Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations by Simon Rich Read Free Book Online

could only take three possessions with you, which ones would you pick?”
    “That’s pretty tough,” I said. “I guess my first-edition copy of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited , James Merrill’s Collected Poems , and my lucky Sonic Youth T-shirt.”
    Well, it turns out the girl was a government research scientist. It’s a long story, but basically when the drugs in my cocktail wore off, I woke up completely naked on a sandy strip of land in the middle of the ocean. A few hours later a jet plane whizzed by and parachute-dropped the record, book, and shirt onto the shore.
    I realize now that I definitely could have chosen better items.
    The last three days have been hell. I have no food, shelter, or medicine. The Sonic Youth T-shirt has an enormous tear through the front. It’s pretty cool-looking, and it shows I’ve had the shirt for a long time, since before Sonic Youth got big. But the tear lets in a lot of cold air, and the larger insects keep getting trapped in it.
    Every few hours I flip through the Merrill anthology in the hope that one of his poems will be about fire building or water purification or how to make medicine, but so far they’re all useless.
    I spent yesterday morning tying the Bob Dylan record to a stick with weeds and swinging it over my head to try to receive radio waves. I don’t remember why I thought that would work.
    If I had asked for a Bob Dylan CD , I could have at least used the reflective surface to maybe heat up some sand. I’m not sure what that would accomplish, but at least I’d feel like I was doing something.
    This morning I ate the poetry book and the shirt. Tonight, I’m going to try to eat the record.
    Let me tell you some more about this island. During the daytime, the sand is so hot that I need to constantlyhop from foot to foot to prevent my feet from getting burned. At night it’s below freezing. There are no trees. There’s just sand, weeds, and some kind of volcano. Every fish I’ve caught so far has been poisonous.
    I just realized that, technically, my house counts as a possession. I could have asked for my entire house.
    I don’t even like Bob Dylan. I just wanted to sound cool.

the dog x-files
    Here are some scenes for a TV show I came up with that’s exactly like The X-Files except all of the characters are dogs.
    REX : Thank God you’re here. I didn’t know who else to turn to. No one believes my story.
    DOG SCULLY : Tell us what happened.
    REX : I used to go into the living room every day. I’d run around, scratch up the couches—you know, have a good time. Then yesterday, I went inside and all of a sudden a horrible electric shock shot through my entire body.
    DOG MULDER : Unbelievable.
    DOG SCULLY : Did you try going in again today?
    REX : Yes. The same thing happened. I don’t even want to go into that room anymore.
    DOG MULDER : Wow. I have no explanation.
    DOG MULDER : I’m Agent Mulder from the Dog FBI. Tell us what happened.
    SKIP : Last week, my face was really itchy. I kept trying to scratch my nose, but … I couldn’t reach it.
    DOG MULDER : What do you mean?
    SKIP : There was some kind of cone-shaped force field surrounding my head.
    DOG SCULLY : Incredible!
    SKIP : The crazy thing is, three days later, I fell asleep … and when I woke up, the force field was gone.
    DOG SCULLY : I don’t understand. This defies all logic!
    DOG MULDER : Not everything can be explained with logic, Dog Scully.
    BOOMER : This is really hard for me. You’re the first people I’ve told.
    DOG SCULLY : Tell us what happened. Maybe we can help.
    BOOMER : Okay, here goes. Yesterday I fell asleep, and when I woke up, my testicles were missing.
    DOG SCULLY : Jesus. This is the fifth case this month.
    DOG MULDER : There’s something happening out there. Something beyond our understanding.
    ROCKET : I used to have fleas all over my body. Thousands and thousands of them. Then, yesterday, I felt a tightness around my neck … and within hours the fleas were