“I can barely see you,” Delilah starts off our virtual date. “Your face is like three pixels.”

“Sorreh,” I reply with a hint of pretension. “Perhaps it’s because I’m using my Kindle?”

“You’re using your goddamn Kindle for our goddamn virtual date?” Delilah flirts with me in that faux-angry tone I know so well. We’ve been on this Zoom call for all of five minutes, but I feel like I’ve known her for an eternity, mostly because it took me three hours to hook up my Kindle to Zoom.

“Yeah, I’m what you’d call a bibliophile,” I hit her with my favorite pick-up line. I follow up with a little improv: “I like to read books. Books are... good.”

“I think I’m going to leave,” Delilah messages me in the Zoom chat. “You’re a nutjob.” She’s testing if I can read all those many words. A seasoned pro, I skim most of them, focusing only on key terms.

“Nutjob!?!” I type back. “Lets wait until 2nd date for that.” I dismiss Delilah’s romantic advances and resume talking about my Kindle’s functionality.

“You wanna see what this baby can do?” I hit the “Share Screen” button. “These are all my books,” I guide her through my virtual library. “Books with pages and words.” I leave the rest up to her imagination.

“That’s the settings menu,” Delilah observes. “Do you own a single E-book?”

I quickly toggle the language to Spanish. “This novel changes dialects every page,” I explain, using the fancy word for language. Phew! That was almost a close one. I give Delilah a wink, but it’s only me who winks back—all alone in the Zoom lobby.

I can barely see you,” Delilah starts off our virtual date...

Virtual Date

Dad: Dear heavenly Father, we thank you for the food we’re about to eat. We thank you for the beautiful people gathered at this table. Most of all, we thank you for our new driveway. Our old driveway had dangerous potholes, but the new one is perfectly smooth. Two cars could fit comfortably in our new driveway, maybe three if you really squeeze them together.

Son: Dad, may I add something? About our new driveway?

Dad: Son, I’d like nothing more.

Son: Um, hi God. I’m Billy. Sorry we’ve never talked. Like Dad, I think the new driveway is pretty cool. Thank you for blessing us with it by allowing mom and dad to work long overtime hours so they could pay for it.

Dad: Thank you, God.

Son: Anyways, oh heavenly Father, I was wondering what would happen if somebody rode their bike on our new driveway while the cement was still settling, and their bike got stuck, and they had to crawl their way out from the sludge? Lord, could you heal the Hellish scar this hypothetical boy left in our new driveway? In addition, for Christmas or some other holy occasion, could you buy him a new Schwinn Roadster without concrete jammed in the gears?

Dad: Son, this isn’t storytime.

Son: Uh, God… thank you for ignorance, and thank you for merciful punishment.

Dad: And?

Son: Smooth driveways. Thank you for smooth driveways.

All: Amen.

Dad: And, son, please clean up after dinner. You look like some kind of rock monster right now.

Dad: Dear heavenly Father, we thank you for the food we’re about to eat...

Grace

— Bump into a girl on your way to class.

— Drop your hot dogs on the ground.

— Get on the ground by tripping on the slippery hot dogs.

— Take the textbooks out of your backpack.

— Politely ask the girl to “just shove the hot dogs in here. Yeah, really get them in there.”

— Demonstrate what you mean by inserting a hot dog in one of the carved-out, hot dog-shaped compartments inside each of your textbooks.

— Romantically guide the girl’s hand by holding up two hot dogs like an air traffic controller who lands hot dogs instead of airplanes.

— Ask for the girl’s name. This will lighten the mood.

— There’s a good chance her name is “Hall Monitor,” and she wants to see your “hall pass.”

— Inspect every hot dog, in case one of them is a cylindrical hall pass.

— Make a break for it, because your hall pass is soaked in hot dog juice and illegible.

— Leave a decoy trail of hot dogs for the girl to follow.

— There’s only one way out, so the decoy trail and your actual trail are identical.

— Mid-chase, the girl’s ponytail drops to reveal her luscious locks. Provide her a hair net to protect the few hot dogs you have left.

— If the girl offers to eat a hot dog with you Lady and the Tramp-style, brush away her hand: “No, these franks are 100% raw.”

— Go back to your single, sexy, Brazilian hot dog vendor named Allesandra and ask her for some more hot dogs, which are your one true love.

How to Do a Meet-Cute Like in the Movies

I’m a graffiti artist. You might be familiar with my work. The big purple penis in the bathroom stall at the Circle K off I-95 Exit 77A? Me. The bigger, purpler penis in the Douglas Elementary School bathroom stall? Also, me. But much less refined than my later stuff.

Security’s been tightened at Douglas Elementary, so I’m forced to search elsewhere for my next canvas. I follow a group of solemn hood rats wearing all black. They keep littering flowers and bawling—doing nothing to cover their tracks. Rookie mistake, because they lead me to a 500-foot-long marble bathroom stall wall. Bingo. And there’s no toilet or sink or gunk. Double bingo.

This is a graffiti hotspot, judging by the 58,000 or so names. My new competition are the likes of Lt. Chadwick Harper, Maj. Lionel Beaumont, and Capt. Augustus McDaniel. Posers. These “artists” seriously think their homogenous minimalist style and bourgeois names are shedding a light on our hypocritical repression by “the man”? Give me a break. And why don’t we throw subtlety out the window while we’re at it? I was in this game long before these frauds, and I’ll be in this game long after them. No one compares to the Purple Peen Machine.

That’s me, FYI. It’s a little something I’ve been cooking up. Let me know if you like it. I was also thinking Big Greg, if you’re more into slant rhyme. In big, bold Comic Sans I paint “Purple Peen Machine” across the 500-foot wall. In a smaller font, I write “Big Greg,” just in case I decide to make the switch later on.

For my next project, I’m gonna paint a mural of soldiers valiantly sacrificing their lives in the name of freedom, because I love war.

I’m a graffiti artist. You might be familiar with my work...

Vietnam War Memorial

Corporate interests are destroying our natural resources. That’s why I snuck into the Wilson family home and chained myself to their Christmas tree.

I make my first encounter with Papa Wilson after he eats a midnight snack. From afar, I watch him throw away a half-eaten granola bar. “Seems wasteful, don’t you think?” I ask him. He jumps back in startlement. This is a normal reaction, since people don’t think about the little ways they harm the environment until I tell them point-blank.

“I’m calling the cops,” he threatens me.

I don’t want my environmentalist message to get muddled with touchy police subject matter, so I let him know: “This will be a peaceful protest. No need to get a third party involved.”

Papa Wilson thinks for a minute. “Would you be willing to watch my daughter on Tuesday nights?” he asks. “Our babysitter is kind of flaky.”

I acquiesce, since I could use the extra cash and children are the future of the movement. Papa Wilson wakes up his wife and daughter, and I introduce myself. “This is only temporary until next Christmas,” I tell them. “For the most part, just pretend like I’m not even here.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose?” Mama Wilson counters.

“You’re absolutely right,” I respond. “From this point forward, I shall sing environmentalist hymns about Mother Nature’s majestic curves twenty-four seven in my loudest belt.”

I was always told you meet your true family through activism. I didn’t believe it until I was included in the Wilsons’ Christmas card. If you look closely, I’m buried in the pine needles behind Mama Wilson’s right shoulder—brightly smiling with a sense of belonging.

Little Annie Wilson has been begging her parents for a pony. I know my efforts inspired her carbon-neutral choice of transportation. My work here is done. Next mission: TV room sit-in. I’m refusing to leave until the Wilsons either switch it to energy-saving mode or stop taping over my C-SPAN reruns.

Corporate interests are destroying our natural resources...

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Joey Johnson