How the other half lives

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Up in the North, no faerie can resist the call. The blazing sun sings to them, leaving other merriment to the all-too-brief night.
But down in Tierra del Fuego, unlucky faeries toss newspaper scraps in their tiny fire pit and huddle around the flames.
“This is s-s-s-s-s-stupid,” chattered Mugwort, rubbing his hands.
“Let’s dance,” said Flitwicket. “It might warm us up.”
“Eurocentric b-b-b-b-b-bastards,” grumbled Mugwort. “Why’d they change the schedule?”
“Something about a bulk discount on Pixie Dust,” said Flitwicket. “Thank bureaucracy. Someone needs to frolic his frowns away.”
Eyes narrowed. Delicate throats growled.
Flitwicket sparked nicely on the flame.

Soldiers

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Alarms went off. Davidson stubbed out his twizzlestick, waved the purple vapors out of the air, and went back to work.
TARGET? asked the viewport.
“Quadrant 3,” said Davidson, twiddling the viewport’s knobs. “Section 5. Platoon 37. Unit 9-alpha.”
Davidson blinked as his avatar flew through the fields of vat-grown soldiers.
Powerful.
Identical.
Almost perfect.
Except for Q3-S5-P37-9a. He was better.
Every now and then, a drone’s matrix would self-enhance, and its milk-white skin would turn dark.
“Obtain,” said Davidson.
Tendrils reached from the ground and pulled Q3-S5-P37-9a into the placentadirt.
OBTAINED.
Davidson smiled. The dark ones were worth bonuses.

The Adventures of Mustard Man – Chapter 10

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I’m sure you’re aware of the news of a woman who found a fingertip in a bottle of Mustard Man mustard.
It’s all a lie.
I’d like to state for the record that it did not get in there at the factory. We have high quality standards for our mustard and make every effort to filter out severed body parts well before the bottling process.
I’m sure that it fell in there at some kind of dinner party. Happens all the time.
Especially in leper colonies.
We sell a lot of mustard to leper colonies for some strange reason.
Blech

The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln 17

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Pain.
Sharp, agonizing pain.
Abraham screamed.
“GET THIS BULLDOG OFF OF ME!” rang through the halls of the White House.
Abe flailed his arm, but the bulldog refused to release Abe’s wrist.
At one point, Abe managed to pry the beast’s mouth open with a fireplace iron, but the dog leapt for his thigh and renewed its grip on the President.
“SON OF A BITCH, THAT HURTS!” shouted Abe.
Abe grabbed an axe from his desk and brained the dog, freeing his leg.
He didn’t bother asking why the axe was there, preferring just to remain grateful for its presence.

Relive

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He wasn’t really her father. He was just some bum she’d picked up off the street.
She did this every year – picking up a bum, washing him up, putting him in her father’s old clothes, filling him with liquor, and then letting him sleep it off.
Hopefully, the bum would attack her. Just like all the others.
She’d scream “Happy Father’s Day!” through the pain.
Exhausted, she would try to forgive him for it all. She needed this.
At sunset, she’d cut his throat and bury him in the back yard. Just like all the others.
And her father.

The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln 16

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The tree stood on the edge of the White House lawn, swaying in the breeze.
The scars along its trunk mocked him.
Abe now really hated that tree.
Not enough time, he thought. Not enough time for this.
Lincoln leaned on the axe blade, pushing it into the spinning grindstone. Sweat poured off of his brow, and his shoulders ached with the strain.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe,” he mumbled. “First, not last!”
Next time, he’d just have the artillery boys use it for target practice.

What kind of idiot?

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We don’t like it when you call them retards. They’re gifted or special now.
Some of them do amazing things. They were called idiot savants, but we dropped the idiot part.
Political correctness. Bah!
See that drooling sack of crap in the corner?
Can’t tie his own shoes. Can’t put on a shirt. Barely knows to go to the toilet.
Put an onion and a cleaver in front of him, and he’ll dice that sucker up in less than a second.
Potatoes, celery, cucumbers…
Perfect little cubes.
He’s the reason we stopped doing Animal Therapy, you know.
Please don’t ask.

Zero Budget

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Chemists get eyewash stations and fire extinguishers.
Physicists get Geiger counters and thick rubber gloves.
Biologists get inoculated for everything.
That leaves zero budget for the mathematicians.
Cheap bastards.
It’s drilled into every schoolkid not to divide by zero. The government’s done a great job of distributing “safety zeroes” to schools to protect kids who go ahead and try, but the professionals have to work with the uncoated wild variety to get the equations to stick.
Long ago, I fell asleep next to five blackboards full of wild zeroes. The exposure destroyed my nervous system.
ALS? Just a cover story.

The Adventures of Mustard Man – Chapter 9

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Every seventeen days, a rabbi comes to the factory to look over our machinery, inspect the mustard seed and other ingredients, and then tell us that with absolute certainty that Mustard Man mustard is not Kosher.
Well, duh.
It’s not like we hired him to do this. One day, he just showed up and wandered around before saying something rude in Yiddish and stomping off.
Who is he? I’m not even sure he’s a real rabbi.
Do they have badges or licenses? Is there a serial number in that beanie thing they wear?
I think he’s an escaped mental patient.

A New Look At the Old Gods

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Contrary to popular belief, the Greek God Of Thunder Zeus and the Roman King Of the Gods Jupiter were not the same being.
Sure, they look alike, but the truth is they’re not exactly alike.
You can easily tell them apart by the thunderbolts. Zeus prefers javelin-like lightning strokes with small jaggies in them while Jupiter prefers massive strokes with only three or four jaggies.
I learned this from Vulcan, who has the manufacturing contract for both.
And, yes, Vulcan actually is Hephasteus. But his real name is “Leslie.”
Try being a big macho blacksmith with a name like that.