Halloween is around the corner.
Pumpkins.
Witches.
Ghosts.
Trick or treaters.
I read in the paper that pet shelters won’t adopt out black cats during October because people do awful things to them.
One person wanted two cats for decorations for their party.
Decorations. For a party.
It’s so wrong.
Cats are not decorations. They have souls, like us.
And when they’re gone?
Halloween is around the corner.
I get out the plastic pumpkins. Then the witches. And the ghosts.
And a paper black cat, arched over three orange letters:
Boo.
I put it away.
I miss him so much.
Tag: tragedy
Freds
Fred’s doctor told him that he had six months to live.
So, Fred uploaded his consciousness into a computer.
And then, Cyberfred watched the real Fred collapse and die.
“Well, that’s embarrassing,” said Cyberfred.
“Very,” said a ghostly voice.
It was Fred’s ghost.
“Well, this is awkward,” said Cyberfred. “And, yet, a bit of a relief.”
“Agreed,” said Fred’s ghost.
“Braaaaaaains,” moaned Fred’s corpse.
“Oh no,” said Fred’s ghost.
“Okay, that’s even more embarrassing,” said Cyberfred.
Zombie Fred got up, and tripped over Cyberfred’s power cord.
“Oops,” said Fred’s ghost. “Sorry about that.”
Zombie Fred moaned “Braaaaaaaains.” again. And again.
History Of Art
The East end of Main Street starts with a few yellow hand prints in the middle of the road.
The hand prints give way to hunting scenes, and then simple geometric designs.
As you travel West, the lines in the road progress through the history of painting… Babylonian… Persian… Greek… Roman… at Fulton Street, you get some Byzantine frescoes and mosaics.
A bit of the Dutch Masters and French Impressionists as you pass the Library, then Dadaist and Surrealist before the splattered mess reminiscent of Jackson Pollock.
(That’s not intentional. That’s where the road painter got hit by a bus.)
The Language of Ice Cream
My car got a flat tire right outside of an ice cream shop.
Is this the universe’s way of telling me that I should have ice cream?
You know, Galileo said that the language in which God made the universe is mathematics.
What if he was wrong? Maybe the universe was written in the language of ice cream?
If so, ISO-639 should include a language code for ice cream: ic.
And you could tack on dialect codes for different flavors, such as ic-rr for Rocky Road.
A rocky road that flattens your tire in front of an ice cream store.
Surviving
You know how child actors turn out badly?
Well, that Peppermint Lane show was one of the worst for the kids who starred in it.
Instead of going to school, they had tutors on the set, but they were paid to give the kids passing grades.
All they knew how to do was be a child actor. And that doesn’t last.
Some got into drugs and alcohol.
Others lost their money to greedy parents and turned to crime or other ways to get by.
The puppets made it into museums, or on toy store shelves, envied by the surviving few.
My only sunshine
“You are my sunshine,” sang Carlos to The Sun. “My only sunshine.”
But The Sun knew better.
This morning, as she rose with the dawn, she saw how sad Carlos was after the stars had all vanished one by one when the night was over.
This time, she’d caught him whispering: “Goodbye, my loves!”
Stars are nothing more than far-distant suns.
Suns. Just like her.
Carlos’ only sunshine?
Bullshit.
The Sun vomited with molten fury, spitting a massive flare at Carlos.
It incinerated him and the entire planet he’d been standing on.
“Who’s your sunshine now, bitch?” thought The Sun.
The Gems
I found my master, Old Wizard Glitterbeard, on the floor of his library in a pool of blood, a bag of gems in his hand.
Once, he tried to tell me which color gem represented which spell…
Red is for fire.
Green is for power.
White is for the lightning.
Blue is for health.
Right! Blue for health.
I held a blue gem to his forehead and waited.
But the gem didn’t heal the wizard.
He was dead.
Oh great. He’s dead.
Now I’m out of a job.
At least I’ve got severance pay, I thought, and pocketed the gems.
The Rose
A rose by any other name is still a rose, but we knew her as Circe.
Whenever I was being an asshole, she’d call me an asshole.
And whenever I wasn’t, she’d still call me an asshole, because she knew it was only a matter of time.
She told me she was listening to all of my stories from the beginning. It gave her something to look forward to.
How do you respond to that? Their last months… weeks… days.
I know I wouldn’t waste my remaining time on that shit.
It must have been the morphine, clouding her judgement.
Ghost
I listened to the ghost of David Rakoff read his latest, final book.
David Rakoff is a brilliant writer, but he’s also a brilliant performer, so his audiobooks are what I get.
Got.
I remembered that his book was available as I left the office, but iTunes wouldn’t load it because I wasn’t on WiFi, and it was a large file.
So, I walked to the bus stop, waited for the bus, got on, and squeezed my way to the back door where I stood in the stink and jabber…
And then, home. Wifi.
Loading… loading… loading…
Speak, ghost. Speak.
Soylent Groan
Near the end of the movie Soylent Green, Charlton Heston’s character weeps as he accompanies his elderly friend to the suicide center.
The tears are genuine. E G Robinson was dying, and he told Charlton about it before the shoot. Charlton wasn’t acting… the emotion of the impending death of his friend was overwhelming.
Also, the whole “processing the dead into food” thing was genuine, too. The movie was over budget, so the producers cut the catering budget by eating hundreds of extras killed in various accidents on the set.
Accidents. Uh huh. Right.
Charlton laughed, and asked for seconds.