Category: Satire Stories

Mitchell Methane Arrestor: Prototype # 217

Post author By Marty Mitchell
Post date May 11, 2024
4 Comments on Mitchell Methane Arrestor: Prototype # 217

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

I was rummaging through what my wife calls the “sentimental junk” in my tool shed when I came across a rather large box labeled “Patents”. You see, in my quest to make the world a better place, I have patented, patent searched, and copyrighted treasures sure to impress my relatives for centuries. I call it a hobby.

I have pulled from the box one of my prize inventions: “The Mitchell Methane Arrestor.” Now I don’t want to give away too many trade secrets, but it consists of a plywood box I made which holds a used vacuum cleaner motor which I purchased from Rector’s Vacuum Cleaner Store. Also, in the wooden box are mounted two carbon filters which the exhaust air flows through.

Tags Misadventures

Satire Stories

Creative Snoring

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

It is estimated that Australia has over 24 million wild pigs. I was on a photo Safari in Queensland to capture on film the King Kong of feral hogs. The locals call him Jambi.

Jambi weighs over 1000 pounds and is well over nine feet long. He has a harem of 45 sows and multiple piglets. Wherever they move, they create mass destruction of the land and many a domestic animal, even humans disappear when Jambi is in the area.

Tags Getting Older, Pets or Pests?

Satire Stories

Leader of the Pack

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

I was lamenting to my wife Cheryl a few years back about being out of shape and how the young muscular guys at work were giving me a complex. She was quick to remind me that the best I could hope for was a simplex. Then she suggested that we take the grandkids on a hike in the mountains.

Tags Family Life, Misadventures

Satire Stories

The Haunted Outhouse

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

I found it hard to explain to my daughter Kalene that there were no such thing as haunted toilets. After my traumatic experience, I had a hard time convincing myself.

Tags Family Life, Misadventures

Satire Stories

Bango!

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

It was a curving section of the county road with a posted speed of 35 mph. Farms and homesteads lined both sides of the road as did overhanging maple and alder trees.

“Slow up in the curve. Almost to . . . yep, there he is.”

Tags Getting Older, Tributes

Satire Stories

Ravens

Audio Version by Author

From the top of a tree, we clung to the remaining trunk which we could wrap our hands around.

Standing on branches below us which strained under our weight, we looked out over the forest treetops. We were at the same height as the giants. We were one of them.

Tags Growing Up, Misadventures, Pets or Pests?

Satire Stories

Vaulting

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

I am standing out on the Meridian High School infield next to the pole vault pit. It is a multi-school track meet. The weather is absolutely atrocious. Quite possibly, this is the end of the world as we know it. Roars of thunder, flashes of lightning, sheets of rain followed by hail the size of marbles which are trying to destroy my umbrella, and yet, the track meet goes on.

Tags Growing Up, Tributes

Satire Stories

The Wind Beneath My Feet

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

From the laundry room came a piercing scream … “My delicate underwear is completely tangled with your Velcro helmet liner! How many times have I told you…”?

I tried calming the situation by assuring her, “Don’t worry dear, good commercial grade Velcro is hard to damage.”

I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast as Cheryl entered with a large ball of fabric just taken from the dryer. I could tell by the look on her face that I would be buying new underwear when suddenly she looked out the back window and realized she had left the porch umbrella up all night.

“Oh crumb! Look at the umbrella rocking back and forth in the wind. I’d better go out there and collapse it before it gets torn to shreds.”

Tags Family Life, Misadventures

Satire Stories

Going Off Half-Cocked

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

“Don’t go off half-cocked!”

Have you ever wondered what that means?

Elwood K was the old man who lived in a small self-made home behind our house when I was growing up. I never had a grandpa after I was four so I adopted him. Everyone knew him as “Swede” which was interesting since the name is Scottish and English. He was known by the white Popeye cap he always wore. His house was full of them. Taking his lead, I wear a black Army Ranger cap which my house is also full of.

Swede was fond of four things: guns, Canadian Mist whiskey, both of which he had hidden all over his house, his yellow half ton Dodge Ram pickup and his mutt dog Digger Odell. Several times a week you could see his old Dodge driving ten miles under the speed limit using both sides of the road. Old Swede was returning from a trip to the liquor store to get his “medicine”. On the seat beside him would sit Digger, head and tongue hanging out the open window. Sometimes Digger was the designated passenger and sometimes he was the designated driver; it all depended on how Swede was feeling.

Tags Getting Older, Growing Up, Misadventures

Satire Stories

Captain Crash

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

It was a time after the Vietnam War but before Operation Eagle Claw, a failed attempt by Delta Force to end the Iran hostage crisis. The years 1974 through 1978 when the average American thought the wars were over, but wars are never over. It was a time that at an undisclosed, seemingly insignificant spot in Washington I was trained to fly high risk helicopter missions and was considered by the US Government to have a license to kill. And though, some 40 years later I can now talk about it, it still haunts me of the death and destruction I caused.

Tags Growing Up, Misadventures

Satire Stories

Snow Skiing-In Order of Humiliations

Post author By Marty Mitchell
Post date March 2, 2024
3 Comments on Snow Skiing-In Order of Humiliations

I was just out in my tool shed looking through some old cottage cheese containers which I use to hold nails, nuts, washers, bolts, and screws etc. I learned of this storage technique from the old man who lived behind me named Swede. He was a course speaking old man with a temper, but I was the only person he had for a son, so he put up with me. Swede taught me many things about hunting, fishing, bee keeping, and gardening, and he kept every spare nut, bolt, and washer in cottage cheese containers in his shed. I inherited them when he died. My only complaint was that he never would wash out the containers before he would fill them with stuff and today, I am trying to find one 3/8-16 x 3.5” bolt as I hold my breath while rummaging through one rancid cottage cheese container after another.

Tags Family Life, Growing Up, Misadventures

Satire Stories

Beak and Bill

Beak and Bill sat on the end of a dock at Lake Padden. The morning was cool, and a light fog drifted across the surface of the water.

The two met every morning during fishing season and sometimes out of season. It was not only a place to catch fish and banter the latest gossip, but it was also a place to sit quietly to let one’s mind drift before the busyness of the day began.

Tags Pets or Pests?

Satire Stories

For a Few Badges More

Audio Version by ElevenLabs.io.

The time in history was the late 1800s. The place was the Wild West. A murderous outlaw known as El Indio has broken free from prison by killing his guards; and his gang is terrorizing and robbing the citizens of the region. With a price on El Indio’s head, two bounty hunters, Monco (Clint Eastwood) and Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), come to collect the prize. Though the two men view each other as rivals, they eventually agree to become partners in their mutual pursuit of the vicious criminal.

Tags Growing Up

Satire Stories

Me and the Other Rat

I met a man sitting on a sidewalk bench in Lynden the other day. He had a heavy Chicago Bears sweatshirt on, and it was obvious to me that he wasn’t a local.

I had a nudge from my inner self to say “hi”. He was a nice guy, but it was hard for me to understand the inner city slang he was using. Basically, I understood that he was in the county visiting a brother who had moved out from Chicago. The brother was encouraging him to move out before he got shot in the streets.