Monday Morning Mark • 89
Instinctive Behavior In Elephants • At The Park • My Day With Elon Musk
One Minute Wit
Instinctive Behavior In Elephants
Jude The Animal Expert Dude
I made a fascinating discovery about elephants today.
If you poke them repeatedly in the stomach with your index finger, elephants will instinctively grab you around the neck with their trunks and shake you like a rag doll for several seconds before slamming you to the ground.
Apparently, other elephants have an instinctive reaction to such behavior in which they appear to be smiling.
Instinct is a curious thing.
— Jude The Animal Expert Dude
50-Word Microfiction
At The Park
A summer breeze blew through Littletown park.
Mrs. Starchy, who just left the salon, worried the breeze would mess up her new hairdo.
Billy was flying a kite; he didn’t care about his hair.
Frank and Betty were enjoying the breeze and a picnic.
Andy, the ant, sampled Frank’s apple.
. . .
Ah, the park. Good for the soul.
Humor
My Day With Elon Musk
Was stranger than you might think
I spent a day with Elon Musk. It was entirely out of the blue and not at all what I expected.
A week ago, I walked to my mailbox to get the latest round of political attack ads. As I took them to the recycling bin, I noticed an envelope with my name on it. No return address, just the letters ERM in gold leaf. I opened the envelope and found these words written on a plain white card.
Mr. Starlin;
You may have noticed that Fake Elon Musk followed you on Substack. Fake Elon Musk is not fake. He’s me! As you can imagine, the use of subterfuge is often necessary when I go online. Otherwise, people will spend far too much time kissing up to me, hoping I’ll like their tweets and they will go viral.
I have enjoyed reading several of your stories, especially the ones featuring donuts and space. I see no reason to explore space without the hope of discovering new types of donuts. In fact, the first business I have planned for Mars is Red Planet Donuts, a donut shop.
Anyway, I would like to invite you to spend the day with me. It is hard to make friends when you are a genius, as you are probably aware. So I often invite interesting people to spend the day with me. Rest assured, there will be donuts.
If you are interested, call my assistant to schedule a day.
There was a phone number printed below the text. I had never spent the day with a billionaire before, or even a millionaire. Only the occasional thousandaire. So I called and booked a day.
The morning of my Musk Day soon arrived. So did a Tesla. The door popped open. I waited for Elon, or someone, to get out, but nothing happened. I walked over to the car and looked inside. It was empty. A voice inside the car said, “Welcome, Mark. Please have a seat.”
“In the driver’s seat?” I asked.
“Of course. Although you will not be required to drive. I am fully capable of driving myself.”
I got in and noticed a box of donuts on the passenger seat.
“Please help yourself to a donut or three. I will be happy to drive while you enjoy your tasty snack.”
So I did. I am not sure if there was something in the donuts or if a knock-out gas was employed, but I was soon asleep at the wheel. When I awoke, I was in the desert. There was nothing but scrub brushes and cactus as far as the eye could see. And a metal hatch sticking up from the ground.
Then the car shouted, in a loud, frightening voice too scary for even the scariest movie that no sane person would want to watch, “Get out!” So I did. Quickly.
The Tesla drove away. I swear I heard it laughing, but it may have been the booming of my heart beating far too fast for any sort of lasting health.
Once I was in control of my respiration again, I walked over to the hatch and opened the lid. Inside was a pole—like a fireman pole — sticking up from the darkness. Since my options were slide down or die of exposure, I slid down the pole. When I reached the bottom, I was in a round room with no doors. In the middle of the room, there was a desk. A Commodore 64 computer and a 13” tube TV sat on the desk. On the TV screen was a sticky note that read,
You must beat Blastar to continue your journey. Good luck.
I sat down and played a primitive 8-bit video game. The game featured a spaceship attempting to defeat a freighter dropping hydrogen bombs. It didn’t take much skill to beat, especially for a grizzled veteran of Nintendo 64 and Playstation 3 games like me.
“Who made this, some 12-year-old?” I asked myself out loud.
“Yes, me. When I was twelve,” Elon said as he walked out of a panel that opened in the wall of the room.
“Oh, sorry.”
“I had to use the technology of the day. And I was only 12. I sold it for $500 to a magazine.”
I felt pretty stupid. “When I was 12, I learned to play a D chord on the guitar.”
“Come on, we have a busy day ahead of us.”
Another panel in the wall opened, and we went into a room that contained large tubes with pill-shaped vehicles positioned at the openings of the tubes.
I hope you don’t get claustrophobic,” Elon said.
“Nope. As long as I don’t have to get into any small, confined spaces.”
“Excellent. Climb into that small, confining pill-shaped transport vehicle over there. It’s my Hyperloop. It is sort of like those pneumatic mail tubes from the 19th century. But with people inside instead of mail.”
I walked over to the pill-shaped transport vehicle.
“Before we get in, we will need to put on fire-resistant suits and helmets,” Elon said.
“What?”
Elon laughed and said, “I’m kidding. The suits wouldn’t do any good. Go on, get in.”
“After you,” I replied.
We both climbed in, and the hatch closed on the vehicle.
Elon started counting backward. “10, 9, 8, 7, 6… Sorry, habit. Here we go!”
The thing we were sitting in blasted down the tube, which was lit up like the final scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“Cool, huh?” Elon said.
“As long as no monkeys throw bones at us,” I replied.
“Oooo. I need to write that down,” Elon said.
About ten minutes later, we surfaced from underground and came to a stop in a glass-walled building. In the distance, I saw a Space X Falcon rocket. We climbed out of the transport and to my surprise Elton John was sitting at a white grand piano playing and singing Rocket Man.
“Stop it, Elton,” Elon said.
“You know I can’t help it, Elon,” Elton replied.
“Elton, this is Mark Starlin. He will be joining us for lunch today.”
“Not the Mark Starlin who writes those Monday Morning Mark newsletters?”
“The very same.”
“Those are brilliant, mate. Pleased to meet you.”
“Thanks. Me too. Um. I like your songs.”
Elton laughed.
We walked outside of the building and got into another Tesla. Elton drove. As we headed into Las Vegas, Elon kept shouting, “Wrong side of the road, Elton! Wrong side!”
Somehow we survived and stopped at a Subway sandwich shop in a strip mall. I was a little surprised at the choice of restaurant, considering Elon and Elton are both extremely wealthy.
“I imagine you are a little surprised at the choice of restaurant, considering Elton and I are both extremely wealthy,” Elon said. “We prefer to go to places without crowds. And there is rarely a crowd at Subway since there are about four billion of them.”
As we sat in a booth enjoying our subs, Elton asked, “Can we go up in the rocket today?”
“No,” Elon said.
“Come on. I promise not to play Rocket Man next time I see you.”
“Alright. Deal.”
“Sweet!” Elton said.
After lunch, we hopped in a private jet and flew to Cape Canaveral, Florida. The three of us got outfitted with space suits and headed out to the launch site. I thought it was all a joke, and Elon would say, “Gotcha!” or “Bazinga!” at some point. But he didn’t.
Then the rocket took off. I haven’t felt turbulence like that since I ate six Taco Bell burritos in one sitting. Eventually, the shaking stopped, and we were in space.
“All right, lads, let’s stop at the International Space Station and see what’s on the menu for dinner,” Elton said.
“Dude! We should have brought donuts,” Elon said.
“Do either of you know how to drive this thing?” I asked.
Elon did. And we docked with the space station. But when we got inside, the place was empty. I was getting a little freaked out. Then an enormous muppet-like creature jumped out at us and shouted, “Dinner!”
We stumbled over each other trying to get back to our ship. I felt a searing pain in my side, over and over. I figured the alien must be biting me.
Then I heard the creature call out my name.
“Mark”
“Mark”
“You’re snoring.”
I woke up and rolled over. Then went back to sleep to the refrains of Rocket Man playing in my mind.
Rocket Man, burning out his fuse up here alone…
Happy Monday.
Mark
Loved the Musk story. You’ll have donuts in space someday I believe it!
All these years, I never got around to looking up the fairly incoherent lyrics to Rocket Man, and here you went and supplied a line! (I had “burning” right) Thanks, Mark!