Insanity

You know that Dave’s Insanity Sauce, the really hot hot sauce?
For some reason, people buy stuff that hurts them. It’s a macho thing, I guess.
Well, my client Dr. Odd is suing them for false advertising.
He says that despite the fact that the sauce causes discomfort to the point of mental duress, it doesn’t actually drive the person consuming it to a state of mental illness.
On the other hand, he’s developed formulas that will cause any range of madnesses, temporary and permanent.
True insanity sauces.
And those Dave’s people are ruining his business with their snake oil.

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.

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.

My Unfair Lady

If the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain, where does the rest of the rain in Spain fall?
My elocution tutor didn’t know. He just wanted me to repeat this phrase and didn’t want me getting off tangent, digging through the library for meteorological tables from the Iberian peninsula.
When I was done with Professor Higgins, I asked Doctor Odd about the rain in Spain.
He laughed. “When I am done with my Doomsday Cannon, it will rain fire and death upon Spain!”
I asked my parents if we could go to Paris instead of Madrid this year.

The Boy Who Never Laughed

Dr. Odd was presented with the case of The Boy Who Never Laughed.
The first week was spent reading joke books to him.
No reaction.
After that, he dressed as a clown and performed various silly acts, such as juggling Bunsen burners or constructing molecular formulas and atomic structures out of balloons.
No reaction.
Finally, the doctor tickled The Boy with feathers of various species of bird, common and rare.
“Coochy coo!” he trilled.
No reaction.
Exhausted, Dr. Odd slumped in his chair…. and fell to the floor.
The Boy laughed and laughed.
Dr. Odd punched him in the face.

Measured emotional response

Doctor Odd was a master of measurement, knowing every unit of measurement there was.
Except emotions.
He could not measure emotions.
There was no emotional yardstick.
There was no emotional scale.
There was no emotional multimeter.
“I must invent one,” he said.
So, over the years, he ran countless experiments.
Taking candy from babies.
Showering people with love.
Telling parents their children had died at war.
Giving gifts to orphans.
And running lunatics through a maze of unfamiliar lights and sounds.
Not that any ethical scientist would respect his results, he revealed his horrific findings:
“I have no emotions whatsoever.”

Bubbly

Okay, so, like I came to this school because they have a good fashion and design program, and it’s got five kegs in the party meter, but, man, tuition was expensive and my parents couldn’t afford it all, so I got a work-study thing going with this scientist in a lab and he’s got all kinda of tubes and wires and vats with bubbly green goo in them and she shouts DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING but, like, this place could use a designer’s touch, maybe some more light, and I see this switch on the wall, so I pull it dow-

Forgetful

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Despite his many failures in all fields of Science, Dr. Odd maintains his keen sense of irony.
His greatest triumph in botany was the splicing and resequencing the DNA of forget-me-not flowers to cause them to naturally produce a compound similar to GHB.
One whiff of the flowers would prevent two to four hours of memory from sticking to the brain.
Dr. Odd forgot to wear a filter mask during his research, so even with extensive notes, it took years to complete.
And when he finished these sinister frankenflowers, he couldn’t remember that he invented them in the first place.

Boiling Point

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Doctor Odd only received one F grade in his life.
His chemistry teacher asked “What’s the boiling point of mercury?”
So, he built an orbiting doomsday laser and performed experiments on the planet Mercury.
The next day, he presented his results.
“I meant the element, not planet,” she said.
She gave him an F. The class laughed.
Odd vowed revenge and transferred to a different high school.
He didn’t wait long to determine the boiling point of the old teacher, her class, and that entire damn school.
He never again got less than an A, or reason to boil again.

Fail

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Doctor Odd watched the mice scurry around the maze, trying to find the source of the scent of cheese.
Unlike other mazes, there was no “center” or “goal” to this one. It was just a series of loops.
And as for the cheese, well, he had smeared the walls and floors of the maze with a cloth containing a cheese scent an hour before.
The mice kept going in circles, and Doctor Odd waited for one to just give up.
Sure enough, the mice were poking their noses through the mesh on top of the maze.
They’d learned to fail.