Running Bored
Sam Aurelius Milam III
A
while back, I was sitting in a friend's car in a parking lot, waiting for
the friend to leave a prescription at a pharmacy. While I was staring
blankly out of the window, a woman parked her car in the parking space
to the right of my friend's car.
I
hasten to assure the anxious reader that I didn't notice the woman.
I never look at women. Indeed, I'm such an avid feminist that, to
me, women have hairy chests and nothing but smooth pieces of skin between
their legs.
This
is what I noticed. When the woman opened the door, a retractable
running board automatically extended itself from under the side of the
car. When she closed the door, the running board automatically retracted.
I
was disgusted. First, the contraption is an abomination of unnecessary
complexity. The car sits so close to the ground that the step from
the car to the ground is a short one. Thus, a running board is completely
superfluous. Furthermore, the retractability feature is just something
else to make the car more complicated and more expensive. It's just
another gee whiz aw shucks gizmo that will eventually fail to work.
With luck, maybe it'll fall off on the street. In either case, it's
a waste of resources and a waste of ingenuity. Not only that, the
thing is actually in the way. The woman had to step out across and
past the worthless thing in order to step to the ground.
I
think that the idiot who thought of that feature must have too much time
on his hands.
The Fable of Benny's Beard
As Retold by Sam Aurelius Milam III
Once
upon a time, long, long ago, there was a man named Benny. He was
very poor. His parents had been poor. In fact, nobody remembered
anybody in his family who had ever been anything but poor.
One
day, a genie appeared to Benny and offered him a deal.
"Benny,"
said the genie, "I can make you rich."
"How?"
asked Benny.
"No
matter," replied the genie, "but there's a condition."
"What's
that?" asked Benny.
"You
have to stop shaving."
"That's
all?" asked Benny.
"Not
quite," replied the genie. "As long as you don't shave, you'll get
rich. The longer your beard gets, the richer you'll get. But
if you ever shave again, then I'll appear and turn you into an urn."
"OK!"
exclaimed Benny. "I hate shaving anyway. I'll take the deal!"
So,
Benny stopped shaving and got rich. The longer his beard got, the
richer he got. Eventually, however, the beard got to be so long that
it became a nuisance, if not an actual hazard. Sometimes, Benny stumbled
over it. The beard would get tangled around him when he slept.
Once, it nearly choked him. Finally, he'd had enough.
"Dammit!"
he thought. "I don't need to get any richer. I already have
more money than I can spend for the rest of my life. Besides that,
it's been so long that the genie has probably forgotten all about me by
now anyway."
So,
Benny got out his scissors and his razor and shaved off his beard.
Immediately, the genie appeared and turned him into an urn.
Moral:
A Benny shaved is a Benny urned.
Stray Thoughts
Sam Aurelius Milam III
Cure
— All of the marketers should be horse-whipped. The judges, too.
And the bankers.
Clout
— It isn't what you know. It isn't even who you know. It's
what you know about who you know.
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| January 2008 | Frontiersman, c/o 2305 W. Sylvester Circle, Show Low, Arizona 85901 | Page 1 |
