- RE: a funny

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

You're a good doctor!

Thank You for thinking of me. My hubby

will love this one, too!

Winks, Genie

wrote:

Hi GeneGood

luck with the new team and you are in my thoughts and prayers. As you said

laughter was your best medicine, thought this story a friend sent me might

be the right prescription. :-} Big

Hugs to everyone!! Things

that go Blimp in the Night...

(The Horror of Blimps)

Last week while traveling, I stopped

at a Zany Brainy

store and saw that they had a blimp

for sale. It's called Airship

Earth, and it's a great big balloon

with a map of the Earth on it, and

two propellers hanging from the

bottom. You blow up the balloon with

helium put batteries in it, and

you have a radio control indoor blimp.

I'd seen these things for sale in

Sharper Image catalogs for $60-$75. At

Zany Brainy it was on clearance

for $15. What a deal!

Last night my wife was playing tennis

and it was just my daughter and I

at home. I bought a small

helium tank from a party store, and last

night we put the blimp together.

Let me tell you, it's quite a blimp.

It's huge. The balloon has like

a 3 ft diameter.

We blew it up with the tank attached

the gondola with the propellers,

and put in batteries. Then

we balanced the blimp for neutral buoyancy

with this putty that came with it,

so it hangs in the air by itself

neither rising nor falling. It was

easy and fun, and then I blew up

another balloon and made Mickey

Mouse helium voices for my daughter. We

flew the blimp all over the house,

terrorized the dog, attacked the fish

tank, and the controls were so easy,

my daughter could fly.

Let's face it, blimps are fun.

Alas, the fun had to end and my daughter

had to go to sleep.

I left the blimp floating in my

office downstairs, my wife came home,

and we went to bed, and slept the

sleep of the righteous. At this point

it is important to note that my

house has central heating. I have it

configured to blow hot air out on

the ground floor and take it in at the

second floor to take advantage of

the fact that heat rises.

The blimp which was up until this

moment a fun toy here embarked on a

career of evil. Using the

artificial convection of my central heating,

the blimp stealthily departed my

office. It moved silently through the

living and drifted to the staircase.

Gliding wraith-like over the

staircase, it then entered

the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping

peacefully. Running silently, and

gliding six feet or so above the

ground on invisible and tiny air

currents it approached the bed.

In spite of its noiseless passage,

or perhaps because of it,

I awoke. That doesn't really say

it properly. Let me try again. I

awoke, the way you awake at 2:00

AM when your sleeping senses suddenly

tell you without reason that the

forces of evil on converging on you.

That still doesn't do it.

Let me try one more time. I awoke

the way you awake when

you suddenly know that there is

a large levitating sinister presence

hovering towards you with menacing

intent through the malignant

darkness. (Now sometimes I do wake

up in the middle of the night

thinking that there are large sinister

and menacing things floating out

of the darkness to do me and mine

evil. Usually I open my eyes, look

and listen carefully, decide it

was a false alarm, and go back to

sleep.) So, the fact that I awoke

in such a manner was not all that

unusual.

On this occasion I awoke to the sense

that there was a large menacing

presence approaching me silently

out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes,

and there it was!

A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE

WAS

APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE GLOOM,

AND IT

COULD FLY!!!

Somewhere in the control room of

my mind, a fat little dwarf

in a security outfit, was paging

through a Penthouse while smoking a

cigar, with his feet up on the table,

watching the security monitors of

my brain with his peripheral vision.

Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT

SINISTER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE

coming at me, and he pulled e very

panic switch and hit every alarm

that my body has. A full decade's

allotment of adrenaline was dumped

into my bloodstream all at once. My

metabolism went from "restful

sleep mode" to HOLY SH*T! FIGHT FOR

YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a

nanosecond. My heart went from twenty

something beats per minute to about

240 even faster.

I always knew this was going to happen.

I always knew that skepticism

and science were mere psychological

decorations and vanities. Deep in

our alligator brains we all know

that the world is just chock full of

evil and monsters and sinister forces

aligned against us, and it is only

a matter of time until they show

up. Evolution knows this, too. It

knows what to do when the silent

terror comes at you from out of the

dark.

When 50 million years worth of evolutionary

survival instinct hits you

all at once, flat in the gut at

200 mph, it is not a pleasant sensation.

Without volition I screamed my battle

cry which is undistinguishable

from the sound a little girl makes

when you drop a spider down her dress

(not that I'd know what that sounds

like,) and leapt out of bed in my

underwear. I struck the approaching

menace with all my strength and

almost fell over. The total lack

of resistance that a helium balloon

offers, when you punch the living

'shioot' out of it with all the

strength that sudden middle of the

night terror produces. Its trajectory

took it straight into the ceiling

fan which whipped it about the room at

terrifying velocity. Seeking a weapon,

I ripped the alarm clock out of

its plug and hurled it at the now

High Velocity Menacing presence.

(Breaking the clock and putting

a nice hole in the wall.)

Somehow at this moment I suddenly

realized that I was fighting the

blimp, and not a monster.

It might have been funny, if I didn't truly

and actually feel like I was having

a legitimate heart-attack. On

quivering legs I went to the bathroom

and literally gagged into the

toilet while shaking uncontrollably

with the shock of the reaction I'd

had.

Unbelievably, both my wife and daughter

had completely slept through the

incident. When I decided that

I wasn't having a heart attack after all

I went back into the bedroom and

found the blimp which had somehow

survived the incident. I took it

to the walk-in closet and released it

inside, where it floated around

with the air currents released from the

vents in there. I closed the

door, thus sealing it in, and went back to

bed.

About 500 years later I fell asleep.

Then...at about 7 am my wife awoke.

She had been playing tennis and

wasn't aware that we have assembled

the blimp the previous evening, and

that is was now floating around

the walk-in closet that she approached.

The dynamic between the existing

air currents of the closet and the

suction caused by opening the door

was just enough to give the blimp the

appearance of an Evil Sinister Menace

flying straight towards her.

This time the blimp did not survive

the encounter, nor almost, did I, as

I had to explain to my very angry

spouse what motivated me to hide an

evil lurking presence in the closet

for her to find at 7 am.

I can order replacement balloons

on the Internet but I don't think I

will. Some blimps are better off

dead.