That sign overlooking Hollywood, that says Hollywood, is a perfect symbol for the town below.
Bright and shiny white on the face of it, like gleaming, capped teeth, smiling, but from behind, ugly and scraggly and all propped up like the bridgework it is.
Paint on your face, walk on to the set, and bring up the lights.
Cue the waiter, he’s really an actor though, he falls down flat, like a cut-out, and everybody topples over, like a stack of cards or dominoes. And there I am, alone, standing there, holding my drink, waiting…
CUT, AND IT’S A WRAP!
Tag: dystopia
The Numbers
Our country is in trouble.
Budget problems, and politicians unwilling to face them.
They form committees… supercommittes, but nothing happens.
That’s when we sent in a team of chefs.
The chefs took one look, grabbed the books, and threw out the cooks trying to cook them.
After washing the fudge off of the numbers, they brought in masseuses to massage the numbers to get them to relax.
The ugliest of the numbers were sent to a beauty salon to make as nice as they could.
Finally, the numbers were released…
And they ran for the hills as our country collapsed.
Greeters
Most Wal-Mart greeters are extremely old people dressed in a bright company shirt who wave a hand and smile and welcome you to Wal-Mart.
It’s a job that could be done with a sign or a robot, but the old people turn out to be cheaper.
Especially if you only hire them for a few weeks as a “greeter contractor” so you don’t have to pay them health benefits.
Sure, it’s rather scummy, using them up and tossing them aside, but in Wal-Mart’s defense, it does get boring seeing the same old old person there at the door, greeting me.
Ukrid The Wise
What makes Ukrid The Wise so wise?
He surrounds himself with many wise men, of course.
Whenever he needed to make a decision, he asked the wiser men surrounding him, and they shared their wisdom with him.
Then, in spite of the sage advice, he would make a decision so outrageous, it would annoy the hell out of the people affected by it.
They’d call for his death, and a few brave souls would come after Ukrid with axes and arrows.
Then, Ukrid would cower behind his circle of wise men, letting them take the blows until his guards arrived.
Revolution!
The revolution is a terrible disappointment.
We should have overthrown the government by now.
But we haven’t.
We go back and read our revolutionary notes.
Che Guevara said that the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution.
So sweep the revolutionary streets with revolutionary brooms!
So scrub the revolutionary toilets with revolutionary brushes!
So make the revolutionary donuts with revolutionary dough!
So make the revolutionary coffee with revolutionary coffee machines!
Revolutionary cream? Revolutionary sugar?
You like it black?
Viva la revolution!
And dunk the revolutionary donuts into revolutionary coffee!
Too much coffee.
Too jittery to revolt.
Let’s nap.
The Walls Have Ears
“The walls have ears,” the nuns tell us.
They are the ears of bad children that talk in class and get dragged by the ear to Mother Superior’s office.
Most kids scream in pain and walk willingly, but the tough ones resist.
The nuns tug harder and… sometimes the lobe tears right off.
After the child is beaten into submission by a flock of nuns with rulers, the prize earlobe is tacked up on the wall as a warning to the rest of the children.
Unless the parents buy it back in the annual Ear Auction.
You know, for charity.
Referrals
I asked the witch doctor, and he sent me to a fortune teller.
I asked the fortune teller, and she suggested I consult a mountaintop guru.
I climbed the mountain and asked the guru, and he handed me a Ouija board.
I checked with the Ouija board, and it told me to refer to the I Ching.
I tossed the bones and looked them up in the I Ching, and they said I should use a Magic 8 Ball.
I shook the Magic 8 Ball and it said “Answer Hazy, Try Again Later.”
That’s how much my employer’s HMO sucks.
Ripe
It used to be that apples were grown locally on small farms, and when the fall came, you’d go out and pick them into a basket, ripe right off the tree, the farmer weighing the deliciousness at the gate, a handshake, a smile. He knew your name, you knew his, hey, Farmer Jackson, how’s the wife? Kids doing alright?
Or you had your own tree, you watched it grow from blossoms to apples to falling leaves and winter’s frost and back again.
Now, in the store, apples shipped from around the world, the whole year long.
I taste one.
Gross.
Silence of the staplers
I sat down at my desk and looked for my stapler.
“It’s gone,” I said. “Who took my stapler?”
My boss leaned over the cubicle wall. “I did. I took all of them.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Paper’s expensive, and paperwork sucks. So if anything you do takes over a printed page to explain, you’re fired.”
He smiled and went to get more coffee.
At first, people just used smaller fonts, but the boss banned magnifying lenses, too.
Pretty soon, we used less paper and became more efficient and profitable.
A Chinese company undercut our prices and we went bankrupt anyway.
A Perfect Ten To Twenty
My coach told me that nobody ever remembers the one who came in second.
So, that’s why I stabbed the bitch who came in first.
Well, that’s not the only reason.
You see, mom pushed me into gymnastics, pulled me out of school, and stuck me with a coach who taught me things that would have made Nabokov puke.
Look, unless you’re Mary Lou Fucking Retton, you’re washed up at eighteen.
So, yeah, I lost my shit, and I stabbed her.
She’ll live, but the coach won’t.
I don’t want that disgusting creep touching anyone else.
(He’s mine, dammit! MINE!)