The Mobile Classroom
Ten minutes into the first lesson I see one of our cars on the road. I’m not sure who is instructing, but it’s probably Thomas. I abandon my route for the moment and have my student turn each time Thomas does. Five minutes into this tailing, my driver asks, “Are we following that car?” “Yup,” I say, “it’s one of ours. You two want to have some fun?” “Sure,” the driver says. Her sister in the back keeps quiet. Thomas’s car turns left and we follow, maintaining our distance. “Now,” I say as we stalk our prey,...
Read MoreLetter from the Patent and Trade Office: You Can’t Patent a Time Traveling De Lorean
Dear Dr. Emmett L. Brown, We have received the patent application (Appl. No. 04/567,892) for your invention, “the flux capacitor.” Having carefully reviewed all of your documentation, I regret to inform you that we are unable to grant you a patent at this time. While we were fascinated by the claim you make in the application abstract — “The flux capacitor makes time travel possible” — we were sadly disappointed by the contents of your supporting literature and scientific data. In fact, as near as we could tell, the flux capacitor appears to be nothing more than some Christmas...
Read MoreRoot Canal
Could he have possibly heard that right? Zack held his eyes shut, though he felt he was thoroughly awake. Well, not totally, but he had definitely not gone into la-la land like he usually did under nitrous oxide. It could be due to his heightened anxiety or the fact that he felt like a corpse somebody dug up, then dragged for ten miles behind a garbage truck. That’s what a savage frat party’ll do to you. It was one sweet orgy with a bazillion people there. He was so annihilated he’d passed out in a Dumpster. Or someone put him in it; who...
Read MoreLaundry
I do the laundry in my household and I do it well, I might add. My wife undertook the arduous task of teaching me the finer points of color and fabric separation after I ran a tie-dyed T-shirt all over her favorite silk blouse. Interestingly, I’ve discovered I have Dacron/Rayon blindness. I have made great strides in laundry since I first took it up seriously in college. The college was co-ed except for the laundromats, which the women on campus demanded be separate. The men’s laundromat had enormous machines, which allowed you to put in an entire semester of dirty laundry. As a...
Read MoreThe Custard Cow
You’ve seen them by the roadside, swishing flies while munching in slow motion: so much mass for so few twitches, yet so satisfied, you simply have to poke them. Nothing else could lump like that, so fatly dignified. Let’s stop a second — right there, by the fence, And try to make it snuffle. If we tied its tail to something? Or, if we convinced a bee — you know, the angry cartoon bee — to sting that bovine bottom?… No, of course I wouldn’t want to hurt one seriously, but just to stir it up a bit before it sags to earth again, the custard cow? Sorry....
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