(A message to the future inventor of teleport machines.)
There once was a man from Nantucket who took to wearing a placard around his neck that read, “The blood of the next person who asks me if ‘it’ really is that big will flow like a river through the streets of Nantucket’.
As inspired by: boot's tigglemup
Sometimes I write it down, sometimes I leave it there, stewing sullenly in the corner.
The trick of living in a very different timezone is that you are sometimes unaware that there was/is a special day, but the treat is that Friday always gets here first.
Their laughter and their lives.
Every crease in his smile.
Her soft gentle hair.
The breeze on your skin.
The rain in the air.
He served two terms as mayor of Mulletville, which didn’t look half as impressive on a resume as it did on MySpace.
I live in the same neighborhood with Spiderman, Superman, several princesses, Batman, Queen Victoria, Thomas the Train, numerous devils, Monster Girl, a penguin (who I embarrassingly mistook for a puffin), two corpse brides, a few more Spidermen, Ariel (who told me about her ripped skirt), Darth Vader (in various sizes), a skeleton who walks with a cane, two friendly witches, a turtle and one slightly robust 13 year old chorus girl.
“God hates Fred Phelps,” Bertha said, “He told me so over coffee and meat loaf last night.”
“The top three floors of San Jose’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. main library remained closed today as staffers worked to reshelve hundreds of thousands of research books and academic theses hurled to the floor by Tuesday’s moderate earthquake.”
“Palo Alto investigators are asking anyone who drove past the blood-covered, dark-haired girl running from her rapist late Tuesday afternoon on North Fair Oaks Avenue in Sunnyvale, to call them immediately.”
In a perfect illustration of Scrirony, the Links list reads, “Bunni, carrot”
Are we sure that toothbrushes is really a word, because it sounds kind of funny.
Never mind.
Mr. Clinton used to refer to his equipment as “my Blind Willie Johnson” until one day the singer by that name punched him in the nose.
‘Mouse’s goal for November 2007 is to write 30 Scrines for a total of at least 500 words.
She sat quietly, listening to soothing music, munching absentmindedly on candy and waiting for the other shoe of doom to drop.
Jared breathed deeply the aroma of crisp apples and wet, rotting leaves that signified Halloween had finally arrived.
I MIGHT have dressed up a little for Halloween (nothing fancy, just some cat ears with an all black ensemble); wouldn’t you know it I ran into the inappropriate gardener on the day when I look like a floozy.
I’d spy on the new neighbors moving in next door through my kitchen window, but to do it I’d have to first wash all the dishes and I’m just not that kind of spy.
In the last five minutes I’ve seen two different people talking on Zoolander phones, which reminds me that years ago when I imagined this as our future, I didn’t realize we’d invent so many things that make us look foolish.
I just filled out the application for a Safeway Club Card, and now I can hardly wait to go shopping again just to hear the cashier say, “Have a good day, Mr. Cooper.”
I tried swearing into the future, and even threw a few random karate chops to try and intimidate it, but still nothing.
The spookiest thing about this day so far was the stale, day-old cup of coffee she handed him, causing him to muse on the symbolic aspects of their relationship, such as the way she folded his underwear into little knots and crammed all the dishes in the dishwasher, often breaking them.
Fred ducked behind the bushes lying in wait for the first Halloweenies frightened enough to leave their bags of candy behind.
Rosellini’s imagination ensorcelled his common sense making him susceptible to alien abduction each time a bright light appeared in the sky.
Old Bruce grabbed a six of Pabst and shuffled out to the clearing behind the barn eager to hold his final palaver with the goats before the first snows fell.
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH”, he cried after jumping into the pile of leaves and landing on the pitchfork, “WHY WOULD ANYONE RAKE LEAVES WITH A PITCHFORK, THIS SENTENCE IS COMPLETELY IMPLAUSIBLE, I OWE EVERYONE AN APOLOGY!”
The phone rang and a chorus of angels began to sing; for once it wasn’t someone stupid wanting something inane, it was a woman who probably confused my resume with someone else’s and wants to offer me a director of marketing position.
At first Thunderpants Johnson was embarrassed by his nickname, but then he grew into it.
Your life could be worse—it could be your iTunes jukebox playing “Muskrat Love.”
I caught wind of her outside some half-dead little hole east of Cheyenne, but in that dry air, the scent of her was gone by the second breath.
“Your sunny, optimistic friend Jen was eaten by a pack of ravenous packaging salespeople and customers.”
Overhearing, “Look out, it’s Henry!” is only funny the first 50 or so times.
Dorothy was willing to try just about anything, including Slugtox injections.
Compact disks of the presentation handouts will be available for attendees who do not have computers.
“This is the year when Life teaches me how to gracefully admit I am wrong,” explained Muriel, “or at least,” she amended,”I hope this crap doesn’t last much longer.”
I’d like to know where I can vote against all that is grey, dreary and winterish.
When the cleaning lady arrived she bolted out the back door in a defensive maneuver designed to abdicate all responsibility.
I sleep each night with my old ‘Harbrace College Handbook’ underneath my pillow hoping that when I awake I will remember all the rules of grammer, punctuation and good sentence structure that I no longer remember.
Last night’s Chinese takeout lingers in the morning air, and I hate it.
I’m not as universal as the others would have you believe; I’m not even all that flexible.
I am amazed at how much my customer’s sound like random cartoon characters when I talke to them on the phone, this morning alone I have spoken with an Elmer Fudd, a Yosemite Sam, a Muttley and 2 Foghorn Leghorns.
As inspired by: 'mouse's Stillness
Fall mornings in Denver are always quiet and still, even the leaves refuse to drop as if they are waiting for something important to happen.
They’re much more enchanting than ovals.
Some days, I swear I can feel the wrinkles forming.
She wondered how many more years it would be before she stopped having the dream: the one where she failed the chemistry class she had forgotten that she signed up for, and the university revoked her diploma, sending her reeling back into living in a cardboard box and subsisting on ramen; she was glad she was such a glowing optimist.
Tammy lamented Monday, rued its very existence, the papers piled high on her desk, the emails overflowing from her inbox, the dreaded voicemails to answer…she sighed happily as she crawled under the blankets on her couch and did absolutely none of this; sick days were a miracle.
The leaves on the trees were perfectly still… as. if. waiting.
The light outside went all wrong, like there was a hurricane coming.
The bloody footprints in the bathroom were the first sign something was amiss.
It’s much more difficult to eat while playing violin than while playing the piano.
Attorneys for Automaton International, the robot watchdog group known for its aggressive defense of robot rights, today filed a suit in federal court demanding that restaurants nationwide stop advertising the sale of “soft serve” ice cream, stating that the word serve is nothing more than a derivative of the word servo, which in the original human language of Latin, meant ‘servus’ or ‘slave,’ and that continued use of such language is not only offensive and denigrating to robots, but a clear violoation of the Autonomy Decision of 2056.
Robots were today awarded complete and total autonomy after winning their long, drawn out 23 year old case, which had claimed that the angry and disgruntled human factory workers who had assembled them back in 2033 had violated their right to peaceful assembly.
There once was a man from Nantucket who took to wearing a placard around his neck that read, “The blood of the next person who asks me if ‘it’ really is that big will flow like a river through the streets of Nantucket’.
The guests all arrived on time, along with the Sunday humper, his tail awaggin’.
The downside to hearing “Barracuda” over and over and over on a video game soundtrack is that it could dig up a memory of being a teenage boy listening to that song one million times in a single night with a girl back in the late ‘70s and still not scoring, if of course, you have such a memory; if not, it’ll probably just cause a different sort of irritation.
Death stalked my father like a bulimic on an Oreo bender reaching for him at the height of his frenzy only to excuse himself and dash to the bathroom where he stuck his bony fingers down his throat.
His apartment smelled like a family of bulimic squirrels had given birth in it.
Dressing up a bit like a hooker (for Halloween), getting on the party bus with 13 other girls (also possibly dressed like hookers), dancing on a pole and going to watch strippers and pole dancers at a club on Sunset.
Pieter slumped heavily in his over-stuffed easy chair as it dawned on him that he had traded the truth for a religion of naugahyde idols and poorly chosen bric-a-brac, indeed his faith seemed gauche and pretentiously provincial when compared to those who had plastic Virgin Mary’s and glow in the dark Jesus with sacred heart’s in their living rooms and on their front lawns.
“My mind is a dark and cluttered basement,” Chopin mused as he struggled to clear the way for his next masterpiece to emerge, all the while the metromone tick-tocked menacingly atop his piano and the magpies furiously squawked demanding he stop what he was doing and serve them another slice of apple pie a la mode.
It never fais that the etter gives out on my keyboard at the moment my most pithy sentence is being birthed.
My son just bought Guitar Hero III, and so far, according to all indicators, I’m going to have an excellent future as an over-the-hill rock star.
Turns out I’m quite fond of Tchaikovsky, despite that whole Nutcracker thing.
With coffee’s miraculous powers of healing and vigor she grew an inch and learned to float on her back.
I caught a glimpse of regret and disappointment in the mirror this morning, but it was still a long way off in the future somewhere, so I didn’t look away.
Nine out of ten doctors gave Peter’s unlearning ability the unprecedented Fantastic! rating.
After weighing the trimmed nose hairs, Jeffrey realized it wouldn’t take as long as he’d thought to collect ten pounds.
Twelve pounds of hair has been cut off my head; I have potato/leek frittata fixings in the kitchen and “Fox on the Run” cranked up on the jukebox; hell, yes, it was a successful Saturday.
Truth is overated; truth does not set you free and it is the leading cause of divorce and prison terms in the country.
Peter enjoyed marching around the house to the click of his metronome.
Peter enjoyed fractals because of their unusual odor.
All the tubes connecting the holes in my head to one another are arguing with each other and passing nasty notes.
It doesn’t matter because my action hero dreams are still quite exciting.
Colicky babies are totally where it’s at (where I’m at, anyway).
{say:} does the ehh-tune kt tunstall cd need an install kit?… do i need the tunes install kit for the tunstall kt?
There is a big difference between going to a violin lesson and going to a psychologist.
The neighborhood raccoons, no longer able to subsist by scavenging the trash of the wealthy estate owners, created a successful dinner theater company producing a noteworthy off Broadway production of “Death of a Salesman” and having done so in cooperation with the Opossum dinner theater troupe, with whom they have a long standing feud, has made the saga of Willie Loman all that more poignant.
Four hundred is a lot of dollars, a lot of sentences, a lot of years, and a lot of rocks, but four hundred is not really that many pumpkins.
On the evening of his 35th birthday, Pedro considered all that he had accomplished, the friends that had come and go from his life, and the beautifully scripted DNR order that his family had given him as a birthday present.
So how about that local sports team and its wins and/or losses?
Vlad’s anger slithered out of him like a dry, leathery serpent coiling around him and crushing him until he could barely breathe.
I’ve collected dozens and dozens of buckeye seeds in my life, because my grandfather used to tell me that carrying a buckeye in your pocket brings you good luck; in all this time, I’ve never seen an appreciable difference in my luck levels, but during buckeye season, I frequently note to myself how lucky I was to have known Grandad.
“I’m in the job I’ve always wanted, in the city I’ve always wanted to live in, and life is perfect,” said Bigelow, seething with resentment.
Chuck enjoyed a modest living as the top salesman for Dr. Solomon’s Amazing Turkey Jerky and Sausage Machine until last night when, during his 200th home demo, he forgot to securely fasten the safety guard and his tie got stuck pulling the hapless pitch man into his own machine and turning him into 250 lbs of ground chuck sausage.
The phrase “brand new Eagles” strikes fear into my poor heart, you know…
What exactly is the point of whipped, light cream cheese?
I’ve got a nice used electric guitar, a really cool electronic tuner, brand new guitar strings and everything sounds great; what I don’t have is any notion how to play guitar.
His parents started referring to him as ‘Senor Queso’ when he was a baby, due to his impressive powers of regurgitation, never intending for the name to actually stick and eventually show up on America’s Most Wanted.
Whenever the acupuncturist was asked what she did for a living, she’d reply, “Acupuncher”, and then when the questioner would go, “Huh?” she’d punch them in the head.
My favorite song from the band ‘Yahweh or the Highway’ was ‘Father, Son, and the Goalie Post’ because seriously, how could it not be?
A book, when published, is a finished work that should and must speak for itself out in the world; to see the touring author chase along behind it, gossipping to the readers about a venerable old character who deserves to rest in peace, is momentarily salacious but utterly tacky.
Whenever I type it, I rediscover that for me the word “disheartening” the most disheartening word in the English language.
In the blink of an eye, nuclear winter passed the baton to global warming.
Thomas Mann’s bulky frame leaned heavily against the refrigerator, his meaty hand furiously scribbling deathless and pithy prose onto a legal pad; prose that would later be cut to shreds by Mann’s discerning editor with a large red retractable Sharpie.
After hours of attempting to think myself out of existence all I managed to do was fart furiously from the intense concentration…brain fart translating to intestinal fart…so I decide to quit feeling sorry for myself, got up and went to yoga class anyway.
As he poured the spoiled milk into his bowl of Honey Bunches of Malaise, the toaster barked, the dog burst into flames, and the cat grabbed a knife and slashed his shin while flashing a gang sign.
what does it mean that sometimes these days when i close my eyes i see myself spinning around in the car, around and around, as i have not spun since 2005, or before that in 1991, both times too swiftly for fear, both times seeming entrypoints into parallel universes?
It is curious that the time stamp on Scrine is centrally aligned when the webmaster resides on the pacific coast; I think I have finally broken myself of the panic that ensues when I see a time stamp that suggests it is two hours later than it actually is.
Louie diden’t understand he was dead, despite the fact his body was lying in the road covered with a sheet next to the twisted car.
Robert felt the sharp blades of the arrow shot through his wallet as he left the mechanic’s bay with $900 less than when he walked in.
I don’t need to tell you until what, I’m sure you can guess.
Although it didn’t make any sense, Alberto was certain he heard El-Keitho shout that the “prunes were attacking” as he leaped from rooftop to rooftop in a daring and swashbuckling escape.
As inspired by: Keith's keith for a day (the exchange rates)
It is remarkably easy to cross the border into Mexico dressed up as the swashbuckling bandido El-Keitho and a few pesos in your pocket to grease a few palms along the way doesn’t hurt either.
I am going to sit in my dark little corner and stay put until I successfully think myself into non-existence.
Mrs. Helen Omorotionmwan a 21 years old, is married with six children, and she lives in Benin City, (Nigeria, and) sells engine oil to drivers in retail; she started her business in the year 1997 [meaning when she was 11; there is a picture of her, this seems possible] (and, a)ccording to her if the loan amount of $350 [made up of individual investments of about $25 each] is given to her, it will help her to buy more engine oil [which, i fervently hope, and do not doubt that, it has done.]
Miniature Keith stole down the walkway unnoticed, alert to any sign of the wolves’ return, carrying a big stick.
The wolves slipped in anyway they could, creeping along dial tones and the scrape of shoes coming up the walk.
She sat in her chair, choking down ibuprofen and adjusting her heating pad; clearly her chair dancing Olympic future was at stake; she never should have attempted that jitterbug maneuver and tipped herself backwards…her gold medal now hung in the balance.
“At the last Big Sandy show I was at I lost my favorite attorney.”
I once set a wig on fire then successfully sold it to a woman whose hair was already on fire.
She adjusted the baseball cap low on her forehead to obscure her eyes as she download half the world’s supply of music and called it ScrineTunes…. she was the force behind Imaginary Keith and his love of a good tune.
Owing to a lifelong love of classroom globes, Muriel’s three favorite colors were turquoise, rust, and yellow.
“We found this li’l guy running away from the construction site, and thought it might be yours,” the foreman told Keith as he carefully handed over a disgruntled-looking blue footed boobie, “on account of your coffee mug there in its beak.”
Based on yesterday’s exchange rates, it is still a much better deal to sneak into Mexico and pretend to be el Keitho than to head north to Canada.
The phone on my desk appears to be broken, it keeps making this dreadful ringing sound everytime I try to clear off a stack of busy work that has been accumulating since 1999
After reconsidering, Keith decided he was the figment of the group’s collective imagination.
Keith poured his cup of coffee and stared wistfully out the window, missing the old days when he could walk outside and mark his territory with a long leak in the morning fog.
As inspired by: Jo's Ploink!
Keith got up, unceremoniously and with a slight popping sound.
The sun came up, unceremoniously and with a slight popping sound.
Melanie was surprised to hear everyone complaining about the quality of refreshments served at the world hunger awareness meeting.
As the less regular Scriners rolled up to Scrine, they were perplexed to find a bevy of ladybugs, a giant number 8, bursting rainbows and a bloodied machete or two.
Having just proclaimed that she agreed with me in that she too hated pink, the young woman was momentarily chagrined when another woman pointed out “but, hey you have a pink jacket”, to which she bravely recovered with “yes, but my Dad bought me that”.
Overheard (said by the person on the other end of the telephone to me): you girls are some tricky bitches.
Having already spent quality time as a raging alcoholic, it seemed like a natural progression to go ahead and become a writer.
IMHO, the bestest invention ever is “check flight status.”
I didn’t mind using one of the intergalactic attorneys offered me in court until I realized I’d misheard the judge, and that my attorney was, in fact, representing me probe bono.
Censorship: when the monkies in the White House think they know it better than the experts; for examples see here.
Alberto’s doctoral thesis argued that the potato was nature’s most perfect food, you can bake them, mash them and cut them into long wedges to make the tastiest steak fries ever and, finally, you could create your very own Mr. Potato Head.
The morning felt like cinnamon dipped in a thick iced mocha and topped with a large swirl of whipped cream.
Thanks to my therapist I now have a word to describe my tendency to shoplift Nestle Crunch Bars while standing in the check out line, recidivism.
Nestle Crunch bars are inimical to my new healtier lifestyle.
Henry preferred potato soup to chicken soup in much the same manner as he preferred redheads to brunettes, which isn’t saying very much, given his overall admiration of both redheads and brunettes, and of course, maybe blonds, which he preferred nearly as much as tomato soup, which doesn’t make any sense at all when he thought about it, because wouldn’t redheads be tomato soup and blonds the potato soup (all of which he enjoyed very much, mind you); women, Henry thought, only complicated his thoughts on soup.
The director of the new-age version of Hamlet had resigned herself to find the author of the review, not because of its scathing nature, but because it was titled, “Not-So-Great Dane”, and for this, the critic had to be destroyed.
She was quite the lexiphane; in fact all Scriners were a bit lexiphanic, but only in the name of better sentences.
If the people I actually voted for ever got into office they’d be dry-docking the battleships and painting them a nice bright shade of pink.
Don’t tell me that my call is extremely important to you after I’ve been waiting on hold 10 minutes; if I was important, you would have answered the damn phone already.
whatsay we nominate our favorite scriners, as in the best writers among us, and i’ll start by nominating my two: keith and pam (wait a minute—that’s three…)
As the bedecked, beribboned and, above all, bepinked girl rounded the corner, bullets sprayed ahead of her, and corpses lay strewn behind her.
I have scoured my yellow pages looking for a 12-Step group designed to help people addicted to semi-colins
Ba’al ran away from home at age 16 and joined the Carnival of Heretics as a fire eater.
Sadly, even the most astute of language snobs will die and then what will their carefully selected words and meticulously punctuated sentences get them?
i realize you young people will soon inherit the whole thing, but while i’m around i really must insist upon more careful composition.
I need a job where I can sit at the beach all day drinking beer, meditating and writing poignant haiku’s.
I eat girl snacks.
Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice Superman and Wonder Woman monitored the battle between Jesus and Darth Vader on their plasma television thanks to the GPS chip installed in Jesus’ sandle straps; Wonder Woman sent the Wonder Twins out to fuel the invisible jet in case they needed to mount a rescue operation.
Judas darted from behind the donkey cart where he was hiding, his hands clutching the bag of precious silver coins he received in payment for setting Jesus’ up, and stopped abruptly when Jesus’ chucked then jived leaving his young betrayer undefended against the onslaught of Darth Vader’s blazing light sabre; Vaders blade stopped a hair breadth from Judas’ nose who, relieved he was still alive, wet his tunic leaving a puddle where he stood.