Troppo's Bad Day

[Zurp]

Warning. If you don't want to waste your time, don't continue reading.......

(I warned you.)

Bill was a happy goldfish, swimming in his crystal-clear fish bowl. He’d swim around in circles, and back, and forth. He thought he must be in heaven.

Bill had two loves. One of his loves was his fish bowl. It was marvelous and clear, and it had a great view of the world, sitting on the counter top.

His other love was gummy bears. The gummy bears who often lived near his wonderful fish bowl were very friendly. They’d chat about sports or movies or politics, and they were all the best of friends.

But the gummy bears often left Bill, and when the gummy bears returned, they weren’t the same gummy bears. Bill enjoyed making new friends with the new gummy bears, but he wished sometimes that he might keep the same friends. But he was too much in love with his fish bowl to think much about anything else. Besides, he was just a goldfish, and goldfishes aren’t very smart.

One day, he learned through the grapevine of gummy bears that gummy bears would no longer be produced. Apparently, the CEO of Gummy Bears, Incorporated, had been sued too many times over the past 15 months regarding the "cruelty to gummy creatures" scandals. The CEO, Mr. Hob-Nobskin, would have been able to handle it quickly and quietly, but he thought the suit said "sandals," and he decided that gummy creature sandals would be pretty comfortable. That just increased the temperature of the fire he was in.

Bill knew he had to save the world from the destruction of the gummy bears. But how? He was just a stupid goldfish who was too much in love with his fish bowl. He knew that in order to save the gummy bears, he would have to find a way to take his fish bowl with him, and he’d need some help, too.

He waited until late that night, and he found some big, pink rain boots. "These should work out pretty well." He fit his fish bowl in the boots. "Now I can walk around, and take the bowl with me." Then he said to the gummy bears, "C’mon, yo! We need to save your brothers!"

Off Bill went, with his big pink rain boots and his clear fish bowl, and about 60 gummy bears jumping behind him. He wandered the streets for what seemed like 5 minutes, but was probably more like 8 minutes, when they found the infamous Taco Planet, a restaurant devoted entirely to serving chalupas. "I don’t like pumpkin pie," Bill decided, and they continued on their journey.

They found the factory of Gummy Bears, Inc., and they went in, with guns-a-blazing. Unfortunately, they didn’t really have any guns, and the armed guards quickly captured the gummy bears and threw them in the next package to be shipped. "They’re in a PACKAGE," laughed Bill.

Bill, alone for the fifth time in his life, was out-numbered 44-2. He knew that he had to escape the guards and get to Mr. Hob-Nobskin and convince him that the world needs gummy bears. But he didn’t know how to escape.
Then, he remembered that he still had Ru Paul’s phone number in his rolodex. "I need to get rid of that," he thought.

Using his flying ninja, karate-chopping, spongebob facial expressions, he tickled the guards and escaped for the moment. However, he knew that they wouldn’t give up looking for him soon. Soon after, they gave up looking for him. He went back in, and tickled them some more, but this time he had the element of surprise in his hands. It was a heavy element, capable of reaching critical mass at any moment, destroying himself and about a bazillion gummy bears and the gummy bear factory, all at once. But the guards, whose union did not allow them to negotiate with terrorists, went on strike, leaving the factory empty. Bill threw the dangerous element of surprise in a trash can, which happened to have Inspector Gadget’s boss in there. He exploded, as he did every episode.

High at the top of the lowest basement was Mr. Hob-Nobskin’s office. He was in there working on putting extra cream cheese on his bagel, when Bill kicked the door open. A katrillion gummy bears stormed his office and started playing with all the stuff on his desk. Mr. Hob-Nobskin explained that he needed to shut down the gummy bear factory or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Gummy Animals, or "PETGA" for short, would continue their protest. Bill was so pissed, he peed in his shiny bowl, which just pissed him off even more.

"SMURF-BERRY CRUNCH!!!" Bill yelled, as he often did when he was angry. But that gave him an idea. He sent his army of gummy bears to destroy PETGA. He told them that if they didn’t want to be eaten, they could go join the protest. If they did want to get eaten, they can fight the protest. The gummy bears, however, were having too much fun bouncing on Mr. Hob-Nobskin’s forehead to hear him.

"It’s time for my last resort," Bill decided. He called up Lee Harvey Oswald, a robot built in the 16<SUP>th</SUP> century, who was framed for killing some president and then later he framed another president for killing some model named Marilyn Monroe. LHO stormed the castle and told PETGA to get the hell off his lawn. They decided that they should go protest some golf tournament that didn’t let gays in the military.

Bill returned home with his big pink rain boots, and he even decided not to kick the dog.

 

[Zurp]

First one got some good feedback, second got NOTHING. Let's see how this one does:

On his way home from his business trip in Seattle, Washington, Al noticed that his squirt gun had been abandoned in an old mine shaft. That could mean only one thing: the evil mole people from the underworld would have taken it by now, and Al’s daughter wouldn’t receive her wedding cake. Al knew he had to go penetrate the defenses of the underworld and plead with the king of the mole people for his squirt gun back, and maybe for cab fare back to the surface.


Al stopped his car, and slowly approached the mine shaft, half expecting a large piranha plant to pop out, like in the video games. When one did, he simply spit a fireball out his nose and slowly reaped the benefits. "Now," said Al, "Here comes the pain!" He jumped down the mine shaft and into complete darkness.


He landed on his ass, and whined about it a little bit to the darkness. When the darkness didn’t respond, he whined about the darkness to the puddle he was sitting in. The puddle responded by making his ass wet, which, in turn, soothed the pain he was in.


He stood up and realized that he wasn’t in complete darkness – there was a little light, and his eyes just needed time to adjust. He could see that he was in a tunnel, and that there was a dim light ahead. Behind him was just a wall. Above him was the mine shaft he entered, and below him was the floor. He realized that he had only one way to go.


He lay on the floor face down and realized that he had chosen wrong: down was not the one way he could go. He stood up and walked down the tunnel.


After 10 feet or so, he laughed quietly out loud, because he remembered what going down a tunnel symbolized.


He walked down the tunnel for what seemed like forever. He glanced at his cell phone and saw that it must have only been 7 minutes, because his cell phone had no service and it didn’t say what time it was. The tunnel turned to the right, and sloped downward at a very shallow slope. Al could feel his knees weaken as he thought about the pain and horror the mole people would have in store for him, right beside the toothpaste and the non-dairy creamer.


After another 7 minute span (so timed by his out-of-service cell phone), he began to hear a noise. It sounded like people. It sounded like people cheering loudly, but still very far away. He walked another 7 minutes.


7 minutes later, he realized that yes, it was a crowd of people cheering. Sometimes they were booing, but usually cheering. He also noticed that the light up ahead was getting brighter. Or was his eyesight getting better? He made a note to himself to cancel the appointment for his dog at the vet, in case his dog was being cared for by the old lady who lives next door to him. What was her name, again? He couldn’t remember. He just thought of her as "Old lady who won’t cut her grass." She didn’t even have a big yard! "I’ll cut her grass for her," Al thought, "If only she’d let me." Then he added, "Old lady who won’t cut her grass and won’t let anyone else do it because she’s a freaky old lady who’s probably watching my dog for me because I’ll probably never get back home after the mole people catch…"


He couldn’t continue because he walked right into a wall. Actually, a "wall" wasn’t entirely accurate, as it was actually a mole person. But the mole person was so large it might as well have been a wall. The dude was HUGE. He was probably 12 feet tall, and at least 90 pounds (Al wasn’t very good at guessing people’s weight). The mole dude turned around and yelled, "Hey everyone, look what I found!" And within 7 minutes he was completely surrounded by moles.


"No one enters our kingdom," said one mole, whom Al decided to name, "Jimmy-Jimmy-Poop-Head," because he looked like a guy he knew in school, named "Dammit." Jimmy looked pretty pissed off. "You surface people think you’re so tough, do you?" Jimmy growled, "I bet you can’t even beat our champion at our national sport."


Al, never one to pass on a national sport, took off his gloves (which was pretty amazing, because he didn’t even know he was wearing gloves) and slapped Jimmy in the face. "What’s your national sport?" asked Al.


"It used to be badminton," said Jimmy, "But then we decided that it was too hard. Ping-pong was the rage for a while," continued Jimmy, "But that was really just because it’s pretty fun to say ‘Ping-pong.’"


To Al’s surprise, the entire crowd erupted into a screeching chorus of "Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong!" With the wave of his hand, Jimmy silenced them.


Jimmy took a couple of seconds for a dramatic pause before continuing. "Our national sport has become none other than the deadliest sport ever." Al begin to wish he had gone to the bathroom at the airport, 7 minutes ago. "It’s fast, it’s dangerous, it’s exciting and vicious and I’ve run out of words to describe it so I’ll just tell you what it is." He took another short pause. "It’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos!"


The crowd gasped in astonishment, as the mere mention of the name was powerful enough to send the women home, crying for their mini-muffins.


"You must beat our champion at Hungry, Hungry Hippos if you wish to see your squirt gun or your world ever again," Jimmy proclaimed. "Our champion is none other than…." In the background, Al could hear a drum-roll. "Paco, the left-handed body-builder!" The cheers that were let out by the crowd was so deafening that Al wondered if he had left the sprinkler on at home.

"If I have to play, I’ll play," said Al, and he took his spot at the "visitor’s" end of the table. Paco, a short dude of only 7 feet tall, stood on the other side.


Al looked down at the game on the table. It looked much the way he remembered it as a kid. The hippos were larger than he remembered, and the surface was bigger, but the same simple game: move your lever to move your hippo to eat the marbles. Al waited for the marbles to drop, which appeared to be from a special chute on the right side of the table. Paco appeared to be concentrating on the chute, as well.


A green light over the chute flashed, and out from the chute came a vicious spider, the size of a big spider. Al jumped back in horror. He’d never seen a spider so big fall out of the marble chute. The spider turned toward Paco, and leapt. Just then, the hippo on Paco’s side of the table reached out and ate the spider. The crowd cheered like a baby eating a french fry. The score overhead indicated that the score was 1-0.


"So that’s the game," thought Al. But he couldn’t remember back when he was 7 (7 minutes ago), whether his 2<SUP>nd</SUP> grade teacher was Ms. Williamson or Mrs. Tomlinson. A chipmunk fell out of the chute. This one charged Al, and he yanked on the lever. The hippo reached out, and missed the chipmunk. The chipmunk, as so many chipmunks do, ran into the street and then into the storm drain. The crowd cheered, as their hero still lead 1-0.

A series of lights indicated with binary numbers that there was probably 9 rounds to this game, and only 7 chances were left for Al to get out with his squirt gun and his life.


A tomato fell out of the chute, and Al launched his hippo after it. Just before he was successfully going to score his first point, Paco’s hippo leapt in front, and nabbed the tomato. "This sucks!" thought Al, "And it’s boring!"

Next to come out of the chute was a pickle. Al knew that this was his chance. He leapt up on the table, which was much larger than I had originally mentioned, and grabbed hold of the pickle just a split-second before Paco’s hippo ate it. Al was eaten with the pickle, and he fell down into the hippo. He fell for about 7 minutes, and landed with a THUD. He also landed with a squish, and realized he landed on the spider. "At least I don’t have to contend with that guy," said Al, "I hate spiders!"


He was in another cave. But not just any cave. This was the cave of the REAL mole people. I guess the one above was just the posers. Unfortunately for Al, the real mole people were out of town, visiting the gorilla people. But maybe it was good news, as they had forgotten his squirt gun. But he didn’t know where to look for the squirt gun.


"Of course!" he thought, "Where do you always leave things when you go out of town?" He ran into the castle of the king of the mole people and he found his squirt gun there, on the kitchen counter, along with the queen’s bathing suit. "The queen’s probably a little pissed about forgetting that," Al thought.


That evening, Al slept in his bed and thought about how funny it would be to set up a trip-wire in the stalls at public restrooms.

 

[Buckeye Babe]

Keep them coming! This one made me laugh out loud.

 

[Zurp]

Keep them coming! This one made me laugh out loud.

This one probably won't be any good...

There once was a guy named Matt. Matt was a pretty cool guy, but every once in a while, his nose would turn into an elephant. Not a real elephant, of course. That would be ridiculous, and, besides, that, it would be impossible. And, for the sake of this story, no one would believe me if I said his nose was a real 12-ton elephant. Is that how heavy elephants are? Maybe they aren’t that big. But it isn’t important. What’s important is that the elephant usually forgot his post-it notes, and could never remember to remember what he needed to remember. Hence, it was not a typical elephant.

It was usually annoying to him, and all, but he did a pretty good job off ignoring it. He thought that if he could wish it away, it would just go away. Sometimes it worked, and other times it didn’t. Or so he wanted to believe. The truth was that it always went away, but simply wishing it away had no impact on the duration that the elephant would stay on his nose. And people would whisper behind his back about how odd it was that Matt had an elephant on his face, instead of where his nose should be.

One day, however, Matt was celebrating the fact that he had gone 4 weeks without the elephant appearing and wrecking his house. He invited 14 stripper-ladies to his house, along with his favorite zombie friends, Tom and Doug. Tom and Doug were each zombies, from the other side of the railroad tracks, where zombies often ruled the world with an iron fist. Usually, the fists were inside boxing gloves or brown paper lunch bags, and the zombies looked like street bums with their liquor bottles. The main difference, of course, was that street bums ask passers-by for a quarter, while zombies simply ate their brains.

As Matt, Doug, Tom, and the 14 strippers partied well into the night, there came a sudden pounding at the door. "That’s weird," Matt said, with his eyes shut, "Usually the pounding comes when I pound on the door. But I’m in here, so I couldn’t have pounded on the door." He went to the door to see who might have pounded on it. There, on the doorstep, was a Homer Simpson doll. Matt said, "Hey Tom and Doug, watch this!" and he punted the Homer Simpson doll as far as he could.

The doll flew threw the air 60, 70, maybe even 80 inches. It landed on the house across the street, where the sweetest, oldest prostitute in the world lived. She grabbed the Homer Simpson doll and yelled, "Damn you Matt!!! And damn you, Snorty Monster!!!"

Back at the party, the wind howled and the bushes squeaked. Reluctantly, Matt was serving drinks to his guests, and then he dropped his tray of empty glasses because it was funny. CRASH! The glasses made a sound like broken glass on a hard-wood floor. The zombie Tom ran to see what happened. "You can smell the glass when you get close to the floor," he said, dropped down to his hands and knees. Doug decided not to kick Tom in the ass, and for that, he was thankful.

Around 5:30 in the morning, the party was dying down, and 11 of the strippers had to go. They took turns kicking each other in the nuts, and then they left on the horse they rode in on. "Jokes on them," thought Matt, "I have their car keys."

Matt looked at the mess his guests had made throughout the night, and then realized that he had gone to Subway earlier and still had 6 inches of sandwich leftover. In the kitchen, however, he found his trusty pencil sharpener. "Take that, you devil-woman!" he yelled, as he threw the leftover sandwich away.

After that day, he never, again, smoked a cigarette.

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

Ahhhhh. So this is what it would have been like if Salvador Dali had decided to write short stories instead of painting melting clocks.

Thanks for keeping it surreal!

 

[Buckeye Babe]

I liked this one, too. I also read it while I was annoyed at work, and it brightened my day if that makes you feel better about the story.

 

[Yertle]

Yeah, except in real life, Doug DID kick Tom in the ass. Remember?

Zurp, these are awesome. I love these lines:

"The doll flew threw the air 60, 70, maybe even 80 inches. It landed on the house across the street" - that's a close house!

"and then he dropped his tray of empty glasses because it was funny. CRASH! The glasses made a sound like broken glass on a hard-wood floor" - it's so simple, it's funny!

 

[Zurp]

"The doll flew threw the air 60, 70, maybe even 80 inches. It landed on the house across the street" - that's a close house!

You liked that one? I'll show you!!!

A long time ago, in the land of make-believe, there lived a beautiful girl, named Rita. At a young age, a wicked witch captured Rita, and Rita was held prisoner high in the witch’s tower.

Every day, the witch sent Rita her laundry and dishes to wash, using a magical elevator. Rita needed to clean the witch’s clothes and dishes or she would be punished by not being allowed to use her cell phone to talk with the dwarves, her woodland friends.

It all started years before that, when Rita was very young. Rita’s father, a kind but stupid man, named Tramampolene Dumpkins, was playing Texas Hold ‘Em with some of his friends. Travis, as usual, was winning by hundreds of dollars (which, in those times, was worth hundreds of dollars), when Tramampolene got two queens. It didn’t take long for the other two queens to show themselves on the table, giving Tramampolene four queens – a nearly unbeatable hand. Surprisingly, Travis went "all-in," and Tramampolene knew he could beat Travis if he only had more money.

The witch, who was out trick-or-treating that night, dressed as a witch, happened by and saw that Tramampolene needed some money. She made a deal with him: if she loans him the money, and he loses, she gets his first-born child. If he wins, she gets her share of the winnings, and Travis loses, for once. Tramampolene, incorrectly thinking he was smart, decided that it was a smart deal, since he didn’t have any kids. Unfortunately, Tramampolene lost the game because Travis had five queens. It was years since Tramampolene figured out that Travis cheated to get those five queens.

But by then it was too late. The evil witch took his daughter, Rita, the day she was born, and Tramampolene had to spend the rest of his life eating pickles and searching desperately for alien porn on the Sci-Fi channel.

Growing up in the tower, Rita didn’t make many friends. For a while, there was this guy named Troppo who visited her a couple of days a week, while the witch was out trying to sucker more stupid men into giving up their first-born daughters. (She never found anyone else stupid enough to agree to that bet.) But Troppo was captured by the Snorty Monster, who had become a father-figure to Rita over the years. Troppo agreed to never see Rita again, and he decided that it was best to not piss off the Snorty Monster.

It was highly ironic that such a terrible monster, known for killing, dismantling, and finally eating scientists and camp counselors would become Rita’s only positive male influence. The Snorty Monster lived in a cave in the woods in which her tower stood, and he’d often climb up the tower to lecture her on boys, smoking, drugs, teen pregnancy, boys, studying hard, a good work-ethic, and the importance of proper grammar. "After all," the Snorty Monster was fond of saying, "You don’t want people to think you’re from Boston, do you?"

Sometimes, however, Rita wanted to leave her tower. The Snorty Monster wouldn’t let her, because the witch was far more powerful and terrible than even he. So one night, when the Snorty Monster was out terrorizing some fat elementary teachers, Rita climbed down the tower, and ran into the woods. She felt scared in the woods, because it was much bigger than her room at the top of the tower. It was also full of muskrats and Italian guys who wanted her to take a taste of their lasagna. Rita hated people who ate noodles of any shape, as the noodle trees were already very near extinction.

Rita spent the night in a tree. When she woke up, a dinosaur was speaking to an eagle. She found it difficult to understand what they were talking about, because they were two towns over, and she could barely see them from her tree. She climbed down to find a shower.

Instead of a shower, she found an umbrella. "This is the exact opposite of what I want," she frowned. Then she laughed. "If I wanted to, I bet I could kick this umbrella." She kicked it. She discovered that kicking umbrellas wasn’t as fun as she had originally thought it might be. From that day forward, she made it her mission to never forget to recycle her used batteries, no matter how purple her fingers got.

Meanwhile, the witch had discovered that Rita had escaped. It was pretty easy to see that Rita wasn’t in her room at the top of the tower, because there weren’t many hiding spots in that room. There was a closet, but she checked there. And there was another closet, but the witch checked there, too. There was also another closet, but the witch knew she couldn’t be in there, because it smelled like burnt hair (from the time the witch was trying to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). There was only one other place Rita might have been hiding: somewhere else.

The witch sent the Snorty Monster to find Rita. The Snorty Monster, not wanting to see Rita hurt, conveniently pooped big, hairy poops when he found out that Rita was gone. The poops gave the Snorty Monster an idea. "To the Batmobile!" he yelled.

The Snorty Monster leapt into the air, and threw a cannonball toward the sky. As he guessed, it fell back to the earth, and he ran north: the only logical direction Rita could have gone.

The Snorty Monster knew that Rita couldn’t have gone east. The eastern woods were full of porcupines the size of a cowboy hat, and cowboy hats the size of VW bugs. And VW Bugs the size of nuns. And she couldn’t have gone to the south, because the south was full of credit card fraud. The Snorty Monster knew that Rita hated bankrupt lawyers looking to make money on bankruptcy claims. That left only north and west, and since the Snorty Monster only had three eyes, he didn’t know about west. Luckily for him, Rita didn’t know that the Snorty Monster didn’t know about west, and she went north, which is the same way that the Snorty Monster went to look for her. Had she known that the Snorty Monster not known about west, she would have known to know to go west. Alas, she got confused as a turtle, and she found a place for her to pick on someone her own size.

That someone was a merry little pineapple named Noop. Noop’s best friend was another pineapple named Noop. Noop and Noop were best friends, hence, the identical names. It’s customary in the pineapple lands to either change your name to the same as your best friend’s, or to become best friends with the one with the same name as yours. Pineapples don’t make much sense to me.

Noop and Noop didn’t like that Rita was picking on Noop. But they figured that they couldn’t do anything about it. What could they do? They were pineapples.

Just then they heard the thundering footsteps of the Snorty Monster. Rita gave out a yelp and threw Noop into the ocean. "NOOOOOOOOP!!" Noop yelled, watching his friend float away. They didn’t see each other again for 34 years, after they each found new best friends, who changed their names to Noop and Noop. They all had wives, and children, and dogs and other pets, but they were never best friends again, despite their old stories about high school football and peeing on Old Man Wrinklesteen.

Back to the witch, she thought she could out-smart Rita the way she had out-smarted her father. She asked magically appeared in front of Rita as she was running away from the Snorty Monster (I wonder why the witch never thought to do that before this point?), and she asked Rita to sign on the dotted line if she wanted to be free from the Snorty Monster. She grabbed the contract from the witch, and gave it to the Snorty Monster. The Snorty Monster read the contract for what it really said, and agreed that he wanted to test-drive a Metro for a couple of months. He signed on the dotted line, and POOF!! He turned into a professor of chemistry.

"CURSES!!" the witch yelled, cursing stuff. She hated chemistry professors. Unfortunately for her, though, she failed high school chemistry, and would never graduate unless the Snorty Monster taught her enough to give her a passing grade. She figured that now was as good a time as any, and she let Rita go back to her parents, who never even knew they had a daughter to begin with.

And that’s why tandem skydiving is for homosexuals and vampires.

 

[FCollinsBuckeye]

There was only one other place Rita might have been hiding: somewhere else.

Pure genius, Zurp

Tramampolene Dumpkins.

 

[Zurp]

I'll start: WTF????????

Once upon a time, there was a Chinese emperor named Fushimo, which meant "He who rides the horse into town and scores with many, many women, and only sometimes has to pay for it." Fushimo was a fair, and good emperor. He was kind to his citizens who worked well, and he punished those who broke the law. He also dressed up as a clown on certain holidays to impress his nephew, Superfro, who wanted nothing more than to move to Ireland and learn the ways of the Dutch culture.
Fushimo, though, had no wife and no heir to his throne. The people of his land were very nervous about this. If there is no rightful heir to the throne, if the emperor should die, a power struggle was very likely. The struggle for power between the nobelmen tended to lead to civil wars. Fushimo, therefore, decided he needed to end his bachelor days of partying and sleeping with a new woman every night and then kicking them out of bed in the morning (though he always gave them money for the cab ride home). He announced that he would begin looking for a wife.
Women of all ages began lining up at the gate. The crowds made American Idol crowds appear small and purple. That gave the emperor an idea: he would audition the women and make fun of them on television. He hired some British guy and a couple of people who didn’t really know anything about what he wanted in a wife, and they made a really funny couple of episodes, making fun of stupid women, psychotic women, and women with too many tattoos.
Finally, they gave Emperor Fushimo the final list of five potential wives. They were all very pretty, smart, interesting people. But only one could recited the alphabet backwards, only one could cook Chinese food that didn’t contain dog, only one could successfully get bitten by a snake without going into shock, only one could recite the names of all the kids in the Brady Bunch, and the last was the only one who could appreciate Napoleon Dynamite.
Therefore, Fushimo decided to marry all of them. Then he decided he wanted some tea. He drank his tea and he offered his wives some tea. They all sat around drinking tea for the afternoon, and talking about how much they liked to drink tea. And they talked about their favorite types and flavors of tea. And they talked about their favorite memories of drinking tea, and how drinking tea often reminded them of drinking tea with other people who were drinking tea. And they closed with some stories of current events, followed by thanking the servants for the excellent tea.
As was customary at the time, Fushimo took his five wives on a tour of the kingdom. The people of the kingdom should be allowed to meet their new queens. He packed his wives into some suitcases and stuck them on a horse-drawn carriage to tour the major cities of China.
Before he got to the first town on his list, however, Emperor Fushimo realized that in those days, China didn’t have any cities. It was all countryside. Miles and miles and miles and feet of rice fields. And families of peasants worked the rice fields. There were no major centralized populations in the kingdom. Then the emperor began to wonder what the peasants do with all that rice. Do they eat it all over the course of the year? Do they sell some of it? Who buys it? Does someone drive around buying rice? Do the people take the rice to a market? Where is the market? Maybe they just mail the rice to a warehouse, somewhere. Have warehouses been invented, yet? Did someone eat the last pickle?
Emperor Fushimo decided that his head hurt, and that he should go home. He let his wives out of their suitcases and he went to bed.
That night, however, Fushimo couldn’t sleep, and he found himself reading his favorite book, "There and Back Again, A Hobbit’s Tale." It put him right to sleep, because it was written in a language that Fushimo couldn’t understand. With the emperor asleep, the wives could get together for some hen-clucking.
"Cluck cluck cluck!" The first clucked.
"Cluck CLUCK CLUCK cluck!" clucked the next.
"CLUCK cluck clu-CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK!!!" the first argued.
And so the clucking continued, getting louder and louder as the night grew longer. Finally, the clucking got so loud that the fat lady had to sing. The clucking woke up Kut-Poo, the fat maid. She tumbled down the stairs and found the wives clucking in the kitchen over a bottle of wine.
"Would you ladies, please shut up!!" Kut-Poo complained. The wives, who were queens, knew that they didn’t have to take this from a fat lady. They retaliated the only way they knew how: the first recited the alphabet backward, the second cooked Chinese food, the third got bitten by a snake, one named all the kids in the Brady Bunch, and the fifth watched Napoleon Dynamite. Kut-Poo was pissed and she exploded in anger. Then she exploded because they hid fireworks in her pockets and she died.
Emperor Fushimo was a little unhappy about the death of his favorite maid, but he didn’t care too much. "Just clean up your mess," he said to his wives. The wives knew that it was only a matter of time before the king got the same punishment the fat lady did.
(Insert cliff-hanging, suspense music here)

 

[Zurp]

Oranges. Did you ever wonder were oranges come from?

It all started back in the old world. A young boy, named Running With Sticks, and his older brother, Beats Up Running With Sticks, were exploring a patch of trees that lived in the exact theoretical center of the great plains of the midwest. The patch of trees appeared to be small from the outside (approximately 50 yards in diameter), but, once inside, the imaginations of the two boys made the woods appear to be at least 2,000 square yards.

The men of the tribe were busy hunting buffalo (which meant they were really watching the football game) and the women were busy preparing the small amounts of what was left of their food (which meant they were sitting on the couch, watching their stories). Running with Sticks and Beats Up Running with Sticks would not be missed for several hours. They decided to play their favorite game: Cowboys and Indians.

In those days, there were no cowboys. In fact, aside from a few crazy guys named "The Jetsons," the Europeans hadn’t even crossed to the west side of the Atlantic Ocean, and the cows wouldn’t make the long swim for another 150 years. Playing Cowboys and Indians was much different from the way the children of the 1950’s played it, which was basically shooting at each other for 90% of the time, and sharing diseases like small pox and raiding horses for the remaining 10% of the time. In those days, playing Cowboys and Indians was more like a cross between lacrosse, throwing buffalo manure, and our version of the game "telephone."

But, with the strange woods staring at them like a giant snowflake might look at a slice of a pickle that is slowly sliding down a window, the two boys decided that Cowboys and Indians might not be the smartest idea they’ve ever had.

Running with Sticks, who wasn’t the smartest 6-year-old in the tribe (mainly because he was 7) dared his 9-year-old older brother to go into the woods. Not being a baby who turns down dares, Beats Up Running with Sticks walked into the woods. Running with Sticks stood outside of the woods, watching his brother from the outside. It wasn’t long before he could no longer see his older brother, and he decided that it would be fun to also go into the woods.

For a while, they pretended they were pirates, looking for buried treasure. But they got bored with that when the ghost of Captain Hans and Rear Admiral Franz told them to shove off. So they reverted back to their next favorite pass-time: forcing grass-hoppers to sumo-wrestle.

The grass-hoppers, as usual, were reluctant to follow the rules of sumo-wrestling. But these grass-hoppers, instead of trying to eat each other, like so many grass-hoppers would before them, wanted to re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg. They brought along some more grass-hoppers, some crickets, some stink-beetles, and even a cordless screwdriver got in on the action. The boys were concentrating so much on the sophistication of the bugs in the re-enactment (they even got General Lee to jump over a cliff just as the sheriff was closing in) that they didn’t realize that the entire world outside of the woods had been transformed. They didn’t know it at the time, but I know it and I’ll tell you so that you know it: a giant space eel sucked them and the woods up into space and transported them to another planet.

That planet had all kinds of interesting life on it, but no humans. No intelligent life, at all, and the mice were stupider, too (if you asked a mouse on that planet how to get to fourth street and third avenue, he might try to buy a bridge off you). But what that planet did have an excess in tuna fish. The tuna fish on that planet, however, were not really fish. They were more like peanuts. But those peanuts could walk a long ways under water, and could carry up to half of its body weight in silly spray.

The tuna saw Running with Sticks and Beats Up Running with Sticks watching their battle, and they decided to introduce themselves. They gave gifts of pearls and skittles to the brothers, before sending them back to Kansas, where they lived. If the tuna were smarter, they would have told the two to follow the yellow brick road, but the tuna weren’t smart, nor were they strong swimmers, and they told the two to go the wrong way.

On their adventures in the new planet, they encountered many strange things, such as hot dog trees, piles and piles of dead hamsters, Howard Dean, and a movie called "The Day I Quit Pooping." Fortunately, however, there was a happy ending, when an Elvis-impersonator gave them a ride on his motorcycle, and gave each of them a piece watermelon. Then, he sped off without so much as a wave goodbye or a smile and a punch in the teeth.

The space eel, who was no more intelligent than a box made of rocks that contains boxes that are made of rocks and contain more rocks, granted each of them one wish. Beats up Running with Sticks, being the mean jerk that he was, wished that he could have Running with Sticks’s wish. Then, he used that wish to send them back home.

When they got there, the tribe was so happy to see them that they granted women’s suffrage and gave them the day off to eat some oranges.

 

[Buckeye Babe]

This may be because I'm really drunk right now, but I laughed pretty hard at this story. The nerd in me liked this:

The patch of trees appeared to be small from the outside (approximately 50 yards in diameter), but, once inside, the imaginations of the two boys made the woods appear to be at least 2,000 square yards.

I am also curious about what "silly spray" is.
Excellent story.

 

[Zurp]

This may be because I'm really drunk right now, but I laughed pretty hard at this story. The nerd in me liked this:

You have a nerd in you? Doesn't that hurt? I bet there are operations to fix that.

I am also curious about what "silly spray" is.

You know that spray stuff that sprays stuff?
Me neither. I don't know what silly spray is.

 

[Buckeye Babe]

You know that spray stuff that sprays stuff?

Oh!!

Silly string!

 

[Zurp]

When did you turn 40? I thought you were like.. 45.

"Stupid Dog," Max said, as he opened his front door, coming home from work. The neighbor’s dog was notorious for chasing cars down the street, and Max knew that the dog would one day get hit by a car and turned into an ice-cream truck.

But Max wasn’t really all that angry with the dog, in the first place. An ice-cream truck would be better than that dog ever was. All he ever did was bark, chase cars, bark some more, and annoy the entire neighborhood. The dog, on the other hand, had submitted several papers on theories of why Einstein’s theories were just made-up garbage to the local newspaper publisher. None were ever printed.

No, Max was more upset that his beef jerky had fallen on the floor of his car, and Max had a tough time cleaning the ink stains from his eyebrows. "How did it get there?" he asked himself, one day when he was on the beach. He thought that he would never know the answer.

So, Max, in his infinite abilities to transgress his anger from one entity to another, found himself sitting alone in his living room, contemplating whether it was a Taco Bell night or a non-Taco Bell night (he hated making that decision on his own). Attempts to flip a coin to make his decision proved futile, for as many times as he flipped the quarter, it always landed on "Heads." To a mere idiot, it would have seemed to be a mathematical miracle – to have a 100% "Heads" rate. Someone with a slightly higher ability to understand how coins work might guess that it’s a trick coin – one that has "Heads" on both sides. To Max, however, who sometimes pretended to be intelligent, but usually when he can actually find the remote control to his television set, and he remembers which channel is the "Spice" channel, the answer was simple: he flipped the coin only once.

The coin-flipping, as I said, did not help him in his decision-making process, as he failed to assign "Heads" or "Tails" to any branch of the decision tree. Therefore, he did as any other mortal would do in his spot: he chopped the flippin’ decision tree down and headed to Arby’s.

Once at Arby’s, he faced another challenge: opening the door. Was the restaurant open? If so, would it be a push-open door or a pull-open door? A voice in his ear told him "Buzz buzz buzz!!!" He swatted at the bug in his ear, and walked up to the door.

The door swung out, and he assured himself that he must not live in Alaska. Max had never been to Alaska. He had heard from his Aunt Paula that it was a beautiful country. His Aunt Paula also believed that Idaho was actually on the moon. From her perspective, theoretically, it might as well have been on the moon, for she was just as unlikely to visit the moon as she was to visit Idaho.

Once inside the infamous Arby’s, Max had more choices. Combo meal or no combo meal? Sandwich or chicken strips? Regular or curly fries? Pay the cashier for the food or pee on the food counter? Max, who was typically a sane person, decided to do the only sane thing he could do: he put all his quarters in his mouth, and pretended he was the king of Portugal.

This was much harder to do than it might sound. Who was the king of Portugal? How do you pretend to be someone about whom you have no information? Luckily for him, though, the cashier didn’t know anything about the king of Portugal, either, and she fully believed him when he said he wanted a number 6 combo meal, curly fries, super-size, and a Pepsi. However, it was unlucky for him that the cashier would not offer him a discount, on based on his royalty.

"I’ve had enough," said Max, "I’m going to bed!" He left Arby’s under more of a temper-tantrum than he entered. With a mighty belch, he announced that he would never return home until his true identity could be unmasked.

Just as quickly as he peed his pants, he was gone, with only the back-firing of his car to let people know that he was truly gone.