From the look on your face, I can tell that you’re wrestling with your conscience, right?
Me, I wrestle with my conscience out in the open. Usually somewhere outdoors with plenty of room, nothing breakable around.
Once, I dated a woman who’d wrestle her conscience in a Jello Pit while wearing a bikini.
(She tried mud once. Things just got messy.)
She made a lot of money from doing that act at bars looking to bring in a crowd.
Then came a big television deal with ESPN, left me for some Hollywood dude.
And that’s when her conscience completely vanished.
Category: My stories
The Radio
There’s something special about our song playing on the radio.
Sure, we have a record of it.
A tape of it.
A CD of it.
It’s on both of our iPods, iPhones and laptops.
But it’s not the same as it playing on the radio.
Chance. Serendipity.
It is luck or is it fate?
I don’t know, but I do know it means something.
I pick up the radio, go into the bathroom, and say “They’re playing our song.”
You look up from the tub. “What the hell do I care?”
I nod, and toss the radio into the tub.
Measured emotional response
Doctor Odd was a master of measurement, knowing every unit of measurement there was.
Except emotions.
He could not measure emotions.
There was no emotional yardstick.
There was no emotional scale.
There was no emotional multimeter.
“I must invent one,” he said.
So, over the years, he ran countless experiments.
Taking candy from babies.
Showering people with love.
Telling parents their children had died at war.
Giving gifts to orphans.
And running lunatics through a maze of unfamiliar lights and sounds.
Not that any ethical scientist would respect his results, he revealed his horrific findings:
“I have no emotions whatsoever.”
Eggplants
I was pushing a cart through the grocery store, gathering vegetables for a salad, when a mad scientist peered from behind a display and whispered “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, but can you make an omeletplant without breaking a few eggplants?”
I thought about it for a bit. “I don’t know.”
He implored me to follow him to the stockroom, where I beheld the largest mountain of eggplants I’d ever seen.
He grinned. “Shall we begin?”
We’ve been trying for ten years, but every time we try, the eggplant breaks.
We’ll keep trying. For science!
The Road To Hell
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, or at least it’s supposed to be, according to the contract I bid on.
The road’s even worse now. The job shoulda been done by now, and I’m way over budget, but how was I to know about the weather problems, the commodities market run by speculators on good intentions, and the union going on strike on me… it’s not my fault, really.
I have no time for my other contracts, my business is about to go under.
I look down… and the road’s finished.
Time for me to walk it.
The Answer
Bob Dylan says that the answer is blowin’ in the wind.
So, I figured that the stronger the wind, the better the answer.
That’s why our think tank leases offices in an airplane manufacturer’s wind tunnel.
I haven’t heard a single dumb idea since we moved there.
Of course, I haven’t heard anything since we moved there. The wind tunnel is deafening, and we wear earplugs for protection.
I tried to set up a whiteboard, but it kept getting blown over.
Maybe moving to the wind tunnel isn’t the answer.
Aha! That’s the answer!
The wind tunnel works after all!
Fist Full Of Mustard
When you spend your whole life in the dark, it’s important to have a system.
I keep mustard packets in my left pants pocket, ketchup packets in my right pants pocket, relish packets in my jacket pocket, mayonnaise packets in this shirt pocket, salsa packets in-
No. Really. Ask me for something.
Mustard? Right here.
Ask me again.
Ketchup? Right here.
See?
Well, okay, you can’t see, because we’re in the closet and the light’s off and it’s dark, but still, I’m ready.
Now I’m ready for anything! Let’s go out there and…
Um… hold on…
Who locked the door?
When it rains…
Mother used to say “When it rains, it pours.”
I’d walk out to the patio and say “Mom? That’s just Grampa on the roof with the hose.”
Mother never said much about that. It was bad enough that Grampa lived with us, making a scene at every meal, accusing Germans of poisoning his soup…
“That’s meat loaf, Grampa, not soup.”
“DAMN THE KAISER!” he’d shout, diving under the table.
The stories he’d tell me, well, they were magical. Tales of… well… I mean… magical stories…
Okay, fine. I ignored the crazy old coot.
Pass the meat loaf… I mean soup.
The Evening Hunt
I used to have trouble sleeping.
Yeah, I tried everything. Mattresses, high thread count sheets, pills, diets, exercise, music…
And pillows. So many different pillows. Piles and piles of pillows.
Different shapes, different materials.
What the hell is Space-Age memory foam? Smells like tar, feels like a marshmallow.
Awful.
That’s when I prayed.
All day, all night.
Days. Weeks. Months.
And then, my prayers were answered.
Standing there, an angel said “How can I help you get to sleep?”
I whacked him with a rock, plucked the feathers from his wings, and stuffed them into a pillow.
Never slept better.
If I had a hammer…
If I had a hammer, I wouldn’t hammer in the morning, evening, or all over this land.
Instead, I’d rent that hammer out to laborers who don’t have their own tools.
With the profit, I’d buy some more tools, like saws and wood planes and socket wrench sets, English and metric.
Then, if someone wants to hammer out danger or warning, they can do it with my hammer, as long as they put down a deposit first.
As for hammering out love between my brothers and my sisters, forget it. My whole family’s nuts.
And they never return my tools.