Edwin, Edgar, Edward, and Eddington played bridge together every Sunday.
When Edgar had a heart attack, they moved the game to Edgar’s bedside.
The medication made his bidding a bit erratic.
Edgar got a pacemaker implanted, and he was fit to go.
Later, Eddington lost a thumb in a wood-cutting accident, but he learned to hold his cards with the remaining 9 fingers.
Edwin went deaf, but they worked around it. Hand signals.
Finally, Edward used the wrong kind of space heater for the game. They all suffocated and died.
So close to graduating high school. What a goddamned shame.
Tag: medical
Shave For Cancer
A friend of mine has cancer, and they’re starting radiation and chemotherapy soon.
All of their hair is going to fall out, so they went ahead and got it all shaved off.
Some people shave their heads in solidarity with their cancer-stricken friends, but that’s a bit extreme, I think.
Plus, I’m slowly going bald anyway, so if I shave it all off, there’s a good chance that it won’t all come back.
That’s why I’m going to shave my back hair.
I’ve got a salon coupon that my coworkers bought me for Christmas.
Hey, I can take a hint!
Ass God
A friend of mine recently underwent a colonoscopy.
They were all freaked out over it. The fasting, purgative, and the discussion about the anesthetic just made it all worse.
I told them how I just laughed through my own colonoscopy preparations and the procedure, and things turned out okay.
So, they went through it all, and they just told me “They found a precancerous polyp.”
That’s great news, I said, precancerous and not cancerous.
“Yes! Thank the gods!” they said.
Except the God Of Precancerous Polyps, of course.
Because he’s a total dick, giving those fucking polyps out to people.
Juicer
Rumors spread across the sporting world that the greatest athlete in the sport was using performance-enhancing drugs.
But then, everybody was doing it back then. The sport was rotten with cheaters and juicers. Everybody doped and juiced to keep up with him.
He just did it more effectively.
Finally, on his last race on the last tour in his career, he performed clean.
No drugs.
No blood doping.
No enhancements at all.
And he came in last place.
Until, of course, he ratted on everybody.
He was the only one to pass the tests, and was declared winner by default.
Prometheus
While online dating sites constructed databases of compatible personality traits, Prometheus Industries collected data on organ compatibility for transplant purposes.
Every mail-in paternity check, medical biopsy, and blood test brought in more data.
Prometheus ingested every result and wove a complex web of names and organs.
At first, Prometheus offered up its data on voluntary donors to eliminate transplant rejections.
But after they demonstrated how successful their algorithms were, they quietly opened up the secret market to allow the wealthy and desperate to view donor resources not yet available.
Prometheus just offered the data. The illegal procurement agents operated independently.
Red and Green
One of the most unusual ways to mark the holiday season would be to feed a meal to your guests that will make them piss green and shit red.
The idea came to me after I pissed green for days after St. Patrick Day.
“I’m halfway to Christmas,” I thought.
Then I passed out, because I was drunk off my ass.
After I recovered, I had to piss again.
Red and green piss came out.
“Christmas colors!” I said. “I did it!”
My urologist says it’s prostate cancer.
And it’s spread quickly.
Now, I’ll be lucky to see next Christmas.
Hold My Calls
Winston’s last words were “hold my calls.”
And then, an hour later, he died from a heart attack.
Winston’s phone rang while the orderlies were moving his body down to the morgue for processing.
“Hey! Hey there!” shouted the phone, over and over.
It was Winston’s voice shouting as the ringtone, and it scared the fuck out of the orderlies.
“I warned you,” cackled Winston’s ghost.
Then his spirit wandered off to the emergency room, where he placed bets with the other ghosts on who would live or die.
Which was awkward when those dying patients became ghosts too.
Awareness
Remember when people wore yellow ribbon pins to raise awareness of AIDS?
Then came ribbon pins of other colors for other causes.
Red for this.
Green for that.
White for some other thing.
I don’t remember all the colors and their meanings.
So, I stopped wearing any ribbon pins.
“Don’t you care anymore?” people would scream at me.
“It’s bullshit,” I said.
So, they gave me a hemp ribbon for Bullshit Awareness.
Well, not as much a ribbon, as a rope.
A hangman’s noose.
And they put it around my neck.
The other end just went over a tree branch.
Nancy’s Face
If you asked her out, Nancy would say “Sure. Let me go put on my face.”
And then she peels off the face she had on, wipes away the glue, and sticks on a fresh face.
She always makes sure she has at least two faces left in the pack.
You never want to run out of faces, and sometimes the last face in the pack ends up squished, like the last slice of a loaf of bread.
Satisfied, she smiles, and tosses the old face into a cage.
The rats chew the face to bits as it screams silently.
Certificates
I’m the county clerk.
I handle all the certificates.
Births
Weddings
Deaths
Every one of them has to go on official certificate paper, lined up just right.
It’s a pain in the ass.
You can’t just print these out in a color laser printer. That’s not good enough for people getting married or having kids.
The dead don’t give a shit, but their relatives care… only right up until the will’s been read, though.
I got bored one day and left a death certificate for John Coward on the copier.
Ran a thousand of them off and proved Shakespeare right.