The December Skyscraper

I have too many novel ideas, so some creativity will have to be tossed aside, altered or forgotten.

The motif of my life was broken up when a professor shoved a book in my hands. I was in a university classroom but should have been in a big city alley. The professor was grungy but not grungy enough. Give me all your money, he said. How is this legal, I replied. This is a monopoly. No, he said, it isn’t, now give me all your money. Fine. Take it. This is a textbook robbery.

A politician was told the medical school had a cadaver shortage. He told them to just train new ones. (Zing!)

While touring a bear-trap factory deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans, a musician fell off a catwalk. He couldn’t read or write the word “well” or, more relevant, the word “careful.” And boy, he tried to play a guitar just like ringing a bell; that is, by shaking it. Oh no, no Johnny. No, no. no. Now the country boy is named Johnny B. Goo.

The sign on the front of the store says the business is open “11 am to Close.” What the hell does that mean?

I returned to my home town after a year’s absence to discover the entire city had been flooded. The entire place was flooded up to one foot of water. Just one foot. It was so little water that life, for the most part, seemed to continue as always. Businesses were open and kids went to school. When I was there my shoes and pants kept getting wet and everybody laughed at me because I wasn’t wearing knee-high rubber boots.

We give 20 "hyper-active" children medication to calm them down but we should just give one teacher the same medication. That's efficiency.

The Situation: If the only way to stop a bomb from killing people, including yourself, was to solve a remedial math equation, would you want the one-time opportunity to solve it or would you want a random other person to be chosen? Does your answer change if you could chose any one in the whole world to answer the problem? Think about it. Read on. My answer doesn’t. I would try it myself no matter what. So too bad readers, your life is in my hands.

Scientists have conclude that the scariest animal in the world, or at least underwater, is the octopus.

There was a writer who went through a six-word phase. My favorite stories of hers were “A computer nerd finished the Internet,” “She hates her favorite song now” and “Dinosaurs are dangerously alive. Fuck doorknobs.” To try and best her, I wrote my own, it was—and is called—“No story is too short.”

This story is a skyscraper because it is made up of dozens of stories.