They were a new breed of email warrior, their letters short and decisive.
Why is it that when you get a large group of engineers in the room, no one can figure out the wireless connection and the meeting stalls for at least an hour?
The men were up before dawn, quietly pulling on trousers and thick, flannel shirts as they thought of the day’s hunt ahead of them.
When playing the game of Adjectives™ with a drive-through cashier, one has several options of play, including: 1) Say, “Have a good day,” which may be similarly returned, which is scored as a draw for the round; 2) Say, “Have a good day,” which in some cases may be trumped with a more powerful adjective (the common play is great), in which case the player then has the option of either conceding the round to the cashier or replaying their hand in one of two ways: a) Calling the adjectival raise with a simple reply of ”You have a great day,” which matches the cashier’s response and is scored as a single point for both players, or b) Offer the cashier a more challenging level of play with their own adjectival raise, such as “Have a stupendous day,” or “Have a wonderous day,” which is scored as two points to the player offering the final adjectival raise; Advanced play levels of Adjectives™ involve a bonus round* that includes the use of adverbs, although this style of play is seldom seen outside of bars, certain Florida retirement centers, and Heckle and Jeckle cartoons.
If anyone’s suffering from insomnia, I have a 30-page commercial lease you can read which is guaranteed to lull you to sleep by page 11.
If we all know that familiarity breeds contempt and absence makes the heart grow fonder, why are we in such a hurry to marry the ones we love?
You call it your Starbucks insulated car mug, I call it your sippie cup.
For about a minute after he awoke this morning, he couldn’t remember his ex-wife’s name.
After the fifth or sixth time I overheard an old lady say, “Oh my god, that’s the best costume all night,” I went into overdrive figuring out what I’d do for my daughter’s costume for next year to top this one.
Similar to cows and some species of canine, I do not speak Spanish.
The city fitfully slept off the worst candy hangover in years.
Pierre couldn’t shoot straight had his life depended on it, but as luck would have, his friend Carlos was a crooked runner and took one in the left shoulder.
As inspired by: 'mouse's November 1
Muriel snuck one Milky Way fun-sized bar with her coffee, hoping to ease her candy hangover.
I think it’s important to pass out candy cigarettes to children on Halloween.
Henry didn’t speak much French, but he could have sworn the man named Pierre shouted, “C’est la Vie!” as the other man was hit by the bullet, and not, “Carlos, you fool!” as he seemed to be telling the police.
Area cashiers mourned the passing of Miss Helene, age 78, the last resident who never tried to make purchases while talking on a cell phone.
I can’t say for sure how many 11 year olds there are who set their alarm clock for 5 a.m. just so they can get up and do homework, but I can say with certainty that there is at least one.
“In addtion to any other remedy authorized by law, when a spouse is convicted of attempting to murder the other spouse, as punishable pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 664 of the Penal Code, the injured spouse shall be entitled to a prohibition of any temporary or permanent award for spousal support or medical, life or other insurance benefits or payments from the injured spouse to the other spouse.”
Enlightenment or not, there’s something about Keith and 1000, that’s for sure.
“She’s delightful and I love having her in my class” is teacherspeak for “she’s a brat, but not much worse than most, so please don’t say mean things about me to the school board.”
As Melissa lit the last of the candles, she again uttered her prayer at her own private alter, and if you listened closely you could just hear the words “… and please let me be perfect at everything I do…”
I think I may have two brains, but I can’t get them to talk to each other, so I doubt I’ll ever be sure.
Peter kept the shadows of his lost loves tucked safely along the edges of a 1000 donut holes.
There’s the big dinner-time Scrines, the standard, lunch break Scrines, but sometimes all that’s required are a few quick shots of scrine.
It was more than a bit disappointing to wake up the other day only to discover that I’m not a tree.
“George, so far I put the body toll at 482 and, I’ll tell you this for nothing, when I find the bastard responsible, I’ll be ringing his neck with my own bare hands.”
Sensing an unbeatable opportunity to embarrass her son years in the future when he would start dating, Lauren snapped a quick photo of her adorable 2-year-old running through the house naked sporting a morning boner.
Today as my wife put on her clothes to go exercise at the gym I suggested she should just go rake the leaves in the back yard to work up a sweat and she looked at me like I was from another planet.
Peter’s wife hated when he referred to Mars as the sensible planet.
She surveyed her new lo-cal diet and determined that she could count Raisinettes as fruit, anything with peanuts or peanut butter as protein, milk chocolate as dairy, and Twix as grains; this was going to be a whole new food pyramid of fun.
I am my most creative when I need to avoid something.
Every time Pepe scrined his heart glowed red, a fact he could not hide no matter how many flannel shirts he wore.
Juniper berries don’t lie.
I will not go gintle into that good night.
“I before e, except after c and when they say a as in neighbor or weigh and in weird, because it’s weird,” but what’s up with ‘Keith’?
I’m sure recipes only call for fresh shredded coconut because the chefs, like me, enjoy whacking the living blazes out of an inanimate object.
And as the end of the month approached, the seemingly innocent target of 8 Scrine sentences a day seemed to build in mounting terror and, with it, the extraordinary silliness of the sentences.
In my family it was tradition to name new babies by having the mother close her eyes and draw a crayon out of the box, which worked out okay for my sisters Sienna and Umber, but not so good for my brother Flesh.
I asked Sally Fields to prove the effectiveness of her new bone strengthening drug by letting me give her a arm a really hard twist, but she wouldn’t go for it.
The morning started off as inconvenient as an inside-out tuna sandwich.
It took a little adjusting, but now my son and I estimate the volume of every room based on the number of hobos we think could squeeze in; our new living room, for example, is approximately 42 Hobos with furniture, 166 Hobos without.
Peter noticed with some discomfort that the safe house of his dreams always needed painting.
as Lucy undid the bottom of her daughter’s Carebear piggybank she lamented all those pieces of her soul that she had given away on the internet over the years; wondering what they might have been worth had she sold them instead.
she put on a full face of ghoul makeup just to pick up my son from school and gleefully took video of his heartrending screams as he shrunk against the backseat crying, ‘mom, is that you?’
I hereby decree that November 2 (November 3 in Australia) is International Get Rid of Excess and Unidentifiable Keys on Your Keyring Day.
Her heart was open like a book and sticky, like flypaper.
When Peter overheard that his grandma had once been quite the flapper, he wasn’t sure whether to look it up in the dictionary or run from the room screaming.
That Halloween, they found that the crime scene laid out on the front porch, including an outline of a witch spattered with ketchup blood, did not go over as well as they’d hoped, particularly when the church camp kids trooped by.
As inspired by: pam's Bad taste
Tired of her husband’s sanctimonious ways, Pastor Bob’s wife ended up attending the Halloween party with a very realistic looking John the Baptist’s head.
“Buses are like life, because when you look at it, all buses are late, really; all buses are on time; all buses eventually go to the garage,” Bob explained as they reached the kiosk, inadvertently punctuating his message by sitting on a wad of gum.
The eyes are the groin of the head.
I’ve never been hurtled through outer space, but I’m guessing it feels kind of like being sucked up into the bag of a really big vacuum cleaner, except quieter and without so much animal hair.
Okay, I totally get it that W is double-U, but then why isn’t M called double-N?
“I’m not the only top thinker in the city to be driven to drinking by this problem,” James told the bartender, “because contrary to what you might think, solving the enigma of geese in the flight path is no laughing matter.”
Zippy the clown marched into the ringmaster’s office and quit “under no uncertain terms” because he could no longer stomach the seltzer-down-the-pants-gag, which all clowns consider to be crass and demeaning.
What hurts more: the thumb that is lodged in your heart, or the hole that is left behind once the thumb is pulled out?
Zippy’s masterful exit was hindered by his standard issue floppy clown shoes and “wucka wucka” horn that squeeled with every deliberate step he took.
Staring anxiously into the mist, the men drew slide rules from the pockets of their starched, white shirts, adjusted glasses and shuffled nervously in Oxfords as black as the blood that would soon flow deeply across the linoleum floor they stood upon.
When told that the man’s obesity was probably due to genetics, the doctor’s tact flew out the window and he replied, “If by ‘due to genetics’ you mean ‘due to his hands acting as conveyor belts transporting deep-fried snickers bars to his gaping maw’, then yes, it probably is due to genetics.”
Remember the heady, carefree days of the [insert nostalgiac item here]…?
The more you find out about it, the more you find out how little you knew.
Jemima was so very disappointed when she found out that all her mother had ever intended was to sew cloth rainbows on the knees of her old jeans.
I know I’m being childish, but I laugh every single time someone talks about their drawers.
I wonder if galahs keep their rosy underparts in their drawers?
As inspired by: 'mouse's Hello? Hello?
Mrs Traellow shut the door to her office, amazed at the number of lonely fruit she’d seen in just her first day on the job.
Apparently, there are people out there that don’t like books.
I met a woman the other day who doesn’t like cake.
Every time a cool, icy wind blows across the Kansas prairie, Kevin regrets the nipple piercing he got in Wichita over the summer.
Some people answer the call of the wild, but for me it’s the call of the ‘eggs on toast with coffee’.
My in-laws come with their own reality-warping field wrapped tightly around them.
Juan wanted to take his wife to see the Big Sandy concert at the local dance hall, but it had been 15 years or so since they’d been on a date and he wasn’t quite sure how to ask a woman out.
Harry suddenly realized that his father died on All Souls Day and that he had deliberately skipped mass.
I’m flipping around but my copy of the DSM-IV seems to be missing some important pages about the kind of depression that’s best treated with chocolate.
The final item in the Scavenger Hunt portion of the ‘Olympics for the Insane’ was “Pubic hair from a syphilitic rhinoceros (female)”.
Tammy rued work, shook her fist at the institution which required her attention every second of the day, leaving little time for her one true love: the scrine; thank goodness weekend was approaching; she felt her creativity slowly oozing back into her very being.
Oh the dubious honor of being the 88th post out of the Scrine 1000; shall I explore some heretofore uncharted territory, or simply go back to my Halloween candy and knitting; somehow I feel unworthy, but here it is… the magical 88.
The way the dog was kicking around and growling in his sleep, I have to believe he was dreaming of politics again.
It’s going to be another beautiful day!
I believe I could have gone right to sleep if the cat hadn’t thrown up on my arm.
As the hospital auctioneer called out, “Going, going, gone!” Peter realized his memory had just been sold.
Even when you know that waking up early, hitting the ground running and buying your groceries before your neighbors are fully awake will yield welcome dividends later in the week, sometimes it’s still good to sleep in on Saturdays.
DO NOT LOSE THE DAMN LIST THIS TIME.
Consider actually doing some of the items on this list for a change.
[Jewish mother voice] Stop writing your damn lists and do something already.
Nearly sixty years passed before James realized he’d fallen into some sort of monstrous, perpetual work machine, but by then it was, of course, too late to do anything about it.
Pablo had to admit, “busted flat in Boca Raton” didn’t sound as smooth as “busted flat in Baton Rouge,” but it was a lot better than the last time when he’d had to try to fit “Trenton, New Jersey” into the song.
Judy discovered that the true magic of Halloween was how one pound of Halloween candy could add five pounds to her waist.
Happiness is finding that your local market carries the full line of Annabelle Candy Bars.
I’ve heard rumours of it, but my only question is does it have figs in it?
I sometimes think that other people enjoy your obsessions as much as, if not more than, you do.
Rosie’s highlight of the week was when co-workers referred to her as ‘a real ogre’.
As inspired by: You can call me, 'Sir''s mission impossible
I’d like to start up a list of all the animals featured on Scrine, but I’m worried this would then obligate me to deliver annual presents to all of them.
I know they aren’t the official words and that The Angels didn’t even start it up, but you’d think somewhere out in this world wide web, there would be the full lyrics.
Seeing the suffering and the misery in the workplace, Miss Jane decides that the mayhem and violence she had in mind would go too far and she tries her hand at asking politely.
After a brief hiatus from her one true path, Miss Jane, in response to the statement “why don’t ya just get fucked, sweethea..” delivers her rage with a disturbing assortment of knives, mallets and, as always, polite, if bloody, mannerisms.
Spices are so damn nice that one day I can imagine they will be outlawed (and I’ll be in gaol).
I should skip the meeting this afternoon and stay home to trim my toenails before they turn into some kind of adverbial claws.
i’m all hooked up now with the innerwebs threads running through the ground so the backyard vines can’t overpower them and the only thing i guess i forgot to ask fiosboy during his six-hour plus install, through the ubergrowth into the warehouse, is: what do you push to make the coffee come out?
I’d have trouble trusting in a god that took AAA batteries, although if they were rechargables, it’d go a long way towards proving reincarnation.
“I must be getting old,” Henry said outloud as he wiped the Cheeto crumbs from the corners of his mouth just as his dad used to do.
“A” run is something that happens to a sweater or a stocking, but “the” runs is something that happens to underwear, and is, of course, potentially much more embarrassing.
Henry Cooper said that he hired Thor because he thought he’d be good at raking leaves, but that was before he knew how many rakes the Norse god would break.