Death Star on a Budget

Emperor Palpatine was none too happy with the destruction of the first Death Star. Naturally, he insisted on a second, even bigger than the previous one, for it was the backbone of his sinister plans. Though Palpatine was an evil genius, however, he had no mind for business or the cost of running an evil empire. Lord Vader considered pointing out that with the destruction of their staggeringly expensive experimental battle station, one with such a major design flaw, perhaps it would be best to take a moment to go back to the drawing board before putting forth such an egregiously large bond issue before the finance committee. Vader said nothing, of course, because there wasn't much room for logistics when having a discussion with the emperor, what with all of the creepy leering and the lightning.

Palpatine would not take no for an answer, so Lord Vader did what he always did when given an impossible task. He delegated. The head of the finance committee wanted to point out that the empire couldn't afford a second Death Star right now, especially considering the order was for one “just like the first one, only, like, six times bigger.” He didn't even ask if Vader wanted it literally six times bigger, which would not be a large diameter increase or if he wanted the diameter to be six times larger, for there wasn't much room for logistics when having a discussion with Vader, what with all the breathing and the choking. He opted for the bigger one, even though it made the fatal exhaust port big enough to fit a ship into. As for the money, the empire would simply resort to product placement for a little while.

- Originally mailed to J. Hall of Jackson, Mississippi

Shavebacca

In a post-rebellion economy, there simply wasn't much call for a wookie co-pilot/smuggler. It certainly didn't help that Han, his former boss, shut down their independently owned mom-and-pop smuggling operation so he could settle down, get married, and have kids in the suburbs. Facing unemployment, Chewbacca had no choice but to go corporate and look for work in a cubicle somewhere.

The first months were the hardest. Chewie went to countless interviews in dozens of star systems (Han at least had the courtesy to lend him the keys to the Falcon while he went job hunting, provided he paid for his own gas and didn't get any tickets), but nothing panned out. It wasn't until one potential employer gave him some friendly advice.

“Chewie,” said Ted at accounts receivable for Tatooine Moisture Vaporators, LLC. “Do you mind if I call you Chewie? Chewie, your resume looks good. You got great people skills. The thing is, nobody's going to hire a guy who shows up to an interview without any pants on. Watto? Jabba? They don't wear pants, and they're criminals. You want to get hired, you need some nice trousers. Maybe a good suit and tie. At least an oxford and some khakis. While you're at it, you might think about shaving. Not professionally, just as a personal choice. Let me tell you from experience, the ladies love a smooth chested guy.”

- Originally mailed to K. Murphey in Chicago, Illinois

The Bet

Despite having used his own cunning to save his father's life, Indiana Jones felt himself constantly explaining just how difficult chosing the Holy Grail was from so many cups. His father proclaimed the real grail an obvious choice and refused to listen when Indy spoke of anything being obvious once it was pointed out to a person. To settle the matter, they made a bet. They would seek out the immortal knight, reclaim the Holy Grail and choose four other cups from those that had been gathered in the old cave.

“I had to choose from a hundred, but even only picking from five, I'm going to win this one,” the confident Indy said.

The immortal knight tried to protest, but they would hear none of it. At the first hotel they found, they gave the test to a dozen people and only one guessed correctly.

“Beginner's luck,” said Henry Jones, Sr. “These people are into televangelists. They associate God with wealth.”

The three of them went from town to town explaining the bet to everyone they met. Hundreds drank, but only a small number chose the correct cup. Indiana celebrated with champagne, which his father had to pay for. The old knight refused, and instead spent the evening lamenting the hundreds who died agonizing deaths to prove a point.

- Originally mailed to H. Longino from Gulfport, Mississippi

Cloban, God of Crab Pies

Many who entered the Baltimore bakery thought the wall ornament an amusing little metal sun, perhaps fashioned after some celestial diety of a long gone Central American civilization. None suspected the strange truth. The wall mount was actually a shrine to Cloban, the god of crab pies. And why would they suspect it? Most would react with bemused surprise if you were to tell them straight faced that there even was such a thing as a god of crab pies, and virtually no one would believe the Haverchuk family worshiped him.

Still, a crab pie god he was. Where many saw the sun's corona, the Haverchucks saw the edge of a flaky crust, and what patrons of the bakery took for the sun's warm rays were actually Cloban's many red, steamy claws. He was a good of tenderness and flavor and subtlty. His heart was soft as butter, but his wrath as fiery as an oven. His wisdom was as deep as the oceans from whence his meaty filling came.

Long ago, people asked how they made such wonderful crab pies, the bakers used to tell them about their god Cloban, and the people would laugh at them for believing in such a silly god. The Haverchucks tried explaining that their family had worshiped Cloban for generations upon generations, but nothing stopped the accusations that their ancestors just made up a god one day. The Haverchucks tried asking the people how they knew their ancestors didn't just make up their gods centuries ago, but in the end, they decided to just keep silent.

- Originally mailed to S. Troub of Long Beach, Mississippi

The Balancing Table

There was a table on which anything could be balanced with far more ease than anywhere else. Pennies, pens, acrobats, even checkbooks and chakras. No one knew why this was so. Some said it was because the table was absolutely, perfectly flat, but critics said that didn't explain how it helped mentally unstable people find balance. Others claimed the table's balancing powers were magical in nature, but critics simply laughed at them, because magic. There were no special electromagnetic fields, or any sort of harmonious alignment with the planet's gravity. Things simply worked better there than anyplace else on earth.

For the longest time, the table served as a tourist attraction. Nearby were shelves of oddly shaped items that people could balance on the table for a dollar apiece. As years passed, however, this was no longer enough for the owner, who increasingly felt the need to do good with his amazing table. He thought perhaps to take it to San Francisco and erect a building atop it, one that would not fall no matter how terrible the earthquake, but the table could not support the weight. He loaned it to congress in hopes they might balance the budget with it, but seemed though the budget could be balanced, only those who were at the table would agree on it, with all other congressmen falling into their usual political grandstanding, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get all five hundred members around it at once. Finally, he decided it best to donate it to a therapist, whose clients often were able to find balance in their lives after only two sessions. 

- Originally mailed to W. Murphree of Rosenburg, Texas

Cat Infestation II: Bathroom Cat

“There's a cat in the tub!” Lisa cried. “Janet, get rid of it!”

“You're a big girl, Lisa. You can get rid of it yourself,” called Janet from the living room.

Since they moved into the house a week ago, Lisa had been struggling to deal with the cat infestation they didn't discover until after they'd signed the mortgage. The exterminator was no help, saying there was nothing to be done about cats unless the cats themselves wanted a thing do. The best advice he could give was to carry a spray bottle and keep anything small enough to bat around locked away.

She eased toward the faucet, hoping to get to the shower to spray it before it... did whatever cats did. Sat there some more, she supposed. A quick blast of cold from the nozzle was enough to chase away the furry pest, but she knew he would be back. Cats always came back. They were always there just out of sight, waiting to pounce, or to knock things off of shelves, or to sit on computers or books or freshly laundered white shirts, or to dart around the place for no good reason, nearly knocking a person over as they did.

No, there was nothing worse than a cat infestation. For the tenth time that day, Lisa muttered under her breath, “Why couldn't it have been termites?”

- Originally mailed to D. Murphey from Ocean Springs, Mississippi

The Lamp

“But you have to shine,” the other poles told her.

“I don't want to,” she said in a defiant pout.

“But it's who you are! It's your purpose in life to be a guiding light!”

“Don't assume you know what my purpose is,” the darkened lamp pole said. “My mother told me never to give in to peer pressure.”

“This isn't peer pressure,” said a pole to her left. “It's common sense! Why else would you have a light bulb?”

“Because glass looks good on me.” She thought to turn to leave, but decided she had more to say. “And another thing. Why should having a bulb mean I'm meant to be a lamp? You're tall. Why aren't you a basketball player?”

“Because I'm a lamp!”

But she would have none of it. She wouldn't listen to the naysayers who would pigeonhole her and force her to be something she wasn't.

- Originally mailed to M. Navoy of Picayune, Mississippi

The Talking Watermelon

News outlets the world over covered the giant talking watermelon story. Who wouldn't be excited, after all? It had sensationalism. Man grows ten ton watermelon! It had human interest. Giant watermelon grown by unemployed man with a dream! And of course, dear heavens, a talking watermelon!

People flocked from all over the world to speak with the sentient melon. For months, the small town of Iloosa, Pennsylvania found tiself overrun with tourists, filling their hotels, eating in their restaurants, buying their “I Had A Conversation With A Watermelon” commemorative sourviner t-shirt and travel mug.

Thanks to the power of the internet and video sharing, soon people realized that as awesome as the idea of a talking watermelon is, that's how unawesome a talking watermelon actually was. Turned out, watermelons were boring and only wanted to talk about rain and soil and sun.

- Originally mailed to M. Worthington of Crystal River, Florida

Sorta Giant Robots

The Venusian invaders hoped to conquer Earth, but their politicians utterly slashed their space exploration budget. Only two probes were launched in the entirity of their preplanning for the invasion, and even those were impact probes and single shot landers. By remarkable coincidence, both probes landed at mini-golf courses, and with the grainy low res images that came back, they assumed that Earthlings were tiny, no taller than six inches, based on the size of the doors on the windmills that seemed to proliferate the planet's surface (also an indicator of low technological advancement).

They built giant robots twenty feet tall, which they were certain would be utterly unstoppable to these renaissance era liliputians. After months in transit, the killer robots finally landed on the earth at their target landing sites. They climbed from the metal capsules and began to spread total havok across the tiny villages they encountered, at least until the first humans showed up. Sure, the giants were still taller than them, but it only took three of them to topple the mechanical monstrosities and their inch thick armor, a scale foot thick to the their anticipated tiny enemies, turned out to be only mildy inconvenient when punched by the armor piercing rounds of a taller populace.

In the end, the robots were content to trash three mini-golf courses before returning home, the Venusians refusing to call the mission a total wash.

- Originally mailed to J. Lawrence of Roseland, New South Wales, Australia

The Dull Corner

It was a perfectly ordinary corner, nothing exceptional about it at all. There was no carpet, but then, most floors had no carpet. There were stains, but these were ordinary, run of the mill stains and nothing to write home about. The paint was uninspiring, the edgework decent, but not breath-taking. As such, when the photo of this particular corner began to circulate at the Thousand Words Society, a collection of writers who firmly believed that a thousand quality words could be written about any picture, the gathering of authors could not stop talking about it. The picture was bland, lacking any fuel for the imagination. Only the greatest writers could create a thousand compelling words about this image, if anyone could at all.

The conclave gathered in the main hall, and a great table was placed on the stage. Overhead, someone projected the image on a large screen, glowing twenty feet across. The group put it to a vote and selected the ten most worthy, creative writers among them, called them to the stage and gave them sheafs of paper and handfuls of pens and pencils. Nine of them struggled, sweat beading on their brow, more from strain than the bright lights. They wrote and rewrote, scribbled and crumbled, and scribbled again. One, however, wrote with ease, pausing only occasionally to look around. His story seemed to be writing itself. When he finished, he read it aloud for all to hear.

“The photo was of the most mundane corner ever beheld,” he began.

- Originally mailed to C. Donnell from Stafford, Texas

The Baby Blue Bouncer

They called him the Baby-Blue Bouncer, but not for the reason most suspected. Many assumed the name came from the tie, but the tie came later. It was a symptom of the name, but not the cause. No, they called him the Baby-Blue Bouncer because of how seriously he took his job. “You'll never get nowhere in this business if you can't abide by the host's rules.”

It was a baby shower for a premature baby. The mother had hoped it would happen before her little Stuart came, but Mother Nature never cared much for schedules, and the young boy came in month seven, a full month before the baby shower. Undeterred, the mother declared they would have the baby shower anyway. She'd kept the child's gender a secret, hoping to play a “Guess My Sex” game. However, to keep cheaters from gaming the system and changing their vote once they reached the party, she asked that all guests show up wearing either blue (if they thought the baby a boy) or pink (if they thought the baby a girl). She'd done a solid job keeping anyone from finding out before the party, but just to be safe, dressed the child in a green onsie with a yellow and brown giraffe on it. She wore a white sundress.

The bouncer would not let the boy in. “Sorry, ma'am,” he told the child's mother. “The kid needs to be in blue or pink. You too for that matter.”

“But it's my party,” she protested.

“Rules are rules,” he said and blocked the doorway.

She fired him, but his reputation had been made as the go-to bouncer.

- Originally mailed to H. Witten in Oxford, Mississippi

Cat Infestation I: Cabinet Cats

Lisa and Janet Hodgkins of Palmyra, New York thought they'd found a real deal when they picked up a two thousand square foot, four bedroom, two bath home with sunroom, covered patio, and storage shed for under sixty grand. As they were moving in, however, Lisa noticed something out of the corner of her eye. Something small and black that darted away quickly. At Janet's insistence, they called pest control, who broke the bad news.

“I don't know how to tell you this, ma'am,” he sad as he stared down at his feet. “I'm afraid you have a cat infestation. Probably the worst case I've seen. They're in the cabinets, behind the couch, under the tables and chairs and beds. Everywhere.”

“Are you sure?” Lisa asked, embarrassed. “Maybe it's not cats. Maybe it's just roaches. Maybe it's an old infestation. Maybe they're gone.”

“Sorry,” he said and pointed a flashlight at a bit of string in the back of a cupboard. “That there is fresh yarn. Not even frayed at the ends. No, you've got cats here and now.”

“Isn't there something we can do about it?” they asked. This was meant to be their dream home after all.

“I'm afraid not,” said the man. “I could spray, and that'll chase 'em off for a minute or two, but they'll just come right back. No, about the only thing to do about a cat infestation is to act like you want them around. It's the only way to get them to leave you alone.”

The devastated women cried into each others shoulders as the exterminator packed his things.

Poor girls, thought the exterminator.

- Originally mailed to A. Perkins of New Orleans, Louisiana

Ghostbusting on a Budget

When the economy collapsed, the Ghostbusters found they could no longer afford the “lavish” working conditions they'd grown accustomed to. As it turned out, the storage vault required staggering amounts of electricity to maintain, the proton packs and traps required expensive charges and maintenance after every half hour of actual use, and the city of New York no longer allowed nuclear accelerators to go unlicensed, which itself cost tens of thousands of dollars per year per accelerator “to discourage untrained amateurs.” Insurance premiums were astronomical. Ecto needed new struts twice a year due to the added weight of the portable storage unit and trap recharger. Plus there was the fact that all of these expenses paled in comparison to the cost of renting a corner location three story firehouse in central New York City.

Facing a seemingly endless stream of expenses, the Ghostbusters were forced to cut back and go low tech. In the current economic climate, their primary method of ghost busting had reverted more and more until finally they were left with putting a card board box on a table and asking the offending ghost very nicely if he wouldn't mind sitting in it for a while.

- Originally mailed to C. Merritt from Juneau, Alaska

Living in 3D

Steve Vanderbrook's first viewing of a 3d movie changed his life. “The movie looks real!” he said to his parents. For the rest of the day, he refused to remove his glasses. His parents tried to explain to him that the real world looked real too, especially if he took of his glasses so it wouldn't have that awkward red/blue flicker as the right and left eyes struggled to make what each saw work. Steve wouldn't hear of it.

He was a kid in the 80s, so it was the cool thing to do. In high school, it was his thing, and because he had a personal style and swagger that existed without the glasses, people accepted it, and some even imitated it. In college, they thought he was being ironic, and it worked for him there as well. They only time it ever was an issue was at work, but as he did IT and did it well, the office was inclined to forgive his eccentricity. When asked why, he would give the same answer, and people would assume it was a metaphor that embodied a personal philosophy rather than an actual literal belief.

“Life is better in 3D,” he would say. “It looks like everything is really there.”

- Originally mailed to P. Mathis from Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Leia's Only Hope

It never failed. Every time they went on a trip together, Obi-Wan Kenobi would always tell Leia, “Remember to study the itinerary. It has all the important information. Hotel name, room number, where we're going and when. If you get lost, it will help you.”

“I'm not going to forget where we're staying, Ben,” she would say. “Besides, if I do, R2 has the plans. I'll just ask him.”

He thought to argue with her, but knew how she could be when someone told her no. She was a princess after all.

Naturally, after checking in and after Ben had left to find a good bar, Leia promptly forgot where they were staying. She couldn't even call Ben because she'd never learned his number, trusting her cell phone to remember for her. She tried asking R2 for help, but he didn't care for her much. She didn't give him oil baths or call him “Little Friend” the way Ben did, and she never made any attempt to learn his language, making their conversations one-sided at best, and usually just a series of commands from her to him with little regard to his feelings. So he didn't tell her. He just cursed in beeps and whistles knowing she wouldn't understand him anyway. Not knowing how else to find the way back to the hotel, she had R2-D2 do what he always did. Find Ben and deliver a message.

When the little droid found him, he was sitting in a seedy bar nursing some Corellian booze. That's when R2 played the eight words the retired jedi had come to dread every time he took a vacation.

“Help me Obi-wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.”

- Originally mailed to R. Morris of Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

Iron Intervention

After a particularly bad drinking binge, the board of Stark Industries decided it could no longer subsidize Tony's downward spiral and they froze his assets. Even the Avengers assembled to hold an intervention for him, saying though they respected him as a hero and a friend, they could no longer stand idly by as he drank himself to death. 

“YOU ARE OFF THE TEAM, MORTAL!” boomed Thor, who due to his whole being a god of thunder thing had no choice but to speak in all caps. It came off much more critical than he intended, and Tony took it poorly. Bruce made a crack about anger issues, and it was up to Steve to settle the situation.

“For now,” he said, placating the cast off billionaire tech mogul. “Just until you can get yourself cleaned up. I mean, the laws don't let people drive a car when they're drunk. It's morally and legally questionable for us to let you operating a flying tank suit under the influence.”

Tony tried to argue, but it was all true. He broke down, apologized, confessed to all the times he'd secretly been drunk on the job, confessed to the vodka dispenser he'd installed, and to all the times Jarvis had to be a Designated Hero for him. Then he left.

Tony checked into a halfway house, but having no Stark money to pay for it, was forced to moonlight as a security guard in a gift shop in lower Manhattan to pay for his stay at the center. It felt belittling at first, wielding billion dollar anti-aircraft technology to protect souvenir mugs, but it reminded him what he was working toward. It made him strive for greatness the clean way. He needed that.

- Originally mailed to B. Nowell of Newport News, Virginia

The Pint and Keg

As far as dive bars went, The Pint and Keg was classy. They still had the usual things that most bars had, live music, a wide beer selection, ladies night, and the occasional drunken individual having too much and behaving foolishly. Even so, all of these things just seemed nicer there. Their live music was often authentic folk music from countries all over the world, such as when Mohinder Ayer came and sang some songs from the Punjab that his mother sang to him growing up, mixed in with a few contemporary favorites of the region. Their drink selection dominated a wall with so many taps from so many places one felt like they needed a passport just to view the beer menu, and nary a Bud or a Miller or a Michelob could be counted among them. Their ladies night was patroned by actual ladies, such as Dame Judi Dench. Even when their patrons had a little too much and got a little disorderly, it was often in the form of drinking songs and amusingly tall tales bellowed out using outside voices. Even when they did get particularly wild and climbed up on the table to dance, it was always something classic and traditional, and could be counted on to display no small amount of talent and training.

- Originally mailed to M. Hayes of Tampa, Florida

Found

They tracked her all over the world from Kiev to the Carolinas after that scam in Scandanavia, and the forged checks she passed in Czechoslovakia. She was the world's most highly sought criminal, and each day at least three Acme Detective Agency agents practically pulled their hair out trying to puzzle out the taunting clues the sticky-fingered filcher would send then, flaunting their inability to catch her. The would trace her phone calls through as many as eight countries in sixty seconds trying to get a lock on her location, but always the double-dealing diva would get away. Clues always indicated she might be in some exotic location. Paris. Mount Everest. The Rock of Gibraltar. And why not? She was a savvy, worldly, high class hoodlum. She stole diamonds and landmarks. She lived a wild high profile life, so naturally, she would want to keep around the best. Only one agent dared to say she was too smart for that, that the clues were deliberate red herrings. After all, a woman clever enough to steal a vowel from the Spanish alphabet was too smart to spend her days carousing post-heist in Monte Carlo or Venice. No, a high profile crook had to lay low if she wanted to avoid capture. While the rest of ACME chased her from Sydney to Rio following the clues the careful criminal left, one followed the money, the hotel bills, the cellphone records, the surveillance footage. As a result, only one agent was able to answer the decades old question. Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? The Ninth Street Howard Johnsons.

- Originally mailed to J. Raper in Batesville, Arkansas

Alien Accountant

The xenomorph had hatched from Wallace Carmichael's chest and hoped to wreak bloody havok on the Burmingham Hilton. A national accountants convention had settled in, and that meant ample opportunity to feed to its acidic heart's content. There was just one problem.

“Sorry,” said hotel security. “No one but convention attendees allowed on the convention floor.”

The alien hissed, outstretched its inner mouth, snapped its tiny fangs, and dripped acid onto the carpet, which sizzled and steamed. Security responded by pointing to a sign stating convention policy and issuing the alien a bill for the carpet.

“Look pal, it's simple. No badge, no admittance.”

The xenomorph skulked off to the registration table, paid the sixty dollar fee, collected its two buffet and drink vouchers, a program guide, and hung its badge around its neck, figuring holding it would take hands away from the vital business of maiming.

As he walked through the main concourse, looking for someplace to start, a panel on new tax laws caught his eye. Obviously he didn't want to be caught unprepared come April, so he sat in. Then he checked his program and selected a few other panels that maybe he might want to attend, and he certainly couldn't miss the mixer that night, and how long does a bloodbath take, really? Half an hour? Forty-five minutes? Surely no more than an hour. It could wait. By the end of the week, he had killed no one, but had become a CPA.

- Originally mailed to S. Johnson of LaFayetteville, Indiana

Toy Gun Legislation

“If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns,” people said.

Still, they outlawed guns, and while it was true only outlaws had guns (that argument worked with anything illegal, such as “If you outlaw murder, only outlaws will murder.”), the number of guns was greatly lessened, for there were so very few guns for the outlaws to get.

Even with guns becoming virtually impossible to find, legally or illegally, many criminals still tried to get their hands on one, and when they couldn't, they would use toys and replicas to make people think they had guns. Congress decided it wasn't enough to legislate guns. They had to legislate the glorification of guns as well.

“If you outlaw toy guns, only outlaws will have toy guns.”

Toy guns were outlawed anyway. Strangely enough, this did nothing to curb imaginary gun violence. Criminals would charge into banks with weapons made of foam or brightly colored plastic and still people would give over the money. The gun was a symbol, they realized. People didn't brandish guns to kill people during crimes. Most wanted nothing to do with a murder charge, in fact. They had them to show they were willing to kill, and most people tended to relent to that kind of hostility, regardless of how imaginary the death may be.

- Originally mailed to M. Krell in Horn Lake, Mississippi