Meet Clever

I'm lying in bed.  The sheets are up to my neck, just covering my shoulders as I listen to the same album I've been listening to for a year straight.  The album takes me somewhere I can't go by my own power.  My legs are motionless in the pitch black.  My eyes dart around the blackness as my mind wonders if this is actually what it's like to be blind.  I tell myself I'm not tired as one song drifts into the next.  Songs become shorter, their tails vanishing into the fog of unconsciousness, their beginnings lost in some crevice void of my reality.  I wonder if I could move a single muscle in my body if I tried. I'm sitting in my car.  I'm driving.  My arm pumps back and forth, my head bobs rhythmically with every shift, my eyes keep even on the plane of the road ahead of me.  The headlights cut through darkness and reveal the night slowly, in small chunks so my brain can digest its surroundings more effectively.  I like i...

"Send in Max Greenwood, Cheryl." The secretary opens the door and I step into my boss's office trying to avoid eye contact as much as possible. "Mr. Greenwood, take a seat.  We just have a few things to discuss."  He opens a folder with my name on it and whistles, simultaneously raising his eyebrows.  I sit down awkwardly with my hands folded in my lap.  "Greenwood, Greenwood, Greenwood... I don't like this.  No I do not." "Sir, I'm sorry if I've done something-" "Oh it's just I hear, from general sources, you've been taking some unapproved breaks."  He cuts me off mid sentence.  "Umm, tell me about your life at home." I pause and look at him inquisitively. "Not much to say.  Wife's good.  I, uh, I'm healthy.  Happy." My boss gives me a disgusted grin.  "Nice and healthy, I hope.  Rested, too, I'm guessing.  Tell me about these breaks you've been taking in ...

There are few foods that require no hands to eat.  There are grapes, I guess, where you can walk under the vine and grab them with your teeth.  Anything growing on a tree or shrub is possibly hands free, actually, but what I'm talking about is the food you eat at home or at a restaurant. The number of hands needed depends on the food.  Sometimes its easy to judge the number of hands you'll need. Example #1)  A steak.  Hand #1: Fork.  Hand #2: Knife. Example #2)  An apple.  Hand #1: Holds the apple. Where we run into big problems is failing to realize the needed number of hands.  There are many foods where, at first glance, the number of hands needed is ambiguous. Example #1)  Big sandwich. Example #2)  Half a cup of salted peanuts.  (The ambiguity here being, do I cup them in one hand and pick each peanut up one by one with the other or do I roll them into my mouth, one handed, with skill a...

Away from Grey My first one.  Fairly well received. Laura This one got a lot more attention but it's not as good as the others. The Company People liked this one the best. I'm hoping more of my stories get published, so I'll update this post when/if that happens.

You've probably heard of the phenomenon in which a random stranger pays for the order of the person behind them in line at a coffee shop.  According to Starbucks baristas, it happens all the time.  The victim of this generous act gets their coffee for free, having their faith in humanity rekindled by a nameless, altruistic coffee shop hero, and the hero gets to feel better than the rest of society for however long the emotional inertia of the deed lasts.  It's a win-win... so it seems. I can't help but wonder how exactly this transaction is performed.  If you're the hero, are you supposed to guess what the person behind you wants?  It would be nearly impossible to guess the price of the order using cash.  Do you use a credit card and let that cover whatever the person behind you wants, and if so, how does that work?  You have to ask yourself whether you're still a hero if you're the kind of person who uses a credit card ...

There are a few different ways to control the spider population in your house.  You no longer have to rely on stepping on them or squishing them in a Kleenex before flushing them down the toilet.  One of the most effective contraptions on the market for spider killing is the sticky spider trap.  If you haven't seen one of these, it's basically a large piece of cardboard that is coated in a super sticky substance and baited with a scent to attract spiders.  The spider crawls on but can't crawl off.  Then it slowly dies. This sounds very familiar.  Doesn't some other creature use this method to catch and kill other creatures?  Could it be the spider with its super sticky web?  Yes. I have a few of these in my house and they work very well.  So well that you will be creeped out by knowing how many spiders there actually are in your house.  I have three.  They've all caught over...

Okay, the first thing wrong with this is that there's no such thing as monsters.  I'm not saying that they're real.  That's dumb. What I am saying, however, is that the logic behind looking under your bed for a monster is ridiculous. Scenario #1 Let's say there is a monster under your bed, one that has every intention of eating or mauling you in the night.  There it lies, waiting for you to fall asleep before coming out and performing its deed.  You fall asleep.  It eats you.  Oh why oh why didn't you think to look under the bed first?  Surely that would have saved you!  At best, you're taking away the monster's satisfaction of getting you while you're asleep.  And if that's a win for you, you may have some pride issues. Scenario #2 Again there's a monster under your bed.  This time you have the intuition to take a peak before falling asleep.  You see the monster.  It goes, "dang, you found me...", th...

Congratulations on finding my first blog post.  These are supposed to be stories so I guess I could tell you one. I will start by telling you all of these stories are original.  I will give credit where needed.  That doesn't mean they are all true, but I'm no thief. We'll start off gently. I own an electric piano.  I keep it in the basement and often play it before going to bed, or instead of going to bed when I can't sleep.  It seems to help. One night when I couldn't sleep, I found myself playing the piano again. I remembered that one of the features of the instrument was having the ability to record pieces of music.  You could set the metronome, play a song, then play it back.  It was a very simple feature.  You couldn't play around with it much and it was very easy to accidently delete a track by playing over an old one. So, at this point I had no idea what track would be on the piano if I were to select 'records' and hit play....