SANDBAGS 

Most things are bought for their usefulness, or their beauty.

Sandbags are bought for their weight. Not exactly a flattering motive, and that’s just the beginning of their troubled lives.

Not too long ago, sandy beaches were roads for the free, the antithesis of inhospitable highways plagued with rules and limitations.

Now, the coasts are being looted by greedy merchants who imprison truckloads of sand in bags and sell them like slaves, with the promise that they’ll protect our homes from the destructive power of wind and water.

Sand, wind, and water always lived peacefully together in beaches. It took Man to put one against the other.

RETIRED WORDS 

They gather in diners and bars to reminisce about the old times, when they belonged in people’s mouths.

Floppy Disk is new to a group that includes old timers like Pulchritude, Icebox, and Xenotransplantation. He feels less lucky than his colleagues; britches, for example, still exist, but now they’re called pants. Dungarees became jeans, and with the new name came prestige and a higher price tag. Floppy Disks? Gone forever, both the word and the object.

Another group is formed by démodé slangs. After a couple of drinks, Bogart likes to tease Chill Pill and Talk-To-The-Hand by bragging that it was coined from a legendary actor’s on-screen chain smoking, and made immortal with the song “Don’t bogart that joint,” from the soundtrack of Easy Rider.

Truth tried to join one of the retired word groups. While claiming that it had been replaced by Alternative Facts, the word was unanimously rejected for still being relevant.

There are groups of girl words like California Widow, You Go Girl!, and Foxy. Skinny and Phat got tired of being made fun of, and left. They now belong to a group where they’re respected for what they mean, not what they sound like.

Once a year, all retired words flock to a convention at Verbatim Stadium in Dublin. There, one will find words as complicated as Omphaloskepsis and Hootenanny, and as ancient as the Victorian Benjo and Chuckaboo.

ANTHILLS 

For sale, anthill recently vacated¹, in a great, flood-free location, with virtually no human interest for future real estate development, government projects, or agriculture². Plenty of parking and winter food storage space underground. Ramps and tunnels in great condition. Never been stepped or driven on. Anteater proof ³. Spacious workers’ quarters and luxurious queen suites. Will trade for bird’s nests, dens, caves, burrows, and spider webs of equal or lesser value. Also suitable for termites 4.


¹ Unless building presents a health hazard, disclosure of reason for abandonment is not required by law, but may be available upon request. 

² Limited guaranty, based on notorious human unpredictability. 

³ Applies only to pygmy southern anteaters (Tamandua tetradactyla minoris.) 

4 Available by Formicidae family members invitation only.

THINGS AS FOOD 

About one billion people on earth have nothing to eat.

That’s because Man can only eat a very small percentage of what nature produces. Rocks, wood, metals, poisonous plants and animals, lava, soil — all out of Man’s menu. Magellan’s crew had to eat leather and sawdust when they ran out of food; nearly all died. To make things worse, whatever Man can eat has to be fresh. Man’s delicate little stomach can only stand soft, and toxin-free foods. Meanwhile, bacteria thrive on decayed fare, termites survive on wood, and vultures feast on rotten flesh.

Would that billion still be hungry if they could stretch their arms and reach for just about anything to give them sustenance? Wouldn’t things like obsolete computer parts, upholstery, fertilizers, old rubber tires, expired credit cards, wall paint, clothing, window treatments, be more useful feeding people rather than landfills?

FORBIDDEN SUBSTANCES 

We’ve all heard about agricultural, pharmaceutical, and food products banned after proven dangerous to human health. And we all know that the greedy companies responsible for these toxic substances don’t just quit making them; instead, they sell them to third world countries with laws and regulations less strict than ours.

This is such a scandal, in the human level, that it’s easy to forget what the chemicals themselves are going through. Individually, they are not evil. But when combined and manipulated by sellout scientists, they become dangerous. As if it weren’t enough being banned in their homeland, they are deported and forced to live in some of the poorest regions of the world.

Put yourself in the shoes of an all-American pesticide arriving in India without any knowledge of Hindi, and not a clue about that country’s culture. Or, imagine an injectable contraceptive, a native of Iowa, landing in the African savanna completely unprepared for the brutal climate of that region.

This is not fiction; it’s happened before, thousands of times, and it keeps happening today. Fungicides sent to Iraq in the middle of a war, fire-retardant materials shipped to the slums of Rio, unarmed and unprotected. Pain killers stranded in islands under military dictatorships.

Lonely and homesick, at least they find a little comfort knowing that they’ll be accepted in these places without any restrictions.