Perpetual Notion Machine

I kept running out of ideas, so I invented a Perpetual Notion Machine. Now, as long as I keep its gears oiled and its fire stoked, my lovely machine does all the writing for me. The only problem with my Perpetual Notion Machine is that it occasionally gets jammed. When this happens, I have to clean out the quips and fragments that are caught in the machinery. The following is what I swept out the last time I cleared a jam. I hope you like it. Enjoy.

Workaholic
Sometimes I think I may be a workaholic. Which is funny, because I don't even like the taste of workahol. I used to excuse my working by saying "I only work to be social," but now that I work alone, I can no longer consider myself a social worker.

Trumps Like A Duck
Have you heard the song "That Girl"? Here's a guy who's got a thing for a girl who has a "body built just like a coke bottle". So she's an amputee with a flat ass and a bad haircut. So there's that.

Now
The full moon is shining straight down on our house. It looks like the porch light is on. The window seat, if we had one, would be nestled in the bay window bathed in moonlight. My son is asleep. He sleeps the sleep of the sleepy. He usually sleeps sprawled on, or at least near, his bed in a position I like to call “Narcoleptics Should Never Run”. Tonight is no exception. There are almost no raccoons in our chimney. They are on the front lawn. They are also bathed in moonlight. They, unlike the window seat, are cavorting, dancing, laughing, singing, taunting. Like the window seat, they are imaginary. But Foxy tells me they’re out there. And I believe her. The cats are asleep. The cats are awake. The cats exist in that place between waking and dreaming where they will always love Peter Pan. The popcorn is done. The laundry is not.

Time Travel
Some say time travel is difficult, even impossible. Time travel isn't difficult, it's unavoidable. You want difficult, try time stopping. Traveling forwards in time is easy. It just takes a lot of waiting. Be patient. And if we can't go backwards, well, neither can cows.

Baked Lays
The first time I heard about "Baked Lays", I thought it was a joke about spring break in Cancun. My bad.

Questions that keep me awake at night...
Taking inflation into account, how tall would Lincoln be today?
If the Shakers were more whimsical, would they have invented the Lego block?
Do all the children live in the shoe, or just the old lady?

Assvertising
Since when have people started advertising products and teams across their seat of their pants? What kind of click-through rates do they get?

Crystal Ball
I couldn't afford a crystal ball so I bought a watermelon and painted it transparent. The future...I seed it!

Hitch
Another mystery solved. I've often wondered why people with trailer hitches on their cars, cover the hitch with a sliced tennis ball. Is it to make their tail-end more visible? No. Is it to lessen the blow when the UPS man trips over it? No.

It is quite simply that these people have woken up once too often to find that a boat or camper has attached itself, in the middle of the night, to their hitch. A neighbor's boat trailer, for example, had been pulled off its cement blocks, across the lawns and onto the hitch.

Why does this happen, you ask? Simple: Valence electrons.

Valence electrons are the electrons that a hitch uses to bond with other elements. As you'll no doubt realize from looking at the Periodic Table of the Elements, Trailer Hitches (QM) have six available valence electrons. They require a full complement of eight in order to be stable.

Therefore, any element with two available valence electrons will feel an irresistible pull towards the Trailer Hitch, sometimes forming lethal compounds.

In the end it is best to bond the Trailer Hitch to the innocuous, and very common element, Tennis Ball (HW).

"All stalkers please report to the break room"
I hear funny things sometimes. For weeks a radio morning guy (read: "on-air personality") has announced another upcoming Freak-Ass Friday. Now I have no idea what a Freak-Ass Friday is, but it certainly sounds interesting. I imagine people showing up at the studio dressed in the most outlandish costumes. Or maybe a guy with a mole on his rump losing to a man with three buttocks. Something interesting. But it turns out the dj was actually saying "Free Gas Friday" not "Freak-Ass Friday." Ah...well. Nevertheless, next week I shall declare my own personal Freak-Ass Friday.

Renfield's Lament: A Poem
I catch more flies with honey,
I've done it all my life,
It makes the flies taste funny,
But it...he he he he he he he...No, Master, No!...I didn't tell!.........Thud.

Free Acrobat Trial
"Free Acrobat Trial" sounded a lot more exciting before I realized it's only a download of document reading software. I was hoping it was a Cirque du Soleil / CourtTV Crossover Event. Oh, well.

Fire!
My English teacher explained to me about "you understood", but I didn't.

Confused and Disorganized
Whenever I feel confused or disorganized, I just think of my Mother’s advice, "A place for everything and place in thing every its", and suddenly I feel sane by comparison.

Hammered Dulcimer
Have musicians always been heavy drinkers? Is this how the Hammered Dulcimer got its name?

Prison: A Haiku
Incarceration
Solitary Confinement
Recidivism

Haiku: A Haiku
Syllables of five
But then another seven
I miss limericks

Raiders of the Lost Ark - Alternative Ending
"Don't look Marian! What ever you do! Don't look!"
"Don't what?"
"Look!"
"Alright! I will!"
Marian gets vaporized by the wrath of God.

100 Words
One hundred words I need to write. I don't know...that's more than I've written in such a long time. Dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, makes it a challenge. Getting the words out one after another, that's the hard part. Editing is easy, change a word here, rearrange a sentence there, no problem. But when writing from scratch, I lack direction. I need a compass, a road map, a kindly stranger to point the way. I think I'm going to give up. One hundred words is just too much to write. I'll never be able to write it on my own...oh, wait...never mind.

An Ode to Erotic Asphyxiation: A Haiku
(with apologies to Tennessee Williams and Vivien Leigh)

Oh my dear, I have
always depended on the
kindness of stranglers.

S&M
I created an S&M survey online but all the sadists refused to click the 'Submit' button.

Birds Do Not Sing In Caves
Thoreau said "Birds do not sing in caves", which is a pity because they're missing out on a killer echo.

Fire Safe
I was just unlocking our fire safe and thinking, "that's a misnomer". Fire safe. No it's not. In fact, I think it was Frankenstein's monster who said it best, "fire bad". It might even be an oxymoron. Fire safe, that is. Not Frankenstein's monster.

Floor Stripper
My wife and I went to Home Depot to get a floor stripper but we ended up getting a table dance.

experts-exchange.com
For years I wondered why Experts Exchange had a hyphen in their domain name, experts-exchange.com. They were early enough that they could have any domain they wanted. Then one day I saw their reasoning when I saw the domain misquoted. When you see expertsexchange.com, your brain divides the words up in a different way. (Give yourself time. You’ll figure it out.)

Start a Renfaire
Want to start a Renfaire? First, you'll need a Renfield.

AmericanSingles
Shouldn't AmericanSingles.com be a Web site about cheese?