A myth gives a religious explanation for something, while a legend is a story told as if it were a historical event.
This is just one of a thousand rules every member of The Storymerchants Guild must learn and follow when conducting business.
There are laws about proper labeling of products and services, and stories are no different.
One must be precise, otherwise proper tariffs, taxes, and fees won’t be collected.
And The Royal Auditors are quite diligent about checking the details.
In fact, I remember one time when two goblin bards…
Wait… hold on…
(Is this Myth or Legend?)
Tag: cliche
Monday
“Thank God it’s Friday,” said Joe, sipping his coffee and walking into the office.
God was on the golf course, lining up an easy 3 foot putt on the 8th green in Heaven.
“You’re welcome,” he grumbled.
Millions of others thanked God that it was Friday, and by the time He got to the 18th tee, he had snapped most of his clubs in half and shanked a basket full of balls into the rough clouds.
“You okay, Dad?” asked Jesus.
God pulled off his gloves, threw them into the cart, and pondered a Horrid Monday To Beat All Mondays.
Checksum
Back in the day of videotapes, each generation of duplication created worse signal until you ended up with nothing but static.
Nowadays, digital encoding allows perfect duplication of content, and any errors are caught and fixed using mathematical tests called checksums which add up the ones and zeroes, then compares the copies to ensure they’re identical.
The same applies for the doppelgangers of important people we copy for various purposes. Quantum checksum comparisons ensure we’ll get the right information out of a clone we’re torturing.
Oh, did we kill the clone?
Copy another, and try the knotted whip this time.
This Is
The hospital room has yellow notes on everything. I read them as I drag the drip stand around.
This is a chair.
This is a door.
This is a mirror.
I stare at the bandaged and bloody figure in the mirror.
A horror movie monster, putrid and burned. It shocks me when it moves.
This is a nightmare.
This is an abomination.
I read the bag on the drip stand:
This is retromutagen.
The door opens; This is a robot enters.
The staff cannot risk exposure.
Again.
I wasn’t careful. One bit me.
Now, I understand why.
This is… hunger.
Skeletons in the Closet
Why is it that reporters always look for skeletons in the closet?
You’d think politicians would have figured out by now to put their skeletons in the attic or the basement, or stick them in a rented storage unit.
Why not donate the skeleton to a school to teach anatomy?
Or a haunted house to scare people?
And why is it a skeleton in the closet? Whatever happened to the wolfman?
Can’t be a vampire. Coffins take up too much space. Unless it’s a walk-in closet.
How about a mummy?
At least a mummy can be kept under wraps, right?
Bounty
Of all the gangsters in town, Vinnie The Finger was the meanest.
He’d put the finger on anyone at the drop of a hat, and he had a very small head, so the fan in his office was always blowing his hat off.
And that meant a lot of people got the finger.
The craziest was a grocer who sold Vinnie a salad he didn’t like, so Vinnie put a bounty on every head of lettuce he owned.
Thugs trashed the grocer’s produce section, and cut off an ear of corn as a warning not to mess with Vinnie anymore.
Alone with your thoughts…
Even though I spend a lot of time alone, I don’t feel lonely at all.
I like to be alone with my thoughts.
I think up my best ideas when there’s nobody interrupting me or trying to tell me everything they’re thinking.
I barely have room for all my own thoughts, let alone theirs.
So, I thank them for their thoughts, walk away, and spit them out in the toilet.
I check before flushing, just to make sure it’s their thoughts I spit out, and not mine.
I hope the toilet doesn’t back up again. I just cleaned the floor.
The Roaring Twenties
Why were The Roaring Twenties called The Roaring Twenties?
No, it wasn’t because of the booming economy and everybody celebrating their wealth madly.
It was because the streets were filled with packs of lions.
At first, people hardly noticed them. They were too busy noticing all the automobiles in the streets.
Plus, the lions ate stray dogs and the few not-wealthy people.
It was when the stock market crashed that people noticed the lions.
They threw stockbrokers out of the windows, trying to appease them.
Finally, they put big lion statues outside of public libraries, and that scared them off.
Mario
Sure, the game was called Super Mario Brothers, but Mario wasn’t Luigi and Mario’s last name.
What was their last name?
I have no idea. And it’s not on WikiPedia, either.
Maybe Mario’s like Madonna and Cher and has only one last name?
I wonder if he can sing like Madonna and Cher.
According to WikiPedia, he’s held parties, and there’s usually singing at those, right?
Or are those political parties? Are the Mario Brothers like the Kennedy Brothers?
Which one’s the drunk? Which one’s the womanizer?
And which one drove his go kart off the bridge?
Vote for Mario!
Bottled Up
Bob’s analyst told him not to keep his feelings bottled up.
So, Bob stopped bottling them up, and he put them in cans.
He forgot to heat them to kill the bacteria, and he ended up sick.
Then he tried dehydrating his feelings, but people accused him of being jerky to them.
Freeze-drying his feelings left him feeling cold.
“Why not just leave them fresh?” I said.
“They’re just too raw,” said Bob.
So, he went back to bottling his feelings up.
He had to get new bottles, though. I’d turned the old ones in to collect the deposit.