New York City vanished.
No explosions or fires, or strange lights in the sky.
It just vanished. Completely gone.
Scientists couldn’t explain it.
A lot of people freaked out. Lots of tweets and Facebook updates and crazy stuff.
Without New York telling everybody what to do, Los Angeles and Washington tried to step into that role.
Some followed, but others said “Fuck you, we’re tired of being told what to do.”
After a while, things settled down, and life returned to normal.
New York never came back.
They’re collecting for a monument, but I got better things to spend on.
Tag: tragedy
Walrus
Don’t believe those TV shows where medical examiners run all kinds of tests to discover weird and unusual causes of death.
For the most part, it’s the same stuff:
Heart attack
Stroke
Car accident
Drowning
Choking
And natural causes
Over and over.
Just once, I’d like to write “walrus” as the cause of death.
Sadly, every time someone gets killed by a walrus, the goddamned family asks me to write “natural causes.”
“Walruses are natural, right?” they say.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Disney made robotic hippos for the jungle cruise. They could always make robotic walruses.
And sell them. As weapons.
Bridge
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.
Atomized
Peter always wanted to go into space.
But the Treaty of Kkaskktk clearly states that Earthborn must remain on Earth.
Satellites enforced the treaty. Earthborn who tried to break the blockade were sent crashing down.
Instead of living within their ecological means on their homeworld, Earthborn continued to ravage their planet, and instead focused their efforts on trying to break the blockade.
For every satellite destroyed, ten would take its place.
Peter tried to design a hyperspace gateway to jump past the blockade, but it started a chain reaction.
Everything was atomized.
But, technically, Peter’s atoms float around in space.
Match
Leslie was obsessed with spreading peanut butter on bread.
Her mother was worried about Leslie’s obsession. She thought Leslie ought to find a nice man to settle down with.
So, she searched for one, and found a man who was obsessed with spreading jelly on bread.
“He’s the perfect match!” Like peanut butter and jelly!
So, they went on a date.
Leslie would spread peanut butter on one side of the bread, and then the man would spread jelly on the other.
They argued, tempers flared, and things turned violent.
But they fought to a draw.
The perfect match indeed.
Black Santa
Whenever I go to the mall to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what I want for Christmas, I ask for “The Black Santa.”
The mall added him to their Christmas Village a few years back, and he’s got better drugs than the regular Santa.
“What do you want for Christmas?” asks Black Santa.
“Just my two front teeth,” I reply.
He hands me 2 pills, and I hand back a twenty.
I swear, on these pills, I can fly higher than a reindeer.
They found his body on New Year’s.
Must have gotten on his supplier’s naughty list.
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.
The Hunter’s Christmas
Every Christmas, Nardo would pick up his toys one by one, howling his hunter’s howl, and put them under the tree with the presents.
Without him to hunt them now, his toys sit unused at the foot of the bed, on top of the chest we keep there.
I pick up a stuffed toy robin, walk into the living room, and place it under the tree.
I look at the robin sitting there, just like years before.
I’d say “Good boy!” and pet him, and he’d go back for more.
But it’s not the same.
Because I forgot to howl.
Ingrate
Nobody ever wants to get back up on Santa’s lap and thank him for all that he brought them. So, he eats to fill that emptiness, and his beard is thick with frozen tears.
He drinks. The elves worry that he’ll pass out in a snowdrift and freeze to death.
Mrs. Claus threatens to leave, but she’s got nowhere to go. All she knows is keeping the fat old man happy.
Well, used to.
She wrote a book. Told everything.
The publisher printed millions of copies in time for Christmas.
Claus hung himself so he wouldn’t have to deliver them.
Detroit
Everybody says that Detroit is dying, but nobody knows when to pull the plug.
Detroit isn’t any help. Detroit is in denial, insisting it’s fine, as the urban decay rots deeper and deeper.
None of its relatives are in any position to help out either. All those sister cities you see on WikiPedia don’t answer Detroit’s calls.
Neighbors? Forget about them.
Chicago is drowning in blood.
Washington is out of cash, so don’t count on a bailout.
Maybe the easiest decision will be what to do with the corpse, because the fire department left long ago.
Hand me a lighter.