Good night, Elizabeth

The king’s daughter climbed into bed and closed her eyes.
“Good night, Princess Elizabeth” was composed by the Royal Music Guy as her personal lullaby, and the gentle strings and muted horns carried her into the land of dreams.
“She’s asleep,” signaled the Royal Music Guy to the orchestra. “Let’s go.”
Tuxedoed figures rose quietly from their seats and tiptoed out of the room.
“Why can’t she just listen to the song on an iPod?” asked the cellist.
“It’s a good gig,” hissed the bassoonist. “Don’t blow it.”
The Royal Music Guy whispered “Good night” and gently closed the door.

The Meal Plan

Back in college, the meal plan covered weekday breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On weekends, there were just the noon brunches, and we were on our own for breakfast and dinner.
Most of us slept through breakfast, or we loaded up on beer at the tailgate parties for football games, but the truth is I never grew out of having milk and cereal.
Sometimes, it was corn flakes, but usually it was Lucky Charms.
Whatever the cereal, the cockroaches always found their way into the box.
Green clovers.
Blue Diamonds.
Yellow stars.
And brown insect corpses.
Yeah, they were magically disgusting.

Delicious

While dirty, grimy starving children crawl in the alleys picking through garbage piles for food, El Presidente draws his silver sabre and slices a gigantic cake, his generals and wealthy friends standing around him and clapping.
The applause was so loud, nobody heard the screams inside the cake.
Except El Presidente himself, who saw the blood on his sword and smiled.
The CIA agent had tried to seduce him. And failed.
Uniformed servants bring out plates with slices from another cake.
El Presidente declines a piece, preferring to lick the bloody frosting from his sword.
And smiling even wider.
“Delicious.”

The Tape

The nurse cut away my splint, unwrapped the bandages, and snipped out the stitches one by one.
Then she swabbed the incision before covering it with strips of tape and wrapping it with another bandage.
“You can stop wearing the bandage when the incision is healed,” she said. “The tape will fall off soon after that.”
And sure enough, the first scab-encrusted strip is coming loose right now.
I plan on putting it under my pillow for The Medical Waste Fairy.
I hope to get at least a quarter for it.
(But enough to pay my deductible would be better.)

Regicide

Prince Alfred was the only heir, and from the day he was born, he was never a well child.
The King wanted another son, because it was obvious that Alfred would never rule. So, he hired assassins to kidnap and kill the queen so he could marry again.
Alfred knew that his father had his mother killed, so he had to kill his father’s mistresses.
He poisoned the first four before his father had the cook replaced.
When Alfred stabbed the fifth mistress himself, The King smiled.
“I believe you’re well enough to rule,” he said.
Then Albert stabbed him.

Boiling Point

An old saying goes that to boil a frog, you need to put the frog in the pot and then turn the heat up slowly. Otherwise, the frog will feel the boiling water and leap out.
This is stupid.
Whenever I boil a frog, I throw it in the pot of boiling water with one hand and slam the lid down with the other hand.
Or, I’ll whack the frog against the countertop to stun it before throwing it into the pot.
If those two methods don’t work, I’ll just play my Titanic DVD so it will jump in willingly.

Coffins

I don’t understand the logic of spending so much effort on a beautiful coffin just to stick it in the ground.
So I began to haul the coffins back up, seal the bodies in bags, and bury them again while cleaning off the coffins for reuse.
In the off-chance that a body needs to be disinterred, I get a warrant in advance, so I can haul the body back up and stick it in a coffin for them to pick up.
I’ve made a fortune in profit, selling coffins over and over.
If only this racket worked with the headstones.

Tennis

Oh. God. No.
Not tennis.
Aside from the Monica Seles stabbing in 1993, I don’t find tennis all that interesting.
Sure, some of the chicks grunt, but that gets repetitive.
And I appreciate a cute butt in white shorts when I see it, but Pete Sampras retired.
Golf is boring, too.
You hear about people getting struck by lightning while playing golf, but they never show that on the Golf Channel.
And the chicks don’t grunt.
Has there ever been a stabbing?
Well, there will be one if you don’t change the channel.
Oh, and get me a beer, too.

The Challenge

Do you remember The Pepsi Challenge?
There’d be a table in a supermarket with someone offering colas in a blind taste test, and the people who said they preferred Coke but chose Pepsi would be put in a commercial.
I always thought it was a fake, but just the other day I saw someone in the supermarket conducting a taste test.
A woman drank one cola, squinched her face up in disgust, and then tried the second.
She spat it out: “They’re both horrible!”
I looked behind the screen… two brands of rat poison.
“Can I be next?” I asked.

If you are what you eat, then you aren’t what you shit

When I was young, I was always amazed at how some things I ate passed right through me.
Yellow bits of corn.
Green beans.
Bits of carrot and red bell pepper.
Disgusting, I know.
But every so often, when I wake up with blood on my lips, I keep lookout for the tell-tale glint of a gold ring.
I scoop it out with a toilet-brush and drop it into a glass of bleach.
I’ve found dozens of rings that way.
As for the finger bones, I flush those with the rest of the waste, and head for the bus station.