Every year, I sign up for National Novel Writing Month.
One year, I wrote eighty-seven words on the side of a church and spent the month in jail.
The next year, I got drunk and had the word “Bilious” tattooed across my ass. Oh, and a pelican in a top hat holding a shotgun.
Then, there was the year I used Dragon Dictation, a speech-to-Text program. Thought I could just talk and talk and talk up the novel.
Yeah, I lost my voice.
This year, I’m going to write.
I’m going to write this all off as a bad idea.
Tag: cliche
Easy Street
Some kids go to college and never come back.
Other kids never leave.
Me, I was emancipated at the age of 3.
But we agreed not to make a big deal of it.
So, I went to a boarding pre-school and kept up the act from year to year.
Sure, it wasn’t easy, paying for it all, but my parents lent me the cash now and then.
Maybe they charged a little too much interest, but the banks kept saying no.
Now, after years of hard work, I’m on Easy Street.
Well, the alley behind it.
Spare some change, mister?
Mount Laundry
I don’t like doing laundry.
And I don’t like it when other people do my laundry.
They might find something in one of my pockets that I don’t want them finding.
I’d rather it never be found than someone finding it.
So, one day, I tried to open the front door.
The laundry pile was jammed against the door.
That’s when I decided to tackle the laundry pile.
It was a mountain. Mount Laundry.
I lost three toes and a Sherpa climbing it.
But it got done.
Just in time to take out the trash.
Mount Trash.
(Where’s that Sherpa?)
Mousetrapped
Long ago, I was poor.
Really poor.
Lived in a total rat-hole, infested with mice.
I guess that made it a mouse-hole instead of a rat-hole.
Anyway, because of the mice, I had to put mousetraps everywhere.
Except that I was so poor, I couldn’t afford cheese for my mousetraps.
I tore out pictures of cheese from the newspaper and put it in the traps.
The next day, I checked the trap.
There was a picture of a mouse from a newspaper in it.
I gave it to the picture of a cat I had as a pet back then.
Milk Street
At the corner of Milk Street and Cookie Avenue, I’d like to build an old-fashioned shop selling cookies.
Kids could come there after school, buy cookies, and dip them in milk while doing homework.
Parents from the community could act as tutors or babysitters.
Instead, there’s a crackhouse.
Sure, there’s kids there, but they’re not doing their homework. They’re acting as lookouts for cops or rival gangs.
I pull up with my milk truck, get out, and walk up to the door.
I pick up the empty milk bottles, put down fresh, and knock.
At least they pay in cash.
Bananacalibur
That’s no ordinary banana in a stone…
That’s Bananacalibur!
Sure, the Lady Of The Lake may have tossed a sword at Arthur, but when pulled it from the stone, The Clown Of The Crown stuck a banana in the hole.
What? What happens to the person who pulls it from the stone?
I guess they get a free banana.
Hey, just be careful what you do with the peel when you’re done with it.
If you slip on it, you become the next Clown Of The Crown.
And the Clown Of The Crown has some mighty big shoes to fill.
For The Soul
A friend told me to read “Chicken Soup For The Soul” so I went to the bookstore.
There were so many other books about chicken soup for various souls.
Shelves and shelves of books.
I don’t have time to read them all.
I was intimidated by all the different books, so I left the bookstore and went to the grocery store.
I reached for Campbell’s Chicken Soup, but then I saw Chicken And Stars, Chicken And Rice, Chunky Chicken And Noodle, a store generic…
Shelves and shelves of soup.
Wait… hold on…
Oh, I forgot: I’m allergic to chicken soup.
Temple
When he retired, Max built a workout shed and wrote THE BODY IS A TEMPLE over the door.
He exercised every day. Rain or shine, heat or blizzard.
One day, while walking to the workout shed, he felt a strange feeling behind his right ear.
Everything went black, and Max dropped to the ground, dead from a stroke.
Max had kept to himself, so it was the overflowing mailbox that was the first sign something was wrong.
The mailman went into the back yard and saw the body covered with flies and other things.
Temple? No.
More like a buffet.
Woodshed
Whenever Joey is bad, I tell him to fetch my belt and meet me behind the shed.
He stands there, holding out my belt.
I take it from him and put it on. “Darn trousers keep slipping without it.”
I grab his head by the ears, twist it off, and take it into the shed where I keep his spare parts.
There’s two heads on the workbench, but one’s torn down.
I put down the head in my hands and pick up the other.
When I go back outside, Joey’s gone.
When I find him, yeah, he’s getting the belt.
Twenty Years Ago
Doctor Odd remembered his grandfather saying “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.”
So, he built a time machine and seed-spreading hoverdrones.
“If twenty years ago is the best time, then forty years ago is better!” Doctor Odd muttered to himself.
He pressed the ENGAGE button…
And he blacked out.
Coming to, he rubbed his head and his hands came back bloody.
“Damn it,” he grumped, and tried to stand up.
His head hit a tree branch.
His workshop was now a thick forest.
Looking around, he saw trees everywhere.
And heard the howls of wolves.