Tag: cliche

Unmentionables

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It is rude to make mention of one’s unmentionables.
This creates a rather interesting dilemma: what is an unmentionable?
If you cannot mention then, then how does one know what not to mention?
I heard about a Downtown club where they’d mention the unmentionables.
Knock twice, then once, and then three times.
The password is “They forgot to mention it to me.”
The cops used to raid the place all the time, but these days they just collect a bribe and move on.
It’s hardly worth mentioning, really.
Perhaps that’s why the unmentionables are unmentionable.
Forget I ever mentioned them.

Mother In Lawless

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The old woman with the gun is my mother-in-law.
But she’s more like a mother-in-lawless.
She breaks into banks with ease, breaking out of jail and nursing homes even easier.
We’re not a close family, but we’re kept under a close watch as hostages. Instead of knitting us sweaters, she keeps us tied up and gagged.
And I don’t drive the getaway car because I’m a part of her gang. I drive it because she’s a horrible driver and her license was revoked by the state.
I’m only doing it to save lives.
Now put the money in the sack.

The Lawyers

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Despite the number of lawyers in America, fewer are available to defendants needing representation, but without money.
So, with a low-power spirit-trap and some old State Bar registers, we’ve started summoning up the ghosts of lawyers to represent them.
They work pro bono, with few earthly needs since having left their bones behind many years ago.
And although some of them are woefully behind on their case law, few modern district attorneys can stand the withering assault of a Daniel Webster or Clarence Darrow.
I still laugh when I see a lawyer’s ghost, chasing the ambulance with his corpse inside.

The Werewolf

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Those damn cops had shot at us.
I lucked out, but the Werewolf didn’t.
The angry beast growls and licks his wounds, picking out bullets with his claws and tossing them into the gutter.
“They can’t kill me,” it says. “But it still fuckin’ hurts.”
I nod and watch the wounds.
The bleeding stops, and within a minute they’ve scarred over.
“Drowning is bad, but fire’s the worst.”
“Try taking a stake to your lung,” I say. “They don’t teach anatomy worth a damn anymore.”
He washes the blood off with the rain, and we head back down the alley.

Mother Nature

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It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, but it’s much easier since she slipped on a riverbank and hit her head on a rock.
With a bandage on her forehead and a smile on her face, she nods with contentment from her hospital bed.
There’s no need to bring her new flowers every day. The flowers I brought her the first day are still fresh today, so all you need to do is take them away while she’s asleep and bring them in when she wakes up.
“Look what I have! Flowers!”
She smiles peacefully and looks out the window.

The Betting Man

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Governor Stack begins each sentence with “If I were a bettin man.”
Which everyone thought he was.
Tickets and race forms poked out of his jacket, and you could always find him down at the track, sipping a martini or a mint julep.
“I just come here for the drinks,” he says. “Best mint julep in the state.”
Which made no sense at all, since the racetrack made horrible drinks.
So, while he’s getting drunk on bad liquor and wasting his money on the horses, we run the state.
We run it better than Stack.
You can bet on that.

Johnny comes marching home…

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When Johnny comes marching home again, we won’t be singing Hurrah Hurrah.
No, we’ll be waiting behind the woodshed with knives.
Johnny may think he’s a big hot-shot war hero, but his brothers who went to the front with him sent back letters saying otherwise.
A lousy shot.
A worthless coward.
A loose-lipped traitor.
He may think he made the explosion look like an artillery shell accident, but Tomkins saw it. And he sent the letter before Johnny finished him off, too.
We hear his horse come up the path, draw our knives, and his whistling grows louder.
STAB HIM!

Money

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I know one guy who’s just rolling in money
No, I’m not rolling in money. And even if I were, I don’t think rolling in money is a very productive thing to do.
Invest it. Spend it. Save it.
But roll in it?
That’s just weird.
Then there’s the guy with money to burn.
That’s just fucking crazy. Burning money.
Sometimes, he dangles the money over the flame to tease me.
Once these two guys got together, and they ended up rolling in burning money.
I grabbed what I could, buried the charred corpses, and bought a ticket to Reno.

Not taking names

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I’m here to kick ass, but I’m not going to take names.
I forgot to bring a pen and paper. And it’s hard to take names on an iPhone when you’re kicking ass.
Sure, the phone has a decent keyboard, but it’s only good when you’re standing still.
Kicking ass jiggles your phone around a lot, and you’ll make a lot of spelling errors.
So instead of kicking ass and taking names, I’m just going to kick ass and then let the police check your wallet for your ID.
You left it at home?
Fine. He’ll use your dental records.

The Cockroach

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The only words I know from the song La Cucaracha are the opening words.
I don’t know Spanish, so the supposedly rich satirical madness of the song has eluded me for all my life.
I’ve looked online for the lyrics, but you can’t trust Wikipedia these days. And those automatic translators end up garbling the words.
So, I went to the library and asked the librarian for help.
She sat me down at a table, clapped her hands, and a Mariachi band came by my table to play.
Pen in hand, I copied down what I could.
And tipped them.