Larry Ryals
Apr 15, 2016 | Humour, 1st pages
20 PRACTICAL USES FOR DONALD TRUMP’S HAIR
1. Wildlife preserve for thousands of dislocated pine beetles and sand crabs.
2. Aesthetically unattractive yet functional paperweight.
3. Mother of all chia pets.
4. Stunt double for Chewbacca in Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens.
5. Role model for laboratory rats who want to move up the corporate ladder.
6. Makeshift, thatch-based dwelling for indigenous tribes in Uruguay.
7. Surrogate sex partner for ferrets.
8. Coolant for super-powerful, all-knowing Trump brain to prevent possible explosion/meltdown.
9. As part of D.A.R.E. program for Brillo pads, serves as horrible warning to teen Brillo pads of dangers of crystal meth.
10. Surrogate sex partner for shag carpets.
11. Delicious kelp and seaweed holiday salad.
12. Setting for prize-winning performance art piece at Museum of Modern Art. (Not to discount the contributions of atonal bagpipers and muu-muu-clad interpretive dancers.)
13. Surrogate sex partner for deviant alpacas.
14. Tiny scale model of Amazonian rain forest, illustrating catastrophic results of the greenhouse effect.
15. Tiny scale model of Siberian tundra, illustrating catastrophic results of scorched earth policy in Napoleonic invasion of Russia.
16. Tiny scale model of Dennis Rodman's face, illustrating catastrophic results of Dennis Rodman's face.
17. Catalyst for fermentation of hops, produces highest quality lagers and ales available anywhere in North America.
18. Visual aid in barber college graduate-level course in applied chaos theory.
19. Fodder for lame-ass comedy list.
20. Surrogate sex partner for Ivana Trump.
Nazareth Bergeron
Apr 5, 2016 | Humour, 1st pages
Chapter 1
↣ But Thinking Makes It So
I open my eyes, as prepared as anyone, I guess, to start my day, and my first thought is “I’m dead.”
I leap to this conclusion because my eyes take in no light and my nose and mouth take in no breath. It’s a fine thing that my second thought is to push my sleeping cat, Mr. Kitty, off my face. He objects, but is soon distracted by the gang of sparrows gathered in the ancient mountain ash outside the window of my trailer, my very much immobile mobile home.
The sunlight streams in on my once white, now taupe, cotton comforter. I squint my eyes until everything gets soft, and blurry, and looks like heaven; maybe comforters in heaven look like that.
I’m feeling good, in a not-fully-awake no-grasp-on-reality kind of way.
I think everyone wakes up like that. No matter what has been taken from you, or hurt, or damaged, there is a moment when you first wake up that you are perfect; as when God first thought you up, perfect.
I feel my bed move on the room side of me, which I have my back to. As I turn, to see what has caused this inexplicable shift in my positioning, I am struck above my left eye by an elbow, with such force that I see stars.
OK. Obviously, I wasn’t actually thinking when I thought I was dead just because Mr. Kitty sat on my face. I don’t think that could be called thinking, in the strictest sense of the word. No, this, coming up, is my first thought:
“Oh shit, I’m married.”
This thought occurs to me, in much the same way a nuclear explosion “occurs”. My brain has become my enemy, if it is indeed true that “I think, therefore I am…” Married.
The thought is physiologically akin to “Oh shit, I just witnessed a really bad car accident,” or, “Oh shit, a guy just jumped off the building across the street.”
I scramble out of bed, like Jackie Kennedy over the trunk of a convertible, and run until my back can be placed against a wall.
Sam Johnson
Mar 17, 2016 | Humour, 1st pages
CHAPTER ONE
I was cold and hungry, and my feet were already starting to hurt. Other than that, it was a perfect day. At least it wasn't raining; that was the worst, or one of the worst things that could happen when you were riding your thumb. I had left Portland only this morning, but instead of doing the smart thing and taking the Interstate, I had opted for the coast highway. The price was short rides and long walks. But I had no reason to hurry back to Texas—or anywhere else for that matter.
The highway followed the ragged edge of the Oregon coastline leaving little room on the southbound shoulder for walking. With the logging trucks flying by ten feet away, it took a certain amount of courage to turn and face them. I already knew I was more likely to get a face full of dirt and tree bark than a ride. These guys weren't about to stop for anyone. On the west side of the shoulder was the Pacific Ocean, held in check by a post and cable barrier. The morning tide roared like a factory and sent a cold mist floating across the highway and me. It had a pleasant salty smell, although on occasion there was the stench of dead fish or rotting kelp. My clothes felt heavy from the mist and clung to me in the most awkward places. The dirt just off the black top had already covered my shoes and was slowly working its way up my pant legs. From the look of things, the longer it took to catch a ride, the worse my chances got.
I hadn't spent a lot of time considering the problems of thumbing the coast highway. Sure, it was pretty, and why wouldn't it be? There was nobody around to mess it up. There was nobody around to give me a ride either. The few nobodies that were around were locals, and they weren't going anywhere. It never occurred to me that the people that built this highway didn't build it to go from Portland to L.A. They built it to go from Coots Bay to Pine Point and Pine Point to Gold Coast and so on. My longest ride so far had been thirty miles. I had already walked half that far.
I was starting to notice another thumbing phenomenon; people who pick up hitchhikers drive fast, so you pass all the people who didn't pick you up in the first place, and they get another chance not to pick you up again. I kept seeing the same people over and over; they even started to wave.
But my biggest problem with thumbing is being forced to accept rides from a bunch of strangers. Talking strangers. It's surprising how much they want to tell you about themselves, or friends, or relatives. It starts out as nervous chatter, and before you know it, you're listening to stuff most people would never admit to even thinking about. How a conversation could swing from the weather to the size of some waitress' boobs in less than five miles of driving was amazing. At one moment I was judging a liar's contest, and the next I was holding a confession. I guess I have a friendly face.
Emilio Boechat
Feb 16, 2016 | 1st pages, Humour
SCENE ONE
A small deli like any other in New York City. Nothing special to say about it. OMAN (about forty years old) is onstage, at the cash register. He is Iranian, but he is often mistaken as any other person from the Middle East, which makes him very angry. FAGNER, a Brazilian young boy (about twenty five years old) enters the stage and walks toward Oman.
FAGNER — (smiling) Hi!
OMAN — (smiling back, strong Iranian accent). Hi.
(Silence.)
OMAN (CONT'D) — What can I do for you?
(A pause. FAGNER smiles again. A BIGGER smile now.)
FAGNER — (strong Brazilian accent). I don't speak English.
OMAN — Oh, yeah? Me neither. (bursts out laughing) Who speaks English in this fucking city?!
(FAGNER keeps a ridiculous smile on his face. OMAN stops laughing.)
OMAN (CONT'D) — Oh… You REALLY don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?
Ben Adams
Jan 29, 2016 | 1st pages, Humour
Chapter One
‘If anyone’s sober at the end of my wake, I’ll come back from the dead and kick your arse.’
Mum’s last words to me before she died were going through my head as I did my gaudy red tie up on the morning of her funeral. She was that sort of character, the life and soul, the heartbeat of our family. Things were never dull with Mum around. And she hadn’t wanted the last party in her honour to be dull either.
As these occasions tend to be, her funeral started off fairly sedately. The service was held at St Martins, the church Mum used to worship at, if you call singing carols on Christmas Eve worshipping. The service was fairly standard. The vicar did a good job, although he did struggle to pronounce Mum’s name. To be fair, Valerie Juniper Fazackerley isn’t the easiest name in the world to enunciate. Most people just called her Mrs F, which was what Dad eventually advised the holy man to do.
Mum was then buried at the attractively named Merton and Sutton Joint Cemetery. Dad will join her there at some point, but hopefully not any time soon. The turnout at her send-off would have pleased Mum. The requisite amount of close family and friends were there, suited and booted, most in black despite Dad having issued instructions to the contrary. A bunch of 1970s hippy musos turned up too. They added a bit more colour to proceedings, both in their dress and in their language.
‘What the fuck am I doing up at this time in the morning,’ John the bass player grumbled as he shook my hand outside the church. The musicians’ role was to play a passable version of Norman Greenbaum’s ‘Spirit in the Sky’ at the wake, a song many of the same faces had played at Mum and Dad’s wedding nearly forty five years previously.
We held the wake in the Morden Brook, the pub across the roundabout from the cemetery. The bar staff were great with our party, laying on free sandwiches and giving us our own room to be miserable in. They needn’t have bothered. At Mum’s instruction, we were less miserable than the pub’s regulars.
Mum was sent on her way with as much nostalgic story-telling and laughter as we could muster. There was our old neighbour, Gary, regaling us with tales of their shared youth. ‘Your mother was a right goer in her time, son. The stories I could tell you…’ No thanks, Gary.
Or there was Anna from the flower shop, an old school friend of Mum’s. ‘She always had her choice of the boys did your mum. She was the first one of us to get boobs. We were so jealous.’ Thanks for that, Anna. And there was Dad. ‘I’m going to miss the old bird. I’ll have to make my own hot chocolate when I go to bed tonight.’ His feelings obviously ran deep.
‘You did her proud, son,’ people who I had never met kept telling me as they scoffed another free sandwich. Half of them had probably never met Mum either. Even Louise, my wife who ran off with a librarian, popped in to pay her respects.
Ian Thompson
Jan 14, 2016 | 1st pages, Humour
The year was 2060, and the month was June, and it was raining outside. That was to say, it was raining in the Out Reaches and not within the vast dome that covered the sprawling metropolis named DOSH-1-TERMINUS-UK, under which Abraham Pope’s bungalow sheltered. Pope was a light sleeper mainly because he worried about everything, including sleeping lightly. He was also insecure, although he couldn’t fathom out why, and that concerned him greatly. Mostly, he had an unerring feeling he had mislaid or forgotten something, and couldn’t help but fret about what.
Several domes, or “boils” as the Outreachers called them, blighted the UK, rising up from its fresh, green land. DOSH-1 spanned the old town of Milton Keynes, and as such, improved the local scenery no end. More domes were dotted around Europe, the largest covering the entire country of Belgium. Each was a node, a gripping finger of the clawing grasp of EZICASH, a part of the gossamer web of Safety and Health that cradled the lands in its caring arms.
Abraham believed that lullaby, and hence it was why he could sleep, albeit lightly, though there was one thing that played on his mind.
