Category Archives: humorous stories

I Swear to God This Is A True Story!!!

8 Replies

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

  • I have been working hard for the past two days transferring information, stories, poems and photos from a tall stack of storage disks from old computers. This story was found in a diary entry from 2006 when I was visiting friends on Baja California. I swear, none of this is made up or embellished!!! So, here we go. Please excuse my irreverence. As penance, I grant you permission to tell any story you wish about me once I depart this earth.

True Story

He is a very good-looking guy, younger than most at the party in this little ex-pat-swollen community on the coast of Baja California, and very tan from a recent fishing trip. As I join the group clustered around him, he has just started telling a story about that trip–an incredible story about  going to get ice to ice their bait, finding the bait shop man dead, and being asked by the police to take the body to the coroner in the next town. Since they have a pickup, after they’ve loaded the body, the police ask if they’d just pick up another body on their way. Seems the police chief’s brother from a neighboring town was playing around with his brother’s gun, shot himself in the head and died.

So they drive thirty miles or so with the one body to pick up the other body to drive to the coroner. When they arrive at the coroner’s office, he asks them to wait a minute and they can just drive the body back to their own village. With this said, he rips the body open groin to throat and starts removing organs. After pronouncing the cause of death as heart attack, he fills two buckets with the organs, sews up the corpse and puts all back in the bed of the pickup.

The drama continues at the funeral, when the casket won’t fit in the hole. When it gets wedged in at a slant, the lid pops open to release, in addition to the obvious odors, myriads of flies. They pry the casket back up, close the lid, and the grave digger gets down to remove the liners from the grave to make more room for the casket. When he does, the walls of the grave collapse and he is buried.

Frantically, all jump in and start removing dirt. Once the grave digger is extricated and the grave freed of sufficient dirt, they once more lower the body into the grave, but as they are shoveling dirt over the coffin, someone remembers that although the body is safely buried, that they have neglected to put the now neatly bagged parcels of organs back in the coffin. So the deceased is exhumed before ever being properly covered, someone is dispatched to fetch the organs, and he is finally intact this time as they shovel the dirt over.

After the dirt is brought up to almost ground level, boards are placed over the grave and it is cemented over. Puzzled, our narrator asks why this is done and is told that it is to keep animals from digging down to the body. Finally, the departed is laid to rest, but not so his ending tale, which has been making its round of cocktail parties ever since.

Cat and Mouse

18 Replies

Earlier today, I wrote about an inventive new idea I have recently had concerning a new concept in cat food.  If you didn’t read that post, you can do so HERE. Since that time, I have actually developed the concept, designed a label and gone into production. There is still some time to invest in what I’m sure will be a competitive product on the cat food market.  Just the first of a line that will eventually also include squirrel, garter snake, rat, lizard and cockroach flavors.  Here is the inaugural product:

IMG_1519 2

And HERE is the final refinement of the product.

Disclaimer: Fancy Feast does not indeed make a “Mouse” flavored cat food. I have altered and used their can design only as a means to illustrate my earlier poem. This is a joke, folks!!!!

First Offense

24 Replies

OldPaintDuckieSoulRed

First Offense

He took a cursory look at the damage. Just a paint scratch, really—one that could probably be removed from his back bumper with a little turpentine. Taking a look at the vehicle that had rear-ended him at the street light, he doubted that it had insurance, so it was a good thing that he’d already decided that there was no need to file a claim or to persecute the offender. It would make a good yarn once he got to the office and a perfect excuse for his being late. 

“Better stay on the sidewalk after this,” he yelled at the back of the toddler pedaling his toy car quickly away from the scene of the crime, his little friend in the toy patrol car pedaling down the sidewalk after him in pursuit, red light blinking, siren wailing as they rounded the corner.

 

The prompts for today are yarn, being, cursory, and persecute.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/21/rdp-82-yarn/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/21/fowc-with-fandango-being/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/21/cursory/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/ persecute

Vocabulary Lesson

14 Replies

 

 Vocabulary Lesson

She was more than irritated. Pissed, really, as she thumbed through the dictionary in search of the word.  Any word that needed to be looked up didn’t belong in a “Dear Jane” letter anyway–as though to the very end he was trying to demonstrate his superiority—her inferiority.

Fuck! She slammed the dictionary to the floor, picked up the half-smoked cigar he’d left in the ashtray, relit it, took a drag and surveyed the new paper cut on her index finger. Just one more of his shenanigans, she thought. Right after he’d cold-cocked her with the news that he and she were finished—that he was leaving her FOR HER MOTHER!!!!!!, he’d lit up his Cubano for one more puff before grinding it out and handing her this letter, telling her not to open it until he’d gone.

His finish had been pretty much like their beginning—with him ending up on the floor. But this time she was standing over him rather than lying in a frail heap below him. Idly, she flicked an ash into his open mouth, hitting him squarely on his tongue. The sun-dried blood on his lip looked like the smudge of a lover’s lipstick. Around his head were the remains of the crystal candlestick her mother had given them for their wedding.  She darted her tongue out to nurse first the paper cut, then the gash across her palm that she had gotten from a shard of the candlestick that had taken a far smaller part out of her than it had out of him.

Far away in the kitchen, the phone rang and rang. Probably her mother. Well, let her get her knickers in a bunch waiting for him. Let her think (for as long as she could put off coming to investigate) that her daughter had reclaimed her property. She was in possession for now and everyone knew possession was 9/10ths of the law. She took another long draw before examining her wounds again.

Then, her curiosity getting the better of her, she moved back to the dictionary to thumb through the e’s. When she’d found the word, “eschatology,” she chuckled and looked back at her lost love. In the letter he had meant for her to read after he had left, he had revealed that their night class in eschatology had led her mother and him to the decision that they must abandon their present lives to join an ashram in India and examine their final destinies. Ironically, she had found that answer for him, at least. She looked up one of the other big words he had used in her “Dear Jane” letter.  “Heuristic: a practical method for solving a problem that is not optimal or perfect but sufficient for the immediate goals.”  He had hit the nail on the head with that one. It was definitely a word that applied to her present situation, if no longer to his!

 

This is a rewrite of an essay from three years ago that I had totally forgotten.  I’ve altered it to meet today’s three prompt words.  A heuristic solution, no?

Fandango’s prompt is lesson.
The Daily Addiction prompt is frail.
The Ragtag prompt is dart.

 

Planning Meeting at the Senior Citizens Center

5 Replies

IMG_0051

Concerted: contrived or arranged by agreement; planned or devised together. A concerted effort: done or performed together or in cooperation.

Planning Meeting at the Senior Citizens Center

Has anyone else noticed that it is much harder to make a concerted effort after the age of 65?  Plans somehow get skewed, no matter how much harder we try. One person forgets the meeting. Another is ill or merely having an “off day” and can’t get out of the house.  Yet another shows up but has forgotten to do the tasks they have agreed to do. Once at the meeting, one or two people can’t hear. Another is dealing with a phone call that has just come in on her cell phone.  Two others ignore their calls but either can’t figure out how to turn off their phones or actually don’t hear the drone. 

The leader of the meeting keeps forgetting the last word of her sentences,  but luckily her friends are accustomed to this and they take turns filling them in for her. When she switches to a power point demonstration, the pictures seem to have turned themselves upside down and the man switching to each new photo has problems coordinating them with the vocal cues.

Several who can’t see move forward to a seat closer to the screen. A man in the front row falls asleep and everyone is distracted watching him as his head bends lower and lower. His next door neighbor wonders at what point she should put an arm out to catch him lest he pitch forward onto the floor. 

The meeting seems to go on for longer than usual and at five minute intervals, women work their ways from wherever they are situated in the rows of seats, past the stiff legs of those they must pass on their way to the aisle, trying not to stumble over feet whose owners seem unable to shift them far enough out of the way. Their panicked eyes and the speed with which they move reveal that they have waited a bit too long to begin their journey.  This serves as a lesson to several other women who rise and work their way out behind them.  As each in the group returns, at least one other audience member stands to work her way out in the same direction.  Occasionally, a man just leaves for a short stroll out into the garden. Everyone finds this suspicious.

Neighbors ask neighbors to repeat what was just said. Questions are asked that have already been answered minutes before. Men make suggestions that are widely agreed with, to the chagrin of the women who have made the exact same suggestion earlier in the discussion with no response.

There is a disagreement and one of the participants remembers that it is time to go home to feed her dog.  Another person wants to get home before dark. Another has arranged for a taxi that will be there in five minutes.

Meeting adjourned.

If you are looking for a daily prompt, try this one.  It posts daily, is easy to post your answer on and stays active for a month.  The Daily Addictions prompt today is “concerted.”

Belly Talk

22 Replies

Version 2

Belly Talk

Stomach, darling, first of all I’d like to tell you how indispensable you are.  Literally, you are irreplaceable in my life.  Aside from digesting my food, you separate my waist from my chest and keep my belts from straying.  You warn me about absolutely revolting subjects as well as food and are handy for nudging ahead in tight crowds.

That said, I need to bring up one large touchy matter.  For all the good you do in this world, do you need to be quite so large?  Lately, for instance, I’ve watched you extending your territory–venturing out into one plump donut extending around my back.  This makes looking at my rear view in the mirror extremely distressing.  “I never look at myself in back,” one friend told me years ago, but darling, that had been evident for years–testified to by the tight snarl of hair in the middle of her head.

But I digress.  You’re  awfully quiet.  I’m a bit worried that I might have offended.  But, the topic of magnitude of sound being brought up, I’ll continue.  Were you aware that you have taken to communicating with me at inopportune times?  A small growl after midnight to remind me of today’s brownies hiding in their microwave storage space safe from ants and marauding family members and friends?  That’s fine…and probably the real reason you were given a voice in the first place. But that long low rumble increasing in volume in the middle of the significant pause in the dialogue of the movie playing in a hushed movie theater?  Totally unacceptable. Other times your voice is uncalled for?  At the dentist’s office and in the throes of a long passionate kiss.  In teachers’ conferences and at ladies bridge afternoons.  No. No. No.  You are not invited in this capacity.  Yes, digest the margarita, the popcorn or the rich dessert.  Comment upon it? No.

That’s it, dear stomach.  I appreciate you. I know you are vital to my health and happiness.  You provide me with countless pleasures–those pleasures increasing with the years.  But, sweet middle of mine, if you could see your way clear to not increasing at a rate commensurate with my pleasures, I would appreciate it very much.  Oh.  Talking again, I see.  And probably not listening.  Oh well.  I hear your message loud and clear.  A pint of triple chocolate extra fudge gelato in the freezer?  Well, honey, this time you are speaking my language.  No one is around.  And it is totally acceptable!

Prose poem For NaPoWriMo’s Early Bird Prompt. Write a love letter to an inanimate object.

Dad’s Makeover

16 Replies

 

Dad’s Makeover

OMG, you guys.  Daddy slept all morning so I made a fast run to the house to find his reading glasses and pick up some clean underwear.  Hold onto your hats, because I have big news. Our old Dad has really cleaned up his act!  He got rid of all the empty paper bags and National Geographics. There is space between objects in the refrigerator. You can see the hall walls again. No countless stacks of empty jelly glasses and yogurt cups.  No drawers full of used twist ties and rubber bands streaked with carbon from newspapers thrown twenty years ago.

All of the flowerpots with dry cracked soil and the ossified skeletons of plants? Gone, along with their friends the stacks of empty pizza boxes and  six packs of beer bottles.No cupboard full of clam chowder.  No year’s supply of ketchup stockpiled in the pantry. In the bathroom drawer, just one tube of toothpaste squeezed from the end. No ranks of out-of-date prescription bottles.  No shriveled tubes of Preparation H.

Mama’s clothes are finally gone from the closet. Her dusty doilies, vanished from every surface in the house. No mismatched socks and wrenches in his bedroom drawers.

How did this come about? Impossible to say as he still hasn’t come to after his surgery, but if I were to assay the probabilities, I’d say a woman might be involved.  There is a vase of flowers in his hospital room and a container of homemade soup in the little fridge beside his bed.  His hair looks newly cut and his nostril hairs are not in evidence.  All presentable underwear in the valise  I packed for him and sis, his jockeys are in shades of maroon, navy blue and rust brown!!!  No more untidy whities.  No more undershirts with holes in them. It’s like they operated on his whole life, not just his appendix.  Removed every dusty, tattered, useless, outgrown part of him and plopped down a new father in his place.

Oops.. gotta run soon.  The nurse just said he has another visitor. Not a family member, but the one who admitted him to the hospital last night at midnight. The one who left the key to his house for me.  They say only one visitor at a time, so guess I’ll have to leave when she gets here.  Door opening. She’s coming in the door! I’ll call you from the car.

(After a ten minute lapse, the phone rings again.)

Okay. You guys? Are you all there?  Sit down, will you? All sitting down? A slight modification. Make that a he who came in the door!

The prompt word today is assay.

In Absentia Conversations

5 Replies

When we first met online, Forgottenman, in Missouri, serenaded me, in Mexico, over Skype until I fell asleep every night. The illustration above is one from a night when I asked to see his hands strumming the guitar as I fell asleep. Sweet, huh? That ended after a year or so, but over the past seven years, we have had many midnight and post-midnight Skype conversations.  Want to eavesdrop?  Here are a few:

On Skype (After Midnight and 3 Margaritas)

She: maybe I need to take Frida (the Akita) to the snore doctor.
She: Perhaps she has sleep apnea. She sounds like a lion when she sleeps.
She: Have you ever heard her snore?
He: Yep.
She: Do you miss it?
He: Miss your zzzz’s
She: You miss my snores? Sweet.
She: I miss snoring for you.
He: That’s the first line of a poem.
She: I’ll write a poem starting with “I miss snoring for you,” if you will, too.
He.: I’ll try to remember to do so tomorrow.
She:

You Say You Miss My Snores

I miss snoring for you,
stepping on your shoe
when we don’t dance,
miss that glance
from your alternate self
you keep on a shelf
when you aren’t with me.
How can it be
that both of us choose
to leave our clues
in cyberspace
not face-to-face?
Alone together
with no tether,
our way
for today
perhaps forever
internetedly clever.

He: it just blows me away how you can come up with something like that, so achingly beautiful, in less than five minutes!
She: Ah. You inspire it.
He: I muse you whilst i amuse you
She: Ha. That is exactly it!
She: What you just said couldn’t have been said more succinctly or more briefly. It is the tweet
of poetry
She: sweet tweet of poetry—sweet bird of absurd

(After this, the conversation digressed.  No more shall be said.)

Update: “He” has written his version, as agreed. I give a link to it below the short additional conversation below

At Midnight after 4 Margaritas:

She: What is the most dreaded disease of hockey players?
He.: i give
She: Chicken Pucks!!!
He: (facepalm emoticon)
She: What is the most dreaded disease of Narcissists?
He.: I give
She: Me-sles.
She: The most dread disease of martyrs? (Promise, last one.)
He: ?
She: You-rinary tract infections

Note: These Skype conversations are from four years ago.The second one actually occurred the same night as the 3 Margarita conversation, so no, I’m not drinking Margaritas every night.  Also, I mix very weak Margaritas, so they are not totally to blame for the silliness above.  Around one or two in the morning, my mind usually gets on a jag and the best way to deal with it is just to hang up on me, which happened soon after this string of unfortunate jokes.  Corny, but I still get a kick out of them.  Yes, they are all original.  I wouldn’t blame them on anyone but my own past-midnight mind.  Judy

.See Forgottenman’s answer to my “You Say You Miss My Snores”  here.

 

The posts above are copied from blogs posted four years ago. The prompt today was conversation.