[Zewb]

COBNAT had a great idea, plugging everything in one post, so I'm just going to totally rip him off.

Welcome to the Zewb Tube.

CLOGS

So I'm walking down the street wearing clogs, and suddenly this guy comes up to me, pushing a shopping cart full of junk. His hair's matted down and he looks - and smells - like he had been buried under a bunch of decaying rats and he had to eat his way to freedom.

Now, he starts babbling at me incoherently. A few words registered in my brain, but they were mostly about political issues, and my ADD has always kept me well protected from that.

So he's just going on and on, blah blah War in Iraq, blah blah, Northern Ireland, yada yada Sean Penn. Then, suddenly, he just picked up his shopping cart and smashed it over my head. The last thing that went through my mind before I lost conscienceness was, "Ngrrphhhleegmm.."

I woke up several hours later in a daze. My hair was sticky with dried blood and the pain in my head was excruciating. I stood up and felt this strange sensation. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

Then it hit me like a freight train: my clogs were gone.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!" I screamed, in an Oscar-acheiving fashion, "Why GOD! WHY???!"

Then it began to rain.

I stood there, blood running down my face, barefooted. All I could think about was my clogs. Oh...my clogs. I remember when I first got them from my Uncle Roy for Christmas. I excitedly put them on and immediately tried them out. Tears of joy streamed down my face as I stamped mercilessly on the cat. It was pure bliss. When my Uncle Roy died, I kept the clogs, and since then, I've had this emotional attatchment to them.

What kind of heartless, homeless, dickless man would deprive me of the one true joy in my life?

That's what I was going to find out.

Thus, a new journey began.

To be continued


IMPROV WRITING

By improv, I mean that I start off with a sentence and just think of everything at the very last minute, trying my best to write the first thought that enters my mind. Needless to say, it's going to be a bit esoteric, so try to bear with me.

Here we go!

I was walking to the deli to buy some ground poodle, when suddenly I slipped and fell into an alternate dimension consisting of psychotic hallucinations surrounded by a multicolored euphoric aura. I ran endlessly through the void until I found a door. I opened the door and walked into the light. I was in a toaster. A giant toaster. I attempted to climb out, but a giant hand dropped two giant waffles on me. I regained conscienceness and began climbing the ridges of the waffle, in the scorching heat of the toaster. Finally I emerged, my hands burnt, but I was alive nonetheless. I looked around; I was in my kitchen. But I was tiny.

I stood on the waffle, awe-struck by my surroundings, until the unthinkable occured; the waffles were done. I was launched high into the air, surely I would have fallen to my death, but I had grabbed a refridgerater magnet and I was holding on for dear life. I looked at the magnet. It was a little uplifting self-help magnet. It said, "Hang in there!"

I let go of the magnet and fell between the counter and the fridge. A giant roach cornered me. Needless to say, I was scared to death. Just as I began to piss myself, the roach stopped and said, "Hey. I'm Hank. Wanna be friends?"

I grabbed a discarded thumbtack and stabbed him 47 times.

The moral of this story? Don't drop acid. Twice.


SANDWICH

As I am writing this, I am also eating a sandwich. My dog is next to me, watching the sandwich's every move. I'm not exactly sure what he is planning. I doubt he is planning anything at all. After all, dogs don't really plan anything. They just do whatever seems right.

But right now, my dog is sitting there, staring. I tell him to leave in a manner that he understands best:

"Fuck off."

But there he remains. Studying the sandwich. Visualizing the succulent taste. Embracing the fine craftsmanship that I painstakingly put into it's creation. For my dog, this very sandwich is the Holy Grail. The Fountain of Youth. A symbol of all that is sacred to all of Dogdom. I could almost see tears of joy forming in his eyes.

I decide to play God. I begin by waving the sandwich back and forth slowly. His eyes follow it with perfect coordination. I start moving toward his mouth, and pulling it away just as his mouth snaps at it with such finess. I decide to reward his persistence by tearing off a small fragment of bread and tossing it at him. He catches it in his mouth, and looks right back at the sandwich. He is not satisfied. He never will be until he has swallowed the entire sandwich. And about 50 more.

A rather complicated situation has been brought to my attention. If I give the sandwich to the dog, I will be forced to go make another one to satisfy my hunger. Also, the ingredients in said sandwich may not agree with his digestive system, and he could end up taking a nasty shit on the carpet tonight. If I do eat the sandwich, the dog's hopes and dreams will be shattered, and he will stagger off to his little niche underneath the coffee table, and sulk there until something else grabs his small attention, making him forget about the sandwich, or any sandwich for that matter.

After the thought of scrubbing putrid stains out of the carpet at 3 AM leave my mind, I decide to eat the sandwich. I study it intently, and just as I am about to raise the sandwich to my lips, my dog stands up, grabs the sandwich from my hand and runs off.

God damn it...

[Zewb]

JOURNEY OF TED

I got very bored and decided to write this ridiculous story of office turmoil and a Gardetto-related shooting spree. I hope you like it.

Life is a strange thing. When I am alive and safe, I feel dead inside, but when I am in a perilous situation I feel truly alive. People need danger. The existence of both life and death are entirely dependant on each other.

I realized this one day, when I acquired an arch-enemy. It started at work. I worked at a low-level cubicle position in engineering. I never really cared about my work, and I was slowly drifting closer and closer to unemployment. It didn't matter to me. In fact, I almost looked forward to being fired. Any change in my life, be it positive or negative, would be a welcome change. It doesn't matter now, as my office has been completely destroyed. But for now, let's discuss my morning.

"Hey dickass," Lance shouted across the office, "You catch that video I sent you yesterday?"

I tried to ignore him.

"Hey! Answer me, cockjacket!"

No way out.

"Yeah, it was pretty funny, Lance..."

"You bet your ass it was funny! I just want to know how she could get it all the way in there, you know what I mean?"

I was surrounded by shocked gazes of my co-workers. To be honest, I wasn't really embarrassed because, for some reason, my eyes were drawn to a rather distraught man who was pounding his fist against the vending machine.

His name was Terry. Terry worked in Accounting, and he was always a strange person. A short, portly man with thick glasses and a ridiculous amount of pens protruding from his front shirt pocket. One of those guys that has lost his mind due to working at such a dull job for years. It can do that to you. It never happened to me, since I was never devoted to my work, and I usually sat in my cubicle and stared at my screen for hours on end. But Terry was a hard-working person who never got credit for it. He sat in his cubicle everyday making spreadsheets, going through lines of code, changing numbers all day, never being promoted, rewarded, or even noticed in any way. It went on, and his mind slowly drifted into insanity. He never expressed his anger, he kept it bottled up inside, because he didn't want to be a nuisance to anyone. Then one day he snapped.

It's the little annoyances around the office that can make a guy snap. A paper jam in the printer, warped mouse ball, the stapler binding up. Little things. One day, Terry ordered the second to last bag of Gardettos from the vending machine. It got caught on the coils, and hung suspended there, which to you and I, is just a minor annoyance, but to Terry it was an emotional blow. He walked away to find some change in his jacket. That's when I carelessly strolled over to the machine, completely oblivious to Terry's predicament, and I punched in the alpha-numeric combination for Gardettos, and recieved the last two bags. I felt lucky, which is ironic, because what I had just done had put my life in serious danger. Terry probably came back and saw that his Gardettos were gone. He probably stared at the vending machine for a good 5 minutes, bottling up his rage before snooping around the cubicles looking for the culprit.

Terry came to work the next day 45 minutes late. When the boss asked him where he had been, Terry shot him 8 times in the chest. It was kind of ironic, because that was the first and last time the boss had spoken to him since he was hired. About that time, I was bolting through the office, pushing women out of the way, knocking over office decor. I honestly didn't really care about my co-workers, or my boss, since I didn't say, "Oh my God, he's got a gun!" which is often screamed by innocent bystanders. I just jumped out of my seat and ran. Bullets started passing me as I ran for the elevator. I now knew that it was me he was after. I bet he just sat there watching me eat his gourmet snack mix, staring in horror as I carefully extracted the tasty brown crunchy pieces, and threw the bland remains in the waste bin.

I ducked into the elevator, which, luckily, was open and perpendicular to his line of fire. I frantically punched the close button, as my first priority was blocking the hail of small brass slugs from tearing through my vital organs. The doors closed, but just before they did, I could have sworn I saw Terry run into view, but I couldn't tell, as my view of the office was reduced to a thin vertical line by then. I pressed "1" and sighed in relief as I descended the shaft. I was on the 23rd floor, so there was no way he could beat me by taking the stairs. I probably set him back by a good 8 or 9 seconds, which seems like a long time when you are running from death.

I now had an enemy. A man was now desperately trying to murder me in a most painful manner, and I now had a reason to live. I felt alive.

The doors opened, and I immediately ran through the lobby, screaming and waving my arms like an escaped maniac. Mostly out of fear, but also to make people get out of the way. I simply could not allow some fat woman, glued to a cellphone, blocking my only path to salvation. I emerged from the building, after dropkicking a fat woman on a cellphone, and ran for the parking lot. At this point I had realized I had forgotten my keys, and for the first time since Terry went postal, I felt a loss of hope. But all was not lost! I thought quickly, and ran to the intersection of the road. Many cars were stopped at the red light, and I knew that my last chance to escape from Terry and his hail of bullets was to relieve someone of their automobile. I selected a blue Lexus, since the driver appeared to be the least likely to struggle. I tried to appear threatening as I opened the woman's door and screamed at her to get out, but when you are a scrawny white man wearing a suit and tie, you just don't have that effect on people.

I knew this when she said, "What the hell are you doing?" It was another spirit breaker, but I didn't let it get me down, because I had an agenda. I pressed the seat belt button, as she slapped me repeatedly, grabbed her by the collar and arm, and tossed her aside. I felt like an asshole as I drove off in that woman's Lexus, but it was either her car, or me. But then again, I'm the idiot who forgot my keys. As I turned onto the freeway, I could have sworn I heard gunshots in the distance.

I collected my thoughts as I was driving down the freeway.

"A man is after me. The cops probably haven't caught him, and he's probably searching for me. He's completely insane, so he is going to stop at nothing to kill me over a bag of Gardettos. I need to leave town. The cops are going to be after me as well, for pushing all of those people, and stealing this car. I have to get out of this town."

It all kept running through my mind all the way to the train station. When I arrived, I left the car double parked, and walked quickly inside. I tried to mellow out a bit. I didn't want to draw too much attention to myself, as it was already suspicious that I had no luggage at all. I bought a cheap ticket to Dallas. I wanted to lay low in a nice big city. All in all, it would be a 6 hour train ride. I smiled at the thought of some well-deserved tranquility as I boarded the train, and I have to say, that the Amtrak was very nice. At least until some inconsiderate gent decided to take a shit in the in the lavatory. I moved to the front end of the train to sit down, and I drifted off to sleep. I was exhausted even before all of it began, since I only got little more than four hours of sleep the previous night. I usually never can sleep, because my day consists of being barely awake for 9 hours or more, then going home not feeling tired enough to sleep. But this time I never slept better.

I closed my eyes slowly and drifted into unconciousness. We hit a bump and I opened my eyes, and Terry was standing directly in front of me with his gun. He said, "You cheated me, Ted...You cheated me out of the only thing that brought me happiness."

The illusion disappeared and I woke up. I lifted my head from it's awkward position againt the window and slowly realized where I was and what had happened. The sun was setting. After the disorientation wore off, I headed to the rear end of the train to the snack bar to get something to eat. The whole Terry incident happened before my lunch hour, so I was feeling pretty hungry, and the train wouldn't arrive in Brownsville for another 46 minutes. I walked into the snack room and looked at the bags of chips available. I noticed a bag of Gardettos, but for obvious reasons, I just didn't want to buy them. In fact, I don't think I ever want to again. I purchased a bag of Cheetos and a can of Mountain Dew, and headed back to my seat.

As I sat there munching on ungodly amounts of salt and cheese dust, staring at the passing landscape, thought about what that lunatic had said in my dream. I looked at this from his point of view, and I realized that, to him, everything he had done up to that point, was entirely justified. I took away the only thing that kept him sane. I almost felt guilty, before I began thinking rationally again, and said to myself,

"It was just a bag of snack mix. Terry is out of his fucking mind."

[Zewb]

Kids These Days..

1950s.

The kids are out of control. They don't need to be listening to Elvis Presley's evil music.

1960s.

What are these kids on? They don't need to be listening to the Beatles. They need to listen to good American musicians, like Elvis Presley.

1970s.

Damn kids, they take a bit of acid, and they think they know everything. Why are they protesting the war? Do they WANT communists to destroy our country?!

1980s.

Why are these kids wearing all these flashy colors? They're just trying to get attention. And they don't need to be drinking that "Jolt Cola" stuff, they're already out of control!

1993

Stop letting your kids go out on Halloween! Halloween candy is riddled with razorblades and poison! And they don't need to be listening to Trent Reznor's evil, depressing music!

1995

These kids need to wear bicycle helmets! They're going to die! Put padding all over them NOW!

1997

ADD! Put them on Ritalin, Concerta, and Aderol NOW! And stop letting them listen to Marilyn Manson! That's why Columbine happened!

2000

DON'T LET THEM OUTSIDE! There are perverts everywhere! They're molesting children! Lock your doors and tell your kids to go in their room and play video games instead!

2004

These games are TOO VIOLENT! THAT'S why Columbine happened! It was VIDEO GAMES! Make them play nice games NOW!

2006

These kids are too fat! Tell them to go outside and quit wasting their lives on stupid video games before we have to roll them down to the lipo clinic! It's all MCDONALD's fault!

I think you get the idea.