Dumbo Dad And The "Desserta le Waste"

           There was once a dad that was really dumb, so everyone called him Dumbo Dad. He didn't think he was stupid, because he could figure out the hardest equation in the world: 1 + 1! The lucky thing was that he had a lot of money, left from his dad. Otherwise, he would have been bankrupt in less than a day! He didn't work at all, and didn't know how to cook. Therefore, he went to luxury restaurants every day. The money from his dad was almost gone, and he still wasn't doing anything to prepare.
           This fateful night, he was going to the most expensive restaurant/hotel in the world - the Restauranta La Expensiva, in Paris. He was already in the 500-story, 100 acre hotel. The 50 ft. limousine had just pulled in from the supersonic luxury airport. The door opened, and the extending chair pushed him all the way to the front doors of Rossimossi Grand Hotel. There, the machine dusted off his luggage, sanitized it, added some coupons, and then whisked it up to his room. Meanwhile, the chair-hefters arrived, holding a red and gold chair between them. They escorted him onto the chair, and then started to take him on a tour of the indoor lake, motorboat rental, golf course, hunting range (actual pine forest, tundra, rain forest, alpine mountain, etc. climates). After that they took the elevator up to the second floor, where the Restauranta La Expensiva extended for 20 floors, stopped, and then continued for 20 upper floors (479-499), which was only for the penthouse owner.
           He spent the afternoon in the outdoor Paradise Pool, which wound around the floor 22. There was a wave machine and tubes, so he spent the afternoon drifting around the tower, absorbing the scenery, and inhaling complimentary martinis and sushi. When he really needed to go pee, he just went into the pool. It had an auto-filtering system that changed the water every second, doubling as a wave machine.
           Suddenly, his poolside phone rung, and he picked it up. It was his reservation to the Restauranta La Expensiva! He walked out of the pool, and the drying machines automatically removed all the excess water on his body. An attendant picked up the tube and deposited it in a small storage area. Then, a clothing machine popped out and dressed him in a tie and suit. Finally, the elevator doors popped open and whisked him through a diamond tube to floor 500, his penthouse, in less than five seconds. He swiped his card, and then went down the stairs to the restaurant, only accessible by penthouse or worker passageways.
           In the restaurant, there was a dictionary on his desk. Or was it a dictionary? He flipped it open and found the first 200 pages dedicated to the 6,458 appetizers, most of which were exclusive to the penthouse. The appetizers included food from all over the world, from all different chefs. For example, there was "Alder Wood Smoked Mushrooms with Sauteed Tomatoes and Four Cheese Firebread - $240".
           He ordered 20 appetizers to start the first of 11 courses. A while later, after everything had been sampled and commented on, he started on the 5,639 dishes. For 7 courses, he selected food from the different countries of the world, eating chow mien, pizza, pasta, smoked salmon, ceviche, ahriche, and others.
           It was time to choose from the 2,367 desserts the restaurant had to offer. He choose the most interesting ones he could find - "Watermelon Grilled in a Pineapple", a Hawaiian ice cream cake that had supposedly made sailors swim to shore for it, "Grilled Ice Cream", "Chocolate Cities of the World", "Peanut Almond Cashew Walnut Chestnut Hazelnut Coconut Cocoa Brazil Nut Pecan Pine Nut Pistachio Pili Nut Soy Nut Macadamia Papaya Pear Pomegranate Kiwi Cherry Black Cherry Grape Apricot Banana Peach Orange Lemon Passionfruit Guava Grapefruit Apple Lime Watermelon Pineapple Ice Cream Banana Split" (the most expensive of the bunch: $2,000) and, last but not least, "Desserta le Waste".
           He waited, and waited, salivating at the thought of all the fruit and sweets. Suddenly, a few hundred waiters came in carrying a humongous plate that took up 10 whole floors of tables. He flew from platter to platter, sampling a bit of the 35 gallons of ice cream, drinking the chocolate syrup, eating the sprinkles, and consuming all 100 bananas. After that, he started cutting apart and enjoying the sweet, tangy sensation of watermelon grilled in a pineapple. Later, he devoured a scrumptious slice of the 10-layer ice cream cake, ate Washington D.C. in "Chocolate Cities of the World", and enjoyed crispy chocolatey grilled ice cream. Finally, he came to the last dessert. "Desserta le Waste" was a bunch of brownish things floating in yellow liquid. It was unlike any dessert he had tasted. The yellow liquid tasted salty, while the brownish things were soft and moist. He thought it tasted really good, and brought some home for his family. He ate the rest of the things, the ice cream, Chocolate Rome, Chocolate Paris, Chocolate Moscow, Chocolate Beijing, and Chocolate Singapore. He didn't notice the Honey Buckets leaving the building, though.
           The next day, he got home, and gave the Desserta le Waste to his family. They looked at it, barfed and fainted. He was surprised, and when they came to their senses, he showed them that it actually tasted good, and ate half of the bowl. Then they barfed and fainted again. He didn't know what to do, so when they came to their senses again, he gave them each some and poured it down their throats. They barfed so much that they turned white, and then they fainted in their barf. Dumbo Dad was really surprised when they ran away from home screaming.

Christmas Day

           Hi! My name is Bill, and I'm a dwarf police chief, U.S. region. Tonight, we have been trying to screen all the Christmas presents made by the elves up at the North Pole. They are sent over to us on a rainbow, and we sit on the receiving end, passing the presents over with a long metal rod called a G-rod. It detects harmful substances.
           So, I was running my rod over a package wrapped in green when suddenly the rod beeped and flashed red. That meant something dangerous was in the package. Carefully, I opened it, and found a small plant inside.
           Cautiously, I touched the plant. I was jerked off my feet as what looked like an innocent tree stump sprouted thorny vines and tried to strangle me. I prodded the plant a few times with my G-rod, and suddenly, the plant's stump opened up, revealing a mouth full of green muck. The tentacles were bringing me closer and closer to the mouth... any second now I would be swallowed... what was happening? The plant had stopped dead in it's tracks. The tentacles flew back into the trunk, the mouth closed, and it looked like a normal stump again. I tossed it into the garbage can.
           After that, I found a group of packages that had been "eaten", and then I saw them - a large group of green monsters. They ate packages, ate more, and soon the whole rainbow was filled with them. They started sliding down the rainbow towards me. I was frozen in fear - I had no idea what to do. I pulled a gun out of my holster, preparing to aim, but when I shot, nothing happened. I had to cover myself with a bubble shield and run to the elves for help. When he got to the elves, he found they were also in distress.
           With a bit of magic, I fixed their house and then informed them of the disastrous situation. They all grabbed toy guns off the racks and sped off, leaving a group behind to make replacement presents. When we neared the end of the rainbow, we saw them and attacked. The giants took a long while to obliterate, but finally the last one fell.
            We held a party after that - after all, we had just saved Christmas!

“一塌糊涂”当爸爸

今天我跟朋友们打赌了。我输了，所以今天要叫我的狗，“一塌糊涂”，“爸爸”。我写日记的时候，我觉得很变扭：

今天家里只有我和爸爸两个人。爸爸想和我玩藏猫猫，我就跟他玩了起来。过了一会儿，爸爸藏进了妈妈的衣柜，等我找着他的时候，他已经在妈妈最喜欢的裙子上拉了一泡尿。这可怎么办呢？我把妈妈的裙子塞进一个鞋盒里，好好的藏在了我的柜子里。

爸爸一回来，看完日记就恶狠狠的扑了过来。

“你敢说我撒尿在妈妈的裙子上？”爸爸向我吼。

“救命啊！”我叫。

妈妈走过来了，对爸爸说：“不要打人！”

爸爸拼命地大叫：“那你看一看他这个日记！”

妈妈越看，她的脸越红。

“啊！”她尖叫着。“我的裙子啊！”她在我的柜子里翻来翻去，找着了那个鞋盒子。她看了里面的裙子，闻到了狗尿味，很生气。突然，他也扑过来，对爸爸说：“帮我-帮我狠狠的打他！”

“不要啊！”我叫。已经太晚了。妈妈，爸爸都已经开始打了。我疼的哇哇叫，屁股也变红了。我坐都坐不下来了。以后我再也不打赌了！

The Strange Birthday Gift

            Hi! My name is Phil and I live in Springfield, Illinois. Today was my birthday - a sunny April Saturday. Today was my 10th birthday - I had hit the double digits! I was looking forward to the dinner out at Rogeson's, the local steakhouse, and the party afterwards. But here I sat on the grass outside my brown house on Morrow Drive, bored with nothing to do.

            I decided to head back into my room to read a book I had just got, The Ultimate Guide to the Animals of the Earth. I walked up the stairs, opened the door, and spotted a strange package on my bed. On it was a label. I leaned closer to read the label. DANGEROUS, it read, Keep out of reach of children under 10. From: THE ALIENS OF MARS

            I kept reading: To: 2nd Bedroom Upstairs, 206th Ave., Springfield, IL.
            "Wow!" I exclaimed. I immediately ripped open the package. What?! I thought. It was only a watch! I put it on and set the hands to the correct time.

            "What time would you like to go to?" asked a strangely robotic voice. I realized it was coming from the watch.

            "Um, what about 1392 in Rome?" I suggested timidly.

            "Transporting..." beeped the voice again.

            There was a sudden flash of light and I saw the Colosseum nearby and a bunch of people wearing white togas running around. I trotted around, and realized that I was wearing a toga, too! The watch had transformed itself into a golden armband. I started talking, and I realized I was speaking Roman too! I explored the place, admiring statues and watching shows. I saw the Statue di Roma, the Antiquarium del Palatino, the Musei Capitolini, and the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. I stayed in the Colosseum for a while. There was a very interesting show going on in there. Two people were fighting each other with weapons I had never seen before. After I watched a few rounds, I got bored, tired, and hungry.
            Suddenly a man walked up to me. He looked very different from the others. He was dressed in a T-shirt and flip-flops, and he trotted over to me. It seemed like none of the locals noticed him. He scooted over, tied me up, gagged me, and then everything went black. The last thing I noticed was a large black object dangling from his wrist. I awoke a few hours later (or so I thought) in a damp underground cave. The person I had seen earlier was next to me, except he looked different. I saw lots of shiny, sharp knives hanging from the ceiling.
            "Where am I?" I meant to ask, but with my gag, it sounded like "WHAAARFF UMM O?" The man, or should I say creature, who had transformed into a slimy green mass of oozing material with huge eyes, replied, "UPI EPM'Y :OBR :PMH YP LMPE, RSYJ:OMH!" Before I knew it, everything went black again. The next time I woke up, I was suspended over a pit of green slime by an iron chain. I couldn't see the creature anymore. I swung on the chain, swinging and swinging, and before I knew it, I had swung fast enough to crash my chain into the rocky ceiling and break it. I fell onto the red ground next to the pit.
            Next thing I knew, six green blobs cornered me. I scuttled through a small hole in the wall, reaching the surface, and I was really surprised! I was on Mars! I looked around for a means of escape. My wristwatch had been taken, and I wasn't wearing a toga anymore, I was in my normal clothes. I ran off on the rocky ground, many green blobs chasing me. Ahead of me, I made out a faint glow in the foggy weather, and saw my escape - a space shuttle that had been stolen from the humans. I leapt into the cockpit, and found I didn't know how to control the shuttle. I pressed a red button, and found it must have been an adapted shuttle, because missiles flew out and hit the green blobs, instantly vaporizing them.
            I suddenly found interest in the shuttle. I ran about, pulling cords, turning dials, activating switches, flipping levers, and pressing buttons. The ground around the shuttle exploded, turned color, made weird noises, and caught fire.
            Suddenly, I found that the shuttle had lifted off. I was headed towards Earth. I enjoyed the view, and then my stomach rumbled. I looked for a sandwich, and instead found the Martian equivalent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - two pieces of rock squishing a squirming orange tentacle and a few of what looked suspiciously liked space slugs. I tossed it out the window and decided to wait until I got home.
            After I landed, with much noise making from the space shuttle (I had decided to try a few remaining buttons), people crowded around for a better look. I was interviewed, and even starred on a few TV shows. I even realized that I had time-traveled back to present time during the blacked-out period, and I had rode that stolen space shuttle to Mars.
            What a great birthday!

Bob the Miner

 Bob was a hairy man. Hair covered him from head to toe, and it grew to around seven inches in some places. Many people didn’t like him because, well, he stunk (literally), and the hair made him look real ugly. He wanted to be respected, even if he did have a lot of hair and he did stink. One day, he saw an article in the news saying that lots and lots of gold had been found in nearby Boston just yesterday. Here’s my chance! he thought.

The next day, he was in Boston at the crack of dawn. He found a job in the “You’ll Get Rich Gold Mine”. After a tiring morning of paperwork and forms, Bob finally sat down for lunch. After lunch, he hurried to the mountain mine and started chipping away at the rock. He chipped for one hour… two hours… three hours… and even four hours straight without even finding so much as a speck of gold. After thirty more minutes of hammering down the pickax, he was about to give up when he found a tiny bit of yellow on the wall next to him.

Could it be? Bob asked himself. He picked at it a bit more, exposing more yellow. He took a heavy shovel and started scraping away the dirt on this large mineral. After fifteen more minutes, about half the gold was exposed. He shoveled away more, and more yellow was exposed, until the huge hunk of gold was excavated. He rolled it out of the mountain tunnel, and into the “Did You Find Gold?” office. There, everybody just stared at the huge hunk of gold. They offered to buy it for a few million dollars, and from then on, Bob lived a happy life with his riches. He was finally a respected man.

Joe the Inventor

Joe was the typical couch potato – a person who sit on the couch eating potato chips and watching TV the whole day. He lived in Idealville in the year 3861, a city for millionaires that stretched out for hundreds of miles. One day, Joe decided he was bored with TV. He wanted to do something else. He decided he would become an inventor that helped the world.
He was almost there when he saw the new city dump. It was in the middle of the city, and stretched out around five miles. There was no way to get around this radioactive pile of metal, plastic, and phortugium - the solid material that came out of the hovercrafts' exhaust pipes. It would be inconvenient to go around the dump, thought Joe. Finally, after a long time of thought, Joe decided to test himself if he was a worthy inventor. In his hovercraft, he found a few otrufiamagnets (super strong magnets that could suck up most materials) -  eleven, in fact, and some other assorted materials. He attached the eleven magnets to a pan, and attached a battery to the pan to activate the batteries.
Suddenly, the trash in a five-foot radius started flying towards him.
"It worked!" he exclaimed.
He disconnected the battery from the pan. He attached the pan to long wires connected to the electrical sockets of his hovercraft. The pan dropped down and fell off the wires. He decided to use the 30-foot long metal cable, or rope, to keep the pan from falling down. He flew all around the dump, sucking up all the trash. Where do I put it? he asked himself, Maybe I could dump it off the Surface Cliff. He flew over to the "Surface Cliff" - the cliff ringing the city floating in the air - and disconnected the wires. The trash tumbled through the air like rain and landed on the barren, polluted Earth down below.
The trash safely disposed, Joe headed back to the factory. There, everybody was cheering for him. He wondered why. Suddenly, it hit him - he had found a new way to dispose of trash! All the Idealvilleans clapped him on the back, congratulating him and thanking him. Joe was extremely happy - he was finally the inventor he really wanted to be!

The Camping Trip

THE CAMPING TRIP

Jones and John weren’t very ordinary. Their parents also let them do anything they wanted. Jones and John always wore matching sweaters. Also, they hated to do schoolwork and homework. The brothers were near-sighted from video gaming a lot, and they had to wear glasses. They both had black hair. John was fifteen, and Jones was six.

One time when they went camping in Mexico, they had a dangerous adventure. They were river rafting on a piranha-infested watercourse when they noticed a piranha in their boat. John, who thought he knew lots about handling piranhas, started poking it. The brothers held the piranha still, tied it up, and threw it into the river; the piranha pulled their boat through the waterway until a big hungry crocodile snapped it up.

After there “boat-puller” was eaten, the boat splashed to a halt and began to shudder violently. Jones saw a ton of crocodiles biting at the sides of the boat. The boat was shuddering, and Jones bounced up for a second. When he knew the boat could have held up no longer, he threw their Ziploc bag full of meatballs behind them, and they escaped in the boat.

Soon after the crocodiles left, they realized that they had missed the only “Return a Boat” station and were now headed into the unknown. John saw a waterfall up ahead, which meant nothing good. All of them had heard stories of people who died falling down waterfalls. Suddenly, the kids broke into a cold sweat. Their hands were trembling.

Jones cried out “I want my mommy!” John however, looked around cautiously.

Just in time, John noticed parachutes in the raft in case they went off a cliff. They put them on and jumped off the raft quickly, for they did not want to plummet down the waterfall. John spotted an island, and headed directly for it.

When John landed, he noticed that Jones was missing. In the distance, he saw a parachute with a person slowly drifting towards the big orange, yellow, and red horizon.

Suddenly, it hit him: he had not informed Jones of the island. To the other side of him he noticed fires and tents. John got out his binoculars for sighting birds and saw their own magnificent campsite.

He looked toward Jones one last time. Jones had almost no hope; he was going into the open sea. Actually, he had some hope. John sent up a flare he had forgotten about, and a rescue boat came two minutes later. Jones had to be saved. John informed the surprised captain of this, and the captain quickly maneuvered toward Jones.

When the last miniscule bit of hope was almost gone, Jones’ shirt was caught on the tall antenna pole. John came out and rescued Jones from flying off the pole. Jones was happy and hyper. John was not. John gave Jones a long lecture.

Then, instead of listening to the lecture John gave, Jones jumped around the boat, and eventually fell down from exhaustion saying, “I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!” Instead of falling on the boat, he fell off the boat. He stood in the air for a second, looked down, and gulped. He fell right on the tip of a spiked rock. His face turned as red as a very ripe strawberry. His mouth was opened up so big he could swallow the Great Wall of China.

He reminded himself, depressed, “Never fall on a rock.”

In the meantime, John didn’t know what happened until he noticed that Jones was missing again. He rolled his eyes, and told the captain what happened.

After that, the captain got kind of mad, waving his hat around, pounding the windows, and saying, “I hate this job!” John was calmer; he pushed the captain’s wheelchair out of the control room, locked the door, and turned backward toward Jones.

He saw Jones doggy paddling around in the water. He came out of the control room and pulled him to safety.

The captain, however, was drunk. He had gotten a bottle of whisky and drank it in a matter of seconds. He swam to the bottom of the boat, and pulled the gas hatch out because he was drunk.

After that, gas spilled everywhere, and the boat started to sink because water started filling the gas container. The captain passed away in the gas. Jones did not notice and accidentally dropped a match he was playing with in the water, igniting it. John found a dynamite six-pack in the boat. He tied it to the back of the boat, where it was ignited by the burning water. The boat propelled itself to shore. The kids made their way back to the camp, and started packing everything up. After all, it was a tiring day. Sadly, they could never find their sleeping bags.

Jones said, “I don’t like to sleep anyway.”

When they looked into their house, John smacked himself in the face. There, right in their backpack, was their phone and sleeping bags.

Steve's Busy Morning

Briiiiiing!... Briiiiiing!... Briiiiing!...

The alarm clock read 7:30 AM, 1/2/13.

“Steve! Wake up and smell the orange juice!” Steve’s mother yelled.

It was the first day of school after winter break. Steve, a tall and skinny boy who was now 12 years old, yawned. It’s going to be a long day, he thought. He got dressed as slowly as possible and packed up his backpack with the speed of a turtle.

“Get down here right this moment, or I’m going to toss you out the window!” his mother shrieked.

Steve almost jumped right out of the window from surprise, right then and there, from the fifteenth floor of the old, rickety apartment building. He grimaced. Sometimes he just couldn’t understand his family, the Bopkins, especially his mother. He plodded through the hallway and plopped into his chair.

“Eat up your breakfast! Hup, hup, hup! Chomp, swallow, chomp, and swallow! The early bird gets the worm! Now hop to it!”

His mother had reached boiling point already and her temperature was still going up. Steve wisely got out of the way before she blew. He went upstairs to brush his teeth, and then ran out the door with his backpack in hand. Halfway to the school, he saw his mother and father going out to work – and an unidentifiable flying object was hurtling from his mother’s car into his father’s. What crazy parents I have, he thought.

When he got to school, he checked his watch  for the time and his backpack for his homework. It was 8:40. 20 minutes and elementary school would start.  4^th grade math – check. 4^th grade reading homework – check. 4^th grade spelling – check. 4^th grade short story writing – huh? Steve wondered where he could have left it. Then it hit him, just like that object he saw his mother throw hit his dad, except this was in his brain. He remembered – in his hurriedness to escape his enraged mom, he had forgotten his writing assignment in his room!

He checked his watch – it was 8:44 already! Steve wondered what to do. He could get a late assignment, and possibly lose his free time for the week, or he could get back to the house and get in with the spare key. He couldn’t decide. Tick…tock…tick…tock… time was running out! He eenie-meenie-miney-moed the situation, and came up with the decision he would go back home. He would need to get back to the house fast.

He sprinted through Mr. Greenbaum’s rosebushes, hurdled over Knick and Knack, Mrs. Henderson’s two dogs, and… landed right in a mud puddle. What a quick way to end his trip. He got up and dripped mud all over the place. He decided to take a risky shortcut – it was already 8:48! He flew over Mr. Smith’s lawn, and was stopped by who but Mr. Smith himself, the person who picked weeds out of his perfect lawn with tweezers.

“You juvenile delinquent!! You lawn-ruiner!!!! You evil, dumb, wicked, annoying, insane, ridiculous–”

“Sorry, sir, but I really have to get going. Why don’t you clean up your lawn a little?” Steve asked. Then, he ran away, towards that distant  apartment building where he lived.

He rode up to his floor, stepped out, and ran to his door. He pushed the doorbell three times, then paused, and pushed it eight times. Nothing happened. That should have activated the key drop mechanism, but it didn’t! he thought. He repeated the procedure. Nothing happened.

“It’s 8:51 and I don’t know what to do!” he complained out loud.

Suddenly, an idea whistled through his brain. “I got it!” he yelled. He “borrowed” the flower pot from in front of the elevator and used it to repeatedly smash against the door. After he hit triple digits in the amount of total hits, and was just about to give up, the door gave way and he found himself in the living room with a shattered flower pot, a lot of dirt, and a prickly rose.

I’ve done it! he thought. I broke through the door of my house, and now I can get my homework! He ran into his room, got his homework, and scrambled out the door. He jumped into the elevator.

“Oops,” he said, “I don’t think I should have done that.” Suddenly, the elevator plummeted downward and he was engulfed in total darkness. He had broken the old, weak cables and the unstable electrical system with his powerful jump. He realized there was no safety brake because the engineers had somehow forgotten it!

The elevator plummeted downwards, and after what seemed like hours of bouncing around and flipping upside down, the elevator landed on the spring at the bottom of the shaft. The elevator bounced to a stop. After he pried open the doors and walked into the dusty lobby, he examined his muddy watch. It read 1:42 PM.

“What happened?” Steve asked himself. He examined the clock on the wall. It read 8:56. The watch must have broken somehow when I was slammed against the walls, Steve thought, and I must get to school fast! He ran out of the lobby, pushed through the door, and rushed to the school.

When he got there, he noticed that the school clock read 8:59. He scrambled for his classroom line, and when he got there, he felt relieved. A few kids started snickering.

“What’s up with the brown stuff on your shirt, Bopkins? Did you have an accident?”

“Steve Bopkins, please come here right now,” the teacher, Ms. Chen, noticed the commotion and said, “I want to know what you’ve been doing this morning.”

Steve walked slowly to the teacher’s desk. Fiddlesticks, he thought, now I’ve done it. Ms. Chen looked at him sternly.

“Is there anything you would like to tell me, Steve?” Ms. Chen asked.

“Well, it’s a long story. I tripped in a puddle of mud while I was running home to get my homework, and then I broke into my house, crashed the only elevator in the apartment building, and ruined my watch.”

“Ha-ha-ha! You kids crack me up!” Ms. Chen laughed. What Ms. Chen didn’t know was that Steve was actually being honest.

Now, Steve Bopkins is in the hospital because his mom threw him out the window.