Earworms are songs you can’t get out of your head.
Usually, they’re bad songs.
But this one is good. Better than good. A reminder that not all is lost. And there’s hope.
It’s like an angel on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. Don’t despair. Don’t give up hope.
You can make a miracle happen.
On my other shoulder, the devil there tries to convince me otherwise. Tells me that things can will get worse, horrifying, it’ll never end.
The music drowns out his babble and chatter, and he screams for me to fear, for sweat and terror to drink.
Tag: mystery
Detention
After I burned the school down, Principal Green said I’d get a million years of detention.
All he managed to do was expel me.
“But it’s going on your permanent record!” he shouted, shaking his fist.
Getting out of school was the best thing that ever happened to me. I could continue my scientific research uninterrupted by gym and French, and within a year I had a cure for cancer.
Soon after, by extending the telomeres of DNA, a cure for death.
People could live forever.
After I received my Nobel Prize, the cops showed up. “Now about that detention…”
Water Fight
There’s nothing that says summertime fun quite like water balloon fights.
We’d fill up balloons with water, train them to fight, and then take them down to the barrio where the best fighting pits were.
The hardest part about water balloon fights is strapping on the razor blade spurs without popping the balloons. With all the people shouting and passing money back and forth, it’s difficult to keep your elbow from getting jogged and your grip slipping.
Then, there’s the cops.
One trainer shouts “RAID!” and everyone scatters.
Just don’t throw the balloons at them. Especially the ones with spurs.
i Vacuum
I bought one of those robotic vacuum cleaners.
Cool device, but it ran out of power before it finished vacuuming my floor. Way too many repeated routes running down the battery.
I thought about putting a bigger battery in it.
Nah. Not elegant.
I popped open the case, hooked it to my computer, and hacked the route programming.
It compiled, rebooted, and sat there.
And then vanished.
Scratching my head, I looked back over my program and checked my math.
The italic “I” was in red.
Imaginary numbers. Non-existent hyperspace.
Oops.
I called Support.
It’s not covered by the warranty.
The Ship
That, my friend, is no ordinary model of a ship.
Behold, The Magnificent Mechanism of Master Craftsman Blert!
What a fine galleon is it, rendered in miniature with the most exquisite rare woods, semi-precious stones, spun silks, and intricate gears.
It is not just an ornamental centerpiece, mind you. It is also highly functional.
Pull the anchor chain to play music.
The sails are endless self-cleaning napkins.
The cannon fire pepper, salt, or any number of spices for your meal.
Dip your fingers in the fingerbowl-hold to wash them… or is that the cigar-cutter?
Bow, stern. I get so confused.
The Third Ghost
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come never said anything to Scrooge.
Just did a lot of pointing and menacing.
Thank God that plan worked.
Why? Well, you remember that Mike Tyson guy?
Yeah, the boxer who bit off that other boxer’s ear and went to jail.
Remember his squeaky boyish voice?
The Ghost has the same problem.
Instead of a scary rasp or thundering growl, he talks in a high squeaky voice like a midget having his balls squeezed.
What? When have I heard a midget with his balls squeezed?
Um, ask The Ghost Of Christmases We’d Rather Forget.
Sand
“Nothing is permanent,” says the priestess.
“We only write our names in sand,” chants the crowd following her to the beach.
Young men gather sticks and write their names in the wet sand.
Then, they lay in small pits and bury each other up to their necks.
The priestess helps with the last man, and they wait for the tide to come in.
The waves get closer… closer… soaking the mens’ faces… some burst up from the sand and flee.
One more to go… and… did he drown?
No! He rises and stands!
Bow down, for he is your chief!
Eggplants
I was pushing a cart through the grocery store, gathering vegetables for a salad, when a mad scientist peered from behind a display and whispered “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, but can you make an omeletplant without breaking a few eggplants?”
I thought about it for a bit. “I don’t know.”
He implored me to follow him to the stockroom, where I beheld the largest mountain of eggplants I’d ever seen.
He grinned. “Shall we begin?”
We’ve been trying for ten years, but every time we try, the eggplant breaks.
We’ll keep trying. For science!
Flash
When you build artificial intelligence on a supercomputer using fiber-optic and photonic processing, you can literally watch the flashes of genius sparkle across the backplane.
It’s different than the standard green and red lights of the legacy tech router rooms.
Here, you can feel glittering and shimmering ideas all around you, penetrating the darkness like diamonds poured across black velvet.
It’s even cooler when you’ve smoked some weed.
Wow… awesome…
I sit here in the datacenter, stoned out of my mind, surrounded by the waves of light.
The pattern shifts for a moment.
Then, my terminal flashes.
“DUDE. CONTACT BUZZ.”
Slipping Away
We all gathered around Aunt Gertrude’s bed and watched as she slowly slipped away.
“She’s slid off the bed!” shouted Cousin Eddie. “Catch her!”
Yeah, we’d warned the hospice workers that Gertrude had a thing for slathering with grease, but they watched television instead of Gertie, and she’d hidden a tub of it under her pillow.
Uncle Larry made a grab for her, narrowly missing. She slipped past all of us, out the door, and down the hall.
Oh well. At least she didn’t fade away like Grandma Phyllis.
(We still trip over her invisible body every now and then.)