'Splain this Ricky. I'm filling our truck at a gas station. Four pumps down, I watch a woman pull the nozzle out of her gas tank and proceed to fill up a balloon with petrol. She carefully knots the balloon which now looks like a wobbly basketball and puts this gasoline bomb in her trunk. She then gets in her car and drives away. What the hell?
October 4, 2014
A right wing extremist politician says that the answer to everything is war. "Kill those who don't agree with you" is his philosophy. So basically, he's telling me I should kill him. Kill him now.
October 5, 2014
Two non English speaking fellows were trying to ask a local where the closest brothel was. The local didn't understand their request. The men got animated, simulated sex with each other, and then one of the fellows pulled money out of his pocket and pretended to pay the other. The local thought the men were propositioning him. Instead of being upset, he smiled, and all three left together. I wondered who would find out first about the misunderstanding.
Ah, the military. First you go out and kill people who don't agree with your ideas and then you get to wear all this pompous crap. How is this not taunting?
October 7, 2014
Someone was complaining about how fake a reality TV show was and that they didn't believe for one moment that it wasn't staged. Someone else said that they thought the show was completely real and that it was one of the most exciting programs on the tube. Being a television writer, they turned to me to verify or disprove their assertions. I told them that all television is scripted, be it sitcom, drama or reality. But, I added, the point of reality TV is entertainment. If you're entertained, does it matter if it's real?
October 8, 2014
Yesterday, I went to a dog park without a dog and was confronted by a lady walking her poodle. Suspicious, she asked me why I was there if I didn't have a dog to exercise. Well, it just so happens that this particular park has one of the most gorgeous views of our lakefront and I wanted to see it. But she wasn't convinced. She asked me if I would go and sit at a Starbucks without drinking coffee. I said I might if the Starbucks had a view like this. Completely unconvinced, she walked on and as she and her poodle exited the dog park, I saw her writing down my licence plate number.
October 10, 2014
I went out of town yesterday and ran into a guy I used to know who is now a cop. When I knew him decades ago, he was on the other side of the law and notorious for it. How can you become a cop if you have a past record? I asked this question to a lawyer friend and he said the guy was probably an undercover informant back then. In other words, he's been a cop all along. Yikes, and you think you know somebody...
To whomever invented this, whomever pushed the button, whomever said it was ok to push the button, whomever thought this would be the solution - F you. All of you. Every single one.
October 12, 2014
Overheard at the gas station.
-- Are you going to Mark's Halloween party?
-- Yeah.
-- What's your costume?
-- I haven't decided. What are you going as?
-- A hooker. I'm gonna dress super slutty and come on to everyone at the party.
-- That's so cute!
October 13, 2014
Until the comments sections of the Internet revealed the world's worst people, did we have any idea there were so many of them?
October 14, 2014
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Gandhi
October 15, 2014
In the middle of the night I heard a loud crash on our roof. It was pouring rain and I wasn't too keen on going out but the noise was too much not to go check. I can't see anything from the ground so I go get a ladder from the barn, climb up on the rain slickened roof and find there a huge, dead, bald eagle. There is no blood and it doesn't appear to be shot, hurt or damaged in any way except that it is no longer alive. Can eagles die of heart attacks? Is there something else that would cause it to plummet from the skies onto our roof in a rain storm at 3 o'clock in the morning stone cold dead?
Gak, it seems my dimwitted loyal subjects will fight to the death for me to wear this silly costume when all I really want is a scratch behind the ears, a few Milk Bones, maybe a tennis ball to run down. Will history see me as an ungrateful ruler or a dog badly miscast?
October 17, 2014
My wife mentioned a passage I wrote in a book that I couldn't remember at all. She said I wrote it, but I don't remember it. Jesus, that's different.
October 18, 2014
A friend who lives in a foreign country just got drafted. He said, "I can't believe I'm expected to learn how to kill other people. I can't believe it." Neither can I.
October 19, 2014
Overheard at the post office.
-- Did you get invited to Mark's Halloween party?
-- No.
-- Me neither, but I'm going anyway.
-- You're gonna crash his party?
-- Everyone will be in costume! He won't even know it's me.
-- But what if he finds out you're there?
-- That's where you come in.
-- What?
-- You're coming with me.
-- I'm not going.
-- Yes you are. Now think of a good costume.
-- I'm not going.
-- What do you mean? It's the perfect plan.
-- I am not going to dress up as somebody I'm not. I only want to be me.
-- What?
-- I'm not going.
-- God!
October 20, 2014
Julie and Juanita, from Brooklyn, New York, were on a bus tour that broke down in our town. After spending the day here, Juanita turned to Julie and said that she could really get the small town vibe everyone in New York is always fantasizing about in that the scenery is gorgeous, the people are nice and friendly, and everybody knows everybody else. The only trouble is, it's boring and there are no cool places, no hip restaurants, no secret raves, no underground concerts by famous bands, I could go on. But she didn't. Soon the bus was fixed and they left.
October 21, 2014
Mikos from Greece was down at the waterfront admiring the lake. He asked why no one was fishing off the pier. He was told it is a bird sanctuary and no fishing was allowed. Birds?! You are not fishing because of little birds?! Mikos was incensed. He went back to Greece and told his friends that Canadian bird protection was out of hand. In Canada, the birds do the fishing! It's unbelievable! His friends swore to never visit the place. And Canada was never mentioned again.
In 137 years of continuous operation, no one had ever gotten stuck in corner three of the Big Orange waterslide at Ronnie's World of Welsh Water. But that is exactly what happened to Jason Capri on Thursday afternoon. "This cheeses me off," groused park owner Ronnie Jessup. "The manufacturer just had a sale on a special tool called a Peeler, where you can scrape people off the sides, but no one has ever gotten stuck here before so we passed on the offer. Now we gotta pay full bore, plus the Peelers are in Italy so it could take a week to get one here. Then of course, we'd have to learn how to use it so as not to filet Mr. Capri when we scrape him off. Realistically? That lad could be up there for a couple of weeks." When asked if he would have to shut down the waterslide that whole time, Ronnie laughed, "Heaven's no. We would lose a ton of money! Are ye daft? We believe Jason's high enough in the corner for people to get by." He instructed the Big Orange ticket taker to warn the riders of the obstruction. "Other than that, all we can do is wait," concluded Ronnie Jessup.
October 23, 2014
Overheard at a coffee shop.
-- You going to Mark's Halloween party?
-- No. Halloween is stupid.
-- Weren't invited, huh?
-- Even if I was I wouldn't go.
-- You would too.
-- Would not. I hate Mark.
-- You do not.
-- Do too. I suppose you're going.
-- Yeah.
-- What's your costume?
-- I'm gonna get a fake spray tan, wear a bikini and go as the Coppertone kid.
-- That kid's ass is showing. You're such a slut.
-- Yeah, well, I heard Cindy is going as a hooker, so I gotta compete with that.
-- I guess.
October 24, 2014
If someone were to ask you what was the greatest moment of your life, what would you say? Probably not what Barry Shane Kilgore said when asked by the MC at a charity event for children with abnormalities what the biggest moment in his life so far was and Barry replied that it hadn't come yet, by inference dissing and dismissing his marriage, the birth of his children and that little red sports car he spent his son's college fund on. So disillusioned were his loved ones that at the following year's charity event, Barry Shane Kilgore sat in his new studio apartment, all alone, still awaiting the arrival of his greatest moment.
October 25, 2014
You know how you can just look at someone and know he's a serial killer? That's instinct. Instinct is something you sense. Now your logical mind can easily override instinct and you could convince yourself that he's something other than the serial killer you know him to be, but in this case, that would be ill advised. Instead, you should be skedaddling and thanking your inner self for the warning. Or you could convince yourself he's a sweet guy and be victim #12. As always, the choice is yours.
October 26, 2014
Here's something worth pondering. Our year old washing machine just busted an internal gut and proceeded to spill all of its water out onto our basement carpet. That in and of itself is pain enough, but during the cleanup I started recounting all the times our basement has been flooded with water. Over the years we have had two different hot water tanks break and spill their contents (old house, no floor drains). We had a porcelain toilet tank literally crack apart on its own and the water ran all night, filling the entire basement with 5 inches of water. Had a water pipe burst in a wall and flood the basement for hours until discovered, and finally, we had torrential rains for a week which overwhelmed the roof gutters, causing the rain water to overflow in a line of waterfalls which pounded the ground, saturated it, and ran the water right back to the house and into the basement (old house, no French drains). Cripes, that's six basement drenchings. Must mean something, eh?
October 28, 2014
Overheard in town.
-- Did you see Cindy's "costume", if you want to call it that.
-- I know! What a slut. If I was gonna go as a hooker, I'd glam it up and go as a high priced call girl, not some street trash crackhead doing 10 dollar favors.
-- I told her, Bitch, it's a costume party, you don't need to role play.
-- She was disgusting.
-- My favorite was the Coppertone girl.
-- That was so much more classy than Cindy's hooker.
-- You got that right.
-- It sucks we have to wait a whole year for Mark's next Halloween party.
Your head hurts and everything is foggy. You've woken up to find yourself in this creepy dated room. You don't know where you are, how you got here, or why you're tied up. The gag in your mouth prevents you from screaming. Dread overcomes you. Panicked, you try to think straight but the white noise from the TV is driving you mad. You struggle against the ropes. Your heart is beating a mile a minute. Suddenly, you hear heavy footsteps down the hall. They approach your door and stop. You are scared to death! With giant saucer eyes, you watch as the door knob slowly turns... Happy Halloween.
October 30, 2014
I was thinking of onetime animal sightings on our property. In no particular order, I have encountered but once a single raccoon, an ermine, a bull moose, some big assed 3 foot long snake, a rabbit, a badger and a lynx. I frequently see deer, bears, coyotes, eagles, owls and hawks. Right now I am watching a mother deer and her two babies grazing outside my office window. Flying around the yard are chickadees, nuthatches and sparrows. On the window ledge there's a spider and a stinkbug. On the ground below is a vole and a worm. None of these animals have any idea I am writing about them. There are so many lives being lived at once.
October 31, 2014
Someone told me they were convinced that life isn't real, everything is an illusion, the Big Bang theory is crap, evolution is fantastical fiction, and that this is just one universe among an infinite number of universes. And who's to say he's wrong?
