Ant Farm

by Simon Rich

  1:01 P.M. Pretended to be homeless in order to receive free soup. −10

  1:05 P.M. Traded the soup to a real homeless man in exchange for all his karmas. +3,500

  5:00 P.M. Constructed Hindu idol out of styrofoam. +75

  5:45 P.M. Carried the styrofoam idol to a Hindu temple and threatened to destroy it if the priests didn’t give me all of their karmas. +35,000

  8 P.M. Stole. −15

  11:00 P.M. Vegetarian snack. +20

  Next Life = Dragon

  repent

  According to evangelical Christians, anyone who accepts Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Even murderers can enter Heaven, as long as they have faith. As you can imagine, it gets pretty awkward up there when murderers run into people that they’ve killed.

  MURDERER: Hey, you look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?

  VICTIM: (Terrified screaming.)

  MURDERER: Oh, yeah. Now I remember.

  VICTIM: How did you get up here?

  MURDERER: I’m not really sure. Someone sent me a Bible while I was on death row. I guess at some point I must have internalized parts of it?

  VICTIM: So … they gave you the death penalty?

  MURDERER: Yeah. Not for killing you, though. For killing some other people. Children.

  VICTIM: Oh.

  MURDERER: Nobody knows you’re dead yet. I hid you in a weird place.

  VICTIM: …

  MURDERER: Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened. If it makes you feel any better, I told a priest about it afterward. He made me say, like, fifty prayers.

  VICTIM: How many people did you murder?

  MURDERER: Four hundred. But I’ve only run into three or four of them so far. I guess not everyone makes it into Heaven, huh? Hey look, there’s Jesus.

  JESUS: Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Prodigal Son! (Laughs, puts arm around murderer’s shoulder.) Seriously, it’s great to have you aboard.

  MURDERER: Jesus, I want you to meet someone. This is…um… geez. This is pretty embarrassing. What’s your name again?

  JESUS: Sorry I can’t stay and meet your friend, but I have to go welcome in some other murderers. So long!

  MURDERER: Guess he was in a rush, huh? Oh well. I’ll try to introduce you some other time.

  ——————————————

  a conversation between god

  and the man in a football helmet

  and a speedo who’s always

  shouting things next to the a&p

  —How’d it go today? Win any followers?

  —I’m afraid not, God. I’m sorry.

  —You told them the news, right? That the world is ending in four days?

  —Yes.

  —And you made the sign, like I told you? With all the information about the apocalypse?

  —Of course.

  —Did you try that thing I came up with, where you start swinging your arms around really fast while saying “The end is coming, the end is coming”?

  —(sighing) Yes.

  —And still no one listened! I can’t believe this. How can I prepare mankind for the apocalypse if they ignore the words of my prophet?

  —I actually had a thought today, God. I was thinking, maybe if I wore something a little more socially acceptable …

  —I have a strict dress code for my prophets: helmet, Speedo.

  —I know, I don’t mean to second-guess you! I just think people would respond better if I wore a suit.

  —Did you do the thing where you start hitting your helmet with both fists to get people’s attention, and then when they finally look at you, you just start screaming and pointing at the sign?

  —Yes. A lot.

  —Then I guess we have no choice. Construct a gown out of aluminum foil and gird yourself with it.

  —Again?

  —Do as I say.

  —I really don’t think that’s going to work.

  —Of course it will! Think about it. If you saw a guy dressed entirely in foil, would you ignore him? No. You’d sit down and listen to what he had to say.

  —Listen, God, I’m honored that you chose me to be your prophet—and it’s been a really exciting thirty-five years, don’t get me wrong. But I’m starting to think that maybe you should ask someone else to deliver your message. Like a senator, maybe? Or a minister?

  —Impossible. You are the prophet I have chosen.

  —Well, maybe I should at least leave the A&P. The manager keeps sending out someone with a broom to chase me off the lot. It’s pretty humiliating.

  —Yeah, I saw that. That was pretty bad.

  —Did you see when all the foil fell off while I was running away? So that I was completely naked, except for the helmet?

  —Yeah. That probably set us back a little. Maybe you should move to the side of the highway? I’m sure we’ll have more luck there.

  —Okay.

  —And I want you to make your sign bigger.

  —Sure.

  —And one more thing.

  —What?

  —Keep your head up.

  —(Laughs.) Thanks, God.

  the odds

  The odds of winning the lottery are statistically equal to the odds of getting mauled by a circus animal. The last guy to win the lottery was Al Romano. He won $80 million playing Powerball. The last guy to get mauled by a circus animal was Sam Ortle. He was attacked by a bear. I thought it would be neat to introduce these guys.

  ME: Well, I’m sure you guys have a lot to talk about. See you later! (Exits.)

  AL: Hi.

  SAM: Hi. Congratulations on winning the lottery.

  AL: Thanks! I’m really sorry … about your misfortune.

  SAM: It had to happen to someone, I guess.

  AL: How did it happen, exactly? Do you work for the circus?

  SAM: No, I work for a computer company on the other side of town. I just happened to be out on my lunch break when the bear escaped into the city. I bent over to tie my shoes, and when I stood up he was sprinting toward me with both arms in the air. It was the single most terrifying moment of my life.

  AL: I’m so sorry.

  SAM: Yeah. I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So … how much money did you win in the lottery?

  AL: Eighty million dollars. It sounds like more than it is, though! I have to pay a lot of taxes! (Long silence.) Listen, again, I’m really sorry about the bear. The whole thing sounds terrible. How did it escape in the first place?

  SAM: An earthquake broke open his cage. Then two lightning bolts knocked the guards unconscious. It’s sort of like God was doing everything he could that day to make sure this horrible thing would happen to me.

  AL: Jesus.

  SAM: So … do you buy lottery tickets often?

  AL: Actually, this was my first time. I was in a store and I saw the “World’s Biggest Jackpot” sign so I just kind of bought one on a whim.

  SAM: I buy lottery tickets pretty often. About five or six a week. I still haven’t won anything.

  AL: Why do you keep looking over your shoulder like that?

  SAM: Checking for bears. I know it probably won’t happen again, but I don’t want to take any chances. It’s a crazy world. Hey, what are you going to do with all the money?

  AL: I haven’t really decided. I’m still a little dazed by the whole thing!

  SAM: You know what I would do if I won the lottery? I’d build myself a suit to protect against bears. I’d wear it all the time, for the rest of my life.

  AL: You know, if you want, I could buy you a suit with my winnings! Seriously, I’d be happy to do it.

  SAM: What’s the point? Some bear would find a way.

  where are all the time travelers?

  Stephen Hawking once said, “If time travel is real, where are all the time travelers?” Everyone I talk to thinks this is such a great quote and that it proves that time travel is just a fantasy. But what people are forgetting is th
at Stephen Hawking is obviously a time traveler.

  Think about it. “If time travel is real, where are all the time travelers?” That is exactly the kind of thing a time traveler would say. Everyone’s like “Oh, Stephen Hawking, you’re so smart, of course there’s no such thing as time travel!” Meanwhile, Hawking is probably at the dog track right now winning trifecta after trifecta.

  Let’s think about this rationally. If you were a time traveler who had visited the future, and someone asked you point-blank if time travel was possible, what would you say? “Oh, yeah, time travel is definitely possible. In fact, I’m a time traveler—confiscate my gambling earnings”? No. You would make some witty quip and change the subject. Then you would politely excuse yourself, call a bookie, and bet on Duke to defeat UNLV in the 1991 NCAA semifinals, even though they were eleven-point underdogs.

  Where are all the time travelers? They’re on Wall Street, smoking Cuban cigars and laughing so hard that tears are streaming down their fat faces. Meanwhile, we’re sitting around like morons, betting our money on random dogs and horses and talking about how smart Stephen Hawking is. He probably didn’t even write his books! If you could magically travel through time, think about how easy it would be to bring back some smart book from the future, retype it, and pass it off as your own.

  The following people are also probably time travelers:

  the woman who married Bill Gates before he invented Microsoft

  the guy who just happened to be filming JFK when he got assassinated

  George Foreman (how else would he know to sponsor that grill?)

  There have always been time travelers. And anyone who says otherwise probably has something to hide.

  desert island

  I was chatting with a girl at a cocktail party last weekend and she asked me, “If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only take three possessions with you, which ones would you pick?”

  “That’s pretty tough,” I said. “I guess my first-edition copy of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, James Merrill’s Collected Poems, and my lucky Sonic Youth T-shirt.”

  Well, it turns out the girl was a government research scientist. It’s a long story, but basically when the drugs in my cocktail wore off, I woke up completely naked on a sandy strip of land in the middle of the ocean. A few hours later a jet plane whizzed by and parachute-dropped the record, book, and shirt onto the shore.

  I realize now that I definitely could have chosen better items.

  The last three days have been hell. I have no food, shelter, or medicine. The Sonic Youth T-shirt has an enormous tear through the front. It’s pretty cool-looking, and it shows I’ve had the shirt for a long time, since before Sonic Youth got big. But the tear lets in a lot of cold air, and the larger insects keep getting trapped in it.

  Every few hours I flip through the Merrill anthology in the hope that one of his poems will be about fire building or water purification or how to make medicine, but so far they’re all useless.

  I spent yesterday morning tying the Bob Dylan record to a stick with weeds and swinging it over my head to try to receive radio waves. I don’t remember why I thought that would work.

  If I had asked for a Bob Dylan CD, I could have at least used the reflective surface to maybe heat up some sand. I’m not sure what that would accomplish, but at least I’d feel like I was doing something.

  This morning I ate the poetry book and the shirt. Tonight, I’m going to try to eat the record.

  Let me tell you some more about this island. During the daytime, the sand is so hot that I need to constantly hop from foot to foot to prevent my feet from getting burned. At night it’s below freezing. There are no trees. There’s just sand, weeds, and some kind of volcano. Every fish I’ve caught so far has been poisonous.

  I just realized that, technically, my house counts as a possession. I could have asked for my entire house.

  I don’t even like Bob Dylan. I just wanted to sound cool.

  the dog x-files

  Here are some scenes for a TV show I came up with that’s exactly like The X-Files except all of the characters are dogs.

  REX: Thank God you’re here. I didn’t know who else to turn to. No one believes my story.

  DOG SCULLY: Tell us what happened.

  REX: I used to go into the living room every day. I’d run around, scratch up the couches—you know, have a good time. Then yesterday, I went inside and all of a sudden a horrible electric shock shot through my entire body.

  DOG MULDER: Unbelievable.

  DOG SCULLY: Did you try going in again today?

  REX: Yes. The same thing happened. I don’t even want to go into that room anymore.

  DOG MULDER: Wow. I have no explanation.

  DOG MULDER: I’m Agent Mulder from the Dog FBI. Tell us what happened.

  SKIP: Last week, my face was really itchy. I kept trying to scratch my nose, but … I couldn’t reach it.

  DOG MULDER: What do you mean?

  SKIP: There was some kind of cone-shaped force field surrounding my head.

  DOG SCULLY: Incredible!

  SKIP: The crazy thing is, three days later, I fell asleep … and when I woke up, the force field was gone.

  DOG SCULLY: I don’t understand. This defies all logic!

  DOG MULDER: Not everything can be explained with logic, Dog Scully.

  BOOMER: This is really hard for me. You’re the first people I’ve told.

  DOG SCULLY: Tell us what happened. Maybe we can help.

  BOOMER: Okay, here goes. Yesterday I fell asleep, and when I woke up, my testicles were missing.

  DOG SCULLY: Jesus. This is the fifth case this month.

  DOG MULDER: There’s something happening out there. Something beyond our understanding.

  ROCKET: I used to have fleas all over my body. Thousands and thousands of them. Then, yesterday, I felt a tightness around my neck … and within hours the fleas were gone.

  DOG MULDER: (Spits out coffee.)

  DOG SCULLY: For years, I’ve tried to be a scientist, to live by the rules of logic and reason. But now I don’t know what to believe.

  DOG MULDER: Please use your magic to kill my fleas.

  animal cruelty

  In order to learn more about animal cruelty, I built a translating machine and interviewed several farm animals about their current situation.

  COW

  —You’ve been incarcerated in this slaughterhouse your entire life. How has it affected you emotionally?

  —I am cow. I eat grass. Grass on ground. Me move mouth down to grass. Chew up grass.

  —Do you think animal slavery will end in your lifetime?

  —Eat grass, rest. Eat grass, rest. Sleep.

  —Do you feel that animals deserve the same rights as human beings?

  —Grass on ground. Eat it all up.

  CHICKEN

  —You’ve lived inside this 26- × 22-inch cage your entire life. How does it feel to know that you will never meet your family?

  —Food in bag. Eat it up.

  —Are “free range” chickens truly free? Or do they suffer the same indignities as standard, factory-produced chickens?

  —Me eat food in bag. Rest. Sleep.

  PIG

  —Human beings have mistreated your species for centuries, caging you in tiny prisons and pumping you full of dangerous hormones, just to make money. If you could say one thing to your human oppressors, what would it be?

  —Give me more of the things that go inside my mouth. I like the things that I put inside my mouth. Chew it all up good. Rest, sleep.

  —I understand that your owner castrated you at birth and then branded you with a fiery hot iron. Does it ever get so bad that you wish for death?

  —Give me more of the things that go inside my mouth.

  lost puppy!

  Our beloved family pet is missing! We lost him on this

  block and he probably hasn’t gone far. If you find a dog

  that matches the following
description,

  please give me a call!

  Thanks!

  —Suzie

  Large claws

  Extra set of teeth

  Red eyes

  Quick to anger

  Often unreasonable; lacks the self-control of other dogs Likes to stand on his hind legs and rise to his full height

  so he can look people in the eye

  Often stays in shadowy areas; very hard to spot sometimes,

  except for his eyes, which always have a faint

  red glow

  Fast

  When he stands on his hind legs and looks people in the

  eye, he expects them to maintain eye contact; if they

  look away even for a second, he has a kind

  of breakdown

  If he’s having a rampage and someone escapes, he likes

  to come find them, usually on the one-year anniversary

  of the rampage

  Answers to the name “Ctharga,” but if his name is said

  three times, something weird happens to his eyes and he

  somehow becomes even faster than he is normally

  Silent

  ————————

  glorious battles of

  the american revolution

  The British redcoats were excellently trained. But their conventional battle tactics failed to subdue the ragtag American troops.

  THE BATTLE OF STONEY POINT — 1779

  George Washington’s minutemen attack the redcoats with pitchforks. Cornwallis, the British general, stubbornly sticks to his strategy: offering the Americans tea and then cleverly giving them none.