Laser Guns and Smelly Garbage

I went rooting around in my neighbor’s trash the other day in search of whatever they cooked that had made my apartment smell like a dead rhino’s intestines. I hoped to find the secret ingredient and buy it out from every grocery store in town, so it could never again be transformed into the devil’s goulash. I failed in my endeavor, but did find something interesting. At the bottom of the dumpster was, of all things, a laser gun.

An idealized version of what I look like rooting in a dumpster

You may be thinking, “Huh, a laser gun? Really?” To which I would say, you need to lay off the thinking a bit. It really isn’t doing you any favors. I gave up thinking in the mid 90s, and I can safely say that I don’t miss it a bit. Now I just react emotionally to whatever situation presents itself. This has backfired on occasion, like the time I drank half a bottle of Tobasco Sauce when I was drunk at Denny’s and then threw it up in the bathroom, but forgot I had drunk the Tobasco in the first place and believed I was throwing up blood, but on the whole, poor impulse control has served me well. Give it a shot.

Don't drink while drunk

So back to the laser gun…

Oh Yeahhh!!!!!!

I grabbed it, gleefully looking forward to blasting cars and Snuggies. I knew from watching reruns of Star Trek that your basic laser gun comes with a little switch that goes from stun to vaporize, but this one only one setting, and that was mutate. I looked around for the neighbor, but only found a straggly raccoon in the neighboring dumpster. The raccoon and I sat down for a while and discussed our options. We decided to draw juice box straws to see who would be the mutatee. I drew the short straw, but the raccoon, his name was Steve, thought the winner was the one who got to be mutated. Apparently the life of a dumpster diving raccoon isn’t as thrilling as everyone thinks it is. I happily acquiesced.


Steve walked ten feet away and stood there with his arms outspread, waiting for me to pull the trigger. I admit that I was a little apprehensive, but performed task. A red beam emanated from the gun and enveloped Steve. It quickly disappeared, and Steve vanished. In his place was a small bunny rabbit with a pink bow around its neck. The bunny was Steve, and he was furious. He wanted to be giant and ferocious. Instead he was tiny and cute. He demanded that I shoot him again. I suggested that things might only get worse, but he wouldn’t listen to reason.

The next three hours were not pleasant. Steve went from a rabbit to a weasel, and from a weasel to guinea pig. He told me to keep trying and the results were in sequence: a guppy, a toaster waffle, a meal worm, a fruit bat, a small block Chevy engine, a limp rutabaga, and back to a fruit bat. We stopped at the second fruit bat incarnation, and I recommended it might be the best we were gonna get. The beam from the gun was getting a little more faint with each successive blast, and it might stop working completely before we achieved an acceptable result. Steve just flapped his wings at me angrily, because his vocal chords were too small to talk. I took this to mean that we should carry on.

Seven blasts later, with a pollywog and a piano bench in the middle, Steve turned into a rhesus monkey. I looked at him with a hopeful squint. In response, Steve ran up and gave me a giant smelly monkey hug. I was incredibly relieved, because the laser gun was smoking pretty bad and the beam had become barely visible. I asked him how he possibly intended to get by as a monkey in the city, but he reminded me that as a monkey, he could break into second story houses and eat all their bananas. I was happy for Steve, and made just one request, to which he happily agreed.

A compressed view of Steve's evolution to a rhesus monkey

The next day, I was sitting at home drinking tequila and watching Jersey Shore when I heard the neighbors banging around in the kitchen. The god-awful smell started drifting through my living room, but I waited patiently. A shadow flitted by the window, and I heard a harsh buzzing sound. The putrid smell instantly changed to fresh baked cookies. Now I leave a fresh bunch of bananas on my deck every morning, and my home never smells like rhino intestines.

My buddy Steve

A Modern Fable

Today’s posting is a story about a snail named Sammy:


Once upon a time there was a snail named Sammy. He was the star of a series of children’s picture books with names like Sammy Saves a Sandwich and Sammy Slimes the Soil. The books were very popular and Sammy made good money. But as he became wealthy and famous, Sammy succumbed to the lifestyle. He began snorting Ortho and betting on aphid fights. He dated an exotic murex snail with expensive tastes, and he had a custom salt pillar built just so he could mock death. The money ran like water, but his books kept it coming in. He showed up late to art sessions, but he was so popular the editors let it slide.

Funding Sammy's vices

Then one day it all came crashing down. Book sales had fallen off, and the publisher decided to go with disabled otter to capture a new market base. Sammy was crushed but knew he would bounce back. Unfortunately, no one wanted him. Other publishers knew how difficult he was and, besides that, alliterations were dead. The only animals getting work had multicultural names or clever meaningful names that made children stop and think.

The dark underworld of aphid fighting

Sammy grew depressed and blew through the rest of his money. The murex snail left him, his Ortho dealer stopped coming by, and his slug bookie sent two hornet thugs who threatened to break his shell if he didn’t pay up on his bets. Sammy turned to fermented apples to block out the pain. At his lowest, he tried to end it all by climbing into the bucket of an escargot collector, but he was too slow to get in. He eventually moved to a pick-your-own strawberry field where he spent his days eating the leaves and defecating on the strawberries.

Sammy knew that if he could work his way into a real life narrative that taught him a lesson, but without being heavy-handed and moralistic, he could turn it into a memoir and make a roaring comeback. When a school bus full of kids on a fieldtrip showed up at his strawberry field, he knew it was his big chance. He oozed his way across the field toward the bus, looking for anyway to involve himself. He was pretty slow, as snails tend to be, and barely made it ten feet before the kids had finished up their picking and clambered back onto the bus.

The sad snail turned back to his plant. He had failed, and might as well accept the fact that living in the field and getting his kicks watching people eat the strawberries he had just pooped was how the rest of his life was going to run, when something caught his eyestalk. A little boy was lying in one of the furrows, and he looked like he was knocked out. Sammy saw the bus getting ready to leave and knew he had to do something. He started back towards the bus as quickly as he could, but it was still a pretty pathetic pace.

A lost cause

He knew he had no chance at getting to the bus in time when a deus ex machina appeared in the form of the two thug hornets who were out searching for him. Sammy begged them to help and promised to get them their money plus the vig with the sales from the story. The hornets picked him up and flew him to the school bus just as the driver was closing the door. The sight of two hornets carrying a snail was bizarre enough to capture the attention of everyone onboard. Sammy had learned to read from back in his literary days, and slimed out a message about the injured boy.

The teacher was extremely grateful to Sammy, particularly since she was already on a final warning for negligence after leaving a child in the stingray tank on an aquarium fieldtrip. She agreed to substantiate his story with the publisher as long as he left names out. The book was a huge hit and Sammy was back on top. His success even brought alliterations back in the picture book market. Now that Sammy was flush, his Ortho dealer showed up at his doorstep, but Sammy pushed him into the street which was freshly coated with salt and oozed back inside to his new wife, a simple apple snail.

The End