Hey, ynow what’s really cool to wake up to?
The beautiful, delicious smell of chili.
I love chili, dude, so when I smell it, I’m wide awake right then and there.
It’s so much better than a buzzer or music or bright lights because all I did then was hit the snooze bar.
There’s no hitting the snooze bar when the air is full of the sweet aroma of five-alarm chili.
And when you lean over to take out that spoon to taste it, well, you’re up and running to the bathroom to put out that fire in your mouth.
Category: My stories
River City
The conman broke into the library at night to do his research on the town.
Henry Hill may have been an awful music teacher, but he was brilliant when it came to the field of meteorology.
Studying the flood records, he calculated the perfect window in which to roll out his music lessons scam.
The final parade would coincide with the biggest storm of the season and massive flooding.
Henry put his notes in his pocket and went to the librarian’s desk.
Nice perfume, he thought. But he was strictly business on his scams…
Oh, such a pretty name… Marian.
Not So Nicely
After killing the bottle, I passed out.
My dream?
I was on the boat to Heaven.
Some dude holding dice and a bottle of whiskey stood up and shouted “Someone, fade me!”
The boat started to rock and I growled “Sit down!”
He stumbled over to me and stared at me with his bloodshot eyes, and the stench from his breath and grimy tattered coat filled me with disgust.
“Make me,” he said.
So, I tried, but we both fell overboard.
Down… Down…
That’s when I woke up, stumbled to the sink, vomited, and swore…
No more musicals before bed.
The Siege of Oz
Before the Wizard floated off and Dorothy vanished, the Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion swore to rule Oz with intelligence, compassion, and bravery.
Instead, they spent their time bickering and fighting.
The Lion became foolhearty. Barroom brawls ruined his once-magnificent pelt, making him that much more sullen and angry, drinking more, fighting more.
The Tinman was overly compassionate, giving away everything in the Treasury.
The Scarecrow, stuck with the balance sheets, yelled “Damn you both!”
The leaderless Winged Monkeys and Witch Castle Guards received news of this chaos.
They marched on Emerald City, ready to overthrow the misguided and incompetent triumvirate.
Rolling
Prisoner 280 asked the headsman’s forgiveness for stepping on his foot, and she placed her head through the guillotine’s stock.
As the sentence was read aloud, she imagined her husband enduring this same insult nine months earlier.
Unlike the king, her head did not drop into the basket, but sailed over the crowd, spinning on to the cobblestoned street.
The town militia chased after it, but it soon rolled out of sight.
They tossed her body into an unmarked grave, which meant they never knew when it was dug back up.
The resurrectionist rubs his hands together, laughing with joy.
Her Name Was Splack
Her name was Splack.
I don’t remember if that was her first or last name.
When you have a name like Splack, it doesn’t matter. You don’t remember it.
Even if she introduces herself as Jenny or Ismelda or writes it on her panties and raises her skirt to greet people, once you hear the Splack, that’s all you’ll ever know her by.
The weird thing was, she chose to go by that name.
So, I went down to Human Resources and looked up what her full name was.
Closing the file quickly, I decided Splack was fine with me.
Runaway Santa
When Christmas is over, we round up the Santas, herd them into trucks, and ship them back to the camps.
Radio tags help catch the strays.
We give each Santa a checkup, fix the damaged ones, and read through field reports that track which strains were effective where.
Beards by environment, bell-ringers versus department stores… we analyze everything.
This helps us plan our training and deployment strategy for the next holiday season.
And how to predict severe failures.
In the basement, the worst Santas are kept.
The molesters. The axe-murderers.
Oh no. The lock is broken?
Quick! Sound the alarm!
A gift for Valentine’s
When we were married, I swore I’d give you my heart forever.
For health, and sickness.
The doctor said that you needed a new heart, but a bad risk for transplant surgery.
You were way down the transplant list. No point in keeping the battery in the pager fresh.
I went to bed, telling myself that this would be the last sleep I’d ever sleep.
The next morning, I woke up with every intention to kill myself and let the doctors give you my heart.
But you were cold. Still. Not breathing.
You died in your sleep.
Oh, never mind.
Checking it twice
Santa’s making his list, checking it twice.
Too bad for John Bettencourt (now known as Paul Miller of Orlando, Florida) that he doesn’t check with the Witness Protection Program.
John wanted chocolate-covered truffles from his favorite online catalog store, but instead of using a new shopper ID, he used his old one.
Santa didn’t notice. But the crooked defense contractor that John blew the whistle on did.
A box arrived the next day.
“Mmmmmmmm… truffles!” John said.
He opened it, setting off the parcel bomb.
It wasn’t reindeer on the rootops, but bloody bits of John raining down on them.
Ground Hog
It be Groundhog Day.
We has a special on groundhog burgers today.
What do it taste like?
I dunno, I ain’t tried one yet.
Go ahead. Try one. It on special, so it don’t cost much.
And you get fries and Coke. Free refills.
(The Coke, not fries. That extra.)
What you say? “This groundhog fresh?”
Course it’s fresh. Just runned them over with my truck this mornin’.
Even got one big sucker with my fender that some dude in the park was holdin’ up.
Yeah, the news say there’s six more weeks of winter comin’, but not for him.