There used to be only two certainties in life: death and taxes.
Sadly, despite the best efforts of a lot of people, neither of those have been resolved.
Now there’s a third certainty: Walter is fat.
He’s dieted.
He’s exercised.
He’s taken pills.
He’s even had surgery.
But no matter what he does, Walter is still fat.
Not that he minds being fat. He carries it well. And he’s in perfect health for someone his size.
So what if he has to buy two airplane tickets? Or take the freight elevator?
Walter is fat, and on that you can depend.
Tag: commentary
Idea Store
I write a story every day.
I hope to write every day until the day I die.
Some days, ideas for stories appear to me, and I write those stories quickly.
Other days, I struggle to scribble down the story on the notepad I keep on my nightstand.
When I am completely out of ideas, I go to The Idea Store.
It’s a huge place, full of wonderful and amazing things that inspire me every time I go there. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I open my front door, step outside, and walk into the store.
Stormy
They give names to hurricanes. And cyclones, taiphoons, and tropical storms.
The sun has a name. It’s a sunny day. That never changes, although my weird Aunt Ruth insists on calling it Gertrude after her dead sister. When she says it’s a Gertrudey day, we know to take away her car keys.
Now, they give names to winter storms.
I suppose it is a matter of time before they give names to everything else, like tornadoes.
I call tornadoes JESUS! or MOTHERFUCKER!
Gertrude called Ruth that when she poisoned her for stealing her boyfriend.
He vanished in an unnamed blizzard.
Madness
I don’t give a crap about March Madness.
Professional sports are a waste of time, but college sports are a waste of academic institutions.
Instead of focusing on educating students and researching the frontiers of knowledge, these colleges and universities train and babysit these gargantuan kids to perform for the crowds.
Where there should be a series of lecture halls and labs, producing results around the clock and year, massive stadiums and arenas sit idle, waiting for a few home games a year.
Forget that slam dunk… give us a cure for cancer! A pollution-free engine!
The ignorant crowd cheers.
Border
After years of debate and finger-pointing, Congress finally got to the business of working out a fair and complete overhaul of immigration policy.
Citizenship would be extended to illegal aliens who had demonstrated all the qualities America was looking for, while the borders would be protected and secured.
The President smiled wide and signed the bill into law.
The next day, the country was overwhelmed with a flood of immigrants demanding amnesty.
“None of them actually stepped on the border, right?” asked the President.
Sure, the border itself was safe, but nobody thought to protect and secure the country, too.
A Fine Kettle
There’s no sound quite like the whistle of a teakettle.
I like to fill up the teakettle, put it on the stove, and then wait for the whistle.
Then, I take off the kettle, pour the water out, and start again.
I’ll do this a few dozen times in an evening when I’m in the mood.
Sure, you can boil water in the microwave, but there’s no whistle.
Just the beep of the timer when it’s done.
My new place has a boiling water spigot in addition to the hot and cold taps.
That’s nice.
Hand me the kettle, please.
Hitler
Monopoly recently retired the iron game piece and replaced it with a cat.
Their second choice was a die-cast figurine of Adolf Hitler.
Why Adolf Hitler would be wandering the streets of Atlantic City, purchasing property and building hotels, I’m not sure.
But you’ve got to admit that if you had a choice between the iron and Hitler, you’d go with Hitler in a heartbeat, right?
In fact, coming in second place in that beauty contest may have been the motivation for Hitler to invade Poland and Czechoslovakia.
If only he’d have come in first.
So many lives needlessly lost.
Barrow
I was thinking about gardening, when I asked myself “Why do they call them wheelbarrows?”
All wheelbarrows have wheels, so why not call them barrows?
Have you ever heard of a barrow? A barrow without a wheel?
I’ve never heard of one. Or seen one.
I looked it up. They’re called a travois. They’re carts that you drag behind horses.
You’d think they’d call them horsebarrows, but they call them travois.
Goddamned French.
However, now that I’ve brought up the subject, can you bring up a horse from the basement?
I’m out of wheels, and there’s gardening to be done.
Backwards
Dan challenged the entire company to go paperless by the end of the year.
He bought smartphones, laptops, and tablets for the staff, but they used those to play games and update their Facebook statuses.
He removed all the printers and copiers, so people would write down notes to each other.
Until he removed the pens and pencils from the building.
Employees were so resistant to change, they would take paper towels and toilet paper from the restrooms and smear them with blood and feces.
That’s when Dan quit and left. Because he was sick of working with crazy people.
Enemies List
I never make New Year’s Resolutions.
Instead, I write up a list of my enemies, and swear to remove them from my enemies list by the end of the year.
It takes a lot of effort to track someone down and to set things right with them.
Especially the ones who are truly rotten pricks to the core. Those require a lot of hand-holding and a lot of deep introspection to get them into a position where they’ll acknowledge your presence, let alone forgive your mortal differences.
That’s why I prefer to have them killed. So much easier that way.