How do you make a joke?

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The back doors to the ambulance flew open and a man covered with blood was rushed into the emergency room.
The paramedics said he was a comedian who had been beaten up by an angry mob.
After he was handed off to the doctors, the paramedics went out for a smoke with the desk clerk.
“Let me guess,” said the clerk. “He tried to tell 9/11 jokes and the crowd got really ugly.”
“No,” said the paramedic. “He was at a dinner party hosted by the Saudi Arabian consulate.”
“So why was he attacked?”
“He refused to make 9/11 jokes.”

The Grim Arena

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The gladiators draw their rubber chickens, salute the crowd, and begin their battle.
“What’s with the chickens?” asks the emperor.
“Budget cutbacks,” responded his page. “You said you’d rather have swordfish dinners instead of swords.”
The emperor patted his full belly and smiled. “I love swordfish.” And then he frowned. “But grown men whacking each other with rubber toys is boring. Can’t they just fight with their fists? Or tell the guards to toss them their weapons?”
“Budget cutbacks,” said the page. “They barely have enough weapons for their jobs.”
The emperor sighed and watched the pathetic spectacle drag on.

For Your Eyes Only

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Sometimes, a document is too secret to be marked TOP SECRET.
So they make those For Your Eyes Only.
The document only appears to the recipient. To everyone else, they don’t see anything.
Not even a sheet of paper. It’s printed using a quantum ink and paper from phase-controlled wood pulp that only activates one unique set of sensory-processing neurons.
The problem is that when an agent resigns, you don’t know it they’ve destroyed all their documents.
We could surgically remove their eyes, but that would be cruel, leaving them completely blind.
So, as a mercy, we just kill them.

After The War

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The Review Board wants to interview me today.
I go down to the new Town Hall, passing the rubble of the old one.
“Were you in the war?” they ask.
The scars and my withered hand say yes.
“I don’t remember,” I say, just as the Veteran Release Center told me to say.
A doctor scans my brain with a wand.
“He’s clean,” he says. “All memories gone.”
“Innocent,” the Board declares, and my ID is stamped with a black V.
Outside, a woman points at me and screams.
“BUTCHER!”
She is arrested.
Don’t resist. Reprogramming is painless.
(I think.)

Password Protected

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My memories are valuable and corporate hypno-spies are everywhere.
All it takes is a dazzlestick to stop someone on the street and open them up for a psychic fileclerk to rifle through.
So, I decided to protect them.
The process isn’t easy, and it takes weeks of sessions to catalog secrets for storage in secure areas of the brain.
I woke up one morning, tried to think of those things, and realized… I didn’t remember any of them.
Protected. Secure.
Perfect.
Time to go to work… Wait. Where do I work?
Hold on… thinking… Oh crap!
I forgot the password!

The Last Piece Of Pie

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I take the pie out of the oven and put it out on the counter to cool.
Everybody is so polite here, so nobody’s willing to take the last piece of pie.
Or the second-to-last piece of pie.
Same with the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth-to-last pieces of pie.
In fact, nobody’s willing to take a piece of pie at all.
Just to start the process will cause that last-piece-of-pie situation to come about.
So it sits on the counter for days.
Spoils, covered with mold, and completely inedible.
(Nobody’s willing to be the one to throw it out, either.)

Weekly Challenge #228 – Muffin Basket

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Eight, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was… was…. um…
It’s Muffin Basket!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Freereed
Tom
TJ
Murray
Abigail
Zackmann
Steven
Norval Joe
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):


Freereed

“Yer ass looks like a heart-shaped meatloaf in those pants.”
He always had a parting shot … umm… compliment.. before they went out.
“Louie, yer a goddam jewel,” she murmured while patting down the last strays of her up-do.
Arrive early, leave late. It’s all so predictable.
A game to see who could not hold their liquor and made a complete jerk of themselves.
Who would be first to break out crying.
“C’mon Muffin Basket, drive me home,” he breathed beerily into her ear.
“Sure, baby, sure.” She reminded herself to remove Cliff’s phone number from her bra first thing.

Tom

In order to increase attendance Sally Rand Junior College
decided to add a burlesque class to its fall schedule.
On a dare from her friend Ida Hampton Muffy Wainwight
signed up for Neo Stripteases 101.
“You Gotta Have A Gimmick” reminded the instructor
referring back to the music Gypsy.
Muffy turned to Ida,
“What’s your Gimmick?”
“I’m thinking Ida and her Ipad.”
“You know techy titillation.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going Martha Steward
a sort of pop n fresh theme.
Muffy and her muffin basket.
As the footlights rise
Hi Boys
I’m Muffy want to be my muffin man

TJ

I don’t know exactly what I expected. I figured, per your
president’s announcement, active combat would end and probably forces
would rotate out as needed. Probably there’d be some violence but
mostly because of the instability. We don’t have water in some places,
still. We jokingly call those places “New Orleans.” We have TV here.
I’m sure we will get the electricity and water going soon. But I was
surprised, finding on my doorstep this morning as I rose for morning
prayers, that the U.S. sent everyone a muffin basket with a card signed
“Sorry about the war. Love, Obama.”

Murray

I’ve been working for years on my compound. Odourless. Tasteless. Highly explosive.
It hasn’t been easy to find a compound that is so volatile, yet resistant to heat and impact. There was only one way to test the prototypes. Thankfully, I’ve got all my fingers. Mostly.
When the first demonstration is complete, I’ll be rich. It won’t matter that the Defense Department fired me.
“What’s this?” the baggage inspector asked.
“Just muffins. Blueberry.”
He eyed me suspiciously, taking one and breaking it apart.
“Huh.” He waved me through.
I left the basket in the bathroom. Armed, of course.
Demonstration time.

Abigail

Ooo baby you know I love how you move that muffin basket. Oh come on honey shake that sweetness. That’s it , spill that hot and good my way. Yah gimmee some of that. I gotta have some of what you got. Bring it on over here. Bring it. Bring it on.
When the paramedics came Verdene jus said, he’d” teetered on off his stool “,and “Hey,can you folks hurry on I got kids to get to and I still got the grill to scrape down” , her thighs fighting the length of the counter . She swabbed unmercifully .

Zackmann

Dearest Guido:
Thank you for the Muffin Basket complete with the Little Wicker Basket brand container. I think
that since I am currently involved in no court activities that you may have sent them to the wrong
address. I sincerely hope not to be mistaken for your target. Thank you again, blueberry muffins
are my favorite and I was overjoyed until I read the card.
“Hope youse enjoy these blueberry muffins just like youse will enjoy a long life iffin youse don’t
testify and youse should knows that No one alive has ever testified against me or my friends”

Steven

Hansel shoved the girl up against the rough tree. “This ain’t what I wanted.”
“I don’t have anything else,” she whimpered, the red fabric of her
cloak draping over her eyes. “Grandma just made the muffins. No
cookies. No cake.”
Hansel looked back toward his sister. “Whaddya think?”
Gretel walked out of the shadows. “I think we have a little girl who
brought the wrong gift and now can’t find her way home.”
“Oh,” Red Hood said, “all I have to do is take a left here and-”
Gretel drew her knife. “Not can’t. She won’t find her way home.”

Norval Joe

I struggle back up the dingy aisle, across greasy, grimy linolium tiles, toward the door, and the light.
Memories of past events, stories, vague and rotting, like the decaying cardboard containers abandoned amid the debris of collapsed soup can piramids, and piles of worm eaten wicker muffin baskets.
I look back. How far have I come?
100 aisles, 10,000 steps.
Each week another aisle along, yet I am farther behind the old man, the guide, the master.
He waits at the exit, his midget and his monkey at his side.
He teases me and calls, “Don’t forget the bacon salt.”

Planet Z

The moment we put the wicker basket in the window, Muffin decided that it was hers.
She climbed up on the table, crawled into her basket, and curled up for a long nap.
She wouldn’t let anyone or anything near that basket.
When she saw Mister Tigger sniffing the basket, she screeched and angrily chased him off.
And she shredded any magazines and shoved away any balls of yarn we put in there.
One morning, she crawled into the basket, went to sleep, and never woke up.
It’s hers forever now. We buried her in the back yard in it.

The Mummy Train

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Mark Twain used to joke that the wrappings for mummies were used in pulp for newspapers and their bodies burned to run trains.
But neither was true.
Instead, mummies were employed by the newspapers in the printing presses, shambling around the massive rollers.
If one got caught up in the machinery and torn to bits, who cared, right? They were already dead, their families long gone.
Letting them don engineer caps and run trains, well, that was a lot more dangerous. Mummy brakemen tended to ignore warning signals, and only so many accidents were tolerated before they all were retired.

Crazy Never Sleeps

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Crazy never sleeps.
You might crawl into bed and close your eyes, but while you’re asleep, Crazy is up and pacing the floor, listening to voices that nobody speaks with.
Crazy can’t be locked in the basement or tied to a chair. No matter what you do, Crazy gets loose and goes crazy on everything.
Broken dishes.
Knives stuck in the sofa.
The tub overflowing again.
Who knows what you’ll wake up to this time?
So, you stay up later… and later…
You try to stay up later than crazy does.
Then you realize: you’ve been the Crazy all along.

Mushroom King

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We all marvel at the magnificent crown of The Mushroom King.
But how did he get his mighty crown?
Well, as all Mushroom Kings do: he rolled his head in a bucket of shit, cultivated and grew mushrooms on it, and kept them growing… and growing… and growing…
Until he had the greatest crown of all.
That’s when we named him the new Mushroom King.
As for his throne, that’s from the previous Mushroom King.
His crown grew far too large, and he sank into the shit, gone forever.
Except for his crown, for the new king to sit on.