Chicken Soup for the Soulless (a parody)

beautiful description of death

2008-09-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

A terminally ill man had been visiting his pastor. As he was preparing to leave, he turned to his pastor and said, "Pastor, I am afraid to die. Tell me what lies on the other side."

Very quietly, the pastor said, "I don't know."

"You don't know?" the man asked incredulously. "You're a Christian man, you're a preacher. Don't you know what is on the other side?"

The pastor had been holding the handle of the door to his study. From the other side of the door came a sound of scratching and whining, and as he opened the door, a dog sprang into the room and leaped on him with an eager show of gladness.

Turning to his parishoner as the dog ran to the center of the room and stood by the nice new ottoman, the pastor said, "Did you notice my dog? He's never been in this room before. He didn't know what was inside. He knew nothing except that his master was here, and when the door opened, he sprang in without fear. I know little of what is on the other side of death, but I do know one thing: I know my master is there, and that is enough."

And that's when he kicked the dog for piddling on the furniture.

May today there be peas within you,
And lettuce and watercress too.
May you trust God that you are exactly
Where you are meant to be,
Unless you're in Harrisburg, or
Just outside Augusta, Georgia,
In which case you're probably screwed.
I believe that friends are quiet angels
Who quietly bear us along when our wings
Have trouble remembering how to fly.
(So please don't drop me. It's a long way down.)

The Golden Slippers

2005-11-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

With only three days to go before Thanksgiving, the spirit of the season hadn't caught up with Donna yet. Cars were packed into the parking lot of the local supermarket, and it was even worse inside the store. Shopping carts and last-minute shoppers jammed the aisles and packed the checkout lanes so that the shortest one still would take at least twenty minutes.

In front of Donna were two small children, a boy about five years old and his little sister. The boy wore a ragged coat. Enormously large, tattered tennis shoes jutted far out in front of his much-too-short jeans. He clutched several crumpled dollar bills in his grimy hands.

The girl's clothing resembled her brother's. Her head was a matted mass of curly hair. Reminders of an evening meal showed on her small face. She carried a beautiful pair of shiny, gold house slippers from Aisle 6.

When the children finally reached the checkout register, the girl carefully placed the shoes on the counter. She treated them as though they were a treasure. The clerk rang up the bill. "That will be $16.09," he said.

Tinny Christmas music blared from Donna's cell phone, the sign of an impending call. "Myron! It's so good to hear from you!" she said loudly, oblivious to the annoyed stares of shoppers around her. "No, I'm just out finishing the shopping for Thursday. I got the candied yams for Mother, but I couldn't find the stuffing you said your daughter likes. Are you sure Stove Top even makes jellybean flavor?"

The boy laid his crumpled dollars atop the stand while he searched his pockets. He finally came up with $7.12. "I guess we will have to put them back," he said. "We will come back some other time, maybe tomorrow."

With that statement, a soft sob broke from the little girl. "But we need to buy them now," she wept.

"What do you mean, Myron?" Donna shrieked into her phone. "It's Monday evening, and I've been standing here for an hour at the supermarket with a twenty-pound turkey in my hands! How can Edith and Merkel even think about going to his father's?!

"Look, you give them a call and tell them we are not going to let them ruin Thanksgiving for everyone and visit his father just because the old man is 83 and all alone. He made it this far, he can make it one more year!"

The little boy cast an odd glance at Donna before turning back to his sister. "We'll go home and work on it," he said gently. "Don't cry. We'll come back."

Now other customers were shuffling nervously from one foot to the other, and a few were departing for longer but seemingly cheerier checkout lanes. One or two looked desperate enough to abandon their carts and make a break for another supermarket.

"I am not being unreasonable!" Donna shouted. "If you were with Dominion Wireless you could make that call for free! I get two thousand WheneverIDarnWellWant minutes each month, plus free weekends and even health benefits."

With a start, Donna realized that no one was moving. Her eyes swiveled onto a sniveling pair of waifs standing in front of her who suddenly began to quake. She turned her attention onto the cashier.

"Will you get them out of here?" she demanded.

"We were just going," muttered the boy. He fumbled past Donna with his sister, then surreptitiously added the golden slippers to her pile of groceries before ducking around to the exit with his sister.

Ten minutes later, Donna emerged pushing a cart loaded with groceries, still talking on her cell phone with her brother Myron. There, poking out of a bag, were the golden slippers. While the little girl pretended to be hurt and fell against Donna's legs to distract her, the older brother pulled the slippers out of the cart.

"MY PHONE!" Donna shouted. She scrambled across the sidewalk and grabbed the phone. "Myron, hold on a minute." She stood up and looked at the two children critically. "Oh, it's you. What hideous slippers you bought."

"We thought Jesus would like them," the little girl said.

"Oh swell, Myron. It's a couple of religious freaks," Donna said into the phone before putting it back down again. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.

The boy answered. "Our mommy has thyroid cancer and is going to heaven soon. Daddy said she might be with Jesus before Thanksgiving."

The girl spoke. "My Sunday school teacher said the streets in heaven are shiny gold, just like these shoes. Won't mommy be beautiful walking on those streets to match these shoes?"

Donna rolled her eyes, and got back onto her phone to tell Myron how Child Welfare needed to do a better job keeping children off the streets. The little girl tearfully watched her scurry into the distance, until her brother showed her the twenty-pound turkey he had been able to snag too.

Somehow, they knew, it would be a happy Thanksgiving after all.

Moral: If we can't "hear you now," we must be deaf -- so just hang the freaking phone up already.

The Pit of Shame
Curious to see what the original is based on? We don't have the original story on our web site, but you can find "The Golden Slippers" all sorts of places on the Internet.

Mouse trap

2005-11-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

A mouse (whose name was Clay), overhearing the farmer and his wife talking about something they had bought to "take care of the mouse" looked through a crack in the wall in hopes of seeing some kind of food. To her dismay, from the small plastic wrapper emerged not cheese but a shiny deadly mousetrap.

Devastated, the mouse retreated to the farmyard (which was called Trump Acres) and took up a loud lament, "A mousetrap's in the house! A mousetrap's in the house!" and soon enough the entire mouse population of the farm was alternately crying "Doom!" and beating their undersides with tiny clenched paws.

The chicken (whose name was Alla), scratching in the dirt for corn, clucked in annoyance at the commotion. "Little mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you," the hen said seriously before walking away. "But it is of no consequence to me, and I cannot be bothered by it. Just suck it up, princess."

The pig (whose name was Adam), still half-buried in the trough, was more sympathetic. "When I win the next farmyard election," he snorted before re-submerging headfirst in the pork barrel, "I promise to take immediate action to reduce the number of mousetraps in the house by thirty percent within three years. In the meantime, I can do nothing but pray but be assured I will. Remember that I do respect you as a person."

The cow (whose name was Felisha), which had been chewing absently on the farmer's five-leafed bumper crop, only looked off dreamily into the sunset as the mouse repeated its terrible news. "That's a bummer," she said before walking away. "Say, did you know that I'm planning to develop the land in my stall? I'm going to call it Cowtopia."

The mouse sat and absorbed these various cruelties until the sun began to sink, then gathered herself and stiffly returned to the stall to feed her young for what may be the last time, and to think.

That very night, a loud snap echoed throughout the house, and the farmer's wife (whose name was Melania)hurried to the trap, knife in hand, to add yet another tail to her growing collection. In the darkness, she did not realize that the trap had caught not a mouse but a terrible snake, one filled with deadly venom, lured there by Clay and now caught by the tail.

The farmer (whose name was Donald) rushed his wife to the hospital, where she was treated with potent anti-venom, but infection set in, followed by terrible fever.

Chicken soup, the farmer thought after returning home, under the studied gaze of the mouse lingering unnoticed on the pantry shelf just above him. Chicken soup is just what you need when you have a fever.

Not long after, the chicken's neck lay pinned across a block of wood by the farmer's mighty left hand. The right hand placed the hatchet gently on the chicken's neck, then lifted it up to deliver a mighty swing. The last thing the chicken saw with its tear-filled eyes was the mouse looking down from the farmer's shoulder, a look of grim satisfaction on her pointy little snout.

When the fever did not break, the pig soon found itself hanging upside-down from a tree in preparation to feed all the friends and neighbors who had come to tend the farmer's wife in her illness. As its life drained away, the pig noticed the mouse distributing leaflets and campaign signs. and realized that this time he had lost the election.

Sadly, the farmer's wife soon died. So many people attended her funeral that the farmer needed to slaughter his cow in order to feed them all.

"But what will become of Cowtopia now?" the cow told the smug little mouse, as she walked into her final stall. "By the way, I really hate you."

At the wake, several mourners remarked on the interesting kibbles the farmer had thought to add to the rice dish, and many of the children enjoyed playing with and petting the "gerbil" that they assumed had escaped from its cage. Several even showed the rodent to their mothers and fathers, who oohed and aahed over the nice pet and patted it on the head before wiping tears from their eyes, and one even kissed it.

But as his visitors finally filtered home, the farmer felt a cold shadow drape over him, and he shivered as he perceived the dark and mirthless eyes of the mouse upon him.

Not long after, a mysterious illness swept across the countryside, killing millions. The farmer, one of those unfortunates who did not die, spent the rest of his days locked in a sanitarium, haunted forever by visions of a large mouse with preternatural intelligence staring heartlessly at him with eyes that spoke of the void.

And so, wise reader, the next time you hear of someone facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember that when one of us is threatened, all of us are at risk. We must keep our eyes upon one another and stay involved, or suffer the consequences.

Moral: The life you save could be your own.

The Pit of Shame
Curious to see what the original is based on? We don't have the original story on our web site, but you can find "Mouse Trap" all sorts of places on the Internet.

The Rescue

2005-11-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

The Rescue

In the dark of a November morning in Markle City, a thunderstorm capsized a milk truck on the Number 17 Route. Stranded and in trouble, the buxom milkmaid Holly and her assistant sent out a call for help over the truck's CB radio.

The call came in and the city aldermen went at once into a closed-door meeting, where they worked long into the night to discuss ways to blame the mishap on the mayor, who represented another political party and was coming up for re-election. The next afternoon, they called a press conference that no one came to (except for a reporter from the Washington Post, who thought someone had mentioned free beer) and asked for a volunteer to risk life and limb to save the buxom milkmaid Holly.

All eyes swiveled on the hapless reporter.

Cursed by his misfortune at being the only attendee, the newly commissioned Rescuer of the Hapless (yet Buxom) Milkmaid Holly and her precious cargo jumped into his car and in a tizzy lurched around the town square, knocking down one newsstand after another that sold The New York Times.

After the reporter had driven off in the general direction of the Number 17 Route, the people of Markle City began their long, anxious wait for the stores to open. Christmas was only forty-five days away, and the stores had not opened yet that morning for them to finish their Christmas shopping. What was worse, the lack of fresh milk had driven the local coffee shop cappuccino clientele into a caffeine-junkie rage that threatened to leave the lower part of the city in flames.

An hour later, the reporter from the Washington Post returned, screeching his car into the scattered remains of the newsstand that had once sold The Miami Herald, sending grocery fliers and tattered copies of Cosmopolitan flying.

The cheering people ran to greet the reporter and the buxom milkmaid Holly, who emerged from the fogged-up car, breathing rather heavily. Falling exhausted on the ground, the reporter announced that there hadn't been any room in the back seat for them to bring both the buxom milkmaid Holly AND her assistant, who had made the ultimate sacrifice by being left behind.

"We never would have made it past first base otherwise," the reporter explained, a little off-balance. "I mean, trying to hit one out of the park wait, no, a line drive into left field no no no, I mean, well, um, I would have struck out," he finished, thumping himself doltishly on the forehead when he realized he would never get a Pulitzer for this slew of commentary.

Not much into baseball after the recent "blink and you missed it" World Series, the city aldermen held another emergency meeting in order to determine how the mayor once again had been at fault. But as they spoke in guarded whispers and charted out their strategies on the white board, 36-year-old Smirkov Grinn took another look at the flushed and radiant buxom milkmaid Holly, smiled determinedly, and stepped forward.

His mother grabbed his arm, pleading, "Please don't go! Your father died in a freak milking accident ten years ago and your younger brother Jocko has been lost ever since you took him to Wal-Mart this past June. Smirkov, you cannot go, you are all I have left!"

With a steely glint in his eye, Smirkov replied, "Ma, I have to go. What if everyone in this town said, 'I can't go, let someone else do it?' I cannot help but do my duty. When the call for service comes, we all must take our turn and let the chips fall where they may."

Extracting himself from her iron grip, Smirkov leapt into the station wagon before she could refasten herself, simultaneously rolled up the windows and locked the doors in an amazing display of dexterity that could have only resulted from countless years of practice, and breathed a sigh of heavy relief. As his mother threw herself in front of the car to stop him, he threw the car into reverse and prepared for the rescue by driving to a neighboring town where he knew there was a coffee shop with a full stock of steamed milk.

An hour passed, and then another, and another, leaving the town aldermen wondering how to blame this new predicament on the mayor, as they were not nearly as creative as they were politically ambitious.

Finally a single headlight pierced the fog, and the old station wagon sputtered to a stop. Smirkov's head was sticking out the driver's window because he had never bothered to refill the washer fluid and the windshield was now creased with road salt.

Cupping his hands, the chief alderman asked, "Hoy, there, did you find the buxom milkmaid Holly's assistant?"

"Yeah." Smirkov grumbled with the growl of a man who has been sorely disillusioned. "Yeah, tell my mum I found the bum. It was Jocko."

Their mother was so overjoyed that she blubbered uncontrollably while the brass section of the marching band played one song, the woodwinds played a second, and slide whistles commandeered the third.

Jocko looked overwhelmed and uncomfortable. Smirkov wore a gigantic smile on his face but whether it was the grin of someone truly as pleased as punch at finding his brother or of a frustrated postal worker with a handgun in his mail bag, no one knew for certain.

"Guess you're happy now, Ma, right?" Smirkov said at last, trying to make the best of things.

The stare their mother gave Smirkov was withering. "As if that even matters to you! Running off like that, risking your life on a fool's errand, without a thought for how it would affect your poor old mother! Didn't it occur to you that I'd be sick with worry at the thought of losing my second son as well?"

"Uh well"

"No, I don't suppose you did!" she said harshly. "Ever since you were born, the only one you've ever cared about has been yourself!

"And YOU!"

She rounded now on Jocko, who had survived his harrowing ordeal alongside the road by drinking skim milk and eating the foam padding in his seat.

"The nerve you have! Where have you been for the last five months?! Don't you know that I love the two of you so much that I would rip my legs off and feed them to crocodiles if I merely thought it would make you happy, and you can't even bother to call me or send me a lousy card on my birthday!"

And then Ma bobbled away.

"Well," Jocko said at last, as their sobbing mother receded in the distance. "Glad to see I didn't miss a thing."

Moral: If you dump your mother to rescue another, and it's your brother... don't bother.

The Pit of Shame
Copyright laws prevent us from sharing the original inspirational story that serves as the basis for today's mailing. Fortunately, lots of people on the Internet have posted stories like "Rescue at Sea" illegally for just such an emergency.

Southwest Arizona Rotten-Luck Tantra Totem

2005-09-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

Southwest Arizona Rotten-Luck Tantra Totem

Do not keep this message. The tantra totem must leave your hands within 96 hours if you are to receive an unpleasant surprise. (This is true, even if you are not superstitious, and especially so if you are stupid and gullible.)

INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HARD-LUCK LIFE

Give people exactly what they ask for, no more than that and even if you know they meant something else entirely.
Memorize people's credit card numbers.
When Trump says, "You're fired," reply, "No, YOU are," and flick the match into his comb-over.
Believe everything you hear, spend all your cash, and sleep in until 11 a.m.
When you say, "I love you," make sure you have an ulterior motive.
When you say, "I'm sorry," do something rotten first so that they know you're not just goofing around.
Be engaged to be married for at least six months if you plan to leave them at the altar.
Believe in lust at first sight.
Never laugh at anyone's dreams. Belittle them as seriously as possible.
Love deeply and passionately, until someone better comes along. (Yes, it will hurt, but your pain will quickly fade.)
In disagreements, fight to win. Name-calling works when logic won't.
Judge people by their mothers, then by how they dot their I's.
Talk faster than people can think, you might be able to sneak something by.
When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and say, "Doesn't the world have problems enough without us wasting time on this trivial issue?"
Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk, and resolve to find some easier way to do it.
Call your mother names.
Remember the three R's: Rage, Rum, and Remembering to Skip #17. (The fourth R, "redrum," is copyrighted, and we don't want to go through that again, do we?)
Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship. Make sure it's completely dead so that it won't come back to haunt you.
When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to blame someone else.
Smile when picking up the phone. The telemarketer will find you so enjoyable he will get all his friends to call as well.
Marry someone you love to talk to. As you get older, you'll want a doormat to dump all your problems on.
Spend some time alone, especially when you're the only intern on call.
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of their hair.
Remember that silence is usually the easiest answer.
Read more books about TV.
Live a good, honorable life. When you get old and think back, you'll realize how much leeway you have before people will suspect anything.
Trust in God and race your Geo Tracker like hell on wheels.
In disagreements with loved ones, deal thoroughly with the current situation so that they're completely frazzled by the time you dredge up the past.
Read between the lines, even the ones that were never written.
Share your knowledge so that everyone knows how smart you are.
Be gentle with the earth. It's the best way to avoid yard work
Pray. People will vote for you.
Never interrupt when you are being flattered. You deserve the praise.
Mind your own business, and never forget that the whole world is your business.
Don't trust people who doesn't close their eyes when you kiss. (After all, you're the only one who should be looking around while frenching.)
Once a year, go home to pick up some more clean laundry.
If you make a lot of money, use it to help others while you're still alive, or you will never reap any of the rewards yourself.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of bad luck.
Learn the rules -- then lord it over others who break them and suffer the consequences.
Remember that the best relationship is one where your love for each other is greater than your need for each other - unless you're referring to your partner.
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it; the more you abandoned, the better the prize!
Remember that your character is your destiny, but don't expect that to make any practical sense.
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon, just like Jeffrey Dahmer did.

Now, here's the FUN part!

Send this to at least five people and your life will become more interesting

0-4 people: Your life will gain more attention.
5-9 people: Your life will gain a helluvalot of attention.
9-14 people: You will have at least five surprises in the next three weeks, probably consisting of mail bombs, poisoned chocolates, and drive-by shootings. (Don't fret, you've earned it!)
15 and above: Everyone figures that someone else will take care of you, so you will be completely ignored.

Your first stroke of bad luck occurred when you received this tantra totem. We promise that you will receive even more bad luck within four days of relaying it.

P.S. Do not shoot the messenger. We have already been shot by enough bad luck.

A copy of the original inspirational e-mail that we are parodying may be found at http://web.utk.edu/~dap/NepGLTT.html. We are not responsible for feelings of warm fuzziness, hyperglycemia, or ice cream headaches that result from reading the original.

Do it today!

2005-09-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you about my brother Jocko. When he was a boy, Jocko had great difficulty in school. He was classified as educationally defunct, a condition that required both patience and medication (not for him, but for his parents, teachers, and especially his loving older brother).

But Jocko was a happy kid with a soft-shoe dance step that lit up the room, particularly when he would dance right into the wall partway through and knock a dozen framed pictures and a shelf full of knick-knacks from Mexico onto his head. Our parents acknowledged his academic difficulties but always tried to take a positive, if stretched, spin on things. "That's great, Jocko!" Ma would say. "You spelled 'cat' with only one E this time. I'm so proud of you."

You'll notice that I'm referring to Jocko in the past tense. Unfortunately we lost Jocko during a sale at Wal-Mart shortly after he graduated from high school this last June. Thanks to Jocko's inimitable fashion sense, an overenthusiastic shopper (according to the forensic know-it-all's) mistook him for a set of irregular sheets that were on sale for fifty percent off, paid for him at the checkout lane and shoved him in the trunk of her car with tons of other low-cost, low-quality items and drove off.

I have held out hope all this time that he would wander out of the dressing room, a changed man, but it hasn't happened. Today the police notified me that they have pulled his lucky underpants from the river, the pair that he swore he would never take off as long as he lived, since it was the pair he was wearing when he met Katee Sackhoff at a science fiction convention.

I've had to accept the painful truth: Jocko is dead, and I'm out the fifty bucks he owed me.

One of the worst things for me is the tragic sense of loss. Jocko wasn't a particularly articulate fellow, but his life was one of unique achievement. A fantasy writer, he has left hundreds of tremendous story ideas unwritten and undeveloped; a humorist, he had a unique knack for building up a mailing list to thousands of people and then ceasing all humor-related writing for 18 months at a time. And while I graduated from high school right on schedule, at age 18, Jocko graduated in record time. (True, it was two months before he turned 35, so it wasn't a particularly good record, but that's not the point.) Jocko was a man among giants; given time, I have no doubt he would have been even less.

Worse, I am plagued with regrets of my own. If I had known that fateful moment by the linen department was the last time I would see him, I wouldn't have asked him if the Lederhosen made me look fat. I would have said, "Jocko, where on earth did you leave the TV remote?"

I also would have taken the time to count the many blessings he brought to his loved ones every time he left the room. I would have spent our Wal-Mart trip appreciating his cantankerous smile, his cacophonous laughter, his co-dependent affection for others, and the way he was so good at getting the Coke machine to dispense free product without the machine falling on top of him just like it shows in the little warning cartoon.

When you put all Jocko's good attributes on the scale and balance them with all his irritating traits such as the CD player that was always blaring out white Christian "rap," the amount of hair he had while I was completely bald, the dirty socks that crawled around under his bed and wandered the hallways late at night, the loud tuba music that would come from his room while I was trying to sleep because he had insomnia and decided to practice at 3 a.m., the times he used to lock me on the porch roof in my underwear when we were children, or even the time he let a stupid bird loose in the car while I was driving and I ended up crashing through the neighbor's fence and into the in-ground swimming pool being used as a temporary aquarium for displaced sand sharks, or the times he would follow me around middle school like a little lost and slightly hearing-impaired puppy, or the time he thought it was really funny to run refrigerator magnets round and round my entire Stan Freberg cassette tape collection ... well, I think you can easily guess how it all measures out.

But now Jocko is gone, and with him has gone my opportunity to tell him how I've always felt to have him for a brother. I won't get another chance to tell the miserable so-and-so all I would have wanted him to hear, but if you have a younger brother, you still can do it. Tell your kid brothers what you would want them to hear if you knew it would be your last conversation!

The last time I talked to Jocko was the day we went to Wal-Mart. He called me to say, "Hi, Smirkov! Look at these skis! I bet I can walk all the way to the pet section while wearing them," and then tripped right into the fish tanks. That memory gives me something to treasure forever.

If there is any purpose at all to Jocko's death, it'd be the first time anything that chowderhead ever did that had a reason. Maybe it's to make others appreciate more of life and to have people, especially families, take the time to let each other know how we feel about one another.

MORAL: When you're parked on a suspension bridge and dragging that body
out of the trunk, remember -- he's not heavy, he's your brother.

Pit of shame
Due to copyright laws, we are unable to share with you the original vignette that we are parodying here. However, you may see it posted illegally at: www.inspirationalstories.com/4/460.html

Heaven can wait

2005-09-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

Matt Wegman pulled onto the interstate and felt the smooth acceleration of his sport utility vehicle. The roadside scenery fell behind as the road raced on, and Wegman felt completely at peace.

From time to time he would run into a pothole or run over a small family sedan on its way to the Jersey Shore, but with his SUV's massive frame and superior suspension system, he barely noticed the bump in the road even as the other motorists were dispatched in flowering red balls of fire beneath his wheels.

Forty miles and three-quarters of a tank of gas later, it suddenly occurred to Wegman that he was dead. He remembered dying; he recalled those last desperate weeks in Texas, gasping for fresh air that could not be found; and he remembered that he had traded in his SUV, affectionately called Bessie, years earlier for a Hummer. He began to wonder where the road was leading them.

He came upon a high, white stone wall along the right side of the road, just as the fuel light came on. The wall was made of the finest marble, and far up the hill he saw a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

When he drew close, he saw that the arch was set over a magnificent gate made of mother-of-pearl, and the street on the other side of the gate looked like it was made from the purest gold. He parked the SUV, let out a low whistle, and thought, "Man, I'd love to try the four-wheel drive on that!"

A man seated at a desk to one side of the gate, with the dirt-stained clothes and hefty frame of a laborer, looked up as Wegman stepped out of Bessie, and smiled. "Hi," he said. "Can I help you?"

Wegman tried not to react as the man reached out a grease-stained hand. He forced a smile and asked, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is -- hell!" The man screamed, and grabbed his wrist as a wasp stung him on the back of his right hand. From beyond the gate came the sounds of happy laughter, mixed with birdsong and carried aloft on a sweet-smelling breeze with the merest suggestion of wildflowers in full bloom. Softly from the background came the gentle susurrations of a river whose mere thought filled the receptive heart with new life.

"Err," Wegman said, an eye on Bessie's fuel gauge. "Could I trouble you for some gas?"

"It's not a problem at all," the man at the desk said, sucking at the welt now growing on his hand. "Come inside, and I'll be happy to direct you to some of the best places to get some. We have a burrito stand just down the street, and a few blocks away there's a Chinese restaurant that's a great place to get lots of gas."

Everyone's a comedian, thought Wegman, as the man gestured and the gate swung open.

"Can old Bessie," said Wegman, climbing into his SUV, "come in too?"

"Oh dear," the man said. "I'm sorry, sir, but we don't allow those inside. Besides, this isn't the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Our roads are so smooth you won't even notice you're driving anywhere."

Wegman thought a moment, then turned back onto the road and continued on his way.

Just as it seemed Bessie was running on fumes and surely would conk out, Wegman came to a dirt road leading through a gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was a soft, broken-down split-rail fence. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against an apple tree and strumming on an acoustic guitar. On the fields beyond the man, children raced back and forth, kicking soccer balls to the shouts and jeers of parents. Rows and rows of identical houses stretched out as far as the eye could see, under a shimmering brown haze that filled the air above.

"Excuse me!" Wegman called to the man. "Do you mind if I come in?"

The guitarist looked up. He had a tired face and brown eyes that seemed lined with care and worry. About him hung the aura of a man used to newspaper deadlines, a man deeply acquainted with role-playing games, and a man who while deeply gifted artistically had never been able to make it commercially as a rock musician.

"Yeah, sure, come on in," he said, and he turned back his attention to the chords for "Blowin' in the Wind," which Wegman had not ever heard in 6/8 time, minor key before.

"What about Bessie?" Wegman asked, patting his SUV on the side of the door.

"Yeah, bring her in," the guitarist said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at a nearby convenience store. "You can fill her up over at the pump."

Wegman grabbed a Coke and some Slim Jims from the convenience store, then walked to the pump to fill Bessie's tank. An LED display on the bump listed the price as $6.579 per liter. When he had paid, he drove toward the man who was sitting by the tree.

The gate and fence were nowhere to be seen; everywhere Wegman looked, the same soulless suburbia rolled on and on without interruption. There was no way to leave.

"What do you call this place?" Wegman asked.

"This is hell," the man answered. "My name's Lou, by the way."

Wegman shook the proffered hand enthusiastically. "Well, that's confusing," he said, pausing only to choke for five minutes on the ground-level ozone. "The man down the road said that was hell too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the clean air, hydrogen-powered cars, fresh water and happy animals frolicking beneath rows of trees?" said Lou. Overhead the sun squatted motionless over a landscape that never knew the peace of night. "Nope. That's heaven."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

Moral: With gas prices so high, people who drive SUVs can just go to hell.

Pit of shame
See the original at http://flyservers.registerfly.com/members5/palsiowa.com/joke.html

The Room

2000-07-31T17:39:00.000-07:00

In that place between wakefulness and dreams, I found myself in a room. There were no distinguishing features save for the one wall covered with small index card files -- like the ones in libraries that list titles by author or subject in alphabetical order. But these files, which stretched from floor to ceiling and seemingly endlessly in either direction, had very different headings.

As I drew near the wall of files, the first to catch my attention was one that read, "Girls That I Have Liked." I opened it and began flipping through the cards, then quickly shut it in shock as I recognized the names written on each one.

Without being told, I knew exactly where I was. This lifeless room with its small files was a crude catalog system for my life! Here were written the actions of my every moment, big and small, in a detail that my memory could not match.

A sense of wonder and curiosity, coupled with horror, stirred within me as I began randomly opening files and exploring their contents.

Some brought joy and sweet memories, others a sense of shame and regret so intense that I would look over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching. A file named "Friends" was next to one marked "Friends I Have Betrayed." The titles ranged from the mundane to the outright weird: "Books I Have Read," to "Lies I Have Told," to "Chores I Have Done," to "Jokes I Have Laughed At."

Some were almost hilarious in their exactness: "Things I've Yelled at My Brothers," or "Days My Clothes Weren't Put Away." Others I couldn't even laugh at: "Times I Broke The Hearts of Those Who Cared About Me," or "Days I Forgot to Even Say Good Morning," or "Things I Have Muttered Under My Breath at My Parents."

I never ceased to be surprised by the contents. Often there were many more cards than I had expected; sometimes, fewer than I had hoped.

But when I saw categories such as "Girly Magazines Hidden Under My Mattress," "Habitual Lack of Gratitude," "Nights the Stereo Was Up Too Loud," and "Times That The Garbage Had Not Been Taken Out," an almost animal rage broke within me.

Sickened as I was to think that such moments had been recorded, only one thought dominated my mind. "This is crazy!" I yelled. "This can't continue!"

Enough was enough.

I had not previously suspected the depth of her obsession, but I surely knew who was stalking me, and I had to stop her, now, before things got too far out of control. I had read enough enough Time-Life serial killer books to realize how such relationships could spiral into broken hearts, shattered dreams, and -- eventually -- uncontrollable gut-wrenching violence.

I stormed outside, crossed the porch, and burst through the door on the other side of the duplex. I did not knock or announce my presence. I wanted to surprise her.

I failed miserably. She already knew I was coming and had baked my favorite cookies.

I glared at her from across the kitchen table. "All right, Mom," I said. "I can't take this anymore. The baby pictures and hair clippings were one thing, but this filing card business has gotten out of hand. You've got to end it. Now."

She studied me carefully, then began to scribble something down and filed it under, "Times He Forgot To Wipe His Feet Off Before Coming Inside."

"All right," she lied. "It's finished."

Moral: Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes, and a mother's undying love.

Pit of shame
Read the original version of "The Room."

A Shmily for You

2000-07-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

Throughout a marriage lasting more than half a century, my grandparents played a special game with each other. The goal of the game, from what I could tell, was to write the word "shmily" in unexpected places for the other to find. They'd take turns leaving "shmily" around the house, and as soon as one of them discovered it, it was that person's turn to hide the word once more.

They dragged "shmily" with their fingers through the yellow canisters of sugar and flour to await whoever was preparing the next meal. They smeared it in steam on the gold-trimmed mirror after hot showers, where it would reappear bath after bath. Once Grandma even unrolled an entire roll of lemon-hued toilet paper to leave "shmily" on the very last sheet.

Little notes with "shmily" scribbled hurriedly were found taped to the dash and steering wheel of the gold Audi, stuffed inside shoes and left under pillows. The word was traced in mantelpiece dust and fireplace ashes, scrawled across catheter bags, prescription bottles, the canary-colored driving citations. This mysterious word was as much a part of my grandparents' house as the Metamucil in the medicine cabinet.

Although I once asked my grandfather what "shmily" meant, he only shook his head and said it was something that my grandmother really enjoyed, so he played the game so that she'd know just how much he cared for her. When I asked my grandmother about the word, she'd purse her lips and say nothing.

It took me years before I was able to fully appreciate my grandparents' antics. Although three failed love affairs (two ending in botched suicide attempts) have kept me from believing in love that is pure and enduring, I never doubted my grandparents' relationship. They had love down pat. It was more than just a game to them. The word "shmily" colored their entire relationship, bringing to it an intensity that few are lucky enough to experience.

I remember how Grandma was always cornering Grandpa in the tiny kitchen, wrapping his arms around her for an affectionate hug or a peck on the cheek. Grandma knew Grandpa well enough that she could always finish his sentences before he got the words out, and she'd insist on helping him with the daily crosswords and word jumbles. She'd never let him forget about the household chores that needed done, or the special milestones in their relationship that deserved recognition, and with a quiet grace he'd always indulge her.

Sometimes he'd even smile whimsically while watching her from a distance and say, "Yep, I sure do know how to pick 'em, don't I?" Before every meal, both grandparents would bow their heads and give thanks, marveling over how God had blessed a marriage such as theirs.

But there was a dark cloud in my grandparents' life: Grandma's breast cancer. When the disease had first appeared ten years earlier, Grandpa had doted on Grandma with considerable passion. Day and night he hovered by her bedside, as if the exhaustion and pain that often made her too tired to talk was not a bother to his eyes. On his own initiative, he enthusiastically painted their bedroom bright yellow so that Grandma could be surrounded by sunshine while bedridden. It was while she was stuck indoors that the word "shmily" appeared with greater frequency. Often Grandma wrote it several times for each time Grandpa did, a sign of her deepening love for him in her time of need.

That time, Grandma amazingly had recovered, but now the cancer had returned, with a vengeance. With the help of a cane and my grandfather's steady hand, the couple continued to attend church, where often Grandma was surprised by decorations in blazing autumn hues. At Grandpa's encouragement, the children's classes often would present Grandma with painted pictures of smiley faces. And on Easter morning, the word "shmily" appeared 32 times on a special insert printed on beautiful goldenrod paper.

Quickly enough, my grandmother grew too weak to attend the services and could no longer leave the house. During that time, Grandpa would go in her stead and come home with bouquets of bright daffodils, buttercups, and tulips provided by concerned parishioners.

Shortly, what we all dreaded finally happened. Only a day after Grandpa surprised Grandma with a new blonde wig, to replace the hair she had lost, she was gone.

"Shmily." It was scrawled in yellow on the pink ribbons of my grandmother's funeral bouquet, on the church banners, over the altar, on little placards given to everyone in attendance to wear. As the crowd thinned and the last mourners turned to leave, my aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and creditors came forward and gathered around Grandma one last time.

As they sobbed, Grandpa stepped up to the casket. "Forty-five years," he murmured in a heartbroken voice. "Forty-five long years." Sighing, he stared at Grandma's body, dressed in a mustard-hued pantsuit he had bought her especially for this occasion, and then, taking a shaky breath, he began to sing. Despite his tears, his song was a melody of unexpected triumph and freedom amid the palpable despondency of the others.

Shaking with my own sorrow, I will never forget that moment. For I knew that, although I couldn't begin to fathom the depth of their love, I had been privileged to witness its unmatched beauty. When it had ended and the crowd dissipated, Grandpa sat down in a chair, smiling to himself as if he had been able to find God's peace amidst the tragedy of Grandma's death.

I could wait no longer to learn the secret of such a love. I approached him and asked what "shmily" had meant. Holding back his tears, he finally explained its deep significance.

"S-H-M-I-L-Y," Grandpa spelled, his soft laughter clean and sober as his eyes drifted back to the golden casket. "It was your Grandma's phrase, that old bat. 'STOP! How Much I LOATHE Yellow!'"

Moral: True love is color-blind.

Pit of shame
Read the original version of "A Shmily for You."

I have two choices

2000-07-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

Barry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. Whenever someone asked him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!" Rumor had it that he had lost a public-relations job because he was so positive even the client got edgy.

Barry was a unique editor because several reporters followed him around from newspaper to newspaper, due to his positive attitude and the deep-seated passion that it would inspire in those around him. Even after reporters found better-paying jobs, they were still committed to following Barry to his new workplace just to warn his coworkers and give him wedgies when no one was looking.

Barry's managerial style really confused me. "I don't get it!" I said to him one day. "You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"

(That was before I had a true understanding of bipolar mania, and realized I was always hitting Barry on the upswing.)

Barry chuckled outrageously. "Each morning," he said, "I wake up and say to myself, 'Barry, you have a choice today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.' So I choose to be in a good mood.

"Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim, or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn. And every time someone comes to me with a complaint, I can choose to accept their complaining, or I can point out the positive side. I always choose the positive side of life!"

"Yeah, um, right," I said, wondering what that dark lump was on the side of Barry's neck but deciding not to say anything. Instead, I began to look for an escape route. To my left beckoned the door to the dark room. All the photographers were currently out on assignment. If I could duck inside, I might escape.

"You know, you should try some St. John's wort," Barry said. "That stuff will clear the blues right out of you! Have you ever tried it?"

As he searched through his desk, I dived into the darkroom and scurried behind a case of chemicals.

Unfortunately, Barry's intuition was as strong as his perpetual enthusiasm, and he quickly found me, flicking on the lights and smiling a toothy grin that was just screaming for a hammer.

"Life is all about choices!" he said. "When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live life!"

"Barry!" I screeched. "You probably just ruined miles of footage by turning on the lights! Mark's going to kill you!"

"Oh," said Barry. "Well, Mark has a choice. He can either be upset about losing his exclusive Pulitzer-winning negatives, or he can see this as a chance to get even better pictures."

"But when is the president getting impeached again any time soon?" I said.

I managed to escape Barry that time by drinking a few chemicals and lapsing into a coma. When they carried me out, he was telling the ambulance squad that we could either feel bad for me for drinking the chemicals, or be glad that now no one would accidentally spill them.

Soon thereafter, I left newspapers to start my own magazine in Alaska. Barry and I lost touch, but I often thought about him when I ate too much candy and got a sugar buzz.

Several years later, I heard that Barry went to cover a bank robbery and was held hostage by three armed robbers. During the stand-off, seventeen of the bullets fired by police went awry and hit Barry.

After eighteen hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Barry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. (He had been shot in the head.) My curiosity was aroused, and when I saw Barry about six months after the accident, I asked him how he was.

He said, "If I were any better, I'd be twins! Want to see my scars?"

"Only if I can re-open them," I replied. I asked him what had gone through his mind when the robbers had held him hostage.

"Well," Barry replied, "the first thing was that I should have had Tony cover the robbery, although he would have been the one in this mess then."

"Probably not," I interjected, although it went unnoticed.

"Then," continued Barry, "as I lay bleeding on the sidewalk and the police were taking care of the paperwork, I remembered that I had two choices. I could choose to resent the cops for ignoring me while I lay dying at their feet, or I could choose to live. I chose to live."

I tried to hide the disappointment on my face. "So weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness? A few brain cells?"

"The paramedics were great, really positive! They kept telling me I was going to be fine." Barry smiled at the memory. "But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man.' I knew I needed to take action."

"So what did you do?" I asked. "Pass Smiley buttons out to the crowd?"

"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Barry. "He asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Then I laughed."

"'Oh swell,' one of the doctors said. 'He's one of THOSE. Can't we just list him DOA? Please?' The other doctor just shook her head and shoved an ether mask on me, to administer the anesthetic.

"I pulled down the mask and told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead!'

"'Shut up, or I'll finish the job,' the doctor said as she shoved the mask back onto my face. So I took their advice and passed out."

Barry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, all of whom since have resigned their fellowships at that hospital and scattered across the country.

I will never forget Barry as long as I live, nor will I forget the lesson he taught me. Every day we have a choice: We can choose to live fully, or we can choose to annoy the stuffings out of everyone around us.

Moral: You too have a choice: You can either send us oodles and oodles of money, or you can let our poor, penniless, innocent children go hungry. Please make the right choice.

Pit of shame:
Read the original version of "I have two choices."

Smile

2000-07-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

She smiled at a saddened stranger.
Her smile made him feel better.
He recalled the kindness of a friend
And so wrote him a thank-you letter.

The friend was so pleased with the thanks
He left a large tip after lunch.
The waitress, surprised by the tip's size,
Bet all the money on a hunch.

The next day she picked up her winnings
And gave away part to a bum
The bum was oh so very grateful
He'd starved for two whole days, then some.

After the bum finished his dinner,
He left for his small dingy room.
He did not know that, at that moment,
he might face a terrible doom.

En route he grabbed a shivering puppy
And brought him home to keep him warm.
The small worn pup was very grateful
To be taken in out of the storm.

That night the house burst into fire.
The puppy barked a loud alarm.
He yelped until the household woke,
protecting all of them from harm.

One of the boys the puppy rescued
Grew up to be the president.
When strife ruled in the Middle East
Nuclear bombs were what he sent.

The missiles killed millions of people
perpetuating World War III.
Soon famine ruled in every nation --
the end of all humanity.

In all of mankind's history,
this made a pretty nasty dent --
all stemming from a simple smile
That hadn't cost a man a cent.

So next time that you feel like smiling,
I beg you, heed this warning well:
Remember that the life you save
could send this merry world to hell.

Pit of shame
Read the original version of "Smile."

The Price of Freedom

2000-07-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what happened to the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Neither did we, until it became a homework assignment, but then we did some research and were humbled by what we found. As the Fourth of July celebration approaches, remember the terrible price paid by these men for the freedom we now have to choose between presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore.

* Five signers were captured by the British and pickled in brine before being packed off to England, where they had to scrub the royal toilets just to earn enough to buy a few measly scraps of crumpets and scones.

* Twelve signers had their homes ransacked and razed by the British. Worse, their insurance agencies refused to pay even a bent shilling because their homeowner's policies did not cover acts of war.

* Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, only to find them three months after the war ended, working at Wal-Mart with tongue studs and green hair.

* Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War, and yet were never memorialized in an NBC miniseries or PBS special, nor were their descendants showcased with bit parts in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot."

Yet despite these horrors, fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. What kind of men were they?

Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists (which means they pretty much deserved what they got, if not worse). Eleven were merchants who ran double-coupon specials only after raising their standard prices. Nine were farmers and large plantation owners who built their fortunes upon slave labor, after encouraging the original American Indian squatters to head west.

They were men of means, and well-educated, but they signed their names on the Declaration of Independence without reading the fine print because George Washington, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson had assured them that King George III couldn't read Jefferson's writing anyway, especially with those silly flourishes that couldn't decide whether they were S's or F's. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his boats swept from the seas by the British Navy. He raffled off his home and properties to pay his debts and died wearing bargain-brand clothes he had scrounged from a Dumpster behind Kmart. George Washington, on the other hand, a landowner who had seduced a rich widow, became the first president of the United States.

Thomas McKeam served in the Congress without pay, never realizing how much pork a congressman could funnel before finally getting caught. He was so hounded by the British that he was forced to hide his family in a cemetery plot in southern Virginia to avoid capture. (The ruse was so complete that even history books believed McKeam's family to be deceased.)

British troops looted the summer homes of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton -- forcing them instead to spend all year on their sprawling 400-acre estates, basking on pitiful green lawns with stylish lawn furniture, throwing summer barbecues, and suffering the luscious scents of their imported rose and tulip gardens all year round.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr. noted that the British Gen. Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged Gen. George Washington to open fire, thus permitting his home to be destroyed. (It later turned out that Nelson had instructed Washington to fire upon the house of his neighbor Bob, whose German shepherd Rufus had kept Nelson up many a night.) Almost two centuries later, the family suffered its final humiliation when a half-cousin, Charles Nelson Reilly, became a celebrity on Hollywood Squares.

While Francis Lewis was away from home, his irate wife sold his home and properties to Thomas Nelson Jr.'s now-homeless ex-neighbor Bob. The British destroyed Lewis' estate and jailed his wife, who fell in love with her captor and eloped with him to the Dominican Republic, where their descendants still man the fence separating that country from Haiti. Meanwhile, Bob moved his belongings into a hollow tree in the New Jersey Pinelands, eventually spawning tales of the mysterious Jersey Devil.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside by her snoring. After hiding for more than a year in local forests and caves, to reduce his sizeable sleep deficiency, he returned home to find her snoring worse than ever, his children working as unpaid interns for Jefferson's law practice, his fields and property in ruins, and his friend Bob nowhere to be seen. Driven mad by loss, Hart began a career of gorilla warfare that involved dressing in an ape suit and stealing bananas from British troops. Eventually known as "the wild man of the woods," Hart became the basis for Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes."

Norris and Livingston and the others suffered similar, equally indescribable fates. (Barring the part about the bananas, of course.)

Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These men were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians (well, none of them, perhaps, except for Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry) but soft-spoken gentlemen who preferred bottled water and non-alchohoic beer. And while they could have possessed a lifetime of free admission to Wimbledon tennis under English rule, they valued holding the reins to power in this country even more. Standing tall, straight and unwavering, they pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance upon the protection of divine providence, we [State Our Names] mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our fratboy honor."

These men gave us an America run by rich white men from Washington, D.C., rather than by rich white men across the Atlantic Ocean. The history books don't say much about what happened in the Revolutionary War. We didn't just fight the British. We were British subjects at that time! We were actually fighting against our *own* government.

(Eighty years later, the United States government would whip the South back into line for pulling that same kind of stunt.)

Some of us take our liberties for granted, but we shouldn't. Take a few minutes during your Fourth of July holiday and silently thank these patriots for not being around to draft you for private conscription. It's not much to ask for the price they paid. Remember: Freedom is never free! (Nor are public parking lots, thirty-day trial subscriptions to travel protection services, and free window installation estimates.)

Show your support by sending this to as many people as you can! It's time we get the word out. The Fourth of July has more to it than bottle rockets, hunting rifles and Michelob beer.

Pit of shame
Read the original version of "The Price of Freedom."