Some Listings From One Who’s Sanity’s Missing

The 1-3 Reasons My Cat May Be A CIA Agent.

1. He can’t account for where he was at the time Kennedy was assassinated.

2. I keep finding weird messages scratched in his litter box that might be secret codes such as:

a)The hairball is wet and spongy.  Repeat…the hairball is wet and spongy. Please advise.

b) The dog humped the mail lady’s leg. Abort! Abort!

c) The black alley cat is in heat…the black alley cat is in heat. Request catnip protocol!

d) The rottweiler knows it's not Tootsie Rolls in the litter. Situation now Charlie Foxtrot!

3. The cat’s scratching post has weird antennae sticking out the top with tiny glowing red lights on the end. I swear that every once in a while I hear someone speaking Russian I'm scooping the litter box.

The 2-3 Reasons Alien’s Left Without Bothering

1. The aliens felt they were being racially profiled.  They resented that humans think all

aliens anal probe everyone they abduct.  This isn’t true, what really happens is they take

the abductee to dinner and a movie first and then they see where things go from there.

2. Earth has developed a reputation as as the Tajuana of the galaxy.  Oh, some aliens

might've occasionally visited Earth, bought a poncho, had some tacos, and enjoyed a bit

of low-class debauchery. However, as some curious and naughty aliens learned the hard

way, if they stay too long, they run the risk of contracting the dirty trifecta of STI’s:

gonorrhea; chlamydia; and genital warts courtesy of a prostitute who goes by the name

of Wanda, or Juan, depending on the alien's favorite flavor.  Being unaware of all the

dangers involved in visiting Earth, the alien life forms would've likely drank the water

giving themselves a raging case of dysentery.  As one can imagine, the 1000 light year

return trip home (with no rest stops until the Andromeda galaxy) without access to

antibiotics to treat the STIs would be painful. In addition, the dysentery fueled Old

Faithful-like diarrhea contaminating and overwhelming their space craft's only

nutritional waste disposal unit would be less than pleasant. Upon their arrival home,

the aliens would quickly warn their peers via the intergalactic travel blog to avoid Earth

at all costs.

3. Recently, as an alien vacation vessel entered Earth's orbit, the ship's sensors

accidentally tapped into a radio signal that played Taylor Swift followed by Justin

Bieber and rounded out with Coldplay.  The ship's crew immediately concluded that

the horrific noise was some deadly new form of auditory defense system designed to

repel alien incursion.  Little did they know, the aliens barely escaped before a much

stronger country music signal was picked up by their sensors.  One verse of, “She

Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” would have overwhelmed their artificially intelligent

navigation system.  Exposure to this drawling audio drool would have transformed

their normally artificially intelligent intergalactic GPS system into an artificially stupid

navigation system.  The result? The alien spacecraft would’ve veered off course, only to

be inescapably caught in the Earth’s gravitational pull. With the artificially intelligent

guidance system offline, the spacecraft would've been sent spinning out of control

plummeting towards Earth at hundreds of miles an hour until it’s lifeless, blackened,

and melted hull finally crashed into the beer booth at the San Joaquin County Fair. It

would've been the alien equivalent to the sinking of the Titanic, minus the god awful

Celine Dion song.

Why the FDA Approves of Nicotine and Alcohol

I’m sure that the FDA considers nicotine and alcohol as an inexpensive way to cull the population with minimal effort.  Who needs war and disease to keep the population manageable? Let those self-destructive folks who overindulge in tobacco and alcohol cull themselves.  It’s an efficient and inexpensive win-win solution to to Earth's increasing problem of overpopulation!

1. The FDA understands that nicotine operates as a self-administered form of evolutionary pressure that weeds out those who lack common sense.  It allows people to accelerate natural selection. Smoke some more! If someone is too self-destructive and dismissive of their health and the health of others to heed the Surgeon General’s warning on their pack of Marlboro’s, do we really want them to procreate?   Thankfully, smokers aren’t exactly prime mating material.  What with their always sexy, phlegmy-hacking-wheezing-hoarse-metastasis filled voice and all.  Now if we could just keep smokers from poisoning children and non-smokers around them it would be a perfect solution to Earth's pesky overpopulation problem.

2. Alcohol: What?  You’re going to quit drinking because you’ve got advanced stage

sclerosis of the liver?  Fuck that quitting shit and have a drink on me!  After all, you

won’t be considered for a liver transplant because, you’d more than likely just wreck the

new one.  So, you might as well go out in a blaze of glory!  Sure, you’ll be so jaundiced

that you look like Winnie the Pooh gone horribly, horribly wrong, but we’ve all got to

die sometime, right? Just don’t drive, okay.  Killing yourself is one thing, killing others

by driving intoxicated, well that is the ultimate state of douche baggery.  Just remember,

play your cards right and you’ll end up in a hospice that’s liberal with the morphine and

you’ll pass away on an opiate cloud.

3. The FDA is in the middle of a complex longitudinal study seeking to understand the

paradox that exists where those who are the least morally, emotionally, psychologically,

financially, and mentally capable people of child baring age can conceive and deliver

children with rodent-like efficiency and quantities while also having a remarkably low

infant mortality rate. It’s called the “Keeping CPS in Business Paradox.”  Oh, it’s a bit

wordie, but it's also about as accurate as one can get.  Like peanut butter to a mouse in a

maze, or cocaine laced alfalfa pellets to a rat, alcohol and nicotine serve as self-

administered behavioral reinforcers for the human longitudinal study subjects.  Without

these, self-administered rewards, it would be difficult to replicate the conditions where

these mysterious, improbable totally irresponsible, and most likely to end in a felony in

some way conceptions occur.

Excuses to Call in and Go Fishing

1. Hi Boss!  I can’t come to work today because I must spend an absurd amount of money to participate in the only sport that might be more boring than golf.  In fact, after purchasing the fishing license, tackle, life jacket, and urine sample quality beer, I will likely have spent more money than I would taking my entire family to a five-star sea food restaurant. During this unscheduled time off, I will absorb enough sun while sitting in a boat to develop every skin cancer known to medical science. I will also likely contract West Nile Virus from the mosquitos around whatever mud hole I’m forced to fish at.  Finally, my IQ will drop between 10 and 20 points as a result of second-hand exposure to country music. Let it be noted that not only will I be bored into a sea cucumber level of consciousness, but I hate fish, so I won’t want to eat whatever I might catch.

2. Hey boss!  I want to live dangerously today instead of going to work. So, I’m going

fishing! As self imposed punishment for calling in, I will force myself to eat whatever I

catch.  By eating my catch, I will be exposing myself to carcinogenic microplastics. I will

also be ingesting enough pesticides and herbicides from the agricultural run off into the

fish's habitat that my piss could used as both a pesticide and defoliant. In fact, just two

milliliters of my tinkle would be strong enough to clear a 100 acre almond orchard of  

every spider mite, caterpillar, foxtail, or blade of crab grass that would dare try to take up

residence amongst the trees. Finally, I could luck out and contract flesh eating bacteria

while standing in water infested with billions of microbes! Who needs expensive

liposuction or gym memberships? If I get flesh eating bacteria while fishing, the inches

and pounds will literally just melt away!

3. Hi Boss!  You know how some people will call out sick to play hooky and have fun? 

Well, I’m calling in, because I'm going fishing, but I promise I won’t be having any fun.

Wait!  What’s That Hiding in the Corner?

1. Alone in a corner it sits, silently gathering the dust of neglect.  It was meant to sing, wail, and growl, but now it’s just a stagnant wooden ornament on a plastic stand. She said it was her dream, her yearning, her destiny, and she wanted it at any cost (so long as someone else paid whatever the cost would be).  So, he gave in to the weakness that a father has for his daughter and bought her the candy apple red, Fender Squire guitar and the practice amp, that he imagined would be the source of a lot of feedback and even more headaches.  Elated to have what she wanted, she took lessons for a month and said the instructor at Guitar Center gave her the creeps (dad knew the teacher and he’s a great guy) and she wanted to quit.  Other teachers?  No, she declared that her hands were too small for the fret board and besides, the strings ruined her perfectly painted black fingernails.  So much for her dreams of becoming the lead guitar player for My Chemical Romance, he sighed as visions of money going down the drain filled his head.

2. The smell hits you first.  The stench is a weird menage of sweat, mold, aged toe jam, and

teenage skin grease with just a touch of peanut butter thrown in for good measure and a

sense of mystery.  A glance in the rooms’ dusty corner reveals the source of this unholy

reek.  It’s a pile of dirty clothes sitting on the bedroom floor.  Oh, but these aren’t just

any clothes.  THESE FILTHY CLOTHES belong to a sixteen-year-old boy.  Shirts,

socks, grayish boxer briefs, gym shorts, and jeans have created a rancid, alien ecosystem

just beneath a Slipknot poster and across from the bedroom's only window. The

window's glass radiates the warmth of the sun providing life-giving heat to the

biological disaster growing within its rays. This natural warmth then accelerates the

fermentation process which takes place in the boxer briefs and acts as an incubator for

the slowly evolving lifeforms which feed on the abundant grease and dead skin cells f

found like nutritious veins of filth throughout the two-foot-high mountain of polyester,

rayon, and cotton.  If a microbiologist could examine just one square millimeter of the

clothing under a microscope, they’d likely piss themselves and call the CDC.  However,

there is no microbiologist present and no scientists in hazmat gear sent in to contain

whatever the pile of clothes has become.  Instead, it’s just mom or dad, armed with little

more than a Tide Pod, and a cap full of bleach who must face the horrific pile of

mutating, logoed biological matter.  That which grows on the Stranger Things T-shirt

has already gained the intellectual equivalent of our ancient ancestor homo-habilis and

it laughs in the face of Tide and bleach.  Nothing short of a full exorcism coupled with

a multi-stage nuclear warhead can end the foul new life that is now growing within the

threads of the teenager’s sweaty collection of Haines and Fruit of the Loom.

3. There it sits silent, rusting, and unused.  I’m not sure if it even works anymore. 

Hmmm.  I’m not sure if this can be salvaged at all. It looks like it’ll need a new set of

parentheses, the commas should be turned, and the periods ported and polished. Who

let the simile and metaphor reservoirs run dry?  Uh oh. The imagination to creation

transmission has seized and the passion gear has melted to the prosaic lifter. I’m not sure

if any of this is rebuildable.  Wow. it keeps getting worse!  The plot generator and idea

alternator are fried, and I don’t think they make replacement parts anymore.  The

adjective pump motor is cracked and when did the verb belt get cut?  Wonderful!  The

pronoun gaskets are leaking sentence fragments. Well, I guess my creative writing engine

is shot. So, I won't be taking a long written journey anytime soon.  Oh well, I guess I’m

just a creative pedestrian. but at least I'm honest. I didn't sneak onto the publication

train using falsified talent tickets like the writers of the print covered toilet paper that are

the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Fifty Shades of Gray books.