There was a turtle named Arnold who went to college. He studied carrying heavy loads and going without water. He graduated with honors as a camel.
When he went to look for a job, however, no one would hire him. There was not much demand for a six-inch high camel.
Arnold got a job driving a cab. He did it well and made good money. He learned where all the hotels were. He became friends with prostitutes.
Still, Arnold felt he was wasting his education. He got a job in a community college teaching Camel Science. Arnold understood the material completely and was loved by his students. He had a class that was all camels, and at the last class they gave him an ovation. Arnold bowed.
Still, Arnold wasn’t satisfied. He took a sabbatical from school and spent a year living with camels, eating with camels, sleeping with camels. At the end of the year, he built himself a camel suit. Using a complex system of wires and pulleys, Arnold was able to operate an outfit the size and shape of a camel.
Arnold went to the Sahara Desert and put up a sign offering his services. Two Bedouins came along and read the sign. Soon Arnold was a Ship of the Desert, carrying them to Cairo. For three years, Arnold worked as a camel. His dream had come true. He became known as a good and obedient camel, and he made a lot of money. No one knew his secret.
One day a camel boy saw Arnold taking off his camel suit to go to the bathroom. The boy approached him and told him he knew his secret. He demanded money to suppress the information.
Arnold refused.
When Arnold returned to the circle of camels, the boy dramatically announced that he was going to reveal a fraud. Before the gaping drivers, he pulled off the camel suit, revealing a turtle six inches high.
“Hello,” said Arnold.
The boy was immediately seized and bound.
“This is not your concern,” the camel drivers told him. “He is a good camel. That’s all that matters.”
“Release him,” said Arnold, putting his suit back on. “Don’t punish him on my account.” The drivers reluctantly agreed.
After that, Arnold was one of the best-loved camels in the desert. The boy, Rab, became his devoted servant. They travelled together for many years.
A man woke up and tried to get out of bed, but he couldn’t. The sheets and blankets were wound tightly around him. He struggled for an hour and fell back onto the bed. Then the bed spoke.
“I will not let you go until you give me what I want,” said the bed.
“And what do you want?” asked the man.
“Sleep,” said the bed.
So the man slept until the bed let him go.
There was a boat that was going to Heaven. The boat had been travelling as long as anyone could remember, and as long as anyone’s parents could remember, and as long as anyone’s parents’ parents could remember.
On the boat, people practiced singing the songs of Heaven, and wearing the clothes of Heaven, and talking the speech of Heaven.
One day they reached Heaven, but it was empty.
So the people got out of the boat and built Heaven, just as they’d studied it. They sang the songs of Heaven and wore the clothes of Heaven and talked the speech of Heaven.
When the next boat came, the people on it knew immediately that they were in Heaven.
This is how the first houses came to be, before people knew how to build houses: stones and wood would fly up and form the shape of a house. It was all by chance. People would go into the houses and live in them. One day, all the parts of the house would fly apart again. The people would find themselves standing on the ground in a forest, no longer in a house. Then they would walk off and look for a new house.
There’s a new arrangement for couples: one will live inside the house and one will live outside. The wife, for example, will spin up a nutritious drink in the blender in the morning, while the husband forages for roots in the back yard. Or the husband will dine in evening dress, attended by servants, while the wife panhandles on the sidewalk for a slice of pizza.
Such marriages are quite successful.
The first man in the world was lonely, so he created God. He built a temple 500 feet high for Him, and carved His statue in stone. This took him twenty years.
At the end of this time, he saw the God who had created him, flying in the sky.
One day the man was walking in the desert and he met the two Gods: the God he’d created and the God who created him.
He threw himself on the ground in front of the God he’d created, shouting, “I am not worthy.”
Then the other God picked him up and held him in her arms.
A man was recently arrested for the murder of George Washington.
“But I was born 160 years after his death!” he protested.
“Don’t think that will make your sentence any lighter,” the judge warned him.
A powdered wig and a set of wooden teeth were found in the man’s bureau.
“I can explain everything!” he said.
But it was too late.
