After my wife’s death, I was cleaning the kitchen cabinets in my Chicago apartment, I came across a small container of bouillon cubes.
The label said they were 18 years old.
This means they’re old enough to get a driver’s license, even though they probably wouldn’t pass the driving or vision tests.
And, being eighteen, they could also serve in the military, but I don’t think the military is openly recruiting potentially toxic substances.
But they could register to vote, as long as they register as a Democrat.
Right after they register my dead wife to vote, too.
Ah, Chicago.
Tag: commentary
Diction
September 19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
All across the world, people say things like “Yarrrrr!” and “Avast, ye scurvy dogs!” and “Me hearties!” and silly pirate-speak phrases like that.
Especially to pirates they meet on that day.
Pirates don’t find this amusing.
It’s like walking up to someone from Australia and saying “Throw another shrimp on the Barbie!”
So when a pirate draws his cutlass and shouts “I’ll have ye guts fer garters!” the proper response is not to applaud at their impressive diction, but to run like hell.
Although, to be honest, pirates rarely wear garters.
The Slaughter
The Bugs set off a blanket of electromagnetic pulses over the planet, wiping out our technological infrastructure overnight.
It didn’t take long for them to slaughter billions.
The survivors were rounded up for hunting and experiments.
And then… the Bugs figured out one of our languages.
The hunting and experiments stopped.
They obsessed over books and the surviving recorded material.
“Wow, we sure fucked up,” said a Bug representative. “We’re really, really sorry about that whole invasion thing.”
They cleaned up what they could, built some nice habitats, and left.
Sure, I still have nightmares.
But it’s peaceful now, right?
Measurement
I worked for a television station when the Internet took off.
I demonstrated streaming video to a salesperson, and then showed them the statistics file.
The salesperson recoiled in horror, like a vampire faced with a cross made out of garlic.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The exact figures?” they asked. “No corrections?”
“Exact,” I said. “Just like Nielsen numbers.”
“But Nielsen corrects those numbers,” she said.
“Corrects?” I asked.
“Fudges,” she admitted. “If the advertisers knew the real numbers, they’d freak out.”
“So did you. Why do we use them if they’re wrong?”
“Because they’re the wrong we agree on.”
Payout
Recently, a fucked-up soldier murdered 16 Afghans in the field.
Some were women. Some were children.
The government paid the survivors fifty thousand dollars for each dead relative.
There are twenty-nine million Afghans.
Do the math, and you come up with a trillion and a half dollars payout if we killed them all.
Then, I realized, that you wouldn’t have to pay a dime if we killed them all. Because there’d be nobody left to pay.
Instead, I’m taking off my shoes and my belt to get on a fucking plane.
While this minimum-wage moron wants to fondle my balls.
A million kroner
Some girls strip to pay for college, but Candy did it the other way around.
Growing up, she wasn’t much to look at, so she put everything into learning, studying and getting good grades.
She graduated early at the top of her class, and she burned through college, grad school, and her PhD like an academic wildfire.
There wasn’t an academic journal published without a research paper by her, and it didn’t take long before she earned her Nobel Prize.
“Thank you,” she said, and she called a plastic surgeon.
She looks like a million kroner now.
Brains and body.
Whelm
I see the word overwhelm all the time.
And I see the word underwhelm all the time.
But I never see the word whelm.
Is there even such a word? If there is, is it just a word that exists to stick prefixes and suffixes on?
If I ever have a kid, boy or girl, I’m going to name them that. Because with all the goddamned Jennifers and Chrises and Williams, they’ll stand out from the rest.
Of course, I can’t have kids.
And there’s no fucking way I’ll name a cat Whelm. That’s a stupid name for a cat!
Grandchildren
Over and over, politicians keep saying that if we continue deficit spending and piling up debt, we’ll be leaving this financial burden to our grandchildren.
I always laugh, because I don’t have children, so I’ll never have grandchildren.
What do I care if we pile up mountains of debt, right?
That’s when I heard a knock on the door.
Through the peephole, I saw a crowd of children with torches and pitchforks.
I turned out the lights, barred the door, and got out the shotgun.
So what if they’re shouting “Trick Or Treat!” It’s all a trick!
Call the police!
Bacon To Space
I read somewhere that if took all the bacon that Americans eat and laid it end-to-end, it would stretch to the moon and back seven times.
Which kinda pissed me off, because with the space program in such shambles, we could just climb that stack of bacon to the moon.
Instead, we eat it.
Oh, sure, it’s delicious, but if given the choice, I think people would give up their bacon so we could get to the moon.
Or, at least, give up some of it.
A seventh. Or two sevenths, so we’ve got a stack to climb down with.
Walk away from a fight
I always found it hard to walk away from a fight.
Now, I have a hard time walking.
I always found it hard to talk my way out of a fight.
Now, I have a hard time talking.
I always found it hard to think my way out of a fight.
Now, I have a hard time thinking
I always found it hard to work my way out of a fight.
Now, I have a hard time working.
I always found it hard to walk away from a fight.
Now, I have a hard time walking…
Talking…
Thinking…
Working…
Fighting.