*Confessions of a Chinese Entomologist
*The Practical Philosopher at Work and Play
*A Mother's Love Makes All the Difference
*Ballad of the Amorous Swineherd
*Fly Me to the Moon and Send the Bill to America
*High and Outside Meets High and Inside
*Scrooged to the Sticking Place
*Horsing Around with Fate and Fortune
*A Fish Tale
*The Grasshopper and the Amp
*The Fox and the Fruit
*Parable of The Three Wise and the Three Former Virgins
*The Ox and the Grapes
*A Camel's Lot Is Not A Happy One
*The Tortoise, the Hare, the Contest and the Moral
*The Portraitless Dorian Gray
*The Crocodile in the Manger
*Foxing the Crow
*The Recalcitrant Worker and
the Ghost of Christmas Last
*The Weasel and the Eighteen-Wheeler
*The Snake and the Grass
Confessions of a Chinese Entomologist
The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu fell asleep in a garden pavilion and dreamed that he was a butterfly. Upon awakening, he could not remember where he had parked his car.
Moral: Being a philosopher is all well and good, but having one of those beeper thingies on your car keys can save considerable embarrassment.
******
The Practical Philosopher at Work and Play
A man stood outside a Krispy Kreme donut shop, deeply inhaling the delicious aroma. The annoyed baker came running out of the store and demanded that the man pay for the smells he was so obviously enjoying. They stood there arguing passionately until a passing philosopher asked if he could settle the
question.
He asked the man for a 5-dollar bill, which he expertly folded into the shape of a playground "popper." He brought the folded bill down swiftly to make the characteristic "pop!" of such a toy, then turned to the baker and told him that the sound of the money had paid for the smell of the donuts.
As the man and the baker stood there scratching their heads, utterly perplexed, the philosopher unfolded the 5-dollar bill, slipped into the store, and got 2 sugar-glazed, 2 chocolate-topped, and 2 with rainbow sprinkles, which he took back home and enjoyed thoroughly.
Moral: If you're smart enough to be a philosopher you should be smart enough to put one over on dumber folks every now and then.
******
A Mother's Love Makes All the Difference
A gorgeous young woman came to her mother one day and asked if it was better to find a rich man or one who loved her sincerely. Her mother told her that one could argue the pluses and minuses of such a question endlessly, but only a practical experiment could provide a conclusive answer.
So the mother placed a number of discrete phone calls, and the next weekend she sent her daughter off in the company of an extremely wealthy man who had been the high bidder. The next weekend she did the same, and the weekend after that, and so on for many months.
One day the mother, noticing that her daughter was becoming decidedly shopworn after all these adventures, and that she was bulging suspiciously when she wore her tight leather pants, introduced her to a sincere, if poor, janitor, then left on her cabin cruiser for her villa on the Riviera, where she indulged herself mightily to the end of her days.
Moral: Mere beauty does not last, and youth will fade, so it's a good idea to cash in early and get out while you're ahead of the game.
******
Ballad of the Amorous Swineherd
A certain swineherd dreamed that he was a suitor for the hand of the princess of the realm, a young girl of surpassing beauty and heiress to untold wealth. The dream was so convincing that the very next day he left his swine and set off for the castle.
After many days on the road, footsore and weary, he arrived at the castle and announced to the Yeomen of the Royale Guard that he was there to plight his troth to the royal princess, and if they carried out his order in a snappy manner he'd see to it that they had a hogshead of ale in their barracks that very night.
The Yeomen of the Guard, knowing a swineherd when they saw one, belabored him with cudgels, put his eyes out with a hot poker and tossed him in with the royal hogs, where he realized his folly that night snuggled against the side of Hortense of the Great Dugs.
Moral: If you ever find yourself a swineherd with aspirations above your station, remember that these things rarely work out as neatly as they do in fairy tales, and that it would be a good idea to at least bathe before you take a shot at fulfilling your fantasies.
******
Fly Me to the Moon and Send the Bill to America
Long, long ago a certain young man was obsessed with the idea that he could fly. He puttered about on his off hours building strange contraptions, none of which worked, and he was filled with a mighty despair.
As he sat in his yard one day, looking at his collection of failures, a man from the government passed by and was quite taken with the assortment of derelict hardware. He immediately saw the possibilities inherent in these flying machines as weapons of war.
So he had the young man sign a secrecy agreement, hired him as a pricey consultant, and paid him an outrageous sum of money for the plans to the machines, as well as having all the existing ones hauled off to a secret hangar on a top-secret military base.
And the young man satisfied his need to fly with a 1,200 cc supercharged Harley-Davidson which, although it remained on the ground most of the time, did a wondrous job of getting his rocks off.
Moral: Dreams may come and dreams may go, but you can sell the government anything.
******
High and Outside
Meets High and Inside
There was once a farmer who was asked for space in his barn to store a great pile of vulcanized silk and a quaint basket of a size that would hold two persons. And the persons who rented this space told him that it was a great gas-bag that would change the very nature of transportation, and paid in advance in gold coin, then went off to join the Revolution, in the course of which they were deprived of their heads and lives.
The old farmer took the gold and hid it carefully, and passed both it and the well-hidden gas-bag to his son when he died, and his son did likewise to his son, and so on.
There came a time when the great-great-great-great grandson of the original farmer was sorely hard up for cash, having already spent all the gold on fripperies for his young wife, who had later decamped with the village undertaker after cleaning out the joint bank account. He sold all that he had, but the crops were bad that year and he was soon left without two sous to rub together.
As he sat in his ruined barn bemoaning his fate and debating whether he should throw himself head-first into the polluted well, he espied a corner of the long forgotten gas-bag, and thought he might sell the silk for enough money to let him move to a territory with a more generous welfare system. So he sought the services of an appraiser, who came out to the desolate farmstead, much against his will.
Lo and behold, the appraiser discovered that the pile of vulcanized silk and the quaint basket were none other than the Montgolfier brothers original balloon, and that it was worth more than a contemporary Airbus A310. He immediately gave the destitute farmer a generous down payment and went off to the auction houses to place the aeronautical treasure up for bid.
The farmer, not believing his good luck, rode his spavined mule into town and came back with a gallon of Jim Beam, which he sat in the barn and drank until he no longer knew which way was up, at which point he staggered out to the yard, fell head-down into the polluted well and was drowned.
Later that night the mule, annoyed at having been left out of the party, kicked over the remains of the Jim Beam, which was ignited by the kerosene lamp and burned the barn, the mule and the balloon to greasy ashes.
Moral: Sometimes it's worth paying attention to an old gasbag.
******
Scrooged to the Sticking Place
There was a miser who had amassed a great pile of gold in the course of his miserable life, and feared mightily that it would be stolen from him. One night, during the dark of the moon, he quietly buried it in the northwest corner of his cellar, smoothing over the dirt floor so it looked undisturbed.
Suspicious old coot that he was, he obsessed over the security of his fortune to the point where he was compelled to dig it up again to make sure it was safe. Imagine his horror when, digging into the northwest corner of the cellar, he discovered nothing but dirt!
Fury possessed him, and, driven to madness, he decided that the farmer in the adjoining homestead was to blame. Seizing his axe, he ran to the nearby farmhouse, battered down the door, and chopped the farmer into bite-sized pieces. The hue and cry attracted the police, who promptly clapped the miser in jail. After a speedy trial he was sentenced to be hanged, which he was, then buried in a potter's field, as he was assumed to be destitute because of his impoverished lifestyle.
Years later a yuppie couple purchased the derelict farmstead as a fixer-upper, which they planned to use as a getaway from their life in the big city. Imagine their surprise when, preparing the cellar for a concrete floor, they discovered a great mass of gold buried in the southeast corner!
Moral: Banks are a much better place to keep your assets, but if you insist on burying it on the premises, for heaven's sake invest in a functioning compass.
******
Horsing Around with Fate and Fortune
A traveler passing a field one lonely night was startled to hear a horse speak the following words:
"You who pass by this lane
Would find yourself great gain
If, by the white stone hence
That marks the boundary fence
You dug up the oaken chest
And found the ancient gold bequest."
The traveler shook his head in disbelief at being addressed by a common plow horse, but, since he had time to spare, and figuring that the advice of a talking horse was just weird enough to be worth acting on, he followed the fence until he indeed came to a large white stone.
Suitably impressed, he sneaked into a nearby barn for a shovel, rolled up his sleeves and started digging alongside the white stone. After many hours of labor, as rosy
dawn light was gilding the sky, the sides of the excavation fell in, killing him.
Moral: Never take advice from horses, especially plow horses, who have a perverse sense of humor and are never completely trustworthy.
******
A Fish Tale
There was once a poor fisherman married to a shrewish wife who constantly upbraided him for their poverty. He was quite a miserable soul, but he dutifully put out to sea each day, even in the worst weather, bringing home his meager catch each evening, which barely sustained the two of them.
One day when he was hopelessly lost in a fog and overcome with despair he pulled up his net and in it found a only single flounder, although one of considerable size. Sighing deeply, he was about to disembowel it when the fish spoke to him, saying, "Fisherman, fisherman, stay your hand, for I am Neptune's favorite, with the power to give great gifts to whichever mortals I choose. Spare me, and I will grant you three wishes."
The fisherman was taken aback, but he had heard some wild tales of sea creatures in his day and had very little to lose when you got right down to it. As a test he said to the flounder, "Well, for starters, you could get rid of this fog." Immediately the fog lifted and the fisherman found himself on a glassy smooth sea not far from his hovel. He was so flabbergasted that he couldn't think of another thing to ask for. The flounder assured him that he would return whenever the fisherman called him to grant the remaining two wishes.
Well, needless to say the fisherman's wife blew a fuse (figuratively speaking-- they had no electricity in their miserable hovel) and drove the poor fisherman out the door back to his boat in a hail of pots and pans and curses, screaming at him to ask for a new house and an inexhaustible larder and haute couture fashions and a Rolls-Royce cabriolet, and....
So the terrified fisherman rowed back out to sea and called to the flounder in despair. Immediately the fish reappeared and the poor man poured out his tale of woe. The fish assured him that everything his dreadful wife had requested was well within his power to fulfill for a second wish. Then, leaning close and dropping his voice to a whisper, he made a suggestion for the third wish, which so impressed the fisherman that he nearly fell overboard. He then rowed for home as fast as he had ever rowed before.
Lo and behold, there in place of his miserable hovel was a splendid Malibu-style beachfront split-level with elegant landscaping and the Rolls in the garage.
The flounder's suggestion for a third wish met him at the door. Gorgeous, intelligent, soft-spoken and a hell of a financial manager....
Moral: Sometimes the biggest and best home improvements have nothing to do with building materials.
******
The Grasshopper and the Amp
Once upon a time there was a lazy grasshopper who, noting that winter was approaching, sought a refuge, since he had spent the summer romping and frolicking and not storing away supplies for the winter like the industrious ants.
After poking about a bit he discovered a hole in the floor of a rundown trailer and, hopping inside, he discovered the perfect hiding place inside a huge amplifier, whose transformers on standby cast a warm glow for him to bask in. There were also lots of crumbs and spilled beer for him to subsist on throughout the cruel winter. So he made himself a little nest of straw and leaves and thought he was the luckiest grasshopper in the world, having idled away his summer and now found a snug retreat for the winter.
At some point in the evening someone plugged a Stratocaster into the amp, cranked it up to 10, and attempted a rendition of Eric Clapton's "Layla" after 11 beers. The grasshopper thought it was an earthquake and fled the trailer as fast as all his legs could carry him. But it was a nippy night and he was soon driven back to his refuge, which was silent again.
The following night, after 6 beers and some primo weed, the same person tried to execute Megadeth's "Skull Beneath the Skin," and the poor grasshopper was forced to flee again into the cold. On the third night it was the Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and over the weekend it was nonstop heavy metal, in the course of which a snowstorm blew up and the grasshopper's emergency exit was blocked.
Many months later it was spring again, but the grasshopper no longer cared to go outside to romp and frolic in the sun, as he had gone deaf and insane over the winter.
Moral: What security is to the worker is slow death to the footloose and fancy free.
******
The Fox and the Fruit
Once in a faraway tropical country there was a fox who found a chunk of durian fruit in a dumpster. He was unable to tell whether it was spoiled or not, but one taste convinced him that it was the most wonderful stuff he had ever encountered. He made a point of rolling thoroughly in it to carry the good news back to the other foxes, but they took a whiff and fled, tails between legs.
"Obviously," thought the fox to himself, "this is an acquired taste, limited to those of a discerning palate and refined appreciation for gustatory pleasures." So for weeks after that he was on the alert for the not-so-subtle odor of durian fruit in the local bazaars and sidewalk restaurants. He discovered that it was easy to locate his favorite treat, as the happy consumer was usually surrounded by people turning various shades of green and trying hard not to toss their cookies in the gutter. He even became bold enough to snatch chunks of the fruit from the dishes of customers, and even abased himself to the point of doing tricks for a succulent chunk or two.
Alas, the durian season came to an end, and he retreated to his den to idle away the rainy season. The following spring he decided to satisfy his craving by going straight to the source, so he spent his days in the local plantation, pacing up and down, craning his neck to watch the ripening fruit far above. Soon large spikes appeared on the fruits, and the shell hardened and turned a beautiful saffron color, and the fruits attained their maximum size and weight. The poor fox was almost beside himself with anticipation.
One day, as he was taking a break from his observations and trying to work the kinks out of his very stiff neck, a fruit directly over him separated from its stem and hurtled 90 feet to the ground, its 20-pound bulk striking him amidships and driving him into the ground like an astonished tent peg.
Moral: For true peace of mind always pick sensible weaknesses, and avoid luxuries that can kill you in dramatic and messy
ways.
******
Parable of The Three Wise and the Three Former Virgins
There were once three indisputable virgins and three putative virgins who worked at a temp agency in the city.
Mostly they were booth babes at trade shows, sometimes they were product demonstrators and sometimes they hid in the aisles of department stores and assaulted passersby with spritzes of perfume. All of them wanted to be actresses or models or model/actresses, although there was such a surplus in that particular job market that signs were routinely placed in shop windows saying "No Model/Actresses Need Apply."
One day they were called in for a gig that involved some millionaire's wedding where the theme was Greek mythology. They were hired for the night to play hetaerae who would welcome the groom as he approached the bridal chamber. For this they were dressed in sheerest gossamer and given oil lamps to carry and they had to practice ululations of bittersweet welcome, which they did with great concentration and dispatch.
On the night of the wedding they were flown to an island where they donned their costumes of sheerest gossamer and carried their oil lamps out to the portico where they were expected to await the groom. Well, they waited and waited, but the groom's plane was delayed by fog. At first they didn't mind, since they were being paid by the hour, union scale, but as the night wore on three of them decided to catch some shut-eye under a palm tree down by the fake oasis. While they were asleep several wick-serpents, overjoyed at the opportunity which so rarely presented itself since the invention of electric light, slithered over and ate the wicks out of their oil lamps.
All at once there was a hue and cry and a flourish of trumpets announcing the arrival of the groom. The three sleepers sprang to their feet and hurried to their places, ululating for all they were worth until they discovered that their lamps were extinguished and the wicks gone. Frantically they looked for replacement wicks, but, alas, no one had thought to bring extras for the sleepy girls. They were utterly disgraced. Worse yet, the millionaire rewarded the alert virgins and their functioning lamps with prize situations on Broadway, whereas the sleeping virgins with the defunct lamps wound up as waitresses in sleazy eateries, married badly and took to drink at the earliest opportunity.
Moral: There is no wick for the rested.
******
The Ox and the Grapes
There were two oxen whose autumnal task it was to wind the presses that crushed the grapes from which the wine was made. The master of the house was justifiably proud of his wine, and a sensitive man to boot, always
allowing the oxen to eat up the husks of the grapes after each
day's pressing, which they enjoyed mightily.
One day as they were lapping up their treat in the cool of the evening a jealous ass of the socialist persuasion came along who mocked them, saying that the farmer insulted them by giving them only the lees, while he kept the wine for himself. The oxen, being of the tranquil disposition that marks their race, shrugged their mighty shoulders and went on enjoying themselves. The ass was furious at being ignored, and told the placid beasts that he was going to sample the master's vintage the next time he was called upon to carry
wine casks to the summer estate.
The very next day the ass was saddled with a barrel-yoke and three casks of wine were laden upon him, and he and the drover set out for the master's summer estate. At noon the drover, as was his custom, paused under an oak tree by the side of a brook to eat his bread and cheese and nap during the hot part of the day. He too was a kindly man, like his master, and unshipped the load of wine from the ass, whom he set free to
graze the rich grass of the countryside.
The ass, seeing his opportunity, waited until the drover began to snore, then ever so carefully tipped over one of the casks, and with judicious head-butting, sent it down a hill against a rock, where it burst open.
The ass, overjoyed, drank as much as he could hold. He was not impressed with the taste at all, but gulped it down anyway, all the while thinking how he would lord it over the dull oxen when he told them how he had partaken of the same vintage as was served at the master's table.
After drinking his fill he attempted to return to where the drover was sleeping, but discovered that the hill he had descended so easily had become three, four, and sometimes five hills, all of which moved about in a most un-hill-like manner. Also his legs refused to operate in synchrony as they had always done before, and his belly began to swell alarmingly. He decided that the best way to ascend the hill was with a mighty leap, which he attempted. However in his fuddled state he only succeeded in casting himself with great violence upon the rock which had burst the cask, and, in like manner, his belly burst asunder and he perished miserably.
That evening the carcass of the ass was returned to the barnyard, where its flesh was given to the dogs and its hide sent to a tannery to be made into boots for the farmyard workers. The oxen did not notice the return of the mortified remains of their mocker, as they were enjoying the reward of their day's labor, quite content as they lapped up the lees and the sweet juice.
Moral: Many are born asses, but others require a snootfull of alcohol to reach their full potential.
******
A Camel's Lot Is Not A Happy One
A Puzzle:
There was once an Arab sheik who had two sons who were not the sharpest scimitars in the palace armory, as it were. He loved playing jokes on them to watch their reaction.
One day he told his two sons to race their camels to a distant city to see who would inherit his fortune. The rules stated that the one whose camel was slowest would be the winner.
The brothers, after wandering aimlessly for days, going slower and slower, finally ran across a wise man in the desert whom they ask for advice. After hearing the advice they jumped on their beasts and raced as fast as they could to the city. What did the wise man say to them?
The Answer:
The wise man took a look at their mounts and said: "Those aren't camels, you nudniks-- they're horses! Your old man set you up again. Now, if you're smart you'll get to the city as fast as you can, and by the time your father gets there you can say, 'Papa, neither camel was slower than the other, so we traded them both for these nifty horses. Some deal, hey, Pa?' and the old sheik your father will be so amused with his clever offspring that he will divide the fortune equally."
And so the brothers set off with great speed and light hearts, and did exactly what the wise man had recommended. As it came to pass the old sheik arrived in the city the following day. When heard the tale, proudly told to him by the brothers, he was so astounded at their unexpected cleverness that he suffered an apoplectic stroke and died on the spot. Lo! At the reading of the will it turned out that the wealthy sheik had indeed divided his fortune equally. Half went to build a new mosque in his honor and half went to build a home for superannuated dancing girls.
The brothers sold their horses and emigrated to the USA, where they started an unsuccessful line of falafel pushcarts in the Bronx. When the old wise man in the desert heard the story he laughed so hard that he suffered an aneurism, fell into the campfire and was burned to ashes.
Moral I: A clever man will not bet all his money on a camel in a horse race.
Moral II: Anyone who expects simple answers to complex social questions from some old recluse who lives alone in the desert deserves exactly what he gets.
******
The Tortoise, the Hare, the Contest and the Moral
There was once a very vain tortoise who could not resist bragging. He would tell his swamp-creature friends about the killings he had made in the stock market, about his days of debauchery in Hollywood, and about his escapades as a CIA counterspy. The swamp creatures, who had heard it all many times before and were bored to tears, would sit there glassy-eyed and pass gas into the brackish, pond-scummed water.
One day a hare happened to pause nearby just as the tortoise was finishing his tale of winning an Olympic marathon. He promptly challenged the armored amphibian to a race. The tortoise, who dimly remembered hearing a story about this same kind of event when he was just a soft-shelled sprout, reluctantly agreed.
A ten-mile course was mapped out by the local eagle. On the big day the two contenders met on the highway shoulder, the hare thinking to himself that he had enough time to catch a nap along the route while he waited for the tortoise to catch up, while the tortoise kept trying to remember the details of the fable. He suspected that guile was involved, because it almost always was.
The signal was given, and the hare dashed off in a burst of speed, only to be hit by a sports car, his broken body flung into the bushes to the amazed delight of a family of coyotes, who weren't used to room service. The tortoise, who had barely set foot on the macadam when the accident occurred, paused, waiting for some comment on the part of the judges, at which point he was flattened by an eighteen-wheeler to the point where his own mother couldn't have told his plastron from his carapace.
The swamp creatures pondered the significance of all this for almost a minute before they resumed passing gas in the brackish, pond-scummed water.
Moral: The race is not always to the swift. Sometimes there isn't even a race at all. But a good moral will always find a home.
******
The Portraitless Dorian Gray
Once upon a time in Nowhere, a prosperous community not far from Redbone in the heart of Arkansas, there lived a young man who fancied himself an artist. His family sold his other siblings into bondage in order to pay his way through art school, and he had sold his parents into bondage in order to finance a year abroad studying at the Louvre in Paris.
On the day that he returned from this sabbatical he was met at the train station by the mayor and the brass band of the Nowhere fire department. The mayor's wife made a flowery speech in which she expressed the hope that the young artist would "put Nowhere on the map" with his artistry. There was great applause, and the bars stayed open past curfew that night so that well-wishers could toast its returned son.
That very evening the artist set to work stretching and preparing a canvas for his chef d'oeuvre. The next morning at cockcrow, while the northern light was still coming from the right direction, he began work on a frame for the painting, for, he thought, the frame is father to the artwork, as a father is parent to the child, n'est-ce pas?. He sent to New York and Boston for the proper exotic woods, and spent months curing it and preparing the glue size that would embrace the gold leaf, preserving the glory of his painting down through the ages. After many weeks of ritual purification he set about carving the base of the frame. Two years later he started work on the intermediary layer, and five years after that he commenced the final, or decorative work. On the twelfth anniversary of his arrival back in Nowhere he began the application of gold leaf, one square millimeter at a time.
At the age of sixty he passed away from acute gold poisoning, complicated by heartbreak and goldbeater's elbow. People came from leagues around to view the magnificent frame, twelve feet wide and seven and a half feet tall. It was set at the head of his coffin, where it set off the canvas, which had never received so much as a speck of paint.
Moral: To accomplish great works it is sometimes necessary to get off the pot.
******
The Crocodile in the Manger
Once upon a time there was a star that shone very brightly in the East, compelling three wealthy but not-so-bright men to follow it in the
hope of finding either a new god or a pot of treasure. Since they were on the Earth and the stars were fixed in the firmament, they wandered around in large, looping semicircles from sunset to dawn. Eventually their meanderings brought them to a modest village, where the star they pursued seemed to hover over a run-down stable. Lighting lamps, they entered the stable to find an immense crocodile in the manger. As they marveled at this the owner of the stable came by to see what the trespassers were up to. The three seekers explained their mission, and the owner assured them that they were looking at a first-class, oak-lined, brass-bound, dyed-in-the-wool god of awesome power and reputation.
The three men fell to their knees and inched forward to pay obeisance to this magnificent god, at which point the crocodile lunged forth and devoured each of them, spitting out only their indigestible teeth, shoe soles and moneybags. As the owner collected the moneybags and began counting his windfall, he reflected on how wise he had been to trade a saddle-horse for the huge reptile, as it dined exclusively on travelers and had no taste for gold.
---------------
Moral: A dog in the manger is merely a nuisance, but a good crocodile can be an investment.
******
Foxing the Crow
A fox and a crow happened to meet in the forest, and, after a discussion of the day's events, the crow offered to take the fox to dinner. He led the fox a merry chase through the woods until, exhausted and thirsty, the fox arrived at the base of a tall tree which was covered with wild grape vines bursting with sugary ripeness. There he had to sit and watch the crow stuff himself while remarking on the wonderful flavor of the grapes and urging the fox to join him, laughing loudly as the poor beast tried to jump high enough to reach the luscious fruit.
Eventually the crow, completely glutted and stuporous, lost his balance and fell from the tree, where he was snatched up by the fox and eaten.
Moral: It is sometimes better to eat crow than complain about sour grapes.
******
The Recalcitrant
Worker and the Ghost of Christmas Last
Once upon a time-and-a-half there was a factory worker who was terribly
displeased with his job. All he did all day was sit in a booth high above
the factory floor and move levers to send different components to
different parts of the factory for sub-assembly or final assembly. "I am
bored out of my gourd," he would tell his fellow workers. "At least you
guys get to talk and horse around on the assembly lines, while I'm stuck
up in that damned booth alone all day. Anybody wanna trade?"
But nobody ever did, because the discontented worker was perfectly right:
his job was as boring as watching paint dry, and the couple of bucks more
he made each week really didn't make up for the absolute tediousness of it
all. That did not, however, stop him from complaining.
One night, just before the Christmas bonuses were due to be given out, he
had a vivid dream in which he was visited by a spirit who was a dead
ringer for the new efficiency expert the factory had hired. "I am the
Ghost of Christmas Last," the spirit said in a sepulchral voice," and I am
here to show you my charts and graphs of efficiency deficits on the shop
floor." With that the spirit erected a cheap aluminum easel and took an
extendible pointer out of his pocket protector. "As you can see, the main
bottleneck is the person who sits in this booth high above the factory
floor moving levers to send different components to different parts of the
factory. This bottleneck could be completely eliminated with a Model
6SJ7-y Robotic Sorter, which would work all three shifts, never take a
break, and has no audio component to complain with. What do you think?"
At this point the disgruntled worker awoke bathed in sweat, realized he
was almost late, and dashed out the door, arriving at the factory just as
the whistle blew. At noon that day all employees were assembled in the
lunchroom where the new efficiency expert explained his plans for
increasing production. The booth above the shop floor was notably absent
in the drawings. Later that day the Christmas bonuses were handed out, and
our worker found, along with a rather stingy bonus, a small pink
notification that his services would no longer be required due to the
overhaul of the production floor. There was also a note from management
wishing him Happy Holidays, along with a gift certificate for a ham.
He spent the rest of the day in a bar, and on the way home failed to
notice the bells and lights at the railway crossing, where the 6:57 out of
Pittsburgh flattened him and his car like a cheap tortilla. When his wife
found out that she couldn't collect death benefits from the factory on
account of his being laid off that day, she was as mad as a wet cat, and
had to go back to working in the nudie bar to support herself.
MORAL: Be careful what you complain about, because even dreadful
situations can become lots worse-- sometimes overnight, especially where
efficiency is concerned.
******
The Weasel and the
Eighteen-Wheeler
"Oh Father," said a little Weasel to the big one sitting by the side of
the road, "I have seen such a terrible monster! It was big as a mountain,
with horns on its head, and a long, long body, and it had eighteen round
black feet. It turned my playmate Freddy into a road pizza just like
that!" he said, snapping his fingers.
"Tush, child, tush," said the old Weasel, "that was only a Peterbilt. It
isn't so big either; it may be a little bit taller than I, but I could
easily make myself quite as broad; just you see." So he blew himself out,
and blew himself out, and blew himself out.
"Was he as big as that?" asked he.
"Oh, much bigger than that," said the young Weasel.
Again the old one blew himself out, and asked the young one if the
Peterbilt was as big as that, in a strained voice like he had been toking
a Rasta bomber joint.
"Bigger, Father, bigger," was the reply.
So the Weasel took a deep breath, and blew and blew and blew, and swelled
and swelled. And then he said, "I'm sure the Peterbilt is not as big as
this." But at that moment he burst. And the young Weasel just laughed and
laughed, because he had only seen a Toyota pickup, and his playmate Freddy
was actually hiding behind a tree.
Moral: You can take Viagra till the cows come home, but you cannot get
a new Peterbilt.
******
The Snake and the Grass
Once upon a time there was a glossy black and yellow stripéd garden hose.
It was bored with its existence, lying curled up stiff during the winter
and dragged every which way during the summer by annoying children and
puttering adults.
One August evening as it lay in the dark it said to itself, "I am a
beautiful glossy black and yellow stripéd garden hose, but with a little
effort on my part I could free myself and slither over to yon nearby
woods, where I could become a beautiful glossy black and yellow stripéd
serpent, king of the beasts and ruler over my domain. I would be feared by
my enemies and loved by my friends, and my progeny would endure forever."
So each night it worked and worked at undoing itself from the garden
faucet until the night came when it was finally free. Very stealthily it
crept out of the garden, slithering silently down the street until it
entered the woods, where it was immediately eaten by a roller coaster.
— MORAL: Follow your dreams, but, like, be a little realistic, for
heaven's sake! And sit up straighter, don't slouch. That's better....
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