifieds for a bathtub big enough to drown an elephant in.
“Money’s no object,” she told herself, wringing her hands. “This is justice.”
It took a flatbed and a crane to deliver it.
However, she never thought about how she’d get it into the house, so the tub ended up in the back yard.
“It’s an above-ground pool,” she told the neighbors, and she hired men to build a deck around it.
“And a ramp,” she said. “A very sturdy ramp.”
She’s sitting on her porch, with a bag of peanuts, waiting… waiting…
Do you hear elephants?
Theater
The old theater was in ruins.
The mayor was an architect, and he drew up plans to revive it.
His wife was good with numbers, and she applied for grants, loan guarantees and stimulus money.
Her brother was a contractor. Another brother handled materials and supplies.
Cousins got hired on to handle the labor, the electric, the pipes, and the rest of the building.
They handled the parking lot, sidewalks, landscaping, and trees, too.
The grand opening was scheduled, posters went up, and so did the theater… in flames.
The mayor’s son sold insurance, and they all vanished like smoke.
Job Market
The job market out there is tough, and everybody’s beefing up their resume with exaggerations and lies.
Me, I’m beefing up my resume with beef.
I started by sending my resume with the finest steaks packed in a cooler with dry ice.
The recruiter threw out the resume and ate the steaks.
Then, I developed a special dye to etch my resume on to the steaks.
The writing vanished as the steaks cooked.
Finally, I made sheets of jerky and printed the resume on those.
By then, the recruiter had died of a heart attack.
And I got his job.
We are not alone
Fred hated everyone and lived alone.
He shopped online and had everything delivered.
He never answered his phone, doorbell, or email.
Every so often, he’d have to go out for something, like doctor or dental checkups. He’d get in the taxi, go his appointment, and come home as quickly as possible.
He wasn’t unhappy.
He just hated people. And liked being alone.
The SETI@Home program on his laptop flashed.
It analyzed signals for extraterrestrial life, and it appeared to find something.
Fred smiled.
Not because there was life out there, but because it meant more life for him to hate.
St. Bactine
Of all the priests and monks in the world, we are the clumsiest by far.
The Church calls us “The Order Of Saint Bactine.”
Not a day goes by where one of us doesn’t trip over a cassock, knock over a chair, stumble on the steps, or get a paper cut in the library.
Some say it’s an expression of the stigmata, but Christ was nailed through the ankles and wrists, not dragged around on his elbows and knees.
A demon, perhaps?
Unlikely.
Instead of an exorcist, we need ergonomics consultants and an interior decorator.
And elbow and knee pads.
The Evil Clown
Walking home from work, I saw a strange sight.
An evil clown was at the corner, waving a sign advertising a costume shop.
Halloween is next week, you know.
Anyway, I watched the evil clown dance and wave his sign at the passing traffic.
Not the most dignified of jobs, I know, but it’s still a job.
Plus, it’s unlikely that it’ll be outsourced to India, since there’s no point in some clown in Bangalore waving a sign around there when the store it’s advertising is in Houston, Texas.
“The economy’s looking up,” I said, and went along my way.
Smith’s Crooks
The Smith Administration was the most corrupt in modern history.
Congress is still trying to sort out the books to figure out where all the money went.
The largest chunk of it wound up in the pockets of Smith’s old college friends who he’d appointed ambassadors.
Unlike the campaign contributors who received the plum assignments of France and England and Berlin, these guys were posted to Oz, Narnia, and Mordor.
That’s right. They’d picked the names out of children’s books.
Sure, these crooks should be tried, but Justice won’t get involved because we don’t have extradition treaties with those places.
Billy Hill
My name is William Hill.
Call me William.
Do not call me Billy.
In school, the teacher would read the roll call.
So, he’d read my name as Hill Billy.
And everyone would laugh.
They’d ask me if I bathed in a creek, slept in a pig pen, or if my dad made moonshine.
Yes, I bathed in a creek.
Yes, I slept in a pigpen.
And, yes, my dad made moonshine.
It was the best moonshine in the state, and when he got a distillery license, we got filthy stinking rich.
(Okay, so maybe the stink was the pigs.)