No matter how much the equipment improves, some guys still don’t make it.
We hang their helmets on the wall at Jimmy’s Bar. It’s tradition to tap each of the helmets on the way to the toilet.
It’s late. Everybody’s hammered.
That’s when the pagers go off. All of them.
Captain walks along the bar, checking eyes and hands.
Rico’s got our keys, so he’s not drunk like the rest of us.
“Go,” says the captain, and he reports the rest of us Not Available.
After the funeral, we went to Jimmy’s.
This is Rico’s helmet.
Go ahead. Tap it.
Tag: society
Collapse
Everybody thought that the economy was recovering, but the biggest bank in the country collapsed.
But it wasn’t like all the other banks collapsing.
It literally collapsed.
Not financially. Those numbers were sound.
The bank itself. The building.
Collapsed.
Bricks, glass, drywall, and everything in the building collapsed into a pile, and a plume of dust filled the air for blocks around.
All the bankers showed up to work, scratched their heads, and then went to the bank next door.
That bank had collapsed financially, so the offices were empty.
It was a tight squeeze.
But they made it work.
Tax Holiday
Today is the state sales tax holiday weekend, where things that students need are sales tax-free and often set at a significant discount.
Notebooks, pens, pencils, paper, clothes, and athletic gear are what typically comes to mind.
The price per item limit is a hundred bucks, because it’s meant to help poor families with kids in school.
What’s weird is that the sales tax break isn’t just for that stuff when it’s bought for students. Anybody can buy new clothes or shoes and get the discount.
But it doesn’t apply to vodka, which is what I needed most in college.
The Needle
If you’re going to die alone in a run-down shack with a needle in your arm, it had better be a phonograph needle.
Instead, we found Joe in the alley with the Space Needle in his arm.
I took out my phone, called Seattle, and told them we’d found it.
“Can you stick it in a mailbox?” they said. “The corner of it says we’ve pre-paid the postage.”
“No can do,” I said, putting on latex gloves and sealing the Space Needle in a bag. “It’s evidence.”
It disappeared from the evidence locker last night.
I called Seattle.
No answer.
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.
Books
Boring? No!
Libraries can be fun and exciting.
All the ideas and hopes and dreams of generations past are contained in books.
Plus, a few surprises.
If your library is old enough and you can forge academic research credentials, you can get access to some really old books.
This Fifteenth Century French cookbook contains many wonders, but the fact that the author wrote over a Ninth Century demon summoning guide makes it extra-special.
With a little lemon juice and a match, I can…
Someone hisses.
It’s not the librarian… it’s the demon.
I slit my finger… here comes the fun!
Never argue
Everybody’s got that one person they look to for advice, an all-knowing wise person who has all the answers.
Maybe it’s a parent.
Maybe it’s a doctor.
Perhaps it’s a priest.
Tennessee Tuxedo had some guy with a stretchable chalkboard.
Me, I’ve got the Nit Noi sushi chef. The guy always knows the answer.
Great advice too, and not just “Never pick a fight with a guy who’s good with a knife.”
Then, he reaches under the counter. “I got this in just this morning” and slices it up, slides me a piece.
And all is right with the world.
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka is dead.
Good riddance, I say.
But that’s not enough.
I don’t just want to piss on his grave.
I want to dig up his coffin,
Pry open his mouth,
And piss into his throat.
And I don’t just want to dance on his grave.
I want to start a kickstarter campaign,
To hire the Rockettes
And dress them up like rabbis
Beautiful, long-legged rabbis
And they’ll dance a whole chorus line on his grave.
Amiri Baraka was buried in New Jersey.
Land of chemical plants and Superfund sites.
A fitting place: a toxic creature in poisoned earth.
Spit Donor
Some guys make a few extra bucks donating their blood plasma, and others market their sperm, but I think I’m the only professional saliva donor out there.
Where I have overactive salivary glands, others are the opposite.
And you may think a cup of warm spit isn’t worth a cup of warm spit, to them it’s like liquid gold.
This being my livelihood, I have to charge a fair market value for my efforts.
Most people are shocked when they get the bill, but if they think my spit is expensive, they should see how much my lawyers charge me.
13 and 666
Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. Many American buildings skip the number 13 when numbering floors.
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia is the fear of the number 666, which some consider the Number Of The Beast.
No building is tall enough to have a six hundred and sixty-sixth floor to skip, but Ronald and Nancy Reagan had their house number changed to 668 because of that fear.
Golf courses, on the other hand, have thirteenth holes, so I suppose if there were 666 holes, those would be numbered properly, too.
I’d hate to have to mow the grass on that course, though.