Category: My stories

Chocolate Chips

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Willy Wonka became obsessed with the idea of a chocolate computer using chocolate chips for memory and processing.
“Usually, Mr. Wonka, your ideas are just goofy,” said the chief of the Oompah Loompahs. “But this one’s downright stupid. We make candy. Really good candy. And we make a lot of money making it. Computers, on the other hand, are low-margin. And the investment in material science research will cost a fortune.”
Willy just wouldn’t let the idea go, so the Oompah Loompahs locked him in his office until the ambulance arrived.
During the weirdo’s extended absence, things ran rather smoothly.

The Mage’s Toothache

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It was the ancient mage’s last tooth. And it hurt like hell.
The toothache remedy potion bottle was empty, and all of the pain spells had verbal components.
His apprentice, not yet skilled in the art of Relief enchantments, was drunk at the pub when a party of adventurers overheard him complaining to the bartender.
“We can raid the tower and free this town of evil,” whispered the paladin.
The cleric and thief agreed, and made their way up the mountain.
Unfortunately for them, the mage’s wands were all point-and-shoot.
He left the cleric alive long enough to heal him.

The Final Dream Of Robert McNamara

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Robert McNamara stood in the middle of a field, stark naked, and watched two circuses slowly moving towards each other in what would amount to a catastrophic collision.
“This is entirely too complex a situation,” he said, and he broke it up into its components: clowns, spectators, acrobats, animal acts, carnival rides, and cotton candy.
Then he streamlined the process by which each component functioned within the whole.
The ringmasters thanked him, and a single more efficient and effective circus rolled slowly across the field.
“Why dream this up at all?” he mumbled, and with that, the old man died.

Talk is cheap

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It used to be that talk was expensive. Only the nobles and politicians could afford to say anything while their servants and peasants were condemned to silence.
Some say that Hiram Gabsalot invented talk, but he didn’t: he just came up with a new industrial process to make it downright cheap.
Pretty soon, everyone was talking all the time. (Some people even talked in their sleep… something unheard of in the days when talk was as priceless as gold!)
The nobles and politicians eventually stopped talking altogether, choosing to use spokesmen to add to the constant barrage of meaningless drivel.

Drunk Robots On Stage

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“You can’t go wrong with drunk robots!” said the producer.
I watched as men in metal suits stumbled around, breaking furniture while the propmaster tore his hair out.
“This is supposed to be Billy Budd,” I said. “You know: sailors, mutiny, Judas symbols. Why robots?”
“Drunk robots!” growled the producer. “It represents man’s total loss of control.”
I watched the clanking shapes crash into each other while waving various broken bits of wood. “Which one’s Claggart and which one’s Vere?”
“They all are!” he shouted.
The play would have been a hit if it hadn’t have been for that electromagnet.

Hockey, My Love

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My first love was ice hockey.
I spent more time on the ice than I did anywhere else.
Especially the shower. I could kill a moose at forty paces with my stench.
I stank on ice. After a while, nobody would play with or against me.
One day, I got dragged into the shower and blasted with the fire hose.
Broke my leg, never quite healed up right.
When I couldn’t skate no more, I went to center ice, chipped a hole with my skate, and put a flower in there.
Then I slashed the throats of those firehose-waving bastards.

Alaska Wins!

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At first, I thought the flier said “Alaska Wins!” but it turned out to say “Alaska Wines!”
“Do grapes grow in Alaska?” I asked the Eskimo sitting in the booth
“Sure do!” he said. “It’s not just blizzards and Prudoe Bay oil, you know. When we don’t use hothouses, we’ve got nice wild berries on the nature trails and some really tough grapes up there.”
He handed me a glass and poured out some wine from a bottle that had a polar bear on the label.
I took one sip and spit it out.
Disgusting!
Alaska wins? No, Alaska Loses!

Cheese Bunnies

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Maybe down there in Florida or Texas you have your chocolate bunnies for Easter, but up here in Wisconsin, we have our cheese bunnies.
Yep. Cheese bunnies.
We didn’t get the idea for them from chocolate bunnies. You got that idea from us.
Long ago, some guy made cheddar Jesuses and called them “Cheesus.” Got lynched as a blasphemer.
His son thinks “I’ll make them into bunnies.”
Now, not everyone has as good cheese as us, but they make good chocolate.
So, they make chocolate bunnies.
I hear someone makes them out of ranch dressing.
That’s kinda stupid, isn’t it?

Calling names

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Every boy in my kindergarten class is named John and every girl is named Joan.
The other five classes are the same.
We check with the other schools in the district and they are reporting the same thing.
You’d think someone would have noticed this with the birth certificates, but nobody noticed a pattern or raised an alarm.
Normal name distribution in the district, normal migration patterns for a developed country.
One boy’s eyes flash blue for a moment.
Then the others. They all smile.
Where did these kids come from?
And where did all of the normal kids go?

The shock

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Today, we fill our bodies with drugs to make up for reckless lives.
In the world of tomorrow, futurists say there will be nanobots making adjustments, repairs, and corrections.
At what point do we stop being ourselves and end up at the mercy of machines?
Does it matter who controls the machines?
Does it matter who dispenses the drugs?
What raw animal instincts are we prisoners to?
Perhaps we never have had any control over ourselves?
I feel a spark and my vision flickers for a bit.
I feel better now.
That shot didn’t hurt at all. Thank you, Doctor.