Dodo Eggs

Eugene is in DodoEggs.com’s backroom digging through the achieved files. Open boxes sit haphazardly around his bent figure with half of their contents sticking up or sitting sideways in their folders. He pops off another cardboard lid and sends it spinning across the narrow room. The difficult task of shuffling papers and dropping boxes has him breathing a bit hard.

“Where are they!? I’m desperate here!”

His deadline is coming and Eugene his running a blank on decent ideas. The writer knew that the ad revenues for his last few posts have been disappointing. The problem is compounded now that the only sponsors willing to buy ad space were the Midas Pen Company (Want to write better than this guy? Buy a Midas!) and the Letter F ( The letter F, Good for More Than Profanity!)

Eugene passes a little gas but there’s no one around.

Finally, he finds the box he was looking for. Its edges are bent and there are several words written like bad graffiti then crossed out with the broad strokes of a permanent marker. The latest markings read, “LEFT OVER IDEAS – POSSIBIBLY CONTAGEOUS!”

This time the lid is pulled off a bit faster and was flung aside without looking. There were no dividers. The box was filled with tattered bits of paper many torn or stained by prune juice. It looked as if the box was filled with nothing but trash!

The first crumpled sheet Eugene picked up read, “You can tell how useful a man is by the number of keys he has on his key chain…especially if he works in a penitentiary.”

Eugene wads the sheet and tossed it aside. “No, no, that’s no good! Why is this even in here?”

Another read, “Why is it called plastic surgery when they use silicon? The only plastic babe around here is Barbie.”

“Ach! I can’t write about that!”

On the third, Eugene read, “Start a radio commercial with a few seconds of static. It pulls a day dreaming driver out of his stupor but doesn’t give him time to switch the station.”

A shake of the head and it’s on to the next sheet. This isn’t working out.

“If science fiction had any basis in reality than ‘Reversing the Polarity’ would work on any misbehaving electronics. It works in the movies! Why can’t there be a RP switch on everything we buy? If it doesn’t work, just hit the switch and you’re off!”

Then there was, “Have you heard the joke about the Polish dustpan and the Jewish broom? It’s the joke that’s sweeping the nation!”

One of the larger sheets told the story of a boy whose mother fed him a baked combination of macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, and Vienna sausages every night. Her goal was to teach the boy not to be picky. Instead, the boy learned to filter feed nutrients from the air and toast insects.

“That’s it.” Eugene walked away from the box in disgust. “I’ll just write that piece on selling jelly beans in smaller bags by flavor and allowing buyers to create their own preferred medley. It can’t be any worse than this stuff.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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