What I'd Say to the Martians (2 page)

T
hank you for stopping. You have obviously found me unconscious by the side of the road, or at a party, or possibly propped up against a wall someplace, and you have wisely reached into my pocket and found this medical advisory.

If you found other things in my pockets, kindly do not read or keep them. They are none of your business and/or do not belong to you. And remember that, even though I am unconscious now, when I wake up I will remember the things I had.

If I am wearing a tie, please loosen it. But, again, do not take it off and keep it. It is not yours, and is probably more expensive than you can afford. If I am not wearing a tie, look around at the other people who have gathered to look at me and see if one of them is wearing a tie that might belong to me. If so, please approach that individual and ask for my tie back. If he says it is his, say you do not think so. If he insists, give him one of the cards (in the same pocket where you found this note) of my attorney, and tell the person he will be hearing from him soon.

Keep me warm. Take off your coat and put it around me. Do not worry, you will get it back. If you do not, within thirty days contact the attorney on the card, and he will advise you.

If you must, build a fire to keep me warm. But—and this is very important—DO NOT ROAST ME OVER THE FIRE. I say this because many people who stop to help others are not that smart and are capable of doing such a thing.

There are some pills in one of my pockets. Take them and hold on to them. If any authorities ask you about them, say they are yours.

If I am outdoors under a hot sun, do not allow children near me with a magnifying glass. Even if they are on leashes, do not allow monkeys near me. Do not allow others to make fun of me, poke me with sticks, or, if an anthill is nearby, pour honey on me. Do not allow onlookers to pose with me for “funny” photos. Failure to stop any of these things may be construed as participation in them, and may subject you to severe legal remedies.

Try to keep me calm. If you are not a physically attractive person, try not to let yourself be the first thing I see when I wake up.

Call an ambulance. I guess that would be obvious to most people, but you never know.

If I am on fire, put me out. If you put me out by rolling me on the ground, do not let me roll down a hill. If I do roll down a hill and get stuck under some bushes, just leave me there; you’ve given me enough “help” already.

If I suddenly begin to sweat profusely and my entire body begins to shimmy violently, do not worry; that is normal.

If I am bleeding, how’d that happen? What did you do now?

Even though I am unconscious, do not dangle things over me. I do not like that.

Answer my cell phone if it rings. If it is a woman named Peggy, pretend to be me and say you are breaking up with her.

If I have wet my pants, get a glass of water and act like you tripped and spilled it on me.

If I appear near death, do not call a priest. And do not call a rabbi and a minister, and have them all go into a bar and do something funny, because I don’t want my life to end up as one big joke.

Get a better job. If you have time to stop for unconscious people, you are obviously not working at full capacity.

Thank you again for stopping. Now, please, stand back and give me some air.

B
ecause I love art, I am offering the following ideas for paintings to all struggling artists out there. Some of those artists may be thinking, Hey, I’ve got good ideas of my own. Really? Then why are you struggling?

These ideas are free of charge. All I ask is that when you have completed a painting, as a courtesy to me, you sign it “Jack Handey and [your name or initials].” And, if the painting is sold, I get approximately all the money.

Good luck! Let’s get painting!

S
TAMPEDE OF
N
UDES

The trouble with most paintings of nudes is that there isn’t enough nudity. It’s usually just one woman lying there, and you’re looking around going, “Aren’t there any more nudes?” This idea solves that.

What has frightened these nudes? Is it the lightning in the background? Or did one of the nudes just spook? You don’t know, and this creates tension.

M
ADE
Y
OU
L
OOK

This idea is difficult to execute, but could be a masterpiece. It depicts a grandly dressed lady, looking straight at you. At first her look seems to say, “Quick, look behind you!” So you turn around, and when you look at her again, her expression now seems to be one of smug satisfaction.

T
HE
B
LEAK
H
OTEL

A man is looking out the window of a bleak hotel room. He looks depressed. From the side, flying through the air, is a football. And you realize, if he’s depressed now, just wait until he gets hit in the head by that football.

T
HE
R
EPENTANT
C
AMERON
D
IAZ

Cameron Diaz, her tear-streaked face lit by a candle, gazes wistfully at a picture of me.

T
HE
W
EARY
P
EASANTS

Some tired-looking peasants are walking down a road at sunset, carrying sheaves of wheat. A nobleman in a fancy coach is coming up from behind. This makes for drama, because you’re thinking, Why don’t those peasants get out of the way?

S
ELF-
P
ORTRAIT WITH
S
TARTLED
E
XPRESSION

The key here is to be able to constantly startle yourself as you’re painting. One option is to hire a startler, but that can get expensive. (The best ones are from Ireland.) Be sure to use opening the bill from your startler as a free startle.

A
BSTRACT
W
HITE
#1

This is a solid-white painting. You might be asking, “Is it okay to put in a fleck of color here and there?” I give up, do whatever you want.

T
HE
B
OXERS

Two boxers are whaling away at each other in a boxing ring. But then you notice that the people in the audience are also fighting each other. And it makes you question who are the truly barbaric ones here, the boxers or the spectators? Then you can turn the painting over and read the answer: “the boxers.”

T
HE
F
RENCH
L
OVERS

A French dandy is embracing his beautiful buxom lover in a lush, overgrown garden. This painting should be in the shape of binoculars.

S
TILL
L
IFE WITH
R
ABBIT

A wooden table is chockablock with fruit, cheese, and a glass of wine. To one side is a dead rabbit, a dead pheasant, and a dead eel. And you’re thinking, Thanks for the fruit, but man, take better care of your pets.

S
TILL
L
IFE WITH
B
EETS,
C
AULIFLOWER,
L
IVER, AND
L
ARGE
G
LASS OF
B
EER

Just kidding. Only the beer.

T
HE
D
EATH OF
H
ERCULES

An old Hercules is being lifted into the air by angels. On the one hand, it makes you feel sad, but on the other, you think, He’s still in pretty good shape.

T
HE
J
OLLY
D
ANCER

The scene is a flatboat on the Ohio River. A frontiersman who looks like me is doing his funny cowboy dance. Everyone seems to be enjoying the dance except for an insane simpleton who looks like my so-called friend Don. Crawling up behind Don is a big snapping turtle.

U
NTITLED

This can pretty much be anything. Just remember to make it good and to put my name on it.

I
suppose we all have the same dream: a hundred years from now, a man carrying a lantern enters a darkened tomb. He’s already nervous, and he hears something behind him. He turns and holds up the lantern. It’s a hideous skeleton! Speechless with fear, he stumbles backward. He trips, dropping the lantern. The oil spills and catches him on fire. A flailing fire-ball, he runs from the tomb, into the night.

You may be asking, Why do they still have oil lanterns a hundred years from now? Look, I think you’re missing the point. The point is, after you die, you want to have a scary skeleton. You don’t want to be discovered by a grave robber or an archaeologist or a jogger and have the guy shrug and go, “Well, here’s another one.”

Why a scary skeleton? First of all, because it’s scary. It scares people. If a skeleton’s not scary, what’s the point of even having one? Also, scariness can actually protect your skeleton. Something like half of all skeletons are eventually dug up and sold. Some go to medical schools, or are taken apart and used as musical instruments. Even worse, many end up in teenagers’ bedrooms, where they are propped up in chairs with funny hats, “smoking” a cigarette. Remember: a scary skeleton is a safe skeleton.

But scary skeletons don’t just pop out of the ground. Or if they do, a lot of planning was involved. Some people make the mistake of thinking that just because they’re hideous in life, their skeletons will be hideous. Unfortunately, that’s a myth. There are no easy skeletons.

Probably the most obvious way to make your skeleton scarier is to gradually distort your bones into grotesque shapes while you’re still alive, using a series of heavy vises and clamps. But this is not as easy as it sounds; you may just wind up with an expensive set of clamps. The truth is, the time to consider this method is probably when you’re young and your bones are pliable. But most people don’t even think about their skeletons then. They’re too busy going, “Oh, let’s play hide-and-seek” or “Oh, where’s my dolly?”

An easier, more practical alternative might be to have your eyeballs injected with some sort of preservative after you’re dead. That way, your skeleton will have intact eyeballs, which is very scary.

You may be wondering if some sort of insect larvae could be injected in your eyes, so worms or whatever could wiggle out. I think maybe you’re overthinking it. The odds of that happening at the exact right moment are almost nil.

To me, the best ideas are simple. This guy I met in a bar said to just bury the body with a knife in its hand. A skeleton holding up a knife is pretty scary. But wouldn’t the knife just fall out of the guy’s hand? said this other guy in the bar. Not, said the bartender, if you secured the knife to the hand with some bolts and wing nuts. Simple, clean, scary. And it leads to other ideas: Could there be some sort of spring mechanism so that when the coffin lid is opened, the skeleton actually makes a stabbing motion? And what would the warranty be on such a mechanism? These are all questions best discussed with a qualified funeral director.

It will probably take Congress to deal with some issues, such as if a skeleton should be allowed to have a loaded gun. On the one hand, an armed skeleton is scary, no doubt. But what if a dog digs up your skeleton? Even if the dog doesn’t get shot, it could drag the skeleton around as it fires randomly in all directions. And no one wants to see that.

I wish there were some magic formula for producing a scary skeleton. A lot of times it comes down to common sense. A terrifying skeleton that instantly crumbles into dust, and then the dust is blown away by a special fan that runs on solar power, might sound good on paper. But in the end, a few nails pounded into your skull at the right angles might be more effective.

The main thing is, try to avoid clichés. You can have your teeth sharpened and let your fingernails grow long, but really, is that the best you can come up with? Here’s an easy test: Ask yourself what you find scary in a skeleton. Or ask your kids or your grandkids. Then “build” on that.

I can’t reveal what I’ve decided for my skeleton, because that might hurt the scariness. All I can tell you is that if you plan on opening my coffin, you’d better bring one of those heart-reviver machines. And I guess bring a blind guy, too, to operate the heart reviver.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: Maybe they have oil lanterns a hundred years from now because there was a nuclear war or something, and electricity became extinct.)

I
have been saying it for so many years in private, I think it’s high time I said it publicly: my wife, Brenda, is not only my wife, she’s my third-best friend. That’s right, of all my friends in the world—and I’m guessing if you added them up there would be more than a dozen—I rank her below only two other people.

My best friend, I would have to say, is Jerry Blake, mainly because we work together and because we eat lunch together quite a bit. Jerry and I get along very well, although sometimes he can get cranky, especially when the pollen count is high. Also, I suspect that some of the things I tell him in confidence he reports back to our boss. He’s not perfect, but still, overall, I’d have to rank him number one.

My second-best friend is Pete Garcia, simply by virtue of the fact that we roomed together in college. I haven’t actually seen him in many, many years, but I get a greeting card from him and his family almost every Christmas. Sometimes I feel like calling him up and recounting some of the crazy things we did in college, but his phone number is unlisted, and I’m not sure where he works these days.

As I said earlier, my third-best friend is my wife, Brenda. One of the main reasons she is ranked so high is that she has actually saved my life on several occasions.

The last time she saved my life, we were up at Crystal Lake. I was several yards out in the water, floating on my air mattress. Brenda was onshore, preparing dinner over the campfire she had built. She was making my favorite meal, this French thing with truffles and scallops and other stuff. I can’t remember what it’s called, even though she’s told me many times. I was relaxing comfortably, when, suddenly, I felt one of my feet slip overboard. The abrupt feeling of water around my previously dry foot caused me to panic. I began thrashing about wildly. The more I struggled to regain control of my bobbing craft, the more that very control seemed to slip away.

Finally, in a blur of white water, the air mattress flipped over. I choked and gagged, but somehow managed to maintain a grip on it. I made a bargain with God, that if He would get me out of this, I would buy a better, more stable air mattress. I cried out to Brenda. She did not hear me the first couple of times, a fact that I still (gently) rib her about to this day.

But on the third or fourth yell, she did hear me and sprang to my rescue. She threw off her shoes, raced to the edge of the cliff, and dove in. I’ll be honest, I never knew she could dive like that. She plummeted the fifty feet or so to the water in near-perfect form. I think it would have been perfect if she hadn’t let her feet sort of drift apart a little bit before entry, but so what, really.

What’s important is that I was sure glad to see her swimming toward me, as by now I was losing my grip on my beloved air mattress. Crystal Lake is said to be home to the rainbow trout. Several rangers swore up and down that no one had ever been attacked by any of these trout, but that’s probably what they say about everything: “Oh, that bear won’t hurt you”; “Oh, that beaver is harmless.”

Anyway, as I held on for dear life, I thought I saw a rainbow trout right under my arm! “Whoa!” I yelled, and flung myself backward. Loss of contact with the air mattress aroused some sort of primeval flapping instinct in me. My hands and arms slapped the water repeatedly as I tried to stay afloat. The mattress seemed to drift away, as in a dream.

After what seemed like forever (although I’m sure she was actually very prompt), Brenda swam up to me. “Grab hold,” she said, extending her hand.

Well, I guess I sort of lost control, because Brenda claims I started clawing and scratching her, trying to literally climb on top of her to escape the water. I don’t exactly remember it that way, but I’ll take her word for it.

Finally, she “subdued” me, as she puts it, with a powerful choke hold that was, in my opinion, much rougher than necessary. I had bruises for days.

Just before we reached the shore, I guess I sort of panicked again, as I thought I heard another rainbow trout swimming right alongside of us. I managed to wrench myself free from Brenda and, I’m not sure how, make it the final few yards to land.

Still, I would have to count that as a save by Brenda, even though technically she didn’t bring me all the way in.

Brenda has saved my life at least three other times, but I don’t think we need to go into those times right now. The main thing is, she’s very loyal and honest and sincere, all of which help her maintain that third-place ranking.

I would say my fourth-best friend is a guy named Cal down at the garage where I get my car fixed. (Cal Jenkins? Johnston?) I guess he’s really more of an “associate” than a friend, because we haven’t really done anything together, but he’s generally friendly to me when I bring my car in, so that’s pretty good.