Sunday, August 31, 2008

more poems about trees

Neighboring pine
There's this
pine tree
down the road
from us,
and it's the
skinniest pine tree
in the whole world.
Or at least it's
in the running
for that title.
If this tree
had an
Italian mother,
she'd be saying to it,
'Eat, eat.'
But this
pine tree
doesn't have
an Italian mother.

On the contrary,
I'm pretty sure
it's mom
is Norwegian.

Friday, August 29, 2008

my Onion headline

Shooting Stars Declare Cease-Fire

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

my lunch with Helen

I had lunch with Helen Gurkelbee yesterday. Helen's a neighbor of ours. She lives right down the street. Anyway, we were halfway through a lovely meal and all the while Helen had been telling me all about her latest conquests -- all of them men much younger than her. I finally dropped my fork and said, 'Do you know what you are, Helen Gurkelbee? You're a cougar, that's what you are!'

She smiled playfully, then made a claw out her right hand and pawed the air in front of her. 'Rowr!' she said. 'Rowr!'

I smiled right back at her, made a claw out of my hand and I started pawing the air too. 'Rowr!!' I said. 'Rowr!' We sat in the middle of the restaurant and took turns going back and forth like that for almost a minute before we broke down and started giggling like schoolkids.

I tell you, you haven't had lunch until you've had lunch with Helen Gurkelbee..

Sunday, August 17, 2008

an interesting fact

Did you know that if you jump out of an airplane anywhere over the state of Florida, there's a 61% you'll land on a Waffle House? Now, like you probably are, I was skeptical about the validity of that statistic.

But, the numbers don't lie. Numbers never do. They're like boy scouts who've been dosed with sodium pentathol.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

the problem with people

Do you know what the problem with people is? We know everything. Yup, there's nothing we don't know. And what I mean by that is that we're masters of the obvious. Like when I had my suitcase shaped like a guitar -- boom! Everyone automatically assumed I was a musician. Or like when I walk up to someone I know, bleeding badly from cuts on my face, the first thing they always say is, 'Oh, so you mouthed off to the wrong person again and got your ass totally kicked in a street fight.' Or when I walk up to a table of friends with a metal bucket on my head, they immediately jump to the conclusion that I've had too much to drink and decided to put a metal bucket on my head because I thought it would be funny.

Now, just because people are usually right when it comes to me, that doesn't make it any less annoying. Truth be told, I would actually like to be a musician. That's right: I would love to play the guitar. But I wouldn't want it to be a big deal. And how would I transport my guitar from Point A to Point B without everyone assuming/knowing I was a musician? What this world really needs is for someone to invent a guitar shaped like a suitcase. That would level the playing field a bit and keep people on their toes. If there were such a guitar -- and such a case for such a guitar -- I could be a first-rate musician in peace.

Then, if someone saw me carrying my suitcase-shaped guitar in a suitcase, and they said, 'Hey, you're a musician!' I could say, 'Nah. I'm just going to the train station. Yup, I'm heading out to Seattle tonight to visit my Aunt Rosary.'

That's the kind of world I dream about at night.

p.s. That was just a hypothetical I threw out there, Aunt Rosary. I won't be seeing you this year. Maybe next year!