Tag: satire

Pen Monkey

“Come on.” The voice was like a bowl of thorns coated with honey. “You can do it. You did it before. Tell ya what. You do this now, I’ll let you write my next book.”

Happy Equinox…just wanted to share a bit I wrote for last week’s Two-Minutes-Go. Inspiration? It’s everywhere.

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As a prison guard in a medium-security facility, Chip had seen some real doozies—CEOs who thought they were due time off from their sentences for golf holidays, celebrities demanding big-name designers upgrade their uniforms. He’d kept notes on all of them for his maybe-someday career as a bestselling author. But this new inmate made taking the graveyard shift worthwhile. Since the old guy was a night owl, that was when the fun really started.

He’d just stepped into the corridor to begin his two a.m. sweep when—

“Chipper! Oh, Chippieee… Aw, come on. Where’s my little friend? Where’s my little buddy?”

The voice repelled yet fascinated him. In the space of seconds, Prisoner 84235 could go from sounding like a creepy old dude trying to lure a kid into his van with candy, then sink into a lower register, like he was aiming to get a girl into the vehicle instead. The other guards said he was crazy and probably should have been sent across the river, where they had the good drugs and quiet, padded cells. But Chip guessed his lawyers kept him out of the bin. Why the legal team hadn’t been good enough to keep him out of the system altogether, Chip could only speculate about. Some of the guards thought that was his wife’s idea. That doing time had more cache than doing psych time. That a stretch in Club Fed would make him worth more when he got out.

When Chip reached his cell, the voice crooned to him. “Chippppp-ieeeee… My phone doesn’t work.”

Of course it didn’t work. Prisoners weren’t allowed to have phones. He’d whined like a toddler when they tried to take it, then he’d threatened to sue everyone in the building. One of the female first-shift guards gentled it out of his hands long enough to remove the battery and the SIMM card, and he’d been content. For a while.

“Did you try turning it off and turning it back on again?” Chip asked.

“Yeah. Twice. This is very sad. And totally unfair.” He beckoned with his small fingers. “Come on, Chipster. Let me use yours, okay? I’ll make it worth your while.”

“You know I shouldn’t—”

“Come on.” The voice was like a bowl of thorns coated with honey. “You can do it. You did it before. Tell ya what. You do this now, I’ll let you write my next book.”

Chip cocked his head. It was probably a bullshit offer, but at the very least, hearing this guy out could be entertaining. Maybe something he could use in his own book one day. He slipped the phone out of his pocket. “Okay,” he said. “What are we doing tonight? Email? Blog post?” His eyebrow hooked up. “Angry tweet?”

Prisoner 84235 grinned, his face bunching like one of those wrinkle pooches. “Yeah. That. Tell ’em—” He waved a hand. “The wire-tapping, the plague, that little business with the nukes… the fact that there’s never any pistachio ice cream anymore…not my fault. It was fake. It was all fake.”

“Like the fake news?” Chip wondered if he should pull up a chair.

“No. All of it. The campaign. The election. The presidency. Me, even. What. You don’t believe me? Believe me.” He pointed at Chip’s phone. “Start tapping, pen monkey. I got a story to tell you.”

12 Blogs of Christmas: A Memo to the Big Guy

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Hi, everyone! I’m so psyched to be shoulder-to-shoulder with these wonderful writers in the 12 Blogs of Christmas event put on by Martin Crosbie. So let’s keep the fun rolling.

Confidential Memo to S. Claus

To: S. Claus
From: Joey the Elf, Vice President and Public Relations Director, North Pole
Re: Christmas 2014 Status Update and Strategic Operation Plan: Confidential

Yo, Santa baby. I know it’s close to go-time and your mental bandwidth must be stretched as thin as the photoshopped spandex in Kim Kardashian’s butt selfie, so I’ll try to keep this brief.

First, I feel your pain about Rudolph’s resignation. I’m sure he’ll do the air traffic controllers proud, but promoting Dancer could be a no-go. Seems the headlamp we wanted to attach to his antlers violates some PETA regulation. We’re looking into that. And you didn’t hear this from me, but there’s a rumor that a few elves are planning a sickout. Guess they’re still a little steamed about losing their collective bargaining rights. Continue reading “12 Blogs of Christmas: A Memo to the Big Guy”

Proposed Actionable Items to Take Under Advisement in 2014

gavel2-570x371The Board of Trustees of this writing/editing single proprietorship has convened, debated according to Robert’s Rule of Order, and agreed upon a list of proposed guidelines and actionable items for the upcoming calendar year. We agree to add these items into the public record and indemnify ourselves to be accountable for their delivery. Continue reading “Proposed Actionable Items to Take Under Advisement in 2014”

Olympic Writing Events

Fully recovered from asphyxiation after laughing your asses off at the opening ceremonies? Great. Now we can get on to the more serious business of the Olympics: the events. Because I’m still pissed that softball and baseball were eliminated after Beijing, I’ve decided to start my own Olympic-style competition. This is for a group of athletes who have been training hard, putting in the time, the effort, the blood, sweat, and tears, and are deserving of some well-earned recognition. They’ve broken land-speed records in coffee brewing and set new endurance milestones for keeping one’s rump in one’s chair. This is for…the writers. Continue reading “Olympic Writing Events”

I Will NOT Go The F**k to Sleep by Richard Crasta – A Review

I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Crasta years ago at a networking event, and if not for that meeting (because he’s mainly been published in India), I might have lost out on the experience of his clever wordplay and the playful but biting satire that peppers his writing. Immediately I purchased a copy of his first and most well known book, “The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel of Colonialism and Desire.” (Buy it if you can.)

Through an accident of the Internet, our paths crossed again, though we are now living on opposite sides of the globe. And through the magic of electronic publishing, I was able to catch up on the books that I missed.

The one that caught my eye first was a book of essays titled, I Will NOT Go the F**k To Sleep, the title meant to be a satire on the recent and popular Adam Mansbach children’s book that’s more for parents, Go the F**k to Sleep. It is, indeed, the title of the first essay in this book, a Stewie Griffin-meets-Bart Simpson take on this command from the child’s point of view. The humor continues, some essays with a political bite, some with inspired silliness, but thoroughly enjoyable.

For instance, one essay, “What You Don’t Know about Bangaloring Could Hurt You,” is a wisecracking look at outsourced American jobs from India’s point of view. Another, “On The Trail of Sex in Kama-Land,” got him censored in his homeland. Crasta also includes an especially funny excerpt from The Revised Kama Sutra, in which our hero, at a tender age and with a repressed upbringing, is disturbed to discover the assertiveness of his male appendage. “A Tale of Two Weddings” puts a satiric lens on the stereotypes many people have about Indian culture.

Crasta is funny, yes, sometimes with a Pythonesque goofiness, but often with an irreverent poke in the eye to those in power. But all good satirists, from Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain to Christopher Buckley and Bill Maher, know that humor is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. Or, as C. K. Chesterton put it, “Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.”

Or, as Crasta writes in his introduction, “The king’s jester had no sacred cows, and was the only one who could laugh at the king and not pay for it with his life–why? Because to prevent a society from going insane, it needs a band of men and women who have carte blanche, carte blanche to point out that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes, or even that black polka dots on his polka dot pants are not dots but holes.”