Lake Day

by Bill Jones

Did you ever get sick of work?  Me too.   However, you should not let your enthusiasm hijack your common sense as is my habit.  In my eagerness to get away for a day of painting at the lake, I told a rather implausible lie, er ah story.  To make sure my boss didn’t try to override my excuse with his enthusiasm for me to get stuff done, I went a little overboard in the description of my injuries.

I told him that I had been hit by an 18 wheeler while crossing the street.  Both thigh bones were broken,  3 ribs snapped, and 2 cracked vertebrae.   I told him not to worry I should be in by the  next day.   So I’m thinking, “that ought to hold him ’til I get a rope.”

Later when the drink and handful  of Vicodin wore off, it occurred to me I was going to have to act real sore at work.   “Hell, I’m a good actor, I can pull this off”, I thought.  Say, did you ever lie to yourself?  Me too.

Well, anyway the next day I was limping around work like a 75 year old Chester.   Moaning and groaning.   This seemed to be going well until I was ambushed by an unexpected happy thought and started skipping down the block in view of my  boss.   Oops.   I told him it was therapy suggested by my bulldog attorney.  Sometimes dropping a name like that will halt further probing.

Abuse of the English Language

By W. R. Jones

As a board certified horse whisperer I can tell you the English translation of the sarcastic remark of the black horse.   “Damn you daft camel, I thought you said there would be water here!”  The gray horse is thinking, “Oh  oh, I must have made a wrong turn back at the tree line.  Now she will be bitch neighing me ’til the cows come home.”

I heard a political analyst remark on tv a few days ago, “It is not in the interest of any republican to see this government succeed.”   Are you shitting me?  How, with the exception of those greedy, power hungry, ego tripped out senators, et al, would it not be in the interest of EVERY person in this country to have the government succeed?

I can’t seem to get the hang of this English language.  The other day I received an envelope that said there was a free prepaid cremation offer inside.   I had to fight to urge to tear it open.  I was afraid it might be one of those too-good-to-believe offers that I would unable to turn down.   What if it was so good I wanted to be cremated immediately to make  the offer deadline?  I still had some chores to do around the house.    I’ve never seen free and prepaid put together like that before.   I started thinking maybe my wife prepaid it.  She was still ticked at me for getting a tiny (by reasonable standards) daub of paint on her favorite dress.  The upside of that incident is for future reference I could mark the color as staining.

Changing Signs

by wr jones

I was looking a the signs at a tiny park for children.  One said no smoking, another give a long list of dangers to beware of.   There was a well dressed man sitting on a bench facing the swings.  He had a briefcase.   I pegged him for an ambulance chaser waiting for some illiterate 4 year old to disregard the copious warnings and hurt himself.   Wala! A new client.   Clearly the city is negligent for not putting the warning  against diving off the slide head first into the concrete in a much larger font.

Just what is the cost of all these dippy ass signs?   I can remember when the aspirin or Tylenol or what ever pills were first poisoned and put back on the drug store shelf.   Before that there was no safety packaging.   Now I routinely cut myself using a sharp object in a desperate effort to get the Imodium pill out of that tight little package before I poop myself again.

So that one individual who poisoned a few pills has cost us billions of dollars in annoying packaging.   Landfills full of plastic and band aids used to stop the bleeding caused by trying to open the pill boxes; I have two summary thoughts on the subject:

1. If the media was not so hell bent on spreading the word about every aberration, no one, or at least very few others would have thought to poison medicine and put it back on the shelfs to injure random people.
2. If we could have a firm number on the cost of the safety packaging vs the few lives that would be lost without it, we might elect to accept the loss.

I’m at my desk just until I have to go again.  I’m using industrial steam powered scissors to free up some Imodium tablets.   I like my pills free range.