The shiner that David got was comparable to the shiner that Sean got that was comparable to the raccoon with nothing going for it except for Monday’s trash.  David bought a pair of sunglasses for $5 and wore them all day.  At night he felt foolish wearing them yet, he had no choice.  Only the day before had he pulled a chain out of his truck to “whoop up on” Steve, who had pulled out a small club from his truck to “give David what for”.  David’s chain got caught on Steve’s club and echoes from Lord of the Rings made the fight somewhat of a comfort to Sean. Steve punched David, giving him a shiner, and David sort of just sat down, holding his eye.
Steve said, “I gave you what for.  Now you go home.”
And David said, “Man, you punched me in the eye.”
And Steve said, “I know.  I’m not blind.”
And David said, “You oughta be.”
And Sean said, “I’m going home to get my mace with the spikes on it.  Wait here.”
And thirty minutes later, Sean showed up with his mace. But it was too late. No one was around to see what he had that would make him the go-to guy for a medieval weapons cache.  Two minutes later, Sean’s shiner would be self-inflicted from the mace and he wouldn’t have 5 dollars for sunglasses.

Two guys walk into a showroom.  One guy has construction helmet on, the other guy has a headpiece on just like Batman’s.  The helmeted fellow is eating a twinkie and the batman has a 99c bag of Doritos.  The showroom is full of office furniture and they both want a desk. The helmeted guy takes a rubber mallet and starts hammering on one desk.  The batman guy takes a ball peen hammer and starts hammering on the other.  After 20 seconds of doing so, a salesman walks briskly towards the helmeted guy and says “Stop. Please, sir.  Stop.”  He walks to the batman and says the same exact thing.  The two guys look at each other and continue banging.  The salesman walks back into the office and comes out with two other salesman who start yelling at the two bangers to stop.  When this doesn’t work, one of the stockers holds a lighter to a fire sprinkler because he feels he has a reason to create disorder.  The showroom becomes wet and three fire trucks pull into the parking lot and the stocker man with the lighter goes into the break room and grabs three boxes of pizza because it’s Pizza Friday and disappears into the back where he is picked up by batman and the helmeted guy and they go to the house where batman has a new Xbox, set up with 3 new games and they all eat pizza and laugh and drink Coca Cola.   The end. 

Epilogue:  The batman fellow’s name is Pat and the construction helmet fellow’s name is Mason.  The stocker’s name is Phil.  They all agree that the new Batman is really good but love Michael Keaton.  They also agree that Papa John’s is really good pizza but not as good as the J and J’s.  Pat can take any topping he can think of to J and J’s and they will put it on his pizza.  He once brought some necco wafers to be put on his pizza and was sure that it would be good but he was wrong.  Phil dated a girl who liked anchovies and wanted some but the grocery store didn’t have any and neither did the pizza place so he bought some sardines and marinated them in salt and oil but she didn’t like it, so he stopped trying. It might mean he didn’t really love her and it’s a good thing that they broke up.  Now, a month ago, Mason started playing Resident Evil 4 and was amazed at the amount of time that went by during play.  He felt like everyone around him aged faster than he did because of how fast time seemed to pass during the game.  He was almost right because of his own mass.  Meanwhile, the salesman who didn’t know what had happened after the incident lives alone and watches Office Space once a week.  Sometimes twice.  His name is also Phil but goes by Philip.  He doesn’t eat pizza much but enjoys cereal.  He has a Reservoir Dogs poster behind his couch and that’s all he has that isn’t functional.  He feels the monotony of his life is diverted by going to Walmart instead of Kroger for his groceries.  He also lies on the floor for hours not doing anything.  He can do 100 situps a day.  He can do 100 pushups a day.  But, what he doesn’t do is think up stupid ways to annoy other working people by dressing up like an idiot and pounding on office furniture in order to get free pizza.  He will be at the apartment complex’s fitness center at 4:00 today in hopes of hooking up.  His relation to time is relative to Mason’s.

When the plot to overthrow the makings of a giant windstorm plan failed, Mitchell found a loophole that involved going back to the storeroom and getting the copperwire set aside for making penny yarn and weaving it in and out of the sheet metal thunder clapper.  When the art director saw him and began his mother hen line of questioning, Mitchell replied that it was a union thing.  Not being in the union, Mitchell knew that this would:  a) uphold his denial of sabotage, b) allow him to give the union more overtime in taking the copper wire out at a later date and c) a thank you beer for the overtime.

On Sunday, the Senate gave audience to the presentation of the Windstorm Finale, designed to be a “Who? Not Us” weapon which was still in the planning stages.  Subsequently, when the time came to show the rattling of the sheet metal in order to create fake thunder, the dull bangs of the copperwire were congruous with the dull satisfaction of the Senate. Later that day, Mitchell thought, “Haha.  “Everyone is stupid but me,” as he drank his free Miller High Life alone.

John Titor’s machine was gravity based and would allow him to travel back to the time he needed to go.  However, one day while “rewinding” (he was trying to watch someone type in a password into the IBM he was about to obtain 10 minutes into the future) a black hole shot an anti- ray right onto his machine (like a reverse disco ball) thus disabling the Gravity Sensor Unit and throwing him sideways onto another timestrip that was a phantom strip but one that kept going, like a fart that never leaves.

Anyhoo, he found himself in the year 1999 and was giggling over the y2k hype, not knowing he was on a phantom timestrip.  “The sky will be falling from now on,” he thought and went to an internet café and tried to log onto his email account but kept failing. 

Finally, he went to the administrator behind the counter.

“My computer isn’t working.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I can’t get any pages to come up.”

So, he walked over with John and asked for the page.

“It’s just yahoo.”

“Don’t know it,” and typed “iii.yahoo.go” and the yahoo page came up.

John then realized he was on the wrong time strip and asked, “What do you guys call the problem about the double-digit numbers turning over to 1900 instead of 2000?”

“What problem?  We don’t have a-“

And then everything around him started disappearing like a fog clearing and he knew that the phantom time had finally dissipated.  He’d never been in the absence of time and began to take a nap because a physicist had once written, “A true nap can only be perfect when there is no time to be wasted and none to worry.”

And he napped in no time.  But it seemed like forever.

Meanwhile, in another time, a physicist had written the word “crap” and then accidentally typed “nap”.