Last week I bought a new phone. I took it out of the box, hooked it up to the wall... Pressed redial. The phone had a nervous breakdown. I got an answering machine for my phone. Now when I'm not home and somebody calls me up, they hear a recording of a busy signal. I like to leave messages before the beep. I don't like the sound of my phone ringing so I put my phone inside my fish tank. I can't hear it, but every time I get a call I see the fish go like this <<<>>><<>><<<<. I go down to the pet store -- "Gimme another ten guppies, I got a lotta calls yesterday." --- records --- I bought a self-learning record to learn Spanish. I turned it on and went to sleep; the record got stuck. The next day I could only stutter in Spanish. I was going to tape some records onto a cassette, but I got the wires backwards. I erased all of the records. When I returned them to my friend, he said, "Hey, these records are all blank." I got tired of calling the movies to listen to what is playing so I bought the album. --- books --- I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. What's another word for Thesaurus? Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? The guy who wrote that song wrote everything. My grandfather invented Cliff's Notes. It all started back in 1912... Well, to make a long story short ... I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done, so now I just have to fill in the rest. I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography. I wrote a few children's books... Not on purpose. I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room. --- apartments --- I installed a skylight in my apartment.... The people who live above me are furious! All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store... With a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store." While I was gone, somebody rearranged all the furniture in my bedroom. They put it in *exactly* the same place it was. When I told my roommate, he said: "Do I know you?" --- houses --- In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said, "Cut it out." Doing a little work around the house. I put fake brick wallpaper over a real brick wall, just so I'd be the only one who knew. People come over and I'm gonna say, "Go ahead, touch it... It feels real." In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... So I never have to go upstairs. One time the power went out in my house and I had to use the flash on my camera to see my way around. I made a sandwich and took fifty pictures of my face. The neighbors thought there was lightning in my house. All the plants in my house are dead -- I shot them last night. I was torturing them by watering them with ice cubes. Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity... If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your head. If you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick. I've never seen electricity, so I don't pay for it. I write right on the bill, "I'm sorry, I haven't seen it all month." My house is made out of balsa wood, so when I want to scare the neighborhood kids I lift it over my head and tell them to get out of my yard or I'll throw it at them. I bought a house, on a one-way dead-end road. I don't know how I got there. The other night I came home late, and tried to unlock my house with my car keys. I started the house up. So, I drove it around for a while. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over. He asked where I lived. I said, "right here, officer". Later, I parked it on the freeway, got out, and yelled at all the cars, "Get out of my driveway!" My house is on the median strip of a highway. You don't really notice, except I have to leave the driveway doing 60 MPH. --- cars and driving ---