Category Archives: Now That’s Just Silly

Based on a True Story!, Now That's Just Silly

Doughnutz

Leave a comment

At My Neighborhood Kroger (if their commercials are to be believed, that’s now the name of the store), they’ve started putting “freshly” baked doughnuts near the entrance of the store, those magnificent bastards.

So far, I’ve always managed to resist the temptation, but I always give them a fleeting, longing glance as I leave the store. Only today, after I’d been staring for well on 30 seconds, I realized a guy was standing next to them, giving me a weird look.

“Oh, sorry man,” I said, “I was looking at the doughnuts.”

He shook his head. “You weren’t lookin’ at doughnuts,” he said, “You were lookin’ at DEEZ NUTS!”

Now That's Just Silly

2 A.M. Isn’t Real Life (A poem?)

Leave a comment

Here I am, 21st century man:
Hating the past, afraid of future, bored of the present.
A postmodern joke, a meaningless narrative, an absurdist nightmare (a meaningless joke, an absurdist narrative, a postmodern nightmare? an absurdist joke, a postmodern narrative, a meaningless nightmare?)
Infinite possibility and potential: brutally murdered by infinite apathy and indecision.
Half-glimpsing half-truths of other worlds, half-believing them until the morning.
Lava inside an ice cube inside a furnace.
Bullet point philosophies:

  • Understood superficially
  • Adopted halfheartedly
  • Discarded casually
  • Lather, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum (and what nausea it is)
Now That's Just Silly

The People’s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game

Leave a comment

Sure, there’s only five of you against a world full of reactionaries, but you have Revolutionary Spirit! You can’t possibly fail. Nothing can stand in your way! Now if only you could find your Revolutionary To-Do List…

I wrote this a while ago, and I kept telling myself I’d eventually go back and fix some of the (minor) problems with it. I guess I probably never will, so here it is as is.

It’s an “Interaction Fiction” about a guy named Karl who’s the leader of a ragtag group of Revolutionaries (never forget the capital “R”!) trying to take over the town of Freedonia. As you hopefully can see from the image this isn’t a serious political commentary (I hadn’t even read The Communist Manifesto when I wrote it). If you are offended by it, please turn off your computer immediately because the Internet is probably not a safe place for you to be.

I entered it into a contest and won a $25 Amazon gift card, making this the first (and so far only) thing I’ve written that I’ve ever been paid for. There is no justice in this world.

If you’re interested in playing it, you can do so in-browser. If you don’t know how to play, just type “help.” You don’t have to play through it all at once, either, you can type “save” at the prompt to save your game and it’ll give you a URL you can use to reload it.

I recommend you download and listen to the Revolutionary Soundtrack while playing.

If you’ve played IF before and have an interpreter program, you can download the game file. If you don’t know what that means, just ignore it and don’t worry about it.

Good luck, comrades.

Now That's Just Silly

The First Time

Leave a comment

“I’m a little nervous,” she said, frowning a little. “I’ve never done this before.”

“To tell you the truth, me either,” he said, grinning sheepishly.

“Oh!” she said, brightening considerably, “Well that makes me feel a lot better.”

“Why?” he laughed, “It makes me a hell of a lot more nervous to know neither of us know what we’re doing.”

“Well,” she said, grinning devilishly, “At least I know if something goes wrong it’s not my fault.”

“I guess that’s true,” he laughed.

“Besides,” she said, “It can’t be that hard. Total morons manage to do it just fine all the time.”

“Maybe it’s because they don’t think too hard about it,” he said, “We might think too hard about it and mess it up.”

“I guess that could happen,” she said.

“It’s something that has to be done though,” he said.

“Oh definitely,” she said, “It’s not something that you can just not do.”

“And you know, with you, I just…it just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she laughed, “I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself after all.”

“Well, I guess we should get it over with,” he said, sighing.

He turned back to her car and stared at the front wheel. “Let’s get this tire changed.”

Horror/Supernatural, Now That's Just Silly

Hard Day to be a Cop

1 Comment

Angels poured out of the rip in the sky in a never-ending stream. The blinding white light shone down from the hole almost metaphorically, as if it were illuminating the spiritual darkness of the city below. And still the angels poured out of heaven, landing in heaps in the streets of Las Vegas.

And this had to happen on the day I’m assigned to take the new guy around, Officer Jarvis sighed to himself.

The kid stared at the sky, his fresh face glowing in wonder and fear.

“Has this ever happened before?” the rookie asked, gasping.

“New one on me,” Jarvis grunted.

By now people were beginning to notice the tear between heaven and earth. Some screamed, some sunk to their knees and cried, some tried to run away.

“But what does it mean?” the kid asked.

“What does it mean?” Jarvis said, surprised the kid didn’t get it. “It means I’m not going to make it home in time to watch Survivor tonight.”

Now That's Just Silly

Devil’s in the Details

Leave a comment

“Well I was walkin’ home from Willie P.’s one night after knockin’ back a few sixpacks of his homebrew, so make no mistake, I was pretty sloshed. Walkin’ next to Old Man J.’s field, all of a sudden I see the field erupt into flames, and I was thinkin’ maybe Willie slipped a little of the ol’ Lucy D. in there (he’s known to do it, the joker).

“But no, this was the real deal. Stepping up to the flames I could feel them singin’ off my arm hairs. I walked over to the pit and who should jump out but the damned old Devil himself. A bit shorter than I’d imagined, he came about up to my knee.

“‘Make a wish!’ he cried, with a voice like rocks scraping against rocks.

“‘No sir,’ I said, ‘I know how this works, I make a wish and you take my soul. No thanks!’

“‘It’s not like that,’ he said, ‘If you want, you can just do me a favor instead. 24 hours after the wish if the favor’s not done, I’ll take your soul! Now, WISH!’

“‘Well alright,’ I said, and my drunken mind went the only place it could, ‘I wish I had another beer!’

“POOF! All the flames were gone and didn’t even leave a scorch mark. In my hand I held a nice cool Natural Light, maybe the greatest beer on God’s Green Earth.

“In my head, I hear the voice of that damn Devil, and he’s sayin’ ‘In return, you gotta steal somethin’!’ I don’t think much about it though, so I head on home.

“Next day I’m having my traditional day-after-visitin’-Willie hangover breakfast at Waffle House, when I suddenly remember my promise. At this point I’m still half-convinced it’s the onset of the ol’ Delirium Tremens, but just to be safe I stick the fork in my pocket and walk out.

“When I get back to the field, sure enough, flames shoot up, the ground cracks open and out jumps the devil. I toss the fork at his feet, casually, like I’m a movie gangster.

“‘Not quite what I was expecting,’ he growled, ‘But it’ll do. Now, your next wish!’

“‘Well, my car’s a bit shot. How ’bout a nice new Ferrari?’

“‘Consider it done!’ shouted the Devil, and sure enough, when I turned around there was a shiny new car with the keys in the ignition.

“‘This time,’ the Devil grinned, ‘You gotta kill somethin’.’

“I looked down, thinkin’ it over. I started pacing around and I accidentally stepped on a fresh little dandelion, and as you can imagine that made me feel right awful.

“But the Devil was even more upset than me. ‘When I said “Kill Somethin'” I didn’t mean a flower!’ he shouted, grimacing, ‘Bah. You won’t fool me next time! Now, your final wish!’

“‘Well, the car’s nice,’ I said, ‘But what’s a good car without a nice garage to park it in? I wish for a brand new mansion!’

“‘Done!’ shouted the devil, ‘Now, as payment for this, you gotta kill somebody.‘”

“Oh my God,” she said, staring at the storyteller with wide-eyed wonder. “What’d you do then?”

He took a long, slow sip of his beer. “I’m not proud to tell you this, but I thought about that long and hard, and I came to a decision.

“‘Nah, not gonna happen,’ I said, and kicked that bastard right back down the hole and went home to my nice new mansion.”

Now That's Just Silly

History of the Word part 457

Leave a comment

Pussy (n) – A person (especially male) who is lacking in confidence or bravery.

Synonyms: Wimp, chicken, pansy, milquetoast.

Rob won’t knock over the liquor store with us. He’s such a pussy.

At first glance, one might think that this is related to the similar (in fact, identical) slang word for a woman’s genitalia. In fact, this word goes back much further. In the 1800s it was common to compare a man lacking in courage to a pussy cat, as seen in a letter from 1876: “Rob refused to help us rob the liquor store. Sometimes I’m sure he is actually a pussy cat.” Over time, the “cat” part was dropped.

It is possible that this term is even older, however. A recently discovered fragment from an unfinished shakespearean play contains the line “Wherefore will Robert not assist us in our illegal acquisition of the King’s prized spirits? Forsooth, he behaves in the manner of the cowardly pussy cat.”

However, scholars are uncertain if this was a common term at the time, or something which Shakespeare had come up with on his own.

Scholars are also uncertain if any of the information in this article is true at all.

Now That's Just Silly

Tales from an Amsterdam Coffeeshop

Leave a comment

This happened a few years back. I was flying back to the states and my plane had a layover in Amsterdam. It was supposed to last only a few minutes, but unfortunately due to laws that had just passed earlier that week after the Netherlands’ government caved into the demands of the terrorist group “Mothers Against Drunk Flying,” our pilot wasn’t allowed to take off until the next day.

I had never been to Amsterdam, but I’d heard good things about their coffeeshops. Being somewhat of a connoisseur of the bean, I decided to see what they had. The experience was totally miserable. First of all, the place was full of smoke! It was a nice day outside and there were windows, but apparently the shop insisted on keeping them closed. Next, the man at the counter tried to tell me they didn’t serve coffee! When I sarcastically asked what they did serve, he asked me if I wanna marry him, which was just plain bizarre. Finally I got fed up and just ordered a pastry.

I don’t really remember what happened after that.

Now That's Just Silly

Hyperspaced

2 Comments
The discovery of faster-than-light travel came about in much the same way as most great scientific discoveries in the universe: as the result of a night of drunken debauchery. After an overly dramatic space battle wherein they completely destroyed the armada of their mortal enemies, the X’th’qulikans, the crew of the battleship Crybabyslobberpuss proceeded to get totally smashed. After waking up, they discovered that they were a few dozen light years away from their original location.
Unfortunately, they had somehow managed to park themselves around the X’th’qulikans’ home planet, and so their important discovery was not reported for centuries until an eccentric collector bought the disk containing the Crybabyslobberpuss’ starship data from a X’th’qulikan caffeine addict whose great-great-great-great-grandfather had fought in the war and had handed down the disk as a family heirloom for generations until this X’th’qulikan in question really needed his next fix at any cost.
But I digress.
It was soon discovered that the secret to faster-than-light travel was the simple extension of one of the most widely known facts in the universe. Just as you might find yourself lying in a strange gutter (or bed) on an unfamiliar side of town (or even in an entirely different town) after a raging bender, it turns out that starship crews who get completely blackout wasted tend to find themselves in entirely different sectors of the galaxy after waking up the next daycycle. Nobody is really able to discern the method of actual travel — the inevitable meddling with the ship’s controls by the drunks leaves any computer data completely undecipherable.
Of course, this method of transportation is incredibly unreliable as the crew really has no idea where they’ll end up. Which is where another well-known fact about drunk people comes into play: they love fatty, fried foods. The crew almost invariably awakens somewhere near a franchise of McGarbilax’s 25-Hour Diner, guaranteeing that they will, at least, be near some semblance of civilization.

The discovery of faster-than-light travel came about in much the same way as most great scientific discoveries in the universe: as the result of a night of drunken debauchery. After an overly dramatic space battle wherein they completely destroyed the armada of their mortal enemies, the X’th’qulikans, the crew of the battleship Crybabyslobberpuss proceeded to get totally smashed. After waking up, they discovered that they were a few dozen light years away from their original location.

Unfortunately, they had somehow managed to park themselves around the X’th’qulikans’ home planet, and so their important discovery was not reported for centuries until an eccentric collector bought the disk containing the Crybabyslobberpuss‘ starship data from a X’th’qulikan caffeine addict whose great-great-great-great-grandfather had fought in the war and had handed down the disk as a family heirloom for generations until this X’th’qulikan in question really needed his next fix at any cost.

But I digress.

It was soon discovered that the secret to faster-than-light travel was the simple extension of one of the most widely known facts in the universe. Just as you might find yourself lying in a strange gutter (or bed) on an unfamiliar side of town (or even in an entirely different town) after a raging bender, it turns out that starship crews who get completely blackout wasted tend to find themselves in entirely different sectors of the galaxy after waking up the next daycycle. Nobody is really able to discern the method of actual travel — the inevitable meddling with the ship’s controls by the drunks leaves any computer data completely undecipherable.

Of course, this method of transportation is incredibly unreliable as the crew really has no idea where they’ll end up. Which is where another well-known fact about drunk people comes into play: they love fatty, fried foods. The crew almost invariably awakens somewhere near a franchise of McGarbilax’s 25-Hour Diner, guaranteeing that they will, at least, be near some semblance of civilization.

Now That's Just Silly

The Case of the Totally Unnecessary and Gratuitous “Dick” Puns

Leave a comment

I’m a dick. A private dick. The best damn dick in this whole town, if I do say so myself. I’m the one who put Vito Romana behind bars. Didn’t make many friends by doing that, neither. But a man’s gotta do what he’s good at. And I’m so good, people even call me Dick, though that’s probably because my name’s Richard. It might also be because when I’m on the case I can be a real…well…you get the picture. I tell ya what, the jokers never stop laughing.

One Thursday morning this dame walked into my office with legs that went all the way up and a dress that didn’t quite go all the way down. I could tell right away she was trouble. Dames like that always are.

“I’m looking for a dick,” she said, the words floating on her sweet breath like the bloated, week-old bodies of mob victims bobbing to the surface of the river.

“I can see that,” I said. I glanced out the window. The rain-slicked street outside was bustling, as usual. Not even rain can stop a city. It just keeps on going, like a train bearing down on the broad strapped to the tracks.

“Is that some kind of joke?” she asked, raising an eyebrow — an eyebrow as perfectly sculpted as the Venus de Milo. It was the kind of eyebrow you only see in the movies, and not even then.

“Well sweetheart,” I said, lighting a cigarette, “maybe I’m jumping the gun, but since my door says ‘Private Detective’ and you came in, I guessed you ain’t lookin’ for a massage therapist. Simple detective work.” I smiled and exhaled a lungful of smoke, the taste of ashes in my mouth.

“Enough dicking around,” she said (I grimaced), “My husband’s been murdered.”

That got my attention — but I was cautious. Half the time some dame came in with a murdered husband, she was the one who did it and was just trying to divert attention. And she wouldn’t think twice about offing you, too, if you got too close to the truth.

“Sounds serious,” I agreed, “How’d it happen?”

“Poison,” she said, one perfect tear — too perfect if you ask me — dripping and falling to the floor impossibly slowly, only to shatter like a window shatters when it’s blasted with a tommy gun.

“Go on,” I told her.

She took a deep breath. Deep like the ocean, seemed to me. Deeper than a woman’s heart, for sure. “It had to be poison,” she said, “One minute he was eating his favorite dessert, spotted dick…”

It was gonna be one of those days.