One of the chimpanzees that played Tarzan’s companion in the movies died recently at the age of 80.
I’m just as shocked as you, because all the other chimpanzees died young.
The first was found drowned in a hot tub after an all-night cocaine party.
Another tried to rob a bank and was gunned down by the cops.
The one we all thought would break the curse became a preacher, then hung himself in a hotel room after getting caught molesting innocent young altar chimps.
I guess the last one lived his life clean.
For a goddamned monkey, that is.
Tag: tragedy
Good Eatin
We needed to get into town to pick up supplies, so we got in the boat and headed for the mainland.
It was a calm day, so we fired up the motor, despite manatee safety restrictions in the area.
Sure enough, we heard a loud WHUMP! and we fell to the deck.
I lost my sunglasses in the water. Damn.
Oh well.
I looked to see what we’d hit.
A dead manatee, floating on the surface.
“What wine goes with manatee?” I asked.
The captain grinned and pulled out a bottle. “This.”
We hauled it aboard and dashed back home.
Bert’s Trumpet
Ah, Bert.
Knew the guy since, hell, All our lives. Work, Army, college, school. First thing I remember is Bert and me, playing in the dirt in our back yards.
Damn, I feel old.
Yeah, I’m the executor of his will (which reminds me, I’m making you mine, okay?)
Problem is, halfway down it, he asks to be buried with his trumpet.
Trumpet? What trumpet?
You remember any trumpet?
I don’t.
Seventy years, I knew him. No trumpets.
Piano, sure.
Maybe it’s a typo.
Piano. Trumpet.
See?
We’ll bury him with his piano.
Here’s a shovel.
We’ll dig over here.
Butter and Ice
Luigi made magnificent sculptures in butter.
Alfonse specialized in sculptures in ice.
For the longest time, they’d work together on projects.
Amazing wondrous collaborations, ice sculptures locked in embrace with butter sculptures.
But Luigi was tired of Alfonse’s sculptures melting and dissolving his work.
They became bitter rivals, undercutting each other constantly.
Alfonse came after Luigi with a knife made of ice.
Mortally wounded, Luigi dropped a block of butter on Alfonse.
The hotel manager found them both in the kitchen, dead.
And that’s where I come in.
I work with Spam.
(Or would you rather have more flower arrangements?)
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.
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!)
Magi
Doctor Odd put down “Gift Of The Magi” and smiled.
O Henry’s tale reminded him of when he sold his invincible army of robots to buy his true love a crown of diamonds, while his true love gave him an Orvis gift certificate.
Orvis?
What the hell?
He didn’t own anything from there.
They fought and broke up.
She kept the crown, and it really pissed him off.
So, he activated the homing beacon, recalled his robots from the pawn shop, and conquered earth.
He put the crown in his trophy case, mounted on his former true love’s severed head.
Grandmother Island
We did our best to shelter Timmy from learning about death, so when my mother died, we told him that she was on a long trip to Grandma Island.
He wanted to go with her, like when we’d all gone to Disneyland.
“No,” I said. “Only Grandma can go to Grandma Island. It’s like Muslims and Mecca. They arrest and kill anyone who isn’t a Grandma on Grandma Island.”
At first, Timmy was sad that he’d never see his grandmother again.
Then, he wrote letters to her, and mailed them.
Sometimes, I wish she’d respond.
I miss you too, Mom.
War Torn
Abraham Lincoln told his family of a strange nightmare, waking up and hearing sobbing from invisible mourners, seeing a raised platform with a shrouded corpse on it.
“Who is dead in the White House?” he asked.
“The President,” said a guard. “He was killed by an assassin.”
Abe said there was a loud burst of grief that woke him up, but the truth was, he climbed into the coffin with his own corpse and had mad passionate sex with it.
Abe never got the chance to explore his latent homosexual necrophiliac tendencies.
Well, that, and restore the war-torn nation, either.
Roll Your Own
Stacy was an artist.
I thought she was a lunatic.
Maybe she was both.
She’d strip naked, cover her body in paint, and roll around on a gigantic canvas.
Blue. Red. Yellow. Green.
Color by color, she’d add to her artwork.
I mean, yeah, she was pretty, and the medium was kinda interesting, but it got repetitive.
Nobody told me that she always wanted to hug someone when she finished painting.
So, I was wearing a tux that night, so when she hugged me, I got pissed.
I slapped her, she slipped on the paint, and broke her neck.
Shit.