The Central Valley Farmer's Daughter.

A traveling genetically modified eggplant salesman is driving through Idado with sample seed packets when his car's computer fails, leaving him stranded by a remote farmhouse.  Too far for a motel, he walks to the house and knocks on the door just as a heavy thunderstorm hits.  When no one answers, he enters. Empty of residents, the declining old farmhouse is clearly owned by a food commodity corporation, and the house is used only for the computers running the watering systems. But it's dry at least, and he huddles up for the night, using one of the computers to check email  before going to bed. 

The next morning, he is arrested by the FBI for corporate espionage and is later sentenced to 2 years in federal prison.  Also, he is fired and fined $30,000 dollars. Also his wife leaves him, he loses his house, he is kicked out of the National GMO Eggplant Marketers' Association in disgrace, and his children thenceforth speak his name only in resentment and sadness. 

When he is finally released from prison, he returns to the place out of pique, and as he walks in the vast, empty dusty field, he spies a strange object in the distance, and to his astonishment, approaches a 5 foot high, 15 foot long eggplant, exactly in the place where his car used to be.

As he softly rubs the enormous vegetable that is perhaps the last marker of his being, a beautiful blond girl with an expensive professional camera steps out from behind the eggplant, taking a series of shots of its deep purple hues framed against the flat landscape, broken in the East by jagged, dry mountains.

"Quite an eggplant!" he says, "You know, you'll never believe this, but...."

"Excuse me," she says, "I'm documenting the decline of life on earth." 

Ut Get Fortunatos

A Cowboy, his friend the Robot, and the Pope are arguing about Vatican II in Karaoke bar in a strip mall in Nevada.  Suddenly, two big scary-looking guys burst in the room and head straight for the Robot, who accesses his memory of extensive gambling debts, and executes panic.exe, spinning his head and waving his rubbery robot arms wildly around.  The big guys approach the table as the cowboy, realizing the Robot is a hapless Jets fan, reaches for his six-shooter.  It looks bad.  But the Pope rises to his full height with great dignity, and bids the men welcome.  Cowed by the Pope, the big guys sit down uncertainly, their fingers on triggers, the Robot's fan squeaking, the Cowboy's steely eyes drilling into their faces with deadly scrutiny.  The air is still and it is hot, and menthol smoke hangs like a curtain.  

Then some bridesmaids go onstage and start singing Daft Punk's "Get Lucky." "Oh, I love this song," says the Pope.  "Let us all listen together awhile," says the Pope, smiling gently, tapping his shoe, making everyone hold hands. 

Angst-Jökens- New for the Fall Collection

Classicism

A desperate New York artist schedules a performance in which he will take a staple gun and staple a live weasel to his head while reciting the U.S. Constitution in front of a video of gold molecules vibrating.  A large crowd has arrived in the Chelsea gallery for his performance entitled "Microeconomics with Live Weasel IV" and just as he is about to staple the struggling, squeaking weasel to his head, he hears a famous art critic say to a friend: "This seems a bit hampered by visual classicism."  He looks at the weasel, who looks back with big, dark, pleading eyes, and decides to lets him scamper off.  The disappointed audience boos, as the artist, his heart sinking, walks off stage, only to notice that the newly freed weasel is outside now, looking in through the gallery window, flipping him off. 


On a Brief Respite from Soviet Russia

It's 1963, and three Soviet submarine commanders are drinking in a bar in Havanna, Cuba. One goes: "Mechanical breakdowns! Drunken crews. Nuclear weapons! U.S. Navy patrols! There are times I would like to give it all up, the stress and responsbility. "   Another goes: "We patrol so close to Florida, we could swim to Miami Beach. You can see even the girls on the beach in the periscope, another world, so carefree and beautiful...."   "Careful, Komrade, says the third, "The Party is always listen..."  

Suddenly a ferocious Polar Bear crashes into the bar, people screaming and running and drinks spilling, and before anyone can react he stomps on the first submarine commander, jumping up and down on him and crushing him, until the bear takes a mighty swipe with his gigantic paw and tears off his head. As the horrified captains look on, the Bear, blood staining his white fur, stands up, looming 10 feet tall, looking right at them and goes: GGRAARRRRGHHHHH!!!  And then the huge beast grabs the body with his enormous sharp teeth, leaving a trail of gore as he exits the flimsy wicker doors, the commander's proud, splattered hat rolling to a corner before falling over for the last time.

The bartender goes: "Another round, Señors?"


BAM-Os! Shoes for Cool Kids

A lady at Goldman-Sachs is at work one day, drinking her half-caff mocha. She analyzes the children's shoe market in a small country: if thousands of adult workers could be fired, return on investment would grow by 3.7%. Children could make luxury shoes for - haha! how ironic!- the  children at the top 5% of the market. All that has to be done is bribe a few officials, weaken child labor laws, exploit religious bigotry to de-fund public education, ban trade unions, maybe scare a few activists, and make a stylish campaign emphasizing cutting edge design and how they use greener, recycled materials. 

Later, on her way back to a lower Manhattan Starbucks, she's run over by a school bus. This story has a happy ending, as thousands of jobs making shoes in a sweat shop in Asia were saved.