Humorous Fiction

The father of Eldon, Med and Dimi threw dozens of books at them one hot summer evening in the upstairs hallway. Two or three dozen, to be exact. Cause: They had broken one too many household rules recently. “You think you can get away with murder?” the father taunted as he tossed the literary grenades. The children - ages fifteen to thirteen, respectively - withstood the tirade like waterlogged soldiers who are one strategic village away from glory. The tirade included a handsomely illustrated version of The Three Little Pigs.

“It's a no-brainer,” said Eldon, their leader, as the children's classic fell to his feet. “We leave at dawn tomorrow.”

“Why dawn?” Med inquired.

“Why tomorrow?” asked little Dimi.

Eldon smiled, hugged his brothers, and then knocked their heads together as if he were Moe (not Eldon) and they were Larry and Curly (not Med and Dimi). He hoped that if the Deity was watching, It would see the humor behind the violence.

From “A Young Gangster Resigns”

I have been a gangster since the age of eighteen. All I have done for the last fifteen years is bully people. But after what happened last night, I know that my heart is not in this profession. I am going to give my two weeks notice today.

I thirst for a legitimate job, where rewards are commensurate with performance. I hunger for salary reviews and the chance to show my boss how much I've improved the bottom line. I ache to be part of a corporate team that supplies a valued service, or that manufactures a superior product line.

Let's talk about professional development. That's a joke in my business. I've never attended a single workshop or seminar. There's no such thing as continuing education in my field. Nobody is looking to broaden their skills, just sharpen their technique. It's still very much a "live by the sword, die by the sword" mentality. My crime family doesn't understand how much self-development means to me. When I try to explain my goals and objectives, they say I read too much. I don't think they trust me.

From “You Write About Dogs”

Inside the vine-tangled brick building with Latin graffiti chiseled over the front entrance, Professor Nodoff called his English Composition class to order.

“I am not wholly pleased with the progress we are making as a group. I'm afraid we must take a different approach. I will assign each student a unique topic. You will write a story, a recollection, or anything else that can be considered a cohesive, self-contained prose composition. The topics have been selected for their apparent lack of excitement. You are to bring excitement to your assignment.”

A hush fell over the classroom like a baffling analogy.

“Jules. You write about dogs. Iris. You write about file folders. Glen. You write about air conditioners. Bernice. You write about dogs. I'm sorry, that was Jules. You write about cheese, Bernice.”

In all, eighteen topics were assigned by Professor Nodoff. The results pleased him on one level, but not on another.

From “Handicapped Decisions”

I thought it was about time we had a living room lamp more in keeping with the times, so I drove to Vance's Furniture & Appliance after one work one partly-cloudy afternoon. While hunting for a parking space, I noticed the store was being robbed by two middle-aged men in wheelchairs, each wielding an immense pistol. I raced to police headquarters, naturally, and shouted the news to a group of uniforms. Men? Women? I can't recall. Crimes like this are not synonymous with life in Cheyenne.

En route to my home and wife, I could hear the handicapped hoodlums explaining to Vance's startled work force: "We want all of the opportunities available to able-bodied people, including armed robbery and other selfish pursuits."

I was still puffing from all the excitement when I got home, but Martha never gave me a chance to... It's like on television when one person keeps interrupting someone who has important news to deliver. On television it may or may not be funny, but in real life we have different expectations. And there was no getting through to my wife of ten to fifteen years. She was more interested in my day at the office.

"Sell any fences today, honey?" she asked. "I bet you'd like a snack. Care for an oven-fresh brownie?"

From “Middle Ages Named To Replace Roman Empire Era”

Constantinople, Aug. 9, 476 -- The beginning of the "Middle Ages" was announced today by the Council of Higher Minds, a blue-ribbon task force that has been meeting round-the-clock since last Wednesday's Fall of the Roman Empire. The panel considered more glamorous names for this new era in mankind's history, but chose the Middle Ages because it best reflects the intellectual progress that lies ahead.

"This name positions the human race to go out and stretch the very limits of its creativity," said Phileas, head of the task force and a consultant with Asia Minor Associates. "We must learn to harness more of the natural resources that Zeus has provided for us. I can't believe that horses and camels are still such popular vehicles -- even in our largest city-states!"

From “Blues Headlines”

Man Loses Key to Highway, Creates Rush Hour Snarl

Search for Back Door Man Narrowed to Clarksdale Area

Hiker Discovers Mojo Graveyard

`Hoochie Coochie Man' Claim Reaches State Appellate Court

Police Deny Using Hellhounds to Trail Robbery Suspect Trio

From “Muddy's Mentor, or Patronizing the Blues”

Dear Mr. Morganfield:

Congratulations! I am enclosing the first payment in what I hope will be a long commitment of support. Although the cheque is in Belgian francs, it may be cashed at any multinational banking institution for a nominal conversion fee. If you have any trouble, just ring the Belgian consulate in Chicago and tell them I am your artistic patron. I'm sure they will understand.

Your letter expressed some hesitation about accepting a gift from a complete stranger. I realize that your natural inclination will be to return my cheque, for how can one live the "blues" unless one experiences some form of restlessness on a day-to-day basis? Let me therefore impose a requirement that my financial support be used strictly to expose more people to your music - through studio recordings and live "gigs," as I believe they are called. My stipends are not to be used for mortgage payments, gasoline, groceries or anything else that would improve your socioeconomic condition.

I look forward to corresponding with you. I wish you much good fortune with your music. And I sincerely hope that you get your woman back.

- For the love of music, Princess M.

From “New Titles From Tri-County Press”

Popular Fiction:

The Trigonometry Murders

Hatred Is Thy Bunkmate

Wet Nurse From the Grave

Literature:

Tomorrow Is a Comma

My Truncated Evening

Dance of the Paraprofessionals

Non-Fiction:

Lives of the Bible Translators

The ABCs of Child Interrogation

Om: The Hindu Home Run

From “Questions To Ask At Cocktail Parties”

As a society, should we reward a young man who steals second base?

If every minute counts, yet something only takes 30 seconds, should you risk it?

You have just turned thirteen and are selling chocolate bars to earn a field trip with your gymnastics team. A sign on one of the homes in your neighborhood says, "No Solicitors Over the Age of Twelve." Do you solicit?

From “New Magazines To Fill Important Niches”

Clean Face Today: All the facts, figures and features about how to shave accurately and intelligently in this perplexing age. Biggest needs are for statistical summaries of state and regional shaving data, accompanied by camera-ready bar charts. Also open to brief reports on local shaving society events.

The Barometric Advisor: The only publication serving the professional barometric-pressure forecaster exclusively. If you've had an unusual or particularly meaningful encounter with barometric pressure, we'll print it verbatim. Also need off-beat filler for "Unpredictable" column.

Seconds: Official journal of the Bruised-Fruit Growers Association of America. The full scoop on BFGAA proceedings and community outreach activities. Especially interested in anecdotes about how you survived a traumatic experience of eating bruised fruit as a child to become the success you are today.

From “Eventually It Will Rain”

A weak high-pressure scenario from huge oblong states like Nebraska and Kansas will offer a brief interlude of sunshine throughout the lunch hour and into mid-afternoon. An equally weak low-pressure scenario pushing north from the south in the very late afternoon should restore the furious wind pattern of these past four days.

Metro area residents are undoubtedly wondering when it will rain, having come so close for so long. The answer is painfully vague. Laboratory analysis of last week's weather has revealed no new evidence of how the air mass can have remained at once so volatile and stubborn. There is a 60% chance that this pattern will not be repeated in our lifetime - even if we are very young right now.

From “Please Invest in Air Nuance”

Air Nuance aspires to be a for-profit passenger carrier serving townships, villages and little cities across the entire spectrum of our United States. We intend to focus the scope of our operations on those communities not presently being catered to by full-time pilots.

The hub would be situated in a vacant field in Smith County, Kansas - the geographical center of the 48 contiguous states. From here, our pilots would pick up virtually anyone and take them to virtually anywhere. (See preceding paragraph for restrictions.)

Management figures that eight turboprops and 40 employees ought to do the job nicely.

From “The Disposal of Clark vs. Randolph”

I am in receipt of the invitation extended by you unto my client, Michael T. Randolph, for the issuance of the sum indicated in your rather hasty and misdirected correspondence of May Sixteenth.

Satisfying your demands would be an erroneous gesture on our part, I'm afraid, for it would distort the true purpose of the judicial process. Our Founding Fathers never intended for an individual to be compensated with respect to a bottle of wine (to wit: Hearty Burgundy, Gallo) inadvertently gracing his foot while browsing, prompting a heated exchange with an adjacent individual, culminating in what we used to refer to in my Vermont prep school days as a "push-and-shove sequence."

As a point of reference, I draw your attention to Williams vs. Amalgamated Grocery Services, in which the court ruled that the mysterious explosion of a Bosco chocolate milk bottle on the shelf when the plaintiff was nine (9) years old could not be directly attributed to his search-and-destroy rampage at Peppy's House of Produce some thirty-five (35) years later. Judges draw the line when adults attempt to make, how shall I put it, "weak" connections. Your client's exaggerated claims surely would be viewed in a similar vein.

The psychological counseling to restore Mr. Clark's confidence to "once again enter retail outlets without the fear that tragedy awaits him" amused my legal partners and I. But we really lost it when we came to the part about chiropractic treatments, which the plaintiff claims have been helpful in controlling "incessant itching of the innermost two (2) digits of the left foot caused by the impression of leather uppers on said digits when the bottle made its swift and unanticipated descent."

Mr. O'Brien, I advise you to re-examine your client's spurious quest for financial gain on behalf of Mr. Randolph, his wife, their six (6) children and two (2) refugees from brutal regimes, which the family is sheltering in spite of the financial strain inherent whenever feelings of the heart triumph over all other considerations.

From “Workshopping the Blues”

Washboard McGuire, organizer of the workshop, wanted to get a feel for our perspectives on the blues, so he opened the floor to questions.

A lively grammatical debate soon flourished over whether "blues" should be singular or plural, which was painful to endure considering the $375 fee. The general consensus was that the singular places a higher significance on the blues, while the plural could be misleading because it assumes there are more than one "blues" out there creating havoc on the population.

I began to lose interest when an older man with a neatly trimmed beard and round spectacles rose from his seat and said: "It makes no difference if someone sideswipes my minivan in the parking lot or if my hard drive crashes - it's still the same blues that Southerners must have experienced on farms, prisons and whatnot."

His next sentence was chopped off by a maniacally beeping pager attached to his belt loop. It was time for the first morning breakout session anyway...

From “Glimpses of Failure”

New Car Review: The Field Mouse XL

If you want to get from your garage to the grocery store and the path is relatively direct, the Field Mouse XL from Generic Motors is an ideal choice in the Microscopic category. And if $4,495 is all you've got to spend on a new car, the Field Mouse is your only choice. Standard seats are comprised of planks of unfinished pine, but for an extra $150 why not spring for a cushion of corrugated cardboard and a stadium blanket from your favorite NFL team?

Don't let the 0.8-liter, two-cylinder engine fool you. It's a workhorse for its size. A recent test drive demonstrated that it will climb from zero to 60 mph if you really have a desire to go that fast. If the Field Mouse XL has a fault, it would be in the styling. The trunk can accommodate no more than 50 paperback books. The rear-view mirror hangs from a piece of twine. And the lack of a passenger window may be disturbing to some.

It Is Adding Up

In your underwear drawer, you are surprised to find a videotape of your exercise routine from the day before. There you are - doing situps, pushups, stretching muscles, riding a bicycle that goes nowhere, showering with soap and shampoo derived entirely from plants, then lunching on food products that have been genetically tinkered with to meet the demands of people who exercise. As you chew, the camera zooms in on a newspaper article that you are skimming. The headline reads: Volunteers Needed To Mentor At-Risk Youths. You cannot look at the rest of the video.

From “Learning From the Alphabet”

A is for Arduous

Arduous is a very hard word to love. You do not want to wrap your arms around arduous. You want to chisel it like a block of ice, or probe its stubborn muscles with the fury of a proctologist who is two months behind on his mortgage.

That's what some people say. Others are more understanding. They are willing to suspend belief and love the unloved. Science fiction? No. People do all sorts of things today that would surprise their grandparents. It's arduous, but what the hell? Some people believe they only live once.

O is for Oxygen

Oxygen does not care that it's outnumbered two-to-one by hydrogen in the world's most abundant and important liquid, water. It is not at all displeased to be assigned No. 8 in the Periodic Table of Elements. Oxygen is not a jealous element. In fact, oxygen may be the happiest of all elements. One Nobel Prize winning scientist went so far as to remove all of the hydrogen from his waterbed and replace it with oxygen!

Why is oxygen so content? Because it feels useful. Whenever an animal, bird or human being draws a breath, oxygen goes down the hatch and energizes the body. If everyone felt as useful as oxygen, crime would vanish like a helium balloon. Your homework assignment, if you haven't already guessed, is to make someone feel useful. Since oxygen is No. 8 on the chart, why not try to make eight people feel useful?

From “24 Vignettes”

A Glimpse of Evolution (No. 3 in G Major)

The events of last Friday are etched in my memory like the sound of a foghorn to a dockside bartender.

On my walk home from work, I dropped in at the neighborhood video outlet and rented two action films. One of them featured humorous criminals whom you wanted to remain above the law. In the other one, the criminals were so focused on evil that you wanted them to die a violent death.

After checking out the films, I rejoined the usual rush-hour throng on the street. I had just removed one of the cassettes from the bag to study the promotional photo when my eyes were drawn like a magnet to what I assumed was a human being. But I wasn't sure. He smiled as though receiving mystical rays from a heaven that nobody else could see. He had an aura about him that I had only seen depicted in religious pamphlets and certain cartoons where the protagonist receives a sudden infusion of power.

What was this traveler doing on the same street as the rest of us, and dressed as if he, too, were on his way home from the office?

Just one look in his eyes and I could see the human race evolving to the next plateau. I had an urge to join him on his evolutionary voyage, but I had the feeling I could not bring my possessions with me. The magnetic force that drew us together abruptly lost its pull. So I continued home like I do every day after work.

Ever since that encounter, I have been feeling pretty good inside. Having seen the future, I am no longer afraid of it.

Candlelight Dinner in Kansas (No. 15 in E Major)

You're not going to believe what happened to me last summer in Leonardsville, Kansas. I'm part of this nuclear disarmament peace march, right? We're innocently marching (that is, walking) east to New York when we encounter an animal liberation group heading west to San Francisco.

We couldn't believe the coincidence! The sound of clicking cameras was deafening. First our group took pictures of their group. Then their group took pictures of our group. Then we started taking pictures of smaller groups composed of members from each group. Two hundred knapsacks opened at once and we shared our dried fruit, trail mix and carob bars. The guitars came out, and pretty soon somebody organized a talent show.

After the fourth song - a lovely recorder duet - our impromptu festival was disrupted by the thunderous sounds of men and women chanting from the south. We thought we were going to be lynched for disturbing the Plains. Several anxious minutes passed before we saw their giant banner: Jobs For North America. We had more company! This legion of unemployed factory workers was on a two-year crusade from Mexico City to Ottawa, by way of Washington, D.C., to register their complaints about artificially cheap imports.

Since we couldn't squeeze any more acts into the talent show, we decided to march en masse to the nearest city with a restaurant that could accommodate all three groups. We had just ordered 200 wine coolers when we were surprised by a Swiss-based group that was circling the globe to ban land mines.

If you made it this far, you might enjoy my blog: http://gottaminutegod.blogspot.com/