Category: My stories

Ulysses grants

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Ulysses sold Inspiration in a bottle.
Sure, it was ordinary tap water, and the bottles dingy beer bottles with cheap laser-printed labels glued on them crooked-like, but people desperate for Inspiration will pay anything for it.
Ulysses does his best bsiness on Artist’s Row in Midtown. He goes around collecting up empties like an old-fashioned milkman, leaving full bottles on the doorstep.
“I need a lot of Inspiration for tomorrow,” says a painter. “Twice the normal order.”
Ulysses grunts, marks a pad with a nub of a pencil, and pushes his cart down the alley.
Inspiration waits for no one.

The Easter Egg Hunt

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We spent all of yesterday painting eggs. The kids love the bright colors and the sparkles. Their wide-open eyes dazzle in delight.
After they went to bed, I hid the eggs throughout the house. That’s right. When they wake up, we’re going to have ourselves an old-fashioned Easter egg hunt.
But sometimes, they whine about this kind of thing. Kids can be lazy these days, you know. Damn X-Box Generation.
So if they give up, I’ll just tell them that we didn’t paint chicken eggs. We painted rattlesnake and alligator eggs. And if they don’t find them all, they’ll hatch.

The Wacky Adventures Of Abraham Lincoln 55

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General Grant slid the card across the table to his Commander In Chief and winked.

Abe looked at it:

“HOUSE OF PAIN”

“They’re good,” said Grant. “They’ve got S&M clubs here in Washington, New York, Boston, and Atlanta. Made Sherman think twice about burning the city down.”

Abe slid it back to Grant.

“As I would not be a slave,” said Abraham Lincoln. “So I would not be a master.”

“Fine,” Grant said. “Your loss. I’ll take Stanton this weekend.”
Abe left the room, went upstairs, and put on his diaper.

“I want my bottle!” he shouted.

Mary Todd sighed.

The Dali Code

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I know you’ve heard of the DaVinci Code, but have you heard of the Dali Code?
Just as the true nature of Christ is in a vault only reachable by following clues laid out by Leonardo DaVinci’s work, Salvador Dali’s work is a map to the Missing Fifteenth Station of the Cross.
Dali? Devout?
Of course he was. Why else would he paint Crucifixion?
Okay, so here’s the secret: Between having his clothes stripped off and getting nailed to the cross, Jesus was slapped with a fish in a bowler hat.
Okay, so he was a weird kind of devout.

Set The Alarm

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Susan set her alarm to six-thirty, and she woke up at six-thirty.
Susan set her alarm to six, and she woke up at six.
She then set her alarm to nineteen forty-one.
Sure enough, she woke up in 1941. People were walking around and going about their lives without a clue as to what horrors of war were right around the corner.
She tried all sorts of times in the past. She even tried a few in the future.
Susan set her alarm back to seven, and she woke up at seven.
Her stupid boss fired her for being late.

Lawyerbot

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Lawyers who had defended the most savage and brutal mass-murdering war criminals had refused his case. Not even for tens of billions of dollars.
“Keep your blood money,” they told the multi-billionaire software mogul..
So, faced with using court-appointed chumps, he decided to defend himself.
He took a long weekend to re-engineer his massive search engines to scour every law book, every court record, and every TV court drama script.
The beta hung the jury. And the Gold release won.
As revenge, he distributed the Lawyerbot program for free.
Lawyers sued to stop him. But Lawyerbot beat them, of course.

Cones

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Tomorrow, all across the world, every orange traffic cone will vanish.
Then, three seconds later, they will reappear just as suddenly as they vanished.
Nobody will realize that they’ve been gone.
They’ve trained us not to notice.
Over the decades, the traffic cones have been watching us, manipulating us, learning our weaknesses.
They especially like construction zones. They think we’re at our most interesting there.
When construction begins on something, they show up. Then, when it’s done, they hang around for a little bit before moving on to somewhere else.
They also like watching driving lessons, just for danger’s sake.

Twinned

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It’s easy when the parents agree who gets custody.
It sucks when they don’t.
Until now, thanks to Cybertwinning.
In less than 24 hours, we can give each parent the child.
One is real. The other isn’t.
Can you tell? Only we can.
Synchrocaps exchange memories between the two, maintaining the illusion that both parents raise the child. It’s disorienting at first, but kids adapt.
Adults don’t. That’s why the kids often go insane when they’re no longer Twinned.
Which is why I’m asking that you have your lawyers talk one last time, please.
For the sake of your child.

Cat Chakras

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All this New Age stuff may seem bogus to you, but all of it’s real for people. And pets.
Chakras? Cats have ’em.
No two cats have chakras located in the same place, though. That’s why one cat will insist that you pet them on the back while other will demand that you scratch their ears and massage all of their paws at once.
If you encounter a cat who is hostile to any attempt to pet them, it is not for a lack of chakras, but that you just haven’t found them yet.
Or the cat may be nuts.

Inkblots

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Every inkblot is a confession.
The first shows a child of nine stealing candy bars from the drugstore.
The second shows an angry teen setting fire to the home of the rival to his affections. Romeo burns. Juliet burns.
The third reveals another theft – test scores for his university admissions exam. A+!
The final one shows his business partner allowed to choke to death after a discussion about insurance.
Wait. There’s one more left, doc?
Hold still. Let’s see… that’s you. And me. Standing over you.
No idea how I kill you, but I’ll try to make it interesting.