Storms and floods washed out the cemetery on the hill, decaying bodies, caskets, and headstones scattered throughout the devastated town.
The townspeople did their best to gather up what they could, despite the wretched conditions they were living under, not much food, no electricity, no clean water.
The National Guard pitched in, volunteers from around the state.
It took a week to get basic services back, weeks to get the rebuilding effort going.
The next year, you could hardly tell there’d been a storm or flood. It was back to the way it was.
So when the next storm came…
Category: My stories
Teacher
The scientists worked up a proposal for teaching chimpanzees language and applied for a grant.
It was rejected, and they were confronted with security officers, cattle-prods and whips.
“What is the meaning of this?” said the lead researcher.
“Shut up and get into the cages!” said an officer, cracking his whip.
Several days later, in the middle of a social grooming and bark-chewing rest period, the scientists learned that their proposal had been misread by the grant foundation, and they were being taught how to be chimpanzees.
Nobody spoke up, because it was fun.
And the mealworm treats were delicious.
Punxsutawney
Let’s face it: nobody gives a shit what goes on here in Punxsutawney during the rest of the year. Nobody comes here when it’s not February second. It’s as if this place didn’t exist.
Isn’t that the truth?
Once the cameras are off and the reporters go home, we break down and fold up the houses, rolling them back into the abandoned coal mines.
The streets are disassembled, the signs and lampposts packed away, and the robot citizens marched into the storage facilities by the few actual humans.
Close the freeway off-ramp, and… done.
Race you to the cryogenic chambers!
Crazy Horse
There’s been some speculation regarding Crazy Horse’s name, and I’d like to set the record straight.
He got his name from his father, who had also been named Crazy Horse, but gave his name to his son.
Some legends say Crazy Horse stole his father’s name, but all he ever did was rifle under his cot and look at his porn collection.
Oh, and Crazy Horse’s horse wasn’t crazy. He was a rather well-adjusted horse, a good mount.
His name was “No, I’m Not Crazy, But This Crazy Motherfucker Riding Me Is, So Cut Me Some Slack, Dude.”
Any questions?
Fancy Labels
I have a rule: The fancier the label, the worse the product.
I made this rule based on the assumption that the more a company spends on label design, the less they have left over for quality parts, ingredients, manufacturing, or anything else related to the actual product.
Good products don’t need eye-catching gimmicks or advertising to get you to buy them. You can sell them in a brown paper wrapper if you wanted to.
I wrote a book about this.
Okay, so it has an orgy of blood, sex, and explosions on the cover.
Hey, gotta sell it, right?
The Magic Bell
Every street-corner Santa has a magical pot and a magical bell.
The pot is a gateway to another dimension full of evil and demons that can only be blocked with a large volume of money.
The bell is used for driving off any evil beings that manage to make it through the pile of money and into our world.
Demons can’t stand the sound of bells. Hurts their ears.
What? It hurts your ears, too?
Maybe… you’re a demon!
Santa! Santa! I caught one!
Help me stuff this guy into your pot to send him back to his evil dimension!
Rusty Tools
I was looking around the internet when I came across an online university collection.
There were lectures on history, literature, and all sorts of other academic interests.
I tried to watch the Math and Science lectures, but despite having taken them in college long ago, I couldn’t keep up with the formulas and equations.
None of it made sense.
I took my framed diploma down from the wall and folded up the parchment.
Then I mailed it back to my alma mater with a note.
“If they take driver’s licenses away from elderly people, then this should be returned, too.”
Kate
Remember that supermodel Kate Moss? Yeah the really thin chick. Really thin. Scary thin. She could put on a bikini and double her weight. yeah, that’s her. You could see the bones in her hips… her arms, really unattractive, yet, she was a model.
Well, she got bitten by a zombie… kept groaning brains, and all, but when it got right down to it, after all the biting and attacking and stuff, she didn’t really eat any brains. Oh, sure, she’d moan braaaaaaains along with the rest of the pack, she ended up just pushing them round on her plate.”
Oodles Of Poodles
I’ve heard the phrase “oodles of Poodles” but nobody’s ever told me how much an oodle is.
I asked a breeder, and they said an oodle is like a bunch.
“How much is in a bunch?” they asked. “It’s a lot, maybe too many to count.”
We tried to work it out, but it was hard, and what’s a single oodle out of oodles?
Plus, the poodles are hard to deal with in such numbers.
Nasty, whiny, snappy dogs.
Truth be told, I don’t even like poodles.
I don’t think I’ll ever be in a mood for oodles of them.
A Scandal In Atlanta
The superintendent of the school district called his principals.
After the cheating scandal, he ordered the teachers not to erase and correct student answers on the scanning forms.
The union rep kept them from getting fired, the lawyers all shook hands, and everybody went back to work.
Time passed, a new round of testing happened.
This time, the teachers got caught marking the answers on forms before they handed them to the students.
“It’s not erasing,” said the union rep.
So, the superintendent filled in a wire transfer form and sent their salaries to an account in Aruba.
And vanished.