by B Mitsoda
____
This May Only Be Hilarious to Me
“You could take off your pants and do the underwear dance, take off your pants and do the underwear dance, dance, dance, take off your- um, I’m sorry you had to walk in on that, Madame Governor, it’s just that the front door was open and so I took off my pants and did the underwear dance, dance, dance…”
____
Art Lover
“My love,” Jerry proclaimed to her, covered in the sweat of passion, “ours is a romance not unlike Pygmalion and Galatea, divine intervention pending.”
____
Pie Filling, Grape Soda, Butter Beans, RIP
The can of Brady’s Black Beans had been a witness to and nearly a victim of one of the most horrific can shootings ever to hit the Sanderson’s summer home fence.
____
Lots
“Who wants candy?!” asked an excited Jefferson to the rest of the group on the deserted island beach where they had crashed over a year ago.
____
That Guy
The away team needed to lose 150 pounds if they were going to reach escape velocity; the landing party mime quickly erected an invisible box to conceal himself in.
____
Beau Boon
With a baboon heart, a baboon liver, and a baboon skin graft, Allyson was looking terribly hot.
____
Post-Workout Jitters
I didn’t think it was a good gym when I saw the chocolate rabbit machine, but after the fifth set...
____
Get Adopted by Celebrities
The worst part about needy kids, thought Perry as another of the little poor unfortunates ran in front of his shopping cart, was that they would never know what it felt like to pay a 12-fingered woman to cover herself in saffron-coated sliced rhino meat and perform Neil Simon plays while you took a champagne bath and threw hammers at plasma television sets.
____
Title TBA
Mama Juice, Wound Gravy, Hog Hole, Chumwich, Eyewash Mishap, Pillow Parasite - no matter how many he wrote down, Freddie Sunshine just couldn’t decide on a title for his next children’s album.
____
I’m Convinced Every Girl Who Likes My Bloody Valentine is in a Band (And Married)
She could’ve asked me to go mountain lion annoying with her, keyed her name into my car, forced me to watch sex tapes of her and her old lovers, yelled at me for something absurd like having a mother, admitted herpes, asked me to hold radium, or even stabbed me once to see if I was paying attention, but to ask me to a jam band festival, well, I’m boxing up all the stuff she left here now and calling up the friends I know that still know how to drink.
____
Bobooju
Nothing was tempting as Bobooju, except for caramel-covered Bobooju.
____
Like Back to the Time I Said This to Matt
Time flies when I’m flying through time in my time machine.
____
Camp Massacre
Throughout the cabins at axe murderer camp, most tossed and turned, sweating through their masks in their bunks, thinking about the legends surrounding a khaki-shorted figure that emerged from the woods and forced them to make god’s eyes and wallets while singing in a chorus.
____
Holidays at the Hospital
Fiberglass has much better heat retention, thought Jonah, as he threw out the spun sugar and put the finishing touches on his family’s first gingerbread house.
____
Puppy Love
A game of spin-the-bottle was the perfect way for Larry to liven things up at the pound.
____
My Very Own Peach
Monarchslavia’s biggest natural resource was princesses and their native language just sounds an awful lot like Russian – my Monarchslavic princess girlfriend swears every word of this is true, just like the guarantee in the catalogue.
____
Lady of the Valley
And so, having scaled the mountain of the Old Gods and stolen the Eternity Stone from the Guardian of Chaos and even slain the Sleeper of Deep Lake, the warrior princess, slightly weary from her trials, bowed her head for the crown, let out a valorous cry, and finally became the queen… of anal!
____
Clueless Teenager, Remorseful Adult
The lake’s water was cold, still Heidi was taking off even more – “silly girl, wait there while I run back to the cabin and ask your father the minister for a heavy towel.”
____
Imagi-Nation
To little Dabney, the plastic bowl tilted sideways hit with water in the running sink looked like a waterfall and the deer in the living room looked like his aunt.
____
Modesty/Ego Team-Up Issue
I would consider myself down-to-earth, despite the cape and the title I gave myself, Captain Awesome.
____
The Fastest Man in the World
Race Lightspeed was the fastest man on the planet, having overslept through the last boarding call for the colony evacuation ship.
____
KO a la Knockout
The champ had about one or two fights left in him – anymore than that and we’d never get him back to the koala cage before the zoo opened.
____
Every Bit Helps
Fine, she wants me to kill the spider in the bathroom, whatever, splat, there you go, Mil- hey, I leveled up!
____
Night Liberry
Reading was FUNdamental, thought Joey as he peered at the library wall from behind a bean bag, hiding from the Phantom of Peacock Elementary.
____
Pool Bear
And then we heard Kevin exclaim, “Oh, man – you guys have a pet bear?!” which was news to us.
___
Fishy Feelings
If fish didn’t have feelings, why did guilt consume him after he slept with his best friend’s wife?
___
My Cynicism is More Better than Your Cynicism
Turner’s mastery of cynicism had netted him endorsements, TV show appearances, and adoring fans, not that he thought much of it or that it would last.
___
The Mummy Vs. Frankenstein II: Carnage in Karnak
The Mummy and Frankenstein were kindheartedly donating the profits from their latest fight to charity, specifically the Survivors of the Mummy Vs. Frankenstein I Relief Fund.
____
Family Law Practice
Grandpa Tom thought it was important that we learned about the justice system at a very young age, which is the reason that to this day my brothers and I have a criminal record.
____
Pitter Pat
Of course I was nervous about having a little one running around – I’d barely been able to deal with its mother, but I guess she had already given birth before the stealth bombers had arrived.
____
Love Everywhere
Love was in the air, you could feel it, and sure enough right then Cupid bust into the Convention Center floor with an armful of paper bags holding enough malt liquor to kill all the 19th Century’s horses; witnesses would later describe it as “the ickiest podiatry conference since ’96.”
____
Bath Time
“Scrubby Duck, don’t think I’m throwing in the towel – this time it’s the toaster.”
____
Karate Champ
I had taken karate lessons bi-weekly for about, I dunno… about four months, so it was kind of a surprise to me when I found I had made the cut for Ragnarok.
____
Preposterpoppycock
Someone in this very parlour was a swindler of some distinction, and Detective Dimsdale of Scotland Yard would begin gathering testimonies as soon as he escorted the Prince of Fonabalony away from this sordid house of scandal.
____
A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.
M.U.R.D.A.R., the fruit of my career in roboti
cs, was actually quite helpful despite his acronym (Medical Urgent Retrieval and Doctor Autonomous Robot) and had saved thousands of lives, most of them victims of L.O.V.R.R. (Licentious Organ Vivisecting Rampaging Robot), one of my less successful models.
____
Parrots are Remarkably Long-Lived
“Hello,” said the small rainbow-colored visitor as he side-stepped through the screen door frame and hopped up to perch on Timothy’s oxygen tank, “yes, yes, you’re looking a bit long in the tooth, my friend, but perhaps if you give it some thought you’ll remember the day about sixty years ago when you visited Parrot Plaza and – sorry is this valve important – anyhow, I’ve waited a long time for this day - a lifetime to you - and you see I think I’ve finally mastered that phrase you asked me about eighty times, and in between your incessant pleads for forgiveness or merciful relief, for the next six weeks I just needed to ask – do you want a cracker?”
____
Better Storytelling through Democracy
This is the story of one man’s emotional journey through things good and ill, the things that make life worth living, the tears and desert of existence – that is, it was until receiving feedback from focus groups, money men, their yes men and the mystics of marketing, and so now it’s about a magic baseball player dating a stripper with a heart of gold who gradually unlocks his ultimate power with the help of an “urban” robot during their quest to defeat an evil samurai sword wielding real estate agent.
____
Fulltime Dickery
“Oh, I’ll tell you where I hid it, but if I don’t see the money in my account by the end of the day, you’ll never get to your milk before it expires,” confirmed Roy, inconvenience kidnapper.
____
Twinkle Harmonium Space Probe Soundtrack
In the immediate twilight that nothing saw, the vector-graphic flash of the space probe’s descent into the planet’s atmosphere right before it crashed and sent home to Earth a bittersweet computer beep pop tune about its gaining semi-awareness, its realization that it was alone, its fear of crashing into the planet, and a final resolve to further the knowledge of the Universe for its creators as it plunged to its death – went mostly unheard until it was used into a club hit called “Partee Girlz Holla [North Hampton Nastee Free-eeks and DJ Buttermouth remix]”.
____
Duyfken
The ‘Little Dove’ had lost half our crew in the waters around Java, but as we pulled into the port at Amsterdam, we knew our wealth would be great, our cargo hold filled to the brim with a new and exciting spice called “catnip”.
____
Caveman Inspiration
At the dawn of time, Stonegrip witnessed the eclipse and took it as a sign to club some shit, like the portents of the squirrel and his hand before it.
____
Supper is Dying in the Lexicon
There was a lot of debate over what Confucius looked like – had to talk about something at dinner in my family’s house.
____
Brainteaser #6
Standing before the rowboat with a chicken, a bag of corn, and a fox, Cory found himself faced with the classic logic problem – which one would he make captain?
____
Your Priority is to Rock
Dan had been looking for the missing cassette tapes with his old band’s demos for over a decade, and now it was time to turn his efforts towards finding his kids.
____
Some Things will Never Change, But At Least There Will Be More Sequels
Parked on her usual bench, Emmy watched a pig-tailed girl gleefully swaying on a nearby swing and reflected on how much things stay the same despite how much they change; fearing she’d miss the bus, she carefully lifted her aging frame and threw the last of the breadcrumbs into the pond for the eager flush of hungry cyborgs.
____
But If They Slip…
The morale boost provided by a drummer in the middle of the Revolutionary War was hardly recreated in First Lieutenant Dickerson’s covert ops slide whistle.
____
A Wolfen She Piss Glow Thing
A palpable unease crept through the flock as a four-legged, plastic-faced Green Lantern approached the sheep - clearly, Billingsley P. Wolf had misremembered the old adage.
____
Me Gusta Gatos
Jerri couldn’t wait to learn a new language, mostly because no one in town would speak to her anymore.
____
Science is Only a Theory That Powers Modern Life
Polar ice was melting, sure, but it really only affected snowmen and they’re basically cold bums anyhow.
____
Where Hippies Come From
With 98% of the products on the planet now made from hemp, the hippies rose into space to convince other civilizations of the eco-friendliness of the plant, as well as crash in their national parks.
____
A Study in December
Thinking about it, Professor Mapleflap’s books really were like children, bad children that deserved to be in the fireplace warming him on that cold December night.
____
Dr. Knowhouser Explains All
“Applying the battery wires repeatedly like so, it triggers a reaction in the nervous system, which sends an electrical current up to the pain centers located in the thalamus and to the parietal lobe of the cerebrum, where the pain writes a memory, a memory that will teach the rabbit to never fuck with the scientist’s garden again.”
____
Chilling
The well-publicized premiere of Gerry’s VHS footage that proved once and for all that Charlemagne’s ghost haunted his storage shed was destroyed by a Wil Smith movie at the box office.
____
Genre Phillip Sousa
None of the kids wanted to play French horn, our Peter and the Wolf phases having given way to marching band industrial.
____
The Littlest Stallion
The world’s tiniest horse, Horshey’s Kisses, had the heart of a champion and the same desire as every other horse of regular size or not - murder!
____
Hero Blog
For my deeds, the gods had bestowed upon me a great gift… oh, what the fuck, it’s a fucking toaster – a fucking toaster, I mean, I slay the horse-demon with the laser eyes and divert the sea to create, I dunno, a new pond for a moon frog that sings or something, and then I wipe out an entire race of witch-giants with perfect rubies in their bellies for a wedding gift for some minor nymphs, and… a fucking toaster?!
____
Refrigerator Science
I wasn’t sure if you could lose motor control from eating too much dough, though my little brother was about to make an astounding discovery.
____
Coffee Date at the Starbucks on Jeffrey in Irvine
We walked through the Albertson’s strip mall back to our cars and I think I still remembered her name; something primeval and horrible in the lizard part of my brain told me starts-with-a-“D” might actually call back despite any pretense of a good time.
____
Beatpocalypse
