The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘odd’

If My Name Was Cloris Nightborne

I don’t know with absolute certainty, but I feel 97% confident that if my name was Cloris Nightborne I’d be a burglar. And a magician.

I would be a pretty good magician, no, scratch that, pretty DARN good, and I would be THE guy rich people would call to have come to their parties to perform magic. Sure, I’d go, I’d impress everyone, I’d banter with the best, and I’d be on my way.

Oh, what’s that, you expected me to have robbed someone of some expensive jewelry before leaving? No, come on, I’d obviously be caught. A set of homes where I am the only common denominator? What do you think this is, open mic night?

Nope. I’d be a bank robber. Way more high profile, and I could show off my magic while robbing people. ‘Excuse me miss, I’ll take all of those coins … OUT OF YOUR EAR!’

I’m driving home having changed out of my robbing clothes and into something a little more snappy smart, and a cop flashes his lights behind me.

I stop my car and wait, wondering, is today the day?

The cop leaves his car and puts his gun up, yelling, ‘Mr. Cloris – I know you’re the magic burglar!’ After a long, cautious and safe approach, I’d be in handcuffs and the cop would sigh loudly.

“Long day?” I’d ask casually.
“Oh, Mr. Cloris – you won’t believe how exciting it is for me to capture you. I don’t like you breaking the law, but I have to say, I’m a huge fan.”
“Oh, always nice to meet a fan.” I’d turn to face him, smiling, my hands handcuffed behind my back.
“Yeah, see, I was there for one of your robberies when I was a kid. You had a deck of cards and you said to this guy, ‘pick a card, any card!’ so the guy took one and you had someone else shuffle the deck, and then another guy cut the deck, and then a lady shuffled again … and then you were like … is THIS YOUR CARD … and you pulled the guys credit card out of the middle of the deck of cards!”
“Oh yeah, I remember that.” I’d say this fondly.
“Yeah, it was super cool! You even high-fived me!”
“Say,” I’d say, “do you want to see a magic trick now?”

The cop would pause then, knowing this was probably against protocol but …

“Are these your handcuffs?” I would turn slightly so he could see my hands handcuffed.
“Yeah!”
“Are THESE your handcuffs!?” I’d say, turning back to show that I was no longer in the handcuffs but holding them.
“YEAH!”
“ARE THESE YOUR HANDCUFFS!?” I’d say, pointing with perhaps a trifle too much nonchalance at his hands, now handcuffed.
“WOW! YEAH!!!”

It turns out a few days later he’d be fired, turns out he was monumentally incompetent.

But hey, that’s just a day in the life of … CLORIS NIGHTBORNE!

Also in case you are wondering I’d have a once a month conversation with my parents where I’d ask why on earth they named me Cloris.

Creation Screen

Wouldn’t it be crazy if you died, and it turns out there is a Heaven, and God is up there, and He is running the Big Show through some lame-looking Nintendo-era interface?

And you saw this and said, “hey God, what’re you up to?” And He’d pretend to be startled and say, “oh, hey, just making a new person – this girl is actually related to you. You want to help?”

8nsthYou’d look over his shoulder and see the screen and suppress a cry and say, “uh … what? This is how you make people?”

God would turn and look at you, giving you one of those, ‘uh duhhhhh’ looks, then he’d turn back to the screen and hit ‘Next’ and a pop-up dialog would appear and God would say, “ok so everyone defaults to the same thing – charisma, 4, coolness, 4, rad factor, 4, other, 4 … But for this one I was thinking of subtracting all the charisma points and two of the other points making her have like a TEN for rad factor. Man, she’d be so rad.”

Then you would think back on your life, all of your myriad of experiences, the unexpected twists and turns that life took, how deeply complex every moment had the possibility of being, and then you’d look back at the user interface and see God hitting a checkbox that said “heigh: medium” and you wouldn’t even have time to be upset that height was misspelled because you’re so overcome with how trivial your life seemed in that moment but your sinking thoughts would be interrupted by a ‘DING’ noise and God is winking at you because He just added another soul to this magical thing we call life.

 

Attn: Ellen (9/21/16)

Front

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Back (apologies for my handwriting!)

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The text of the postcard is

Dear Ellen,

I imagine if you sat outside a middle school gym on the night of the science fair taking video of people walking out it would be a lot like an ad for a men’s golf tournament.

A bunch of 30’s-50’s guys in nice pants and polos doing mildly excited fist pumps. (Excited about honorable mentions or birdies, I guess.)

Sincerely,
DumbFunnery.com

Why am I doing this?