QUESTION

Has anyone else noticed the expanding universe?

 

MEDITATION

I’ll bet Batman and Robin have weird tan lines.

 

WE HEAR

THAT Martha Stewart is a better lay than Taylor Swift and that the woman has a mouth on her that can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. Pardon our French! Anyway, as some would point out, it’s just locker-room talk … THAT Roger Stone once had a three-way with Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka. There’s a chance this isn’t true, of course. Roger once stole dinosaur bones from the Museum of Natural History in New York City. (That actually is true. He did steal those bones, but he needed them.) … THAT Liberace was a wildcat in the bedroom. Our spy reports: “Our lovemaking was unbelievably intense, like his bedroom decor. Was it gratifying? Yes. There were hands and feet all over the place. With all the biting and scratching it was like wrestling with the Three Stooges. Bear in mind this was 1972 and long before homosexuality was invented.”

 

FOUND

I found a wallet today that contained $200, some credit cards, and some family pictures—my family now.

 

PROVERB

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who constantly said, “It is what it is.”

 

HOME EXCHANGE

Advertised for a palace swap on HomeExchange. What luck! King Charles ended up giving me the keys to Buckingham Palace and told me to help myself to the Scotch eggs in the fridge. Also, I tricked him—I don’t have a palace! He ended up sleeping behind the luggage carts at Heathrow.

 

SUSPENSE THEATER

MAN: After all we’ve been through together, do you think this is the end? Or could it perhaps be a new beginning? 

WOMAN: I don’t know. (PAUSE) I don’t think we’ll ever know. 

(THE END)

 

MOWN LAWN

“Twenty-five dollars. Payable in advance,” I said. 

“You’ll get the money when you’ve finished mowing the lawn,” said Mr. Wilson. 

“Okay,” I said, real tough.

 

HOW MIKE TOPP, POET, SPENDS HIS SUNDAYS

The author of “The Poetry Jug” loves to walk the same way (north) in the morning and the other way (south) at night. Good for the sidewalks, he says. Some of the sidewalks can’t be walked on at all. “We’re saving them for future generations.”

 

A VERY SHORT STORY

We were looking for a good spot to try out my new bow-and-arrow set. It was getting dark. I tried for a bat overhead and missed but the arrow came down and struck my brother. Bats are really hard to hit the way they dart and dive in the sky. Dad said they’re equipped with a kind of radar.

 

HARD-BOILED

So, as if I didn’t have enough trouble of my own making (those letter bombs come to mind. And that threatening fruit basket I sent to the White House), now I had some crazy dame to deal with. Figures. The late Carl Werthman was right about when shit happens. It happens every time.
 

BAD ACTORS

I explained to Bugs Bunny that using the portable-hole invention was a misdemeanor, whether Elmer Fudd fell in it or not, and he was trying to talk his way out of a ticket by saying Wile E. Coyote was always painting train tunnels on canyon walls. I said it was a false equivalency.

 

DIARY

The next few days were kind of a blur to Woody Woodpecker. He didn’t remember much of what happened. He kept a diary, but his entries for those days just said, “Guess who? Ha ha ha HA ha, ha ha ha HA ha, ha ha ha HA ha, hehehehehehehe!”

 

WHAT’S IN MY LIBRARY

Just finished reading Georges Bataille’s amazingly prescient book “The Impossible Burger.”

 

IN COUNTRY

Sometimes my coworkers’ suspicions would be aroused by items they found in my pockets when they were stealing from me—my search history, my algorithms, that sort of thing—or by things I shouted in my sleep when I was sleeping on the job, like “You’ll never take me alive, pigs!”

 

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

Early on, “Wheel of Fortune,” the game show created in 1975, had a segment in which players are shown either being hauled away to prison or lowered one by one into unmarked graves.

 

KINDLE

Sometimes when reading “Homer’s Odyssey” on my Kindle, things from other genres—like an opera phantom or a robot invader from space—will suddenly pop up, probably because I haven’t bought the ad-free version. I thought I’d mention it. The public has a right to know. (U.S. Constitution, page 46.)

 

THE SIXTIES

In the 1960s over half of the U.S. population was eaten by hippies.

 

APOLOGY

Each citizen was given a small apology to take home.

 

THE NEIGHBOR

At first I didn’t mind living next door to a mad scientist but after a while I started to get irritated by the insane laughter coming from his laboratory at all hours of the day and night.

 

LASSIE

Lassie was finally canceled because of her big head. Sometimes she wanted a rewrite, with a better gag line here, and here. Or she would keep calling in a makeup artist to touch her up. Or insisting on a stunt dog when the abandoned mine Timmy had fallen into looked too dangerous.      

 

GOMER

Gomer stuck his head in the door.

“Barney said I should throw out the garbage,” he said. “What’s my motivation?”

“The garbage stole your girl,” said Andy. 

“It did? Why that dirty…” 

Gomer left, thoroughly motivated.

 

SMART HOME

“A smart refrigerator isn’t just a novelty item, you know,” the salesperson said.

“What else is it?”

“It’s an indispensable part of any smart home.”

“Ah.”

“Think about it.”

“I will.”

“Talk it over with your smart toilet.”

“Okay.”

 

EARTHQUAKE

Two years ago, seismologists at UCLA predicted an earthquake in Haiti. Sadly, they were right. A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Haiti on Aug. 14, 2021, causing widespread destruction. The good news is that two of the seismologists will receive the prestigious Bruce Bolt Medal.  

 

THE LINE

“Hello?” I said. There was no reply. I heard sinister music on the line. “Is this Murder Incorporated?”