Category: My stories

Ghostwork

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If you have a ghost, my advice to you is to give it a job.
Ghosts can be very useful. And loyal.
A ghost will enjoy walking your dog for you while you’re busy. And they’ll prepare delicious dinner meals while saving you the chore of cleaning up afterwards.
Got landscaping to do? I’ve got one word for you: ghost. There is nothing more reliable than a ghost with a lawnmower and hedge trimmers.
I, for one, have three of them working for me.
Hold on… maybe I meant to say “Mexicans.”
Or Mexican ghosts.
Still, they do excellent work.

Rygar

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Jack?
Oh, Jack! He calls himself “Rygar” now, and he sleeps in his basement under a pile of old towels.
Until… he wakes up… senses… INTRUDER!
“Come on out, Jack,” said his landlord, nervously twiddling his keychain. “We need to talk about you tapping the Smith’s cable line.”
“RYGAR ANGRY!” shouts Jack, and he searches his towel-pile for weapons.
“I’m sure you are,” said the landlord. “We’ll discuss this when you’re ready, okay?”
The landlord sighed and reminded himself that of all his tenants, Jack paid his rent on time.
And in cash.
“Grondar Goldheart happy,” growled the landlord, chuckling.

Marching Boots

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Every moment, we grow more afraid.
Boots! Boots! Marching Boots!
I can hear them marching in the streets, the boots of the soldiers!
Not the soldiers themselves, mind you. Just their boots.
It’s an impressive sight, so many boots marching in unison, completely in step.
A fearsome sight. A scary sight.
We peer out of our windows, watching them.
Who will protect us from these boots? Who will stop this stomping menace?
The soldiers?
No, they are more afraid than we humble citizens are.
We watch the socks, drying on the clothesline.
Will they be next?
All hope is lost.

Scythe

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Fashion is so fickle, you know.
This year in Paris, all the rage is scythe.
“Scythe is the new black,” says a designer, and he pedals the grindstone faster. Sparks fly!
The blade’s edge is sharp, and the flat of it is polished mirror-like.
Trowels and rototillers are so yesterday… scythe is now! It’s hip! It’s fresh!
It’s the in thing.
The word is: scythe.
“It’s the new black,” says the model behind the stage, changing from Versace to Armani. “It goes with everything.”
She checks her hair and heads for the runway.
Watch out, world. Scythe! Scythe is here!

Bad Wine

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As I watch the sailboats slide slowly across the bay, I open our bottle of wine.
“Was it a good year?” my sister asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Year’s not over yet.”
Aunt Polly used to say that good company makes up for bad wine.
We’ve been doing this for years – bad wine, stale bread, and a ratty old blanket on the shore of the bay.
“Is the sun going up or down?” my sister says.
“I’m not sure anymore,” I say. “Have a drink.”
We used to go out rowing, the three of us.
Don’t ask.
Just drink.

Woodwork

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If I seem a tad distracted, it’s because my new lathe is broken.
I bought it last month, thinking I’d do woodwork. Sure, I don’t know anything about carpentry or crafts, but Wood 2.0 is new and exciting. It’s all about social woodworking. And the marketing brochures said it was profitable, too.
All I needed was a lathe and a client base.
Technical Support tells me it’s not plugged in. Then they say I’m using glass instead of wood… that’s why my finished product is often a pile of broken glass.
I’ll just scream louder and threaten to sue them.

Baby Elephant Wank

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Little Susie wanted to learn about the birds and the bees, but Daddy liked elephants.
“When a mommy elephant and a daddy elephant love each other very much,” said Daddy, “they do something special at night and make a baby elephant.”
“What if a mommy elephant loves a mommy elephant?” asked Susie.
Daddy looked down at his hand. The ring was gone, but its impression was still fresh on his finger.
“Then the daddy elephant hires a lawyer,” he said. “And then he moves away to Pittsburgh.”
To this day, Susie always gets a bit turned on at the circus.

Pizza Time

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Okay, so my wife was making pizza the other night, and I got to chop up the veggies.
I like to use the alligator chopper thingy we have. It dices them up real good. And, it’s fun, too!
Then, I dry out the veggies and then get out some mushrooms to blot on paper towels.
My wife doesn’t like mushrooms on pizza, so I put them only on half.
She baked the thing, pulled it out of the oven, and guess which half I ate from?
Yeah, that’s right. The one without mushrooms. Her half.
I’m a bad, bad husband.

Fetch

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My dog loves to play fetch.
It’s really simple to play: I throw a stick and he runs after it.
The problem is, he keeps bringing back the wrong stick.
For example, I just threw a small tree branch, and he came back with a cedar plank.
I threw the cedar blank, and he came back with a wooden chair leg.
I have no idea where he’s getting all these different bits of wood.
So, I took him to the beach and we played with driftwood.
Same thing – he comes back with Maplewood.
How about we try tennis balls instead?

Reboots On The Ground

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Here in Army Weapons Technical Support Services, we get all kinds of calls from the field.
Usually, the solution is just to reboot the device, but the reboot switch on the Standard Assault Rifle Unit is hard to get to when the operator is in combat and wearing thermal gloves.
It used to be even more difficult to reboot the things – you had to stick a paperclip in a hole and hold it there for 5 seconds.
This is why it’s so important to hold live-fire exercises for testing these devices. Virtual simulations don’t fail quite like real hardware does.