Posts Tagged ‘My brother Duncan’

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The “I Can Live With That Dating Service”

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

By Tiber

Quite awhile ago, I wrote about how my idiot brother, Duncan, and his wife, Honor, had somehow come up with a good money-making idea.

They’ve started the “I Can Live With That Dating Service” where prospective daters just reveal everything wrong with themselves instead of what’s right.

This is actually working because, when you think about it, coexisting with other humans is really much more about what you can stand as opposed to what you can share.

And it looks as if they’re having their first marriage between two clients.

Duncan and Honor, weighing all of the couple’s flaws, have put together a perfect match.

He leaves up the toilet seat…But she’s a compulsive cleaner who’s happy not to touch the lid.

She cracks her right hand knuckles…But he’s deaf in his left ear.

He wakes up hungry at 3AM…But she’s a lonely insomniac, who now has someone to cook for.

She bites her nails…But he has a phobia of pointy things.

He hogs the remote…But she thinks TV is evil and she lets him.

Most horrifying of all, both of them, when stressed, compulsively hum, “I Love You. You Love Me” from that Barney children’s show.

So now, they can sincerely sing it to each other, never plunging again into the dating pool, making it a win-win for them and the world.

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When you care enough to send the very best

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

 

By Tiber

I haven’t mentioned this because, frankly, it was too damned disturbing.

The triplets worked forever on my brother Duncan’s Father’s Day gift. Then they unveiled it and the entire family went mute.

They had created a life-sized replica of some demonic entity that clearly worked full time as Satan’s primary henchman.

Mom didn’t know what to do with it.

On the one hand, the kids were so proud of their art. They’d worked so hard on it. Plus, they’d actually been considerate enough to give their Dad a present.

Still, Mom wouldn’t have the thing lurking in a room where any of us spent any time.

So the sculpture ended up in the front hallway, near the door, where only visitors are now suddenly jolted into thinking they’re about to be personally escorted into some fiery vortex to hell.

Today, though, finally realizing they were a little short in the “thanks” department, one of the triplets asked Duncan,

“Didn’t you like your Spiderman statue?”

“Spiderman statue?…OH! SPIDERMAN! Yes! Yes! I love it!”

We all jumped in with our own gratitude, of course.

It’s much better to accept that some relatives are just massively untalented rather than confirm that nagging fear that they really are small minions of Beelzebub.

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Lend me an ear. No, wait!

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

By Tiber

As you know, my older sister, Vanessa, has her own small limousine company.

Lately, as usual, they’ve found any number of items that riders have left behind.  And they’re things like backpacks and shoes and bras, things you’d think people would miss as soon as they got out.

Anyway, Vanessa let our brother, Duncan, have a limo for his wife’s birthday celebration and he claimed, furiously, that there was a human ear left in it.

That one Vanessa didn’t believe and she called Duncan an idiot.

Duncan then lost it to the point of evidently believing that a severed human ear was still operative and he yelled that maybe Vanessa had planted it in there to spy on them.

That made Vanessa so angry that she said Duncan would not be allowed to borrow another limo for his wife’s birthday for an entire year which, of course, was its own kind of stupid.

The severed ear turned out to be just a dried apricot. 

But it did leave me with one of my many questions. Since any given family has a certain number of I.Q. points, why am I not a genius?

There are countless people I’m related to who, clearly, are not using any points of their own.

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“Wow, sir, you’re right. That really is huge.”

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

By Tiber

We were on a family vacation when I was five, and Dad drove miles out of our way to see the “largest T-Rex ever constructed.” My brother, Duncan, who was nine, thought the T-Rex was one of the great wonders of the world. I thought it was an enormous predator, smart enough to stand very still until a dumb five-year-old came close enough to be devoured.

For Duncan, it started his love of anything too big. You know that my sister, Iris Nell, is obsessed with anything tiny. My parents, for some reason, have raised at least two children who enjoy being in worlds with no resemblance to our own.

With our thoughts now on making money, Duncan returned to the big.  He thought it would be very easy to build the world’s largest something and then charge people to come and see it.

“It wouldn’t be that hard to make the world’s biggest baseball bat!”

“Harder than you think. A giant one’s already been built in Louisville, Kentucky. For the Louisville Slugger.”

 “Oh. Well, it wouldn’t be that hard to make the world’s biggest doorknob.”

“You’d have to beat Vining, Minnesota.”

These answers came from our brother, Kru, who in another example of our family’s weird knowledge kept shooting down all of Duncan’s ideas.

“World’s Largest Hammer?”

“Eureka, California.”

”Oh, come on!”

I reminded Duncan that we all considered him to be the biggest tool. Why not charge admission just to gawk at him?

Duncan is older, heavier and the exhausted father of three and yet it’s amazing how fast he can chase you down two flights of stairs, trying to bash your skull in with anything regular-sized he can find.

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You may now kiss yourself

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

By Tiber

I’ve always competed with my brother, Duncan, about everything. And nowadays, I sort of enjoy it because it’s usually very easy to win.

This week was Duncan and Honor’s wedding anniversary, however. Even with Duncan’s mastodon-sized flaws, the fact remains that he is happily married and I am not.

Their wedding was a nightmare. The cop had never seen anything like it but right before Honor was about to step into her limousine for the ride to the church, the car spontaneously burst into flames. No one, to this day, has ever figured out how that happened.

Later, another cop said he’d never seen anything like it either when, on finding the reception too long, Duncan and Honor decided to step across the street to the park and consummate their marriage under a swing set in their half-removed wedding clothes. That one got them arrested  for indecent exposure, lewd conduct, corrupting minors and something else I can’t remember. Taunting squirrels with nuts, maybe.

In any event, you clearly had not only the powerful forces of the supernatural but also the considerable forces of the law trying to break the two of them up. Yet, in spite of everything, they’re still together.

Me? I had a girl break up with me once because I like cheese.

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The Four Horsemen of the Applesauce

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

 

By Tiber

Since we had our little fire scare, I didn’t write this week about the triplets’ Halloween. Normally, we throw a big party here for everybody but, this year, we had to beg off and all that was left was just the triplets going out trick or treating.

As you know, the terms “docile” or “manageable” or really, let’s face it, “human” are seldom used in any sentence alongside “my brother Duncan’s triplets.” And before Halloween, everybody was debating costume ideas for them.

Since Duncan was taking them out and the triplets are approaching 11 and are slightly taller now, Erin said dryly, it was obvious they should all go as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Duncan would be “Death” and two of the triplets would be shoo-ins for “Conquest” and “War.” As for the third triplet, well, going as “Famine” might just score more candy for everybody.

Mom, however, who is still making a brave attempt to love them – oh. all right, she does actually love them, said no way were her son and grandchildren going dancing around the neighborhood dressed up as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

She said no again, even when Kru mentioned that he knew a woman who might even loan them some of those tiny horses.

Finally, somebody had the inspired suggestion of the kids dressing up as a big Saguaro cactus. You know, those tube-shaped, three-pronged ones that grow out in the desert. Each triplet could have a tube on the top, where their face could stick out but, best of all, all of their feet would have to be pushed together into the bottom tube. They could walk but they could never run. Brilliant!

On the night, though, I thought they really looked more like a condom display. Obviously, I didn’t say anything in front of the kids.

And actually, I didn’t say anything in front of Duncan either. We may have our differences but I know there probably have been times when he’s thought about condom displays himself, and wondered why he didn’t  stop by one some 11 years and 9 months ago.

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The Mad Hatter Part II…When baseball caps attack

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

 

By Tiber

As I’ve said many times before, my idiot brother, Duncan, is always annoying somebody about something.

Not long ago, he made our other brother, Kru, angry and Kru decided to get back at him. He started mentioning to Duncan that one of the new side effects of global warming was that some people are suffering from an expansion of their skulls.

He’d just made it up, of course, but every so often since then, Kru has been slipping a little piece of cardboard into Duncan’s favorite baseball cap. So the cap has been getting tighter and tighter and Duncan has been getting more and more worried.

Finally, he went to the doctor and told him that because of global warming, his skull was enlarging. The doctor told Duncan he must be working too hard.

But that hat has just kept on getting more and more snug.

Now, Kru has started mentioning something even worse. He says he read where some people’s skulls are actually shrinking, due to worry about the economy.

And yesterday, he removed all of the cardboard from Duncan’s cap. The cardboard had stretched it out, of course, and when Duncan put it on this time, the hat plopped down, completely covering his eyes.

He raced back to the doctor again, yelling that his skull was now shrinking because of the bad economy. And this time, I think, the doctor may put him away.

So, what a few people have said could turn out to be true – that even in the midst of some difficult times,  good things can still happen to those who just wait.

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Duncan’s “I Can Live With That” Dating Service – Part II

Monday, August 16th, 2010

By Tiber

As I’ve said before, my brother, Duncan the Dim, has actually come up with a business that has some money-making potential. He and his wife, Honor, seem to be making a go of their “I Can Live With That” dating service.

They’ve set up in the cloak room off the entrance hall, since Mom won’t let their customers any closer into the house. And I watched Honor in action with a client today.

“Now, how we’re different is that we believe it’s not the things you share with a partner that make a relationship work as much as how many of your “dumpable” traits the two of you can tolerate, as long as you  know about them in advance.”

The guy nodded vigorously. “That‘s why I liked your ad! A number of ladies have definitely ended up wanting to kill me.”

“Then let’s get all of you right out in the open Okay, first off, I see that you’re overweight.”

“Yes, but I’ve just joined a gym!”

“Now, remember who you‘re talking to. Do you ever plan to go”

“…No.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m a very active sports guy, though.”

“Playing or sofa?”

The guy shuffled around a bit but finally came clean.

“Sofa…But at least I wouldn’t be out with other women…And I’d even be willing to take a real girlfriend away for a vacation.”

“Would you pay for a 3, 4 or 5 star hotel?”

“Oh, God, no. None of those.”

“Would you at least go for lodging without bedbugs or toxic mold?”

“…Yeah…I guess I could spring for that.”

“Now in terms of ‘crazy,’ how much are you willing to put up with? The categories are: 1) quirky 2) eccentric 3) fanatic 4) loco and 5) batshit.“

“Well, ‘batshit’ would be out. But I could probably go as high as a 3, maybe even a 4. I mean, I’m a fanatic about sports and we all can be loco at times.”

So eventually Duncan and Honor tallied the guy up.

“Okay, your category is ‘lazy, fat, crazy, obsessive and cheap, with a truly crap track record.’ Surprisingly enough, though, we could also give you ‘faithful and tolerant.’”

“I’ll take it!” the man yelled.

And my guess is, he’ll find a girl who will too.

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