Come peek at my naked fancy

I'm easy.

Easy to amuse.

I know because I crack myself up all of the time.

I can see something, and my brain goes "oh boy!" and runs off into a flight of fancy.

Sometimes I can even explain the fancy to someone else afterwards.

I'll give you an example.

Yesterday I was walking in the park and right at the entrance to my favorite path there was a huge triangular orange sign that said "TREE WORK."

Well, I immediately took a picture of the sign with my camera phone and my brain ran off into a couple of story tangents to go with the sign.

Why?

Because the image that the TREE WORK sign conjured up for me as soon as I read it was trees working.

Like behind the counter at Starbucks, as nurses, driving buses, selling newspapers, like that.

And my brain decided that this sign was put up in the forest as an advertisement so that trees could line up behind it and get placed for jobs.

Kind of like a woodland employment agency.

But, sadly, not all of the trees would be suitable for employment.

Because trees can be dumb as a post and are often as thick as a 2X4.

And some of them?

Like Hawthorne trees?

They can be quite prickly.

And Oaks, don't even get me started on how hard Oaks are to work with.

Obvious conclusion?

Some trees would be left jobless.

That led me to envisioning a tree standing on a street corner with a sign on a string that said "will work for fertilizer."

That's the way my brain works.

From surdity to absurdity in five seconds flat.

In my life I've been blessed with a few people who get the things I think and love me for them.

Hopefully some of them showed up today.

If not, oh well, it amused me.

Twice.

Once when I thought it, and once when I typed it out for ya'all.

And isn't that what living well is all about?

Being happy with what you create in your mind and in your life?

I like to think so.

And since I'm the one thinking it, I agree wholeheartedly with myself on this point.

And the idea of trees shuffling around hawking nuts at a ballgame?

That just kills me.

 

[I blame this whole flight of fancy on seeing The Wizard of Oz for the first time at a highly impressionable age.]

Conan O’Brien has stolen my brain

I have a drawer in my kitchen where random things that were "lost" show up sometimes.

Recently I overheard someone say "I'm sorry for your loss" to a bereaved woman.

I understand the human nature part of that.

The part where we don't want to let go of a loved one.

We'd like them to just be "lost" to us for a while.

But wouldn't it be funny if that lady's Springer spaniel showed up in my kitchen drawer?

 

This thought occurred to me while I was stretching this morning.

But I totally heard Conan say it in my head.

And I laughed.

Then I decided that it was too mean for me to say onblog, but to say that Conan said it in my head?

That works.

But the funny thing?

Jon Stewart could say the exact same thing, but substitute "Grandmother" for "Springer spaniel."

And nobody would hate him for it.

My conclusion?

The fewer freckles you have the closer to the edge you can take your comedy.

And it probably helps that Jon has that cute little tush.

At least the car was stopped at the time

Two days ago I saw something that I never thought I'd see a woman do in public, let alone in traffic.

Sit back, make yourself comfortable and let me set the scene.

I was sitting in traffic.

It was a sunny day.

There was a lovely breeze.

The temperature was hovering around 77.

In other words, perfect convertible weather.

There was a woman in a car sitting next to me at the light.

Her car was a convertible.

An expensive high end one.

She also had an expensive high end look about her.

She was wearing good jewelry, she had a nice even tan and her clothes fit well and looked new.

Her hair was honey blonde, expensively cut with professional highlights as though she'd just come from the salon.

But if she had just come from the salon, she seemed to have forgotten to ask the stylist to go the extra mile and remove some other hair while she was there.

Because APPARENTLY while checking her lipstick in the mirror on her visor she noticed some whiskers.

And was intent upon removing them.

Right then.

Right there.

Now I may be old fashioned, but I think that female facial hair grooming should be done in private.

Not this woman.

She spent the whole time we were sitting at the light moving her tongue under her lip to thrust it out so she could tweeze her whole mustache area in her visor mirror.

She must have plucked twenty or thirty stray whiskers while we sat there waiting for the light to change.

Did I mention that she was doing this in the daytime, in a convertible?

A convertible.

As in open to the sky and all the cars surrounding hers.

Nothing between her and my eyeballs.

And nothing between her and the eyeballs of the grinning guy in the car on the other side of hers.

He locked eyes with me and gave me the universal do you see this eyebrow lift and hand gesture.

I gave him back the universal I see it but I don't believe it smile and head shake.

Then we both laughed.

I just sat there shaking my head and laughing until the light changed.

I thought about the lady off and on for the rest of the day and never did decide if a) she didn't care that people could see her b) she was oblivious to the audience c) she was just so freaked out by the whiskers that she couldn't wait ten seconds to pull into one of the multitude of parking lots available to her to tweeze the offending hair in a less public setting.

I don't know what she was thinking.

I do know that as she drove off I found myself thinking that I hoped that whoever she was driving to meet was well groomed.

Because if they weren't they might be in for a surprise.

This woman owns tweezers, and is not afraid to use them……

I don’t think you can do that in Ohio….the monkey per redneck ratio is too small

I was sitting in traffic waiting for the cars ahead of me to figure out how to merge one after the other into one lane because of construction.

The first five vehicles or so had apparently never seen this done before and were not doing a good job of allowing the harried road crew worker to direct them safely into one lane.

It was hot out. It was the end of the day. Tempers were frayed.

Some of the drivers seemed to need a refresher course in the Golden Rule.

Although interestingly enough, the folks who seemed most likely to need a refresher course in do unto others had a really good grip on how to use their horn.

And one of the horn blowing motorists reminded us all of how much fun it is to make interesting hand gestures at another motorist and that it's okay to follow up the hand gesture by shouting something rude to a construction worker who's just trying to do her job.

As I said, it was hot out and tempers were frayed.

Luckily there was no gunplay.

As I was sitting there smiling, patiently waiting my turn, because a) I'm polite and b) I was sober and c) I love a good piece of street theatre, a red van with California plates came abreast of my car.

Traffic had crawled to a standstill while the knuckleheads sorted whose turn it was out, so the red van and I were face to face for about two minutes.

The driver of the van was an older woman. She had long gray hair topped with a blue knit hat.

The knit hat peaked my interest since she was wearing it in 80 degree weather, so I watched her for a minute.

She sat waiting for a break in traffic so she could turn into the entrance to a couple of chain hotels and a restaurant.

She was holding the wheel in the ten and two position and I could see both of her hands.

About three seconds after I looked at her movement by her chin caught my attention.

To my surprise and delight, on her shoulder was a small monkey.

The monkey was just calmly sitting there on her shoulder running its fingers through her hair in long smooth strokes.

While she sat there waiting to turn, it stroked her hair over and over in a soothing way.

I don't know if the monkey was soothing her or itself, but it made my day.

It was such a cute monkey.

I wondered if when they checked into the hotel if the lady would have to pay for a double occupancy room, or if she'd just leave out the part about traveling with a monkey.

[like those ladies with purse dogs on airplanes]

In my mind's eye I could just see the tiny monkey tucked up into a double bed with the covers up to his neck with only his tiny sweet monkey face sticking out.

I sat there and smiled harder.

The lady saw me and gave me a big smile in return.

I didn't notice any change in the monkey's expression.

I have never before seen someone traveling with a monkey.

I started thinking that maybe everybody should have a monkey to travel with who would sit on their shoulder and soothe them.

Then I started thinking that maybe every construction worker who had to deal with yahoos at rush hour could have a shoulder monkey too.

The best part of that idea would be if the monkey was both a soothing monkey and also an attack monkey.

That way if someone was rude to you while you were on the job, the monkey could launch itself at the rude person and grab them by the nostrils and head butt them.

But you probably can't do that in Ohio.

With all the construction?

We'd need an awful lot of monkeys.

Superhero at Large

Early one Tuesday morning this past fall I was driving along about two miles from my house.

I stopped for a red light just before entering a school zone.

I was sitting there, minding my own business, singing along loudly [and badly] with the radio.

My attention left the song I was singing when the floorboard of my car started to vibrate.

It tickled my feet.

What I saw tickled my whole body.

Coming toward me, still in the school zone, was BATMAN.

Batman, in full Super Hero regalia, driving sedately through the school zone at 20mph.

He was riding a huge black motorcycle. He rode toward me, cape billowing behind him, the sun glinting off of his shiny handlebars.

The ground rumbled beneath the bike.

I couldn’t have been more delighted. My mouth fell open and I started laughing.

As he came level with my car, I goggled at his Batman mask, his Batman tights, his Batman utility belt, his Batman boots, his Batman gloves.

The only deviation to his workaday crime fighting clothes was fringe hanging all along his gloves. The fringe dangled from wrist to elbow. I say deviation from his usual clothes because I’m of the generation that grew up with Adam West embodying Batman on tv, and Adam didn’t have fringe on his gloves.

I started wishing that everyone I knew was in the car with me to see Batman riding around in my neighborhood. As he passed me, I scrambled in my purse for my camera phone. I got the window open and my arm out, but by then he was too far away to get any kind of picture.

He did give me a tiny two fingered salute.

And I gotta tell you…..it made me all butterflyee in my tummy.

About a week later I saw a headline on yahoo that a guy dressed as Batman had been ARRESTED in Florida for wearing a mask in public. Apparently as part of the homeland security guidelines wearing a mask in public is a no no.

This law makes me wonder how the good guys will be able to protect their secret identities.

Will we force all of our crime fighting heroes to abandon their posts?

Will they all be unmasked?

Will the evil doers know who they are and where they live and thereby be free to come to their house to kick their dogs and pull up their shrubs?

I hope not, because I love the idea of Batman casually tooling around early on a Tuesday morning.

I wondered if he was coming from or traveling toward something official, like opening an electronics super store, or a child’s birthday party, or disarming a nuclear warhead.

Or maybe he was just on his way to pick up Robin to go shopping for some brie and a nice chardonnay.

Whatever he was doing, I hope that Ohio never opts to arrest Batman for being Batman.

Superheroes need to remain at large. To delight young and old. To do what they do best. To make grown ups into kids again.

And if anyone knows how to mount a video camera to the hood of a car, please send me an email.

I want to be ready for the next time.

Mug full o’ spider

Last Thursday I was lying on the floor watching Burn Notice. I mean a biography on Albert Einstein. Yes, that was what I was doing, watching a biography to improve my brain.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. I turned my face and there, three inches from my eyes was the biggest spider that I have ever ever seen outside of a pet store, or loose in a friend's car in high school.

Let's explore that for a minute…..my friend who shall remain nameless, but his initials are Jeff Kaehler, had a pet tarantula that got loose in his car. Prior to the escape the spider had been much loved and well tended. Jeff reveled in displaying the spider's prowess at snapping #2 pencils with its formidable jaws. Therefore, once it was loose in the car there wasn't a lot Jeff could do about finding it and returning it to its cage if he also valued his fingers. And he did. Value his fingers that is. Sooooo, he left his poor lovely spider in the car, with the windows up, in the hot sun, in August, for days…..hoping that it would get hungry and come out so he could catch it. Or alternatively, and sadly, meet its demise so he could safely resume driving his car.

Now, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the story I heard was that after a week of no sign of the spider, he got into the car and drove away to the self serve car wash to use their giant vacuum cleaner to dispose of the corpse.

About half way there, he felt a slight tickle on his leg. He looked down, and sure enough there was his furry friend climbing his leg. He managed to pull over, capture the little guy in a baseball hat and put him in the glove box. Then he drove home, got the cage, opened the glove box, the spider JUMPED into his house and began devouring the waiting food. So all was right in spider land that day.

My story has a murkier ending.

I have always been a person who catches bugs and lets them go outside if at all possible. Where I live now my windows have fixed screens, so anything bigger than a ladybug can't be released out of the windows.

The evening of the visit from the giant spider I was already in my jammies. My front door opens onto a hallway, not to the great out of doors.

When I saw the giant spider, I jumped up and went into the kitchen to get something to catch it in. My dishwasher was running and all of my glasses and large mugs were inside. I scrambled around and found the mug in the photo.

I put the mug down in front of the spider and he climbed in. HE JUST BARELY FIT. I covered the top with a paperback book and ran squeaking to my front door. I tossed him into the hall as close to the exit door as possible.

There's a gap under the door and my hope was that he would find it and go outside. I went back to watching Burn Notice. I mean Albert.

A few minutes later I heard panicked screaming in the hall. It was a man's voice, screaming in a high pitched girly way and also swearing, quite loudly and inventively, in a much less girly way. A lot of doors opened and shut while other tenants looked out to see what was up.

I cracked my door and watched the spectacle. The guy was hopping around on one foot and then actually LEAPED into the air and grabbed hold of the staircase rail in one big sideways motion. He scrabbled at the rail with his feet churning until he found purchase for his giant sneakers and then he disappeared from sight.

I closed my door grinning and went back to watching tv. I checked the next day and there was no giant squished spider in the hall. My hope is that the little spider guy came to no harm and is living happily outside.

Now my question is, does it make me a sexist because I found the freaking out guy funny? If it had been a woman or a child who discovered the little hairy guy, I would have felt bad about tossing a giant spider into the hall and scaring them.

But since it was a guy, I was amused.

Hmmmm….maybe I'm a closet sexist and don't know it….

[does some soul searching]

Nope, I'm pretty sure that no sexism was in play since the whole amusement thing hinged on this PARTICULAR guy freaking out about something that was one one hundreth of his size, and that he could have easily squished with his giant number twelve sneakers.

I hope you don't think less of me.

And speaking of thinking less of me…I wasn't watching a program about Albert Einstein to improve my brain.

I was watching Michael Weston blow stuff up. So there. And I bet Michael wouldn't have been bothered one little tiny bit by a big black hairy four inch spider…… unless it showed up in his yogurt. Then he would probably have been pissed. Michael hates it when anybody messes with his yogurt.

What were they thinking?

I was flipping through the channels yesterday and saw John Cusack so naturally I put the remote down.

I picked it up about 30 seconds later.

I had happened upon the last 15 minutes of The Ice Harvest; which I had never seen.

And I never will.

Let me tell you why.

Twelve seconds into the scene I had landed on, John had a handgun in his hand.

His goal in the scene was to save a girl who was in obvious danger, so the gun seemed reasonable.

He DID look incredibly uncomfortable holding a gun so they got THAT part right.

The gun was sans bullets, so he went off to find bullets.

John's characters are often unprepared for emergencies, so they got that part right, too.

What he found instead of bullets was a shotgun.

A shotgun that he then pointed at Randy Quaid.

[insert that sound that a record needle makes scraping across a record]

That is just soooooo not John Cusack.

A few seconds later John was disarmed and had a big knife stuck THROUGH his foot by a very upset Randy Quaid..

……...*YIKES*

I actually felt ill.

I went off and found baby deer and kittens to look at for a while.

Doesn't it say IN HIS CONTRACT somewhere....play nice with John Cusack, he's fragile?

I'm all for actors stretching their acting chops. But there are some things that I just have a problem with certain actors doing.

For instance, I can't picture John Wayne in a tutu. (oh damn, I just pictured John Wayne in a tutu) But you know what I mean, even if the man, say to settle a bet, would wear a tutu, there is no way that the CHARACTER of John Wayne would wear a tutu.

Same with John Cusack. John plays fragile, complicated men who ultimately get you to feel that you should be scooping them up into a blanket fresh from the dryer and offering them cocoa.

I have no idea if that is what he is like in real life. I did, however see a video of him being interviewed by a reporter who had mixed him up with Kevin Spacey. She kept insisting that John was in American Beauty and unfortunately she was one of those people who once they have an idea in their head, they don't let it go. He remained calm and classy. He did look a little miffed by the end there though.

But not nearly as miffed as when Randy Quaid stuck that knife in his foot.

[shudder]

http://www.maniacworld.com/how-not-to-interview-john-cusak.html

Life’s Little Delights

I love people. I love to talk to people. I love to watch people. I love to watch people talking with other people.

You get it, people are interesting, people are fun. Glad we have them here on planet Earth. Moving on.

Just about every day I see or hear someone doing or saying something that later works itself into my writing, or into a comedy bit, or just into a story to amuse my friends.

Sometimes it finds its way into all three.

It's not unusual for me to find more than one hidden iceberg of comedy lurking just beneath the surface of my ordinary day.

I have a friend who teaches his comedy writing students to keep a notebook with them at all times to write down anything that strikes their fancy.

One day I saw something that still makes me grin whenever I picture it.

I didn't have a notebook, but there is no way short of a severe brain injury that I'll ever forget watching this particular scene.

It is seared into the synapses of my brain, or at least into the synapses connected to my funny bone.

I was taking a course at a local college and just before class I was sitting in my car at a traffic light waiting to turn into the parking lot.

The car in front of me had one occupant. He was fiddling with his rear view mirror while the light was red.

The light turned green but the car didn't move.

I'm a polite person, so I gave him a minute to notice the light without honking my horn.

I was so glad that I did.

We ended up sitting through two cycles of the light because he was busy perfecting something and I was busy laughing my butt off and hoping he wouldn't see me and stop.

The car's occupant was a young, stick thin guy who was so white that he verged on being incandescent.

He was dressed all in black.

His eyes were lined in black.

His hair was dyed jet black.

He had multiple piercings in his face and ears.

He was painfully cool.

I could see him thinking about how cool he was right there in his rear view mirror.

He didn't notice that the light had changed because he was intently watching himself.

What he was doing, for want of a better phrase was "pose smoking."

At first he was just smoking normally, but then he began sending the smoke out of his lips in various ways; at the roof of the car, out of the side of his mouth, in one big exhale, etc.

Then he tried improving his style by smoking his cigarette in a "French" way, holding the cigarette between the second and third finger of his right hand, the back of his hand bringing the cigarette to his mouth; his whole focus seemingly riveted toward getting the sneer just right as he blew the smoke back out into the mirror.

I sat there grinning, covering my mouth so he wouldn't see.

The light changed, but he didn't notice it, and I sure as heck wasn't going to honk at this point.

Next, he tried smoking the "looks like he's smoking a joint" way, pinching the cigarette hard between thumb and index finger, deeply dragging so that almost the whole cigarette was burned up in one inhale.

Once he had his lungs sufficiently filled with smoke, he attempted a smoke ring.

One smoke ring came out just fine and then the next didn't go so well and he began an epic coughing fit.

He was hacking so violently that even though he couldn't have weighed as much as his spare tire, he was making his whole car bounce up and down and rock from side to side as he coughed.

I was laughing hard by then and not even attempting to hide it.

I sat there whooping, torn between acting on my mommy instincts; hopping out, patting him on the back and offering water, and hoping he'd continue.

Before I decided between the two, he recovered.

He used his sleeve to dry his eyes, checked the status of the light, which was red again, and lit another cigarette.

This time he opted for the eyes squinted up "let it hang out of the side of my mouth while I talk" tough guy look.

So, there he was, eyes squinted up, smirking, cigarette dangling from his lips……a haze of smoke encircling his head…..intently watching himself in the mirror.

When he shot himself with his finger gun and followed it up with the universal what's up chin lift……..

I almost wet myself.

Seriously, I was laughing so loud at that point that I don't know how he didn't hear me.

But, sadly, before he could rummage around and find a really long cigarette holder and do an impression of a sixties spy movie villain, the light changed and he drove into the lot. (he would have needed a long haired white cat to stroke while smoking to complete this visual anyway)

I do have to say that I don't approve of smoking. It's a disgusting habit. It makes you smell bad, taste bad and inhibits your ability to rhyme. (little known but true fact)

I've always been, as Tony Randall was often described, "a militant anti smoker," but on this day I loved the tobacco industry because it was truly one of the funniest things that I've ever seen someone do in real life.

To be fair, I guess he thought that he was doing it in private. But HELLO….those glass things you can see out of???? People can see IN too.

I'm so glad that I waited when the light turned green.

If I'd been impatient and honked at the guy, I would have missed his whole show.

The lesson learned?

If you're observant and patient and kind and wise and gentle and open hearted…..the universe rewards you by letting you see something funny enough to make you snort bologna out of your nose.

So to sum up…….smoking isn't cool no matter how many ways you try it…….neither is necrophilia…..which has nothing to do with anything ....other than in my personal lexicon of uncool things, smoking and necrophilia are both in the top ten, so I thought that I'd share.

Fake News Friday-Alien Activity

June 12, 2009

Medina, Ohio

Carla Roundtree,69, called 911 on Thursday of this week to report suspicious Alien activity.

Ms. Roundtree told Harlan Edwards, the chief of Medina police, that Aliens had come into her house and escaped even before she could get a photo of them.

"Me and Ricky was just sittin in the front room watching Jerry Springer when all of a sudden I got this chill, like a cat awalkin over my grave, so I ran in to check on the grandbabies."

Ricky is of course the much loved Ricky Archer, 53, local beer can sculpture artist and burping champion of three counties.

"Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather, I was just that surprised. I got in the bedroom and there weren't nothin there. No Aliens to be seen atall. But there was this funny tinny smell in the air and this blob of blue goop on the floor shaped like the top of a soft ice cream what comes out of one of them spigots they got over at the Dairy Queen" continued Ms. Roundtree.

"Well, I hollered for Ricky and he come arunnin, but afore he got to the bedroom the goop just disappeared up in a little puff of smoke and a sound like 'ting'.

That's when we noticed what they'd done."

At this point both Ricky and the Chief of Police had to steady Ms. Roundtree.

Ricky got her a glass of water so that she could gather herself together and continue with her story.

Several of Medina's finest, the chief, her common law husband and I waited with bated breath for her to finish the tale.

She drank the water, clutched the glass in one hand, clung to Ricky for dear life with the other and in a shaky voice she said,

"Not only had they changed the diapers on both of the babies, they had vacuumed and washed the windows.

And those windows are hard to clean; they stick somethin dreadful in the damp."

Reported by Karen Schindler of Miscellaneous Yammering 6/12/09

SpongeBob is my co pilot

Now I know that this is an awful photo, but to be fair, I took it from inside my car, through my windshield, through their windshield on a sunny day, trying to be clandestine. I was trying to be clandestine because I didn't want to scare anyone off; especially not the owner of this well blessed car. (I was also being clandestine because when you spell the word surreptitious correctly is just looks wrong.)

Depending on what the driver looked like and how approachable they seemed, I was going to ask about their double icon decision.

I hung around for a while, well for quite a while, until I got hot and thirsty as a matter of fact. Finally I reluctantly left my vigil and went into the large electronics store where we were parked.

I was still grinning when I went inside, and an employee asked me why I was so happy. While I got a drink of water I told him about my sighting and he told a couple of other people and soon I tromped back outside with six employees of said store in tow and then the greeter joined us to see what was up.

We ALL waited while speculating on the why of it all, and hoping to meet the driver who presumably had all of the answers. Or maybe he had some REALLY BIG QUESTIONS of his own.

But the owner never showed, so we went back inside, them to work, me to buy a tiny appliance.

SpongeBob and Jesus had really made our day. (There's a sentence I bet you won't see in print twice today.)

But I had then and still have now, a lingering niggling question.
Just as a fun stop you in your tracks and make you think image, I love this combination.It could be explained as easily as hey, I like Jesus, and the grandkids like Spongebob, so what's the big deal?

BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO KNOW IS……..WHY ARE THEY BOTH FACING OUT????

And EACH seems to be blessing the road ahead.

Wouldn't Jesus AUTOMATICALLY cancel out SpongeBob?

Just what extra base is this person covering by having both? Inquiring minds want to know. And oh yeah…want to caption it?

I am not M. Night Shyamalan

I am not M. Night Shyamalan but I recently got a glimpse into what his life must be like.

I don't know how anyone could confuse us. There are few similarities. I'm tall. He's tall. He has those dreamy liquid eyes. I have eyes. We're both parents. And we both write.

But I think that's about it for similarities folks and still, there seems to be some confusion.

I know, I know, a lot of my stories start with I met a man in the park ......but I spend a lot of time in the park so a lot of my random conversations take place in the park.

When this gets old for you feel free to substitute in your head the words ice skating rink, boxing match, skeet shooting or white water rafting for "in the park."

So I met this man in the park, we met on several occasions, nothing planned, we just happened to be there at the same time.

We had a bunch of conversations about a bunch of stuff that I won't bore you with, but one day we happened upon what I do for a living.

Well, he got really excited about me being a writer.

He asked what I was working on.

I told him about my current WIP and even showed him my synopsis which I happened to have in my pocket because I'd had lunch with a friend earlier in the day and she wanted to see it.

He asked if I'd ever written a script.

I told him one of my favorite stories about a movie idea that I'd had and about sending it off with a kiss into the land of bottom drawers and garbage pails in agent's offices everywhere.

The twist to my story is that someone famous who shall not be named in this place, but when I tell the story has the adjective "freakin'" in front of his name was mildly interested in my idea.

Which led to me getting a phone call while driving and having to pull over to the side of the road, only to find that I only had a scrap of paper one inch by one inch in size to take notes on.

So I'm telling this story, again it's one of my favorite stories, waving my arms around and doing all the hopping up and down that I do when I'm excited……..

I get to the end of the story,

Wait for the laugh,

Instead, he leans in and says,

"So can I pitch you a movie idea?"

See the title of the piece. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Note: As a follow up to this see "My friend T is a Rotten Stinking Bastard"

Fake News Friday

Medina, Ohio

Local Shrink Ray Inventor Solves Crime Spree

Local inventor Jake Sampson came forward on Wednesday of this week to help police solve a string of seemingly unrelated robberies.

Sampson, 44, invented a shrink ray gun several years ago. He says he uses it mainly around the house.

"Well, except for when I go to my Uncle Bud's junk yard and shrink up the piles of junk for him. But that's just sensible. That's just ecology. I go to the county dump once a month and do it for them too. Oh, and then there are all those tires that the Firestone folks need shrunk up, and of course the recycling.

We're big on the plastic recycling not getting to sit around and muck up the ground water here in Medina. We shrink it right up and put it in a file cabinet down at city hall. There's 52,000 plastic milk jugs filed in an 8 x 10 manila envelope under 'J' in the mayor's office," said Sampson.

"I invented the shrink ray back in 1997 right after my truck died," continued Sampson "I couldn't fit my dog or his giant bags of dog food into my VW, so I figured out a way to make them smaller for easier transport."

The gun could be easily overlooked since it looks so ordinary. For the body of the gun Sampson used a bar coder that he picked up in a retail auction.

Sampson said that about two weeks ago he was in his back yard using the ray gun to enlarge the riding lawn mower that he had purchased and then shrunk and carried home in his pocket.

His neighbor, Joe Thornton, 51, came around the corner of the garage and witnessed the restoration of the lawn mower.

Thornton asked to borrow the gun to bring home a tractor that he said he had just purchased and Sampson loaned it to him.

Over the next three days Thornton shoplifted a tractor, side by side refrigerator, a living room suite, a hot tub, a revolving bed, a floor freezer, an entire side of beef, and a pack of gum.

Sampson read about the mysterious string of robberies in the paper and put two and two together after he went to Thornton's house to reclaim the shrink ray gun and saw the new furniture in Thornton's living room. The living room had previously been decorated with a rusty lawn chair and a beer cooler.

"After the cops had him in handcuffs, I asked him what the hell he was thinking about using my ray gun like that to break the law and all, and he said that he had just intended to steal the tractor, but then the other stuff was just so fancy he couldn't help himself. And that he likes gum," said Sampson.

Reported by Karen Schindler of Miscellaneous Yammering June 5, 2009