Category Archives: Comedy Story

November 5, 2012 · 10:28 am

CURSE OF KINDNESS

In October of 2012, I helped produce a benefit show called Thirst: The No Round. The event was an evening of short plays performed in a bar. All profits went to Minnesotans United for All Families to help fight the marriage amendment that would change the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. (The amendment was defeated in November of 2012.) A lot of people believe marriage equality is a political issue. In my opinion, many of America’s current political issues are matters of simple human decency. This two-part monologue was my attempt to sum up some of my feelings about political activism, romantic relationships, and also Harry Potter. Enjoy.

CURSE OF KINDNESS: PART ONE

Excuse me! Hello! May I have your attention? My apologies for interrupting your meals and drinks. I realize you don’t know me. I’m just some guy in a bar. My name is James. There. Now I’m not some guy in a bar, I’m some guy named James in a bar.

Anyway, I was wondering if you would all be willing to join me in a toast? I would like to toast the concept of kindness. If you think kindness is a good thing, please lift your glasses and on the count of three join me in a toast. One, two, three–bullshit!

Kindness is bullshit! That’s right, I said it. I used a swear word right out loud in a bar. And I will do it again if I have to.

I’m sorry to be so edgy, but I’m a little out of control right now. I’m supposed to be getting married next week and I just had a horrible fight with the woman who may or may not still be my fiancée.

We’ve been together for a few years and we’ve never had a real fight. And it was starting to make me nervous, so I said, “Hey, sweetie, before we get married, I think we should have, like, a practice fight.”

She thought that was ridiculous. When I asked her why she called me a name. A horrible name. A vile, cultural epithet.

She called me a Hufflepuff.

By a show of hands, how many people here know what a Hufflepuff is?

It sounds horrible doesn’t it? Hufflepuff. It sounds like a noise an old British man would make when he’s choking on a crumpet. Hufflepuff. Or like a really lame drug addict. Like someone who tries to get high by sniffing Play-Doh or something.

But the true meaning of Hufflepuff is even more insulting.

For those of you who don’t know, a Hufflepuff is one of the four houses at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as featured in the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling.

People who are in the Gryffindor house are brave. People in Ravenclaw are smart. People in Slytherin are evil. Hufflepuff is for EVERYBODY ELSE.

If Hufflepuff were real that’s where they would put the stoners and the dumb kids who try hard. Hufflepuff is the AV club of the Harry Potter world.

But the most common virtue of Hufflepuffs is that we’re supposed to be kind. Not surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of Hufflepuff characters featured in the Harry Potter story. Just Cedric Diggory. And do you know what he does? He spends about six hundred pages standing around being nice and then he dies.

That’s who my fiancée thinks I am. That’s what she thinks should go on my tombstone: “He was nice until he died.”

Do you know why that’s an insult? Because nice is a codeword for cute. When someone crinkles up their nose and says, “Oh, isn’t he nice?” what they’re actually saying is, “He reminds me of that puppy I had on my trapper keeper in seventh grade.”

Even worse, nice is a codeword for harmless.

No one respects nice people because kindness is a passive virtue. And I am done with that. I am done being a Hufflepuff. I told my fiancée that I was going to show her. I told her I was going to go out to a bar, get drunk, and go nuts in front of strangers.

Which is exactly what I have done!

Except for the drunk part. This is an O’Douls, so I’m not really drunk. But I do feel bloated and I have to pee. So, brace yourselves– because this Trapper Keeper puppy is about to urinate all over your minds!

Who wants it first?

Hey, you! Yes, you! I would like to confront you about an important, divisive issue that a lot of people feel pretty strongly about. I personally do not think that the Harry Potter films are as good as the books. What do you have to say about that?

DON’T ANSWER! I am going to tell you what I think! I think the movies are emotionless, tarted-up turds with too many special effects and not enough Dobby the House Elf.  Saying you know the story of Harry Potter because you saw the films is like saying you know about current events because you watch Fox News.

That’s right, I just attacked Fox News. Does anyone here want to defend Fox News?

Wow! No one? Okay, that makes me feel a little better.

But how about this? I think people who hang their toilet paper under-handed are sick. They’re terrible, manipulative people. I believe strongly in an over-handed toilet paper hanging approach and I’m willing to stand up and fight for what I believe in. I will stand up and fight like a Gryffindor for people’s right to hang toilet paper over-handed!

And I will tell you something else–now that I hear myself say that out loud in a bar full of strangers, I’m realizing that perhaps my issue is not with you people but rather with my fiancée. My cruel, name-calling, underhanded toilet paper hanging fiancée.

So, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to go use the bathroom. Then I’m going to leave an inadequate tip at the bar to prove I can be as evil as a Slytherin. Then I’m going to go home and face my issues with my fiancée head on.

But before I go, I want to leave you with a good toast. I’m sure many of you here tonight are in relationships. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out or celebrating your 50th anniversary, relationships are hell. So, I propose a toast not to kindness, but to something I believe is really universal in all relationships. I offer a toast….to bravery!

Now, where the hell is the bathroom?

CURSE OF KINDNESS: PART TWO

Excuse me! Excuse me! May I have your attention again? It’s me, James. You might remember me from earlier as the guy who was yelling about Harry Potter and the toilet paper.

Look, I just came back to the bar to apologize. I brought you guys a flower. It’s just one so you’ll have to share.

Feel free to pass it around or keep it for yourself depending on where your moral compass points. I’m not here to judge.

Anyway, I wanted to say I’m sorry for freaking out and yelling at you earlier. Also, I figure you guys have a right to know what happened when I confronted my fiancée.

So, I went home to yell at her about being so cruel as to call me nice. When I got home, she was sitting on the couch watching a movie. She was crying and eating ice cream out of a tub with a soup ladle because she couldn’t find any clean spoons.

And I was really angry. I was riled up from all that O’Douls I slammed and the movie she was watching was Prisoner of Azkaban—which is the worst Harry Potter film because they don’t even tell you why Harry’s patronus is a stag. And you just have to infer who Padfoot, Prongs, Wormtail, and Moony are, and the Whomping Willow just moves locations. It’s so stupid!

I wanted to just scream and smash the TV, but I didn’t.

I went full Hufflepuff.

I sat down and I hugged her. I made the active choice to be kind. And I realized I’m not sick of being nice, I’m sick of the world acting like being nice doesn’t make a difference.

So, excuse my language, but dammit all to hell I am going to be kind. I am going to be actively, almost aggressively kind.

For example, on the way here, I tried to do as many kind things as I possibly could. I bought you guys the flower, I picked up some litter, I helped an old lady cross the street.

Technically, I tried to help an old lady cross the street. She was moving really slow so I came up from behind and took her arm and she hit me with her cane and blew this whistle she was wearing around her neck.

But! I apologized and clarified what I was trying to do. And she said thanks and gave me a piece of butterscotch candy. The kind of candy that I think just naturally grows in the purses of old women.

Anyway, I’m not here to stereotype people. I’m here to celebrate. Because I don’t want to spend my life being angry about what makes us different, I want to make the choice to celebrate the things that unite us.

Whether it’s over-handed or under-handed, we all use toilet paper. Whether you like the movies or the books, we all like Harry Potter. I accept that there are some people who just plain don’t like Harry Potter. Probably the same kind of people who like Fox News. But that’s not the point.

The point is—I would like to offer a toast. May I borrow someone’s drink? Thank you. Is there alcohol in this? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, I’ll deal.

Earlier tonight, I toasted the concept of kindness with sarcasm. Now, I would like to offer a sincere toast to all that kindness entails—empathy, understanding, love, and just general Hufflepuffery.

After all, what is the point of bravery if it’s not coming from a place of kindness? And so, you nice strangers in a bar, I offer a toast to the power of kindness. Cheers!

Now, I have to get home to my fiancee before she starts watching that piece of crap movie about dragons and formal dances that the producers have the audacity to call Goblet of Fire.

Thank you all and goodnight!

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy my writing, check out other stories like this in my book Comedy of Doom.

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October 30, 2012 · 10:06 am

The itPhone

I’m a big fan of old horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. I also spend a hideous amount of time playing with my smartphone. This led me to think about what kind of story these masters of macabre suspense might write if they were alive today. Enjoy.

I would like to tell you a story about a terrifying, soul-sucking, life destroying thing that happened to a friend of mine.

He got a new smartphone.

My friend—whose name was Jonathon—was a huge fan of Apple. He once sent me an article saying experts predicted that the next iPhone after the iPhone 4 would be the iPhone 5. To which I responded, “Which experts are saying this? Counting experts?”

But the next phone was, strangely, the iPhone 4S and Jonathon dutifully lined up in the middle of the night to buy one. But while he was waiting, a small wizened old man with a crooked smile and bulbous eyes emerged from the shadows of a nearby alley. The old man wanted to sell Jonathon a knock-off iPhone called an itPhone.

Jonathon laughed and said no, but the more he played with the itPhone, the more amazing it seemed. So fast, so responsive, so intuitive as though the phone knew what Jonathon wanted even before he did. On an impulse, he bought the phone.

At first, he was thrilled. Jonathon’s phone was always the fastest. He was that annoying guy at the bar who could look up character actors’ names on his phone faster than his friends could remember them with their slow human brains.

But after a few months, Jonathon started having problems with the phone. One day, he called me and I was terrified. Because who the hell uses their phone to actually call people these days?

Also, my ringtone is the Wilhelm Scream. For anyone who is not familiar with the Wilhelm Scream, it’s a famous audio clip used in many films when minor characters die or fall from high places. It sounds something like, “oooWAAUHHHooohhh!”

Anyway, Jonathon was in panic about his phone.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“It’s…it’s haunted,” Jonathon said.

I asked for some examples of what this haunted phone was doing.

Jonathon quickly rattled off a list. “It keeps giving me the wrong directions! And it autocorrects all of my texts! And without asking me it keeps poking all my Facebook friends!”

“Yeah,” I said supportively, “That’s what phones do.”

“You don’t understand,” Jonathon shouted, “It took a picture of my junk while I was sleeping and sent it to my co-workers!”

“Well,” I said, “Was it a good picture? Tasteful lighting? Did it use an Instagram filter?”

“This isn’t funny!” Jonathon whisper-yelled. “It downloaded an app and I can’t delete it.”

“What does the app do?”

“It makes it so the phone screams if I stop touching it.”

I laughed and the line went dead. I almost called back but I really, really hate talking on the phone. It just seems so much easier to send a text, you know?

Anyway, I didn’t hear from Jonathon for a little while. But I assumed he was alright, because he was always online. He was very active on Facebook. And Twitter. And Google+. And Pinterest. And Reddit. And Tumblr. And Etsy. And Regretsy. Even LinkedIn. I admit, that gave me some pause.

Eventually, he stopped responding to tweets and texts, so I decided to make a personal sacrifice, stop everything I was doing, and call him on the phone like a savage.

The phone rang and rang and finally Jonathon picked up and said in a raspy voice, “Hello?”

“Jonathon. It’s me. I decided to call you. On the phone. Because I figured what the hell is a phone for after all?”

There was a pause. And then Jonathon cackled like a maniac for a solid minute. He followed the laugh by quietly saying, “LOL.”

That seemed redundant to me. Then he said something even more bizarre. He said, “No, seriously. Actual LOL.”

That just pissed me off.

I mean, LOL stands for laughing out loud. When you add the “actual” you’re just admitting that the majority of times you say LOL you’re lying.

But I digress.

Jonathon hung up and didn’t answer my calls after that. He started changing all of his profile photos. Strange, artsy shots of the corner of his jaw or just his eyebrow. Thankfully, never his junk. At least I don’t think so.

I emailed his co-workers and discovered he had stopped showing up to work weeks ago.

I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice. I decided to physically get in my car, drive through actual traffic to his home, and speak with him face to face. I even parallel parked. It was horrible.

When I arrived at his house, the door was ajar. I gently pushed it open and it screeched ominously. The house was a mess. Clothes, food, bottles, and papers everywhere. It looked like the home of the least organized serial killer in the world. I heard the soft mewling of a cat.

As far as I could remember Jonathon didn’t own any cats.

I followed the noise to the bedroom. There was a dim glow coming from inside the room. I steeled my nerves, peeked inside, and saw him.

Saw it.

Illuminated by the glow of the phone, it was clear that Jonathon had changed. He was shriveled and hunched. His tiny arms could barely support the weight of his hands. His thumbs were enormous and his fingers had developed into fine points. His hair had fallen out and his head had contorted to make more room for his eyes….his giant bulging eyes. His whole body was bent and angled as if it were being pulled into the phone.

His huge, bloodshot eyes seemed to strain out of the sockets as they stared at the phone.

Stared at cat videos on the internet.

I stood there, arms grasping the door frame to hold myself steady. “Hang in there,” I thought, “Hang in there like the cat on the motivational poster.”

Almost against my will, I heard myself saying, “Jonathon?”

Suddenly, his huge bulbous subterranean eyes locked on mine.

“You,” he croaked, “I know you from the Facebooks.” Then he reached out one of his tiny, pointed fingers and growled violently, “POKE!”

I ran out of the house, screaming and thinking to myself, “THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS IN PERSON!”

By the time I had run halfway down the block to my car, I began to doubt if I had even seen it. There was a phrase nagging at me, some traditional wisdom, handed down through the generations. Then I remembered.

The phrase was this: “Pics or it didn’t happen.”

I made my way back to the house. My trembling hands pushed open the door. It screeched again. This time there was no cat sound. I trudged through the debris to the bedroom door and looked inside. Jonathan was gone.

I began to explore the house, my heart lurching into my throat every time I opened a closet door or pulled aside a shower curtain. But Jonathon was nowhere to be found.

Then I heard something, very faint yet very close. Was it a cat? No, it was a scream. A repeated, muffled scream.

And I realized the phone call was coming from inside my pants.

Idiot.

I pulled out my phone, cursing my choice of the stupid Wilhelm Scream for a ringtone. I touched the answer button and held the phone to my head.

“Are you looking for me, Facebook friend?” Jonathon rasped.

“Yes, Jonathon, yes I am.”

“I’m in the bedroom.”

“No, you’re not, Jonathon. I’m standing in your bedroom right now.”

“I’m right where you left me. On the bed.”

I turned and looked at the bed. I gathered my courage, terrified that I knew what I was about to see, and I pulled the covers away.

Sure enough, there was Jonathon, his horrible face writhing with laughter.

Writhing inside his phone.

His pointed little fingers scratching the glass surface from the inside. He stared into my eyes and said, “END CALL.”

The line went dead and Jonathon’s phone went black. I left the phone there, raced to my car, and drove straight home.

Well, not quite straight home, I got lost and had to do a google map search, but the point is I never saw Jonathon again.

No one did. At least, not in real life. He’s plenty active online though. He always says YES to my Facebook invites, but he never shows up. So in many ways, he’s living a very normal life.

I’ve tried to tell mutual friends what happened. But they never believe.

After all, there are no pics. So maybe it really never happened.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy my writing, check out other stories like this in my book Comedy of Doom or support me on Patreon. Thanks!

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April 6, 2012 · 1:32 pm

Blink Blink Blank

The first Kurt Vonnegut novel I read was Breakfast of Champions when I was in 8th grade. After I read it, I developed this opinion: if you accept that the world is a stupid illogical place, then the world suddenly makes a lot more sense. This has always given me a strange comfort. I wrote this story for a group I perform with in the Twin Cities called The Rockstar Storytellers. Our assignment was to write in the style of our favorite author. Thanks, Mr. Vonnegut. Poo-tee-twoot?

Here is what I know:

Algernon Grimshank was a human being on the planet earth. Like most human beings on the planet earth he had the following problem:

He was very smart and yet most of the time he behaved like an absolute idiot. He knew for a fact that most people behaved like idiots, too, and he suspected most of them were smart enough to know he behaved like an idiot. And yet, he tried to pretend he didn’t, which was of course a very idiotic thing to do.

Algernon Grimshank’s personal idiocy manifested itself like this:
He told people he was a writer.

He would go to cocktail parties and high school reunions and say things like:
“Yes, writing is who I am!”
“Yes, writing isn’t about deadlines!”
“Yes, writing is about truth!”
“Yes, yes!”

Here was the truth:
On any given moment, on any given day Algernon would have vastly preferred to sit on his couch, eat pizza, and stare at a television than lift one finger to do anything even remotely productive.

Many of the idiots on planet earth felt this way. But they all thought it was very important to lie to one another about it.

And so Algernon Grimshank spent a ridiculous amount of his short life staring at things that were blank: pieces of paper, his computer screen, his friends’ faces when he told them his story ideas.

Blink blink blank.

Over the years, older wiser idiots had taught Algernon many glib, cliché catchphrases that would help him become a truthful writer.

One of those phrases was this:
Write what you know.

Here is what Algernon Grimshank knew:
Laziness. Horrible soul-crushing sloth. So, one day he decided to write about that. He did research on his subject by looking up sloth on a website called wikipedia.org.

Wikipedia was an online encyclopedia that any yahoo could edit. Many well-educated idiots doubted its truthfulness when compared to a real encyclopedia that could only be edited by a handful of highly trained yahoos.

This is what the ambiguously educated collective of yahoos knew about sloth:
It is a cardinal sin. Like murder, it merits damnation in hell without the possibility of forgiveness. Algernon found it odd that if you plan on killing another human being but don’t really get around to it—you are just as likely to go to hell as if you actually slit someone’s throat.

Blink blink blank.

Next the website told him sloth was sometimes associated with goats and the color light blue. He noted that a citation was needed.

Then the website told Algernon something so idiotic he doubted its truthfulness.

It said:
Each of the seven sins is paired with a patron demon. The patron demon of Sloth was Belphegor. A demon who was sent from Hell by Lucifer to find out if there really was such a thing on earth as married happiness.

The website also told Algernon that Belphegor was Hell’s ambassador to France.

Furthermore, the website told him that Belphegor tempted humans to be slothful by creating ingenious bits of technology which would waste their time.

Like all demons, Belphegor could only be summoned to earth by throwing a sacrifice of some kind on the floor of your home. The sacrifice required by Belphegor was this: shit.

This caused the following sentence to pop into Algernon’s brain against his will:
The mystical portal between Hell and France is poop.

Finally, the website told Algernon that Belphegor was traditionally pictured as an old man sitting on a toilet. Algernon Grimshank never knew that traditional Judeo-Christian demonological iconography could be this low-brow.

He was curious. He looked around his home for something akin to a big piece of shit.

He picked up a copy of his latest half-finished story and threw it on the floor.

POOF! A puff of acrid smoke filled the room and Algernon found himself in the company of an old man on a toilet.

The toilet-man said:
“Hey Buddy! I’m Belephegor! What can Belphegor get for you? Don’t just stare at Belphegor! Belpehgor is here to help you. You got any questions for Belphegor?”

Algernon threw open the wardrobe of his mind and desperately searched for a few words that might go well together. He said:
“Why are you sitting on a toilet?”

Belephegor responded: “It’s like sitting on the truth!”

Blink blink blank.

“Look, Belphegor made something for you, buddy!”

The demon reached a wrinkled hand into the toilet and threw something to Algernon.

It was this:
A light blue Nintendo 3DS portable video game system. Belpehgor pulled one out for himself. The game loaded in both devices was Tetris. They both began to play.

This is how you play Tetris:
You stare at a blank screen. Eventually different geometric shapes fall from the sky. You use your thumbs to jostle buttons so you can make the shapes connect with one another. Once the connected shapes form a complete line they disappear.

You can’t win at Tetris. It’s just a question of how long until you fail.

Hours passed. Belphegor yelled out things like:
“Yes, I just flipped the l-shape!”
“Yes, I just made six hundred and sixty-six lines disappear!”
“Yes! Yes!”

Algernon was enjoying himself. His eyes burned and his thumbs ached. Pieces of half-digested pizza fell in his gut, piling up into a mass of twisted geometric spires. He felt like an idiot. He should be writing, creating. He wanted to make all his words connect and form lines so he could win his next high school reunion.

He was all conflict and no resolution. His story really should end there. Instead, I am going to do something glib and cliché. I am going to insert myself, as the author, into the story. It’s a lousy trick that reeks of post-modernism.

Here is what I know about post-modernism:
It’s an ambiguous term that educated idiots like to bicker about at cocktails parties. We are currently trying to look smart by debating whether or not post-modernism is dead. It’s difficult to decide since none of us can agree on what post-modern meant in the first place. Personally, I think it means to have the creator comment in a knowing way on his or her own narrative.

So with a poof of light blue smoke I enter the room with Algernon Grimshank and say this:
“Hey buddy, I’m your creator! How can I help you? What can I get for you? I’d like to resolve your problems as neatly and quickly as possible.”

Algernon stares. Blink blink blank.

Belphegor tries to throw me my very own Nintendo 3DS, but I’m ready for him. Wikipedia told me the secret to defeat the demon sloth: zeal.

Each of the seven deadly sins is opposed by one of the seven virtues: chastity, moderation, generosity, charity, humility, meekness, and zeal. Putting them all together, they don’t make a lot of sense. I would not want to be in a room with a generous, humble moderate zealot meekly offering to give their chastity to charity.

Eager to save my protagonist from himself, I launch into a zealous tirade! I say things like:
“Yes, you’ve got to write for yourself, not for anyone else!”
“Yes! Writing is like a fire in your soul and you must release it or you will get burned!”
“Yes! Writing isn’t about coming up with answers it’s about asking questions!”
“Yes! Yes! YES!”

A huge flushing sound fills the room and Belpehgor swirls into thin air–sucked back to Hell. Or France. Yes, let’s go with France. Yes.

Finally, Algernon and I are alone together.

He asks the question we idiots rarely ask one another.

He says:
“Did you mean all that or did you just say that because you thought it would impress me?”

Eventually, these words fall out of my mouth and form lines:
“I want to say whatever I have to to win this story.”

Algernon asks:
“But why?”

I answer:
“So I can tell myself that I’ve done something today. Once I’ve done something I can go home. I can sit on my couch, drink whiskey, and watch hours of television while complaining about how shitty the writing is.”

Algernon asks:
“Will that really make you happy?”

I do my best to answer him truthfully.

I say:
Here is what I know.
Here is what I know.
Here is what I know.

A version of this story is also available in my book COMEDY OF DOOM.
Thanks for reading.

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February 13, 2012 · 10:38 am

Sense and Seven Minutes in Heaven

I wanted to write a new romantic story for Valentine’s Day. Instead, I just spent some time poking around on the internet. And I found something incredible: an unpublished Jane Austen erotica story called “Sense and Seven Minutes in Heaven.” Really, this was not written by me. It was written by Jane Austen. Which is odd, because there are a ton of f-bombs. Enjoy.

SENSE and SEVEN MINUTES IN HEAVEN by JANE AUSTEN

MINUTE ONE:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man locked in a closet with a single woman must attempt to engage in pre-marital fornication. However little known the feelings or views of such a man on first entering the closet, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of single women, that should the suggestion of wanton ribaldry not be made, a single woman is disposed to consider it an insult.

These truths were not lost on Miss Margaret Lucy Anne Cockingwood of Cockton Manor on Old Cockingham Lane nestled in the quaint village of East Poppingcockshire.

Maggie, as she was known to her closest friends, was currently locked in a rather small closet with a legendarily dour gentleman named Mr. Frith Banbury Fannycock Cardington.

Mr. Cardington had protested greatly when the spinning bottle of port came to a definitive stop while clearly pointing in his direction with all the firmness and rigidity of a scolding Dowager’s jutting digit.

“I am ever so afraid, I must decline,” whined Mr. Cardington. “I do suffer from allergies so.”

But Maggie and the other dinner party guests had forced him into the closet as he bleated like a sheep about the dire risk of an apocalyptic sneezing fit.

And so, Maggie and Mr. Cardington stared at one another’s dimly lit silhouettes as the precious seconds ticked away and Mr. Cardington fumbled about for something interesting to say.

“I say,”  he said redundantly. “This small, tight space is rather damp isn’t it?”

“Not yet,” responded Maggie with an equal mixture of annoyance and lascivious intent.

MINUTE TWO:

Mr. Cardington was baffled by this blatant innuendo. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “come again?”

“At this rate, there shan’t be time for that,” grumbled Maggie.

“What?” retorted Mr. Cardington as though he hadn’t just been bashed about the head with a rather obvious reference to multiple orgasms.

“Honestly, Mr. Cardington,” Maggie huffed, “have you no sense of social decorum? We are in this closet for a most singular purpose. Do you know what it is?”

“No!” Mr. Cardington whisper-yelled.

“There are no end of euphemisms for it,” Maggie protested. “Roasting the beef. Ringing for the butler. Braiding the wick. Visiting the stable. Polishing the soup spoon. It works with virtually any verb and noun, for heaven’s sake!”

Mr. Cardington’s ignorance was palpable. Indeed his confusion was as large as the British Empire itself, but ironically it appeared as though the sun would never rise on it.

“Mr. Cardington,” Maggie blurted, “I simply wish to fuck you!”

MINUTE THREE

Sadly for Maggie, the only part of Mr. Cardington that stiffened was his upper lip.

“Miss Cockingwood,” he lectured, “as a gentleman, I’m afraid that I cannot bring myself to even mention aloud, much less agree to, such an illicit act.”

Maggie took a deep breath and launched into a lengthy speech about pride and pagan rituals and the hubris of British culture daring to impede the basic carnal knowledge to which flesh is heir, about sense and bi-sexuality, and the hideous damage sexual repression can do to the psyche of a nation. However, the thesis of her strident and eloquent argument could have easily been communicated with this compelling universal truth:

“There is nothing sadder than a single man who will not put out.”

MINUTE FOUR

The next 30 seconds passed in silence.

Time dragged forward with all the speed and warmth of a melting iceberg.

Finally, Mr. Cardington’s defiant posture slumped in defeat as he mumbled, “Oh, bugger me, fine.”

“We shall have to make haste,” Maggie admonished. “We only have three minutes left.”

Mr. Cardington cocked his left eyebrow and said, “That shan’t be a problem.”

Maggie kissed him furiously and the unlikely couple engaged in an awkward ballet of inelegant button popping and lace removing that was as hideous as it was exciting.

MINUTE FIVE

They fucked.

MINUTE SIX

They continued fucking. The couple stumbled and wrestled, kicking up dust, causing Mr. Cardington to sneeze repeatedly. The closet became a symphony of bizarre human sounds.

Sneezing, moaning, copulating, perhaps flatulating?

Who could tell?

And who cared?

What with all the fucking.

MINUTE SEVEN

Still fucking!

Maggie reached for Mr. Cardington’s fob. It was not a euphemism.

She reached into his waistcoat and popped open the watch. She was able to make out the time as Mr. Cardington’s naked white ass was so bright it actually gave off a glow—a dim romantic light like a big, tight kerosene lamp.

“We’re almost of time,” Maggie moaned.

Mr. Cardington, ever the gentlemen, informed Miss Cockingwood he was simply waiting for her.

There was a polite round of offers from both parties to allow the other to climax first.

Mr. Cardington stated rather firmly that he would hear nothing of it. He argued that he had already violated his own sense of gentlemanly conduct by agreeing to fuck Miss Cockingwood in the first place and should he allow himself to climax prematurely he feared he would not be able to live with the shame.

What would they say in London?

Maggie began to rebuke Mr. Cardington for his baroque attitude towards orgasm etiquette when fate intervened.

At the exact same moment, five things happened.

Maggie climaxed.

Mr. Cardington climaxed.

The closet door fell open.

Mr. Cardington sneezed.

The rest of the dinner party guests stared in shock.

Luckily, they were all quiet high on opium. They were also blinded by the sudden brightness of Mr. Cardington’s luminous white ass, so no one was precisely sure of what they saw that night.

Later, Maggie and Mr. Cardington would agree that three out of the seven minutes they spent in that tight, damp closet in Cockton Manor on Old Cockingham Lane nestled in the quaint village of East Poppingcockshire were, indeed, heaven.

THE END.

A version of this story is also available in my book COMEDY OF DOOM.
Thanks for reading.

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January 26, 2012 · 12:39 pm

IT’S OVER, SNOW

Before I lived in Los Angeles, I lived in Minnesota for many years. As the difficulty of winter increased for me I struggled to describe to friends how I felt about snow. I realized the best analogy for my relationship with snow was this: It’s like dating a crazy person. The following is my attempt to  break up with snow. It will probably get ugly.

Snow.

You and I have to talk.

We’ve been seeing each other on and off for more years than I like to think about and—no, no—Snow—I don’t want to play. No, I don’t want to throw you at my friends or roll you into balls and make you a man. That’s just weird.

Snow. This is serious.

It’s not you, it’s me, but I think we need to break up.

No, no, Snow, don’t lose your shit. I don’t deny we’ve had some really good times together. Usually in December.

You’ve been away for a while and when you first come back I’m excited to see you. You look fresh and pretty. And, honestly, it’s really nice to have you around for the holidays. I sit by a warm fire and I could just stare at you all night.

But then January 1st hits and I am so fucking done with you.

Why? Because I know you’re going to spend months making ridiculous demands of me.

How many times have I made plans with friends that I have had to cancel because of your bullshit?

I’m sick of the embarrassment of calling my friends and family and saying, “Sorry, I can’t make it to dinner or the show or the family reunion because Snow showed up in the middle of the night and fucked up my car.”

You don’t care what’s going on in my life. You show up whenever you want with all your needs and your issues. Shovel me! Scrape me! Blow me!

Not to mention my favorite passive aggressive game—pour kitty litter on me or I will knock you on your ass. That’s just deviant.

And then you try to play it off  like it’s cute. You’re all like, “Oh, come on, stay home from work, lie down inside me, and let’s make an angel together.”

It’s cute in December, Snow, but by February, it’s just pathetic.

And that’s another thing. By February, you’re not exactly pretty anymore. Thousands of different people and machines have trampled through you, you’re full of mud and filth, you keep melting and refreezing, melting and refreezing. By March we finally start to see the truth: you are a messy, dangerous bi-polar pile of crazy mush.

No, no, I am not being overly harsh. Remember when I said it wasn’t you, it was me? I was lying.

It is totally you. You’re insane. You dictate where I can park my car!

By the end of March, you are downright sociopathic. I’m not playing with you enough, so you start a big melt to try to get my attention back. The second I start to feel a little sad that you’re leaving, you pound me with another ten inches.

That’s it.  That’s the end of the story. Can we just be friendly about it?

Can I have my stuff back?

What stuff?  All the stuff I’ve lost inside you over the years. Hats, mittens, keys, glasses.

No, you do not give them back every year. I wait while you slowly melt to find the stuff I dropped. Somehow, my class ring never reappears but you manage to retain every single piece of dog shit you’ve collected for the last six months.

See? I can’t do this anymore. You drive me into a frenzy of anger and whining. I can’t even complain about you to my friends because they’re sick of hearing it.

All they say is, “If you hate this relationship so much, why don’t you just move on?”

And the answer is: I don’t know.

Maybe I  like to complain. Maybe it is me. Maybe I’m afraid to try a different relationship.

What the hell is out there for me, anyway? I don’t want to date fog. I don’t want to build a life with dry heat. I know you’ll just follow me to the mountains.

I need to be strong. I need to break the cycle. I need to do something crazy like hook up with a fault line.

Until then, you and I are stuck with one another, Snow.

But from now on, we are just friends. And barely that. I’m sure I’ll see you at parties. Whether you’re invited or not.

I’ll do my best to be civil and if I can’t look at you without screaming, I’ll just hide in my house. But if you pile up on my roof and try to break into my house—I will get a restraining order.

Have a good life, Snow, have a good life.

This story is now available in audio format as part of my comedy album A VERY HOLIDAY THING. The album and the blog post were made possible by funding from Patreon. Thanks, patrons!

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January 10, 2012 · 12:15 pm

Preparing (Emotionally) for the Zombie Apocalypse

If wishing makes it so, there is little doubt we will soon face the horror of a zombie apocalypse.

Many people consider themselves well prepared. We all have our preferred zombie hunting weapons: shotguns, cricket bats, golf clubs, longbows, a replica of a broadsword from any one of the Highlander films or television series. Basically, anything that is long and hard and/or fires a projectile. That’s normal and healthy. More on that later.

We all know where we would hole up to make our stand against the undead horde: Wal-Mart, K-Mart, The Big K, Target, Super Target, CostCo. Basically, any place that has a lot of food and would also be a depressing place to die. That’s just common sense. More on that later.

We all know who we would try to rescue and/or protect: our spouses, significant others, our children, quiet neighbors who keep to themselves because they probably have a lot of weapons in their basement. Basically, all of the important people in our lives who are still mobile or have tactical value. Grandparents are pretty much out of luck. That’s just good strategy. More on that later.

Say what you will about the lazy human beings of the 21st Century, we are physically prepared for the zombie apocalypse. But at the risk of sounding unmanly, what about our feelings?

Are we, as a people, EMOTIONALLY PREPARED for a zombie apocalypse?

Let’s start by reconsidering some of our cold, cruel, and emotionally distant physical preparations.

Do we have to slaughter zombies with phallic objects? What if we imagine hitting them with something soft and beautiful? A tulip? A handwritten letter? An unframed Monet print from a college dorm room? Would that be effective? Probably not. Does it make you sad that beauty is useless against zombies?

What if we didn’t make our final stand in a soulless big box store? What if we went to a happy place? A used bookstore? A locally owned homeopathic day spa? A patch of shade under our favorite tree? Would these be good fortresses? Probably not. Does it upset you to know your happy places make for great zombie feeding grounds?

What if we didn’t just rescue helpful people we love? What if we went out of our way to help a stranger? Or someone we know to be a jerk? What if we raced to a nursing home to protect the older generation from certain doom? Would a cranky wizened old man with a catheter and a penchant for racist slurs be a cheerful and valiant comrade for our desperate final stand? Of course not. Does it agitate you to think zombies might force you to die in the company of annoying people?

Zombies limit our options, don’t they? And it makes us angry. It makes us want to kill them viciously in a large well-lit retail environment.

Picture it: A reanimated heathen monstrosity shambles through Super Target. It’s Doug. Doug from that yellow house down the street. He gives out full size Snickers bars on Halloween, not just the misleadingly named fun-size. Doug is following you down the cleaning supplies aisle. His grisly arms outstretched as if asking for a reassuring hug. You savagely beat him about the head with a metal toilet plunger designed by Michael Graves until his skull caves in like a rotten melon.

Achievement Unlocked! You just killed (or re-killed) Doug, the full sized Snickers man, from down the street.

How do you feel about murdering Doug? He made you do it, right? But, still.

Those are Doug’s brains you splattered on the floor. You’ll be thinking about that when you get out that pole with the tennis ball on the end to rub the streaks off the cold unforgiving tile. And as you stare at your reflection in the Super Target floor, the horrifying truth wrestles its way into your conscious mind: ZOMBIES ARE US.

On some level, we are the undead and the undead are us.

And so we have to ask, “Why are we hitting ourselves? Why are we hitting ourselves? Why are we hitting ourselves in a Super Target with a metal toilet plunger designed by Michael Graves?”

Yes, the zombies make us do it. Yes, it’s us or them. Yes, zombies are murderous mockeries of our former selves–mindless, unreasonable symbols of death and decay. But they do have one thing going for them:

Zombies are goal oriented.

Zombies want to eat the brains of the living and that is all. No excuses, no bullshit.

Zombies don’t stand around at cocktail parties claiming they’re going to eat brains after they go back to school and get their MFA in theoretical brain eating.

Zombies don’t DVR episodes of The View to get step by step brain eating tips from a panel of experts.

Zombies don’t drop everything and move across the country because they think they’ll have better luck eating brains in Portland, Oregon.

Zombies don’t start arguments on the internet about whether or not they are eating brains ironically.

They just fucking eat brains.

And maybe that’s why we fantasize about killing them so much.  The shambling bastards make us feel lazy.

Perhaps we should stop thinking about how successful we will be in slaughtering our reanimated friends and neighbors in the inevitable zombie apocalypse and spend more time with ourselves.

What if we all focused on our own inner zombies? What if we pursued our life passions with the indomitable ferocity of a zombie who wants to eat brains?

What is your eating brains? Is it climbing a mountain? Playing the tuba? Becoming fluent in modern conversational French?

Set your sights on your goal and let your inner zombie go! Stumble-walk as fast as you can! Smash through the glass! Rattle the fence until it falls over! If someone chops your legs off with a heavily discounted wood axe from Wal-Mart, then dig your fingers into the very ground and drag, drag, drag your chomping unyielding jaws to victory!

Because the only way to truly EMOTIONALLY PREPARE for the zombie apocalypse is to lead a life that is worth fighting to keep.

When you have achieved this goal, you can happily look forward to the zombie apocalypse–fully prepared to bash the heads of the undead with a toilet plunger in your hand and a bounce in your step!

But until that happy day, all you can do is get out there in our pre-apocalypse world and chase down your dreams.

Now, go, my friends, go out there and eat the metaphorical hell out of some jerk’s brains–like only you can.

A version of this story is also available in my book COMEDY OF DOOM.
Thanks for reading.

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December 21, 2011 · 12:05 pm

A Death Star To Guide Me

The following is the letter I should have sent to Santa Claus when I was a young boy.

Dear Mr. Claus,

My name is Joseph Aaron Scrimshaw. The adults in my family call me Joey. I hate that. I tell them my name is Joseph. They laugh and call me cute. I tell them their reaction is condescending and pejorative. At this point, most adults leave the room.

Their loss.

But back to subject matter that is more germane to this missive. In regards to my Christmas present this year–it is my deepest desire to be the first child on my block to own a Death Star Space Station play set inspired by the major motion picture event, Star Wars.

Now, Santa, I realize you are probably not a fan of this recently released sci fi/fantasy epic since you are of the older generation and probably prefer more adult fare such as Annie Hall, ABBA:The Movie, or Exorcist II:The Heretic.

Suffice it to say, like yourself, Star Wars is rooted in ancient mythologies. Its timeless narrative allows young people to vicariously live a life of noble heroism through the main character, Luke Skywalker.

The film reminds us that we all have exciting destinies. As soon as a fascist regime brutally murders our parents or guardians, oh, the adventures we will have!

At the end of the film (after his second parental figure, Obi Wan Kenobi, has also been murdered) Luke Skywalker deals a terrible blow to the Galactic Empire by destroying the aforementioned space station, The Death Star.

The film’s phenomenal box office success has generated an unprecedented wave of merchandise. There are Star Wars glasses, posters, cereals, pillow cases, ornaments, etc. In Germany, you can even get Star Wars toilet paper.

Wiping your ass with an image of C-3PO seems like an odd way to express your interest in the film. But then, it’s Germany. I don’t need to tell Kris Kringle how weird the Germans can be.

(As a side note: I am so completely surrounded by the oeuvre of Star Wars, I often wonder if it will warp my mind and lead me to an adult life in which I obsessively quote the film and pretend any long cylindrical item I see is a lightsaber. So it goes.)

The most popular tie-in product is the Kenner toy company’s line of action figures. Action figures are like dolls that don’t threaten your masculinity. As much. The Death Star is a play set for these action figures. Sort of like Barbie’s Mansion, but evil.

And speaking of evil, I realize the irony of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ by receiving something called The Death Star. I could argue that there is a STAR connection to the story of Jesus’ birth, but I think we both know I would be equivocating.

I ask you to judge the Death Star not by the blatantly evil name (in fact, one wonders how the Empire got this name past the steering committee. Perhaps The Force was used?) or the rather inflated suggested retail price of $49.95, but rather judge it by the joy it would bring to me–young Joseph Aaron Scrimshaw. An intelligent, sensitive young man trapped in the barren wastes of the frozen tundra that is Northern Minnesota.

(Another side note: Northern Minnesota is much like the North Pole if most of the elves were alcoholics and Mrs. Claus had never heard of contraceptive devices. That is to say: it is lacking in magic.)

Rest assured, Santa, that I have exhausted every other possibility for acquiring the Death Star. I have asked my 26-year-old hippie parents to buy it for me. They answered a firm “no,” shaking their needlessly long hippie hair.

Even both of my Grandmothers put together to form a sort of financial Mecha-Grandmother could not afford the Death Star. I find this hard to believe as I have personally witnessed my maternal Grandmother smoke at least $60 worth of Virginia Slims cigarettes in one sitting.

And so, Santa, as holographic Princess Leia said to Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope. I risk no hyperbole when I say my entire world view for the rest of my life hangs in the balance.

I realize the Death Star is merely a collection of cheap plastic (and orange foam used to clumsily symbolize the garbage in the trash compactor), however, what magic has been fused into the plastic? Is it really an overly priced commercial tie-in? Or is it like a star itself? Both a muse to sentimental poets and a very real giver of light, warmth, and life?

If I receive the Death Star, I will be justified in my current belief that the world is a bright and happy place in which one can always make one’s dream a reality.

OR these fragile beliefs could be ruthlessly shattered by YOU. And I will be sentenced to a long and hollow life devoid of joy, compassion, and love. Suddenly, $49.95 doesn’t sound that expensive, does it?

Yours with much affection,

Joseph Aaron Scrimshaw

 

P.S. I must warn you in advance, I will not be able to leave out any cookies for you. As I mentioned earlier, my mother is a hippie, so I hope you will enjoy her seasonal collection of dried fruits and unsalted nuts.

Merry Christmas and May the Force Be with You.

A version of this story is also available in my book COMEDY OF DOOM.
Thanks for reading.

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November 9, 2011 · 11:03 am

Bullshit Time

There’s a theater event in the Twin Cities called THIRST. It’s an evening of four short one-act plays performed in a bar. The only writing guideline is this: the scene has to be set in a bar. Audience members eat and drink and every ten minutes or so a little bit of theater suddenly starts happening at a nearby table. It’s not nearly as frightening as it sounds. This is a monologue I wrote for THIRST a few years back. Have a drink, enjoy, and try not to be frightened by BULLSHIT TIME.

Excuse me! Excuse me! May I have everyone’s attention for just a moment?

Hi. My name is Evelyn and I am a single woman. I’ve been coming to this bar every night for the last week trying to meet that special someone.  I’ve had dozens of blow-my-brains-out-boring conversations with individual men. And I just don’t have time for it tonight. I still have to go to the gym, grab a burrito at Chipotle, and watch at least four hours of television so I’ll have something interesting to dream about when I get my four hours of actual REM sleep before I get up and go back to work.

So basically, I need to save time by hitting on every man in this bar at once. And the ladies who are open to experimenting. I just want a life partner—I’m not picky. As far as I’m concerned a spouse is like a library card or a liberal arts degree–probably wouldn’t actually use one much but I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t have one.

Sooo, about me. I’m adventurous. Obviously. I am an excellent multi-tasker. I can do almost anything I set my mind to and bitch about it at the exact same time. I don’t cook. I’d throw my refrigerator out but that would just be another part of the kitchen floor I’d have to clean. I like to laugh. Sometimes I feed my cat a saucer full of milk and Jameson and then film her trying to play bat the string. I’m not a bitch about it. I don’t post it on YouTube or anything.

What else? I work for an office furniture company. I’m in charge of designing office clocks. I like to think that’s my contribution to bringing the different demographics of the USA together: no matter who you are, how you vote, or where you live—chances are you’ve stared at a clock I’ve made and cursed it for not moving faster.

It’s fair to say I have some issues with the concept of time. I call bullshit on time. Not even time itself, really, but all our bullshit rationalizations.

Time isn’t a friend that accompanies us on our journey. Time is an annoying little jerk poking you in the back. Time is that cliché where you’re driving a car and there’s an obnoxious kid in the back going, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” That’s what time feels like until you turn thirty or forty and suddenly that little shit in the back seat isn’t saying, “Are we there yet?”  She’s saying, “You passed it! You passed it! You passed it!”

And there’s no turning around. You can’t whip a shitty on the highway of life. You miss the exit and you’re screwed. You will never use the bathroom at that particular McDonald’s. You just have to wait for the next one. Even though all the McDonald’s kind of look the same, you’ll never know if that was THE ONE.

Not that I’m comparing men to McDonald’s. Sure, men can make you happy and fat and take years off your life, but they are inferior to McDonald’s in one significant way: they do not change their menu or policies based on social or economic pressures. I’m not sure if that made sense.

I don’t mean to be maudlin. I don’t care about getting old. Crow’s feet, love handles, cankles, turkey neck, the golden arches–you name the insulting term for the natural progression of the female body–and I couldn’t care less if it’s happening to me. I just don’t want to get old without having all the stuff I want.

Which leads to the obvious question of what I want.

I want companionship. I want to have sex with a man, then wake up and be happy he’s there instead of wishing I had an ejector button for the right side of my mattress. I want someone who won’t be offended if I accidentally drop the f-bomb during our wedding vows. I want someone to come with me to the emergency vet when my cat’s liver inevitably fails. I want someone who will lie to me and tell me it had nothing to do with the Jameson. And then laugh at his own bullshit.

I want a man who will give me a baby. Literally. Like he’d step out for a pack of smokes and he’d come back and say, “Honey, I decided to pick up some pizza rolls for dinner and I adopted this baby so you don’t have to deal with all that pregnancy crap.”

I want a man who understands that I want the destination without all the damn travel.

Sooo, that’s me. I guess if you could make it through my little presentation and you still want to date me, I’d probably say yes. I’d take you back to my place to meet the cat. I’d tell you to pick out the best of the James Bond films to watch on Blu-Ray and see if you get it right. We’d make sure we can order a pizza without debating the toppings like it was a nuclear disarmament treaty.

There would be no sex that first night. At least not with you.

If everything went really well, I’d pick a fight with you over money just to make sure that’s not going to be a problem. And after that, a hug. A nice warm make-up hug. Because no one ever got gonorrhea from a hug.

So, in closing, thanks for your time. Best of luck with your journeys and if you think I might be the right destination for you, just do what the television tells you to when you’re drunk at 3 AM. Don’t wait! Call now! Supplies are limited and time is running out.

A version of this story is also available in my book COMEDY OF DOOM.
Thanks for reading.

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October 27, 2011 · 10:50 am

WORD PORN

This story was originally written for a friend of mine who loves two things: words and mythology. By words, I mean he loves big words that make him feel smart at the expense of others. And by mythology, I mean fantasy. And by fantasy, I mean cheap swords and sorcery fantasy like a combination of He-Man and soft core pornography. Actually, He-Man pretty much is soft core pornography, isn’t it?

This is a fantasy story starring words.

This is WORD PORN.

Once upon a time in the land of Dictionary, there lived a word called Indefatigable. Indefatigable was a huge leviathan of a word. His scandalously long vowels and hard consonants caused others words to swoon and sway. Their syllables would spread wide–revealing their trembling trochees and gliding diphthongs in an orgiastic fit of phonetic submission.

But there was only one word in the entire land of Dictionary that Indefatigable had eyes for: Pulchritude. What a noun. Pulchritude’s undulating flow, harsh rhythm, and wanton popping of her plosive P was almost unbearable. There was no adjective to describe Pulchritude with the exception of her sister. Pulchritudinous.

But all was not well in the land of Dictionary—a word of great evil was gathering power. A flabby, jaundiced, heinous word known only as Oleaginous.

Oleaginous had hatched an unspeakably odious plot to slaughter every word between himself and Pulchritude so she would be forced to live directly next to Oleaginous and endure his fetid polysyllabic advances.

Oleaginous, together with his lugubrious henchmen, Squamous and Feculent, marched through the lower O lands of Dictionary—murdering O word after O word with feckless disregard for their antiquity. They silenced Oration! They beheaded Overpass, defenestrated Overthrow, and ripped a gaping hole right through the center of Ozone.

Word of the atrocity traveled to our hero, Indefatigable. Together with his chatty sidekick, Loquacious, Indefatigable set off on a perilous venture to rescue his coveted noun.

As Indefatigable raced through the land of Dictionary, Loquacious babbled and chattered in a desperate attempt to provide comic relief that was neither humorous nor particularly successful in facilitating an emotional catharsis.

“Looky there,” squawked Loquacious like a socially challenged eunuch, “Larceny is having a lark with Laxative!”

But Indefatigable could not be consoled. He raced forward pausing only to wave a friendly hello to his good friends Libido, Liqueur, and Lubricant.

Meanwhile, the villainous triumvirate of Oleaginous, Squamous, and Feculent plundered a path through the hills, valleys, and streams of P. They perforated Penetration! They plastered Pedantic and sent Perdition straight to Hell! They pricked Promiscuity and popped Prophylactic! Oleaginous was almost within propinquity of Pulchritude. All he had to do now was pass through Puberty.

Suddenly, Indefatigable burst upon the scene. Pulchritude told him to capitulate to Oleaginous as she was more than capable of defending herself. But Indefatigable was intransigent.

“You’ve killed a lot of good words today, Oleaginous,” said Indefatigable. “And I’m going to make you pay.”

The two big, hard to say words stared at each other with mutual loathing. Wind whistled atop the rocky plateau upon which they stood. Lightning slaked the dark clouds’ hunger for illumination. And all the other words in the land of Dictionary gathered to witness this apocalyptic conflagration.

Tension paced back and forth. Histrionic wailed and moaned. Ellipsis waited to see what WOULD…HAPPEN…NEXT…

Suddenly, the titanic battle began!  Swindle barely had time to collect bets before it was over. Without breaking a sweat, Indefatigable had ripped Oleaginous into his component parts leaving a hideous splatter of flaccid letters pooled in their own fluid. An Alphabet Soup of death.

The crowd began to disperse when Indefatigable cried out, “Oh, I’m not done yet!”

And his tireless eyes met with the unfathomable beauty that was Pulchritude’s pupils.

And even Loquacious was speechless as Pulchritude mounted Indefatigable like an umlaut on a U. They copulated for what seemed an incalculable time—an astounding epic of hammering, pounding, and punctuating—the two words riding one another like prurient asterisks!

It was too much for most decent words. Hell, it was too much for most naughty words. Fellatio’s jaw fell open in shock. Sodomy turned his back. Even Fuck blushed.

And finally, in a swelling exclamation of teleological bliss, Indefatigable and Pulchritude climaxed–their syllables intertwined in an obscene mockery of a compound word.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the true story of the invention of the word: In-pul-chrat-ah-ga-tude-able.

Or to describe this linguistic union in more pejorative terms—their disgusting, spasmodic lovemaking had created a lovely new word that simply means “tireless beauty.”

Because sometimes even ugly things can be pretty.

A version of this story is also available in my book COMEDY OF DOOM.
Thanks for reading.

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October 11, 2011 · 3:41 pm

Come Along, Scrimshaw

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Joseph Scrimshaw. I’m a comedian and writer born in the age when human beings were taught everything they know by the television box. I would like to introduce you to my favorite show from the television box–exactly as it was introduced to me.

Imagine, one day, your older brother tells you some guy at school says there’s this British science fiction show on every Friday and Saturday night on the Sesame Street channel. You had no idea that station even broadcast after 10 AM but you stay up late and tune in. Literally. You have to turn a PHYSICAL dial and adjust AN ANTENNA like you’re a steampunk. Your wrist aches.

Suddenly, the opening theme warbles through your tinny speakers. You watch as monsters outfitted with guns, toilet plungers, and bumps that look like the robot version of an STD outbreak match wits with a charming man whose nose is so large he would not be allowed on American television unless he was playing a serial killer.

What the hell is this?

You watch again on Saturday night and see an entirely different charming man with an entirely different giant nose.

What the hell is this?

You want to look it up on Wikipedia. But Wikipedia doesn’t exist yet. So you ask your brother to ask that guy he knows at school.  Which, when you think about it, isn’t that different from looking it up on Wikipedia.

On Monday, you finally get the download. The show is called Doctor Who. The plunger monsters are Daleks and the charming men with the giant noses are The Doctor. He’s played by different actors because instead of dying like a boring American hero, he regenerates. (You briefly think James Bond might also be a Time Lord. Sadly, he is not.) The Doctor flies through time and space in a blue box because that seemed like a good idea to someone in 1963 and it never changed because, dammit, they like it that way. And so do you.

Your life is now changed. Every kid you know likes Star Wars and Super Heroes. But this…this is a low-budget, sometimes blatantly educational show featuring women whose breasts are often fully covered and a protagonist who actively tries to prevent cool military guys from blowing crap up. You will not be playing Doctor Who on the playground. As a more pessimistic Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, “you have taken your first step into a much smaller world.”

And I took that step. I flew off the cliff like a lemming with mild astigmatism.

I convinced my pals at school to give the show a try. They returned with this actual quote: “That show is so stupid, watching it will probably give you AIDS.” It was a bit of a rough school (with an obviously poor sex ed program), but the kids were cool. I had always been a little weird, a little artsy but the kids at this school liked and/or tolerated me. Then we moved to a different neighborhood with fancier schools. Against my will, I was forced to regenerate.

At the new school I was treated as a full-blown geeky loser. We had a reading period every day. The other kids brought sports magazines. They looked at the pictures and occasionally sounded out the captions.  I brought novelizations of obscure Doctor Who episodes carefully wrapped in plastic comic book bags so the corners of the book wouldn’t get bent. The bullies were so hyper sensitive to people being different the fact that I could even spell PBS would have enraged them. But a British science fiction book in a plastic bag?  That was like an attack on Middle America.

Against all normal instincts of self-preservation, I persisted in my Doctor Who love. When Halloween rolled around I dressed up as The Doctor’s archenemy: The Master, an evil genius clad in ominous dark robes and gloves. The best I could do was faded black jeans, a black short sleeve shirt, and one sparkly white Michael Jackson glove. I spent the day repeating The Master’s catchphrase: “I am the Master and you will obey me.” In retrospect, telling prepubescent girls to obey me was a little creepy. But, I digress.

My conflict with the bullies culminated during a field trip to the State Capitol. While standing in line, one of the bullies entertained himself with the stupidest of all bullying techniques– the tapping game.

He would tap me on the shoulder.

I would turn around.

He would look the other way.

And repeat.

It was as if he were preparing himself for the monotonous factory job he no doubt holds today.

TAP.

I had resisted getting into a physical fight all year because I wanted to be a pacifist like The Doctor.

TAP.

The Doctor would try to talk it out.

TAP.

I had tried, but it didn’t work.

TAP.

I admired The Doctor for his kindness and his empathy.

TAP.

But I also admired his willingness to fight.

TAP.

The only thing bigger than The Doctor’s nose was his brass fucking Time Lord balls.

TA–

I whirled around and punched the bully in the face. He punched me in the gut, I tried to knee him in the groin, and the teacher pulled us apart. He, of course, mocked me for the rest of the year but never within punching range. And if I turned around and stared at him fast enough, sometimes he would flinch. I had triumphed the way The Doctor so often did: with just enough justifiable violence to hang on to the pacifist cred.

The next year I went to a different school and regenerated back into an artsy kid who was just kind of weird. 

For better or worse, Doctor Who helped make me the man-child I am today. The show reminded me to value intelligence, creativity, poor fashion choices, and absolute pig-headed defiant individuality.  Over the years, I internalized my own inner Doctor Who novelization, and lovingly wrapped it in plastic so the corners don’t get bent. And if there were an inscription on the inside cover it would read:

I am Joseph Scrimshaw. I am my master and I will obey me.

A version of this story is also available in my book COMEDY OF DOOM.
Thanks for reading.

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