Soul ranchers

This is almost verbatim a conversation that took place during a SEAL PT course workout one fine morning between the instructor and various clients. Talking is generally discouraged, but this happened to be the "more relaxed" group that meets at 6 a.m. instead of 5:30 a.m.

DH: PARTNER UP!! 2 MINUTES OF PUSHUPS!! Hey Miss Rita, listen to my screenplay! There’s this guy, right? And he goes to have some Lasik. Then, due to some freak accident of the surgery, he’s left with the ability to see constantly moving shadows out of the corner of his eye. After a while, he learns that the shadows he is seeing are human souls being sucked up by this being… . It turns out that there an evil alien force on another plane of existence that thrives on human souls- the older the better ….they’re called “Soul Ranchers”…

RP: Oh, so the more we suffer, the older the souls get and so it’s the Soul Ranchers that are causing all the human suffering….

DH: KEEP PUSHING!! YOU ONLY GET THE BENEFIT IF YOU GO UP AND DOWN!!! Yeah, so how do we get out of this? Do you just say, oh what the hell, I’m going to just live my life, there’s nothing I can do

MC: (a young 19 yr old Catholic student in our group) so there’s no consequence to our actions, there’s no God we have to answer to…

DH:15 SECONDS!! God?!? I’m talking about Soul Ranchers. Are you saying that the only reason you do anything right is because you are afraid of GOD? PUSH PUSH PUSH! 30 SECONDS!! What about the laws of society and man? Why do you do anything right?

MC: guilt.

RP: Well, what if we flooded the market and all committed suicide so there would be a bunch of souls, not necessarily old and suffering….

DH: SWITCH IT UP!! GROUP 2 HIT THE GROUND! What the hell have you done to our protagonist? You can’t just commit suicide, anyway they’d just be happy because they’d get all those souls, it would have no resolution.

RP: So call it a French film. Anyway, the souls wouldn’t be old, then it would be over…

DH: 1 MINUTE!! UP AND DOWN! PUSH PUSH PUSH!! DON’T COUNT THAT! YOU CALL THAT A PUSHUP?!? I don’t like the mass suicide solution. And I hate subtitles. Anyway, they eat the souls whether they’re old or not, it’s just that they’re more tasty…better beef. SWITCH!!

RP: (pushing up): I GOT IT!! We could all become vampires, they don’t have any souls…

TM: (a girl that works for the Museum of Fine Arts) …or lawyers, THEY don’t have any souls

DH: ha ha ha, lawyers, I like that. STOP!! TRICEP PUSHUPS! ONE MINUTE! I think ya’lls weekend assignment is to figure out an ending for this. LISTEN UP!! THERE’S THIS GUY AND BECAUSE HE HAD A BOTCHED LASIK SURGERY HE CAN NOW SEE THESE SHADOWS THAT ARE SOULS BEING FARMED BY THIS EVIL ALIEN FORCE CALLED “SOUL RANCHERS!!” THEY EAT SOULS BECAUSE THEY’RE TASTY!!! YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO!!

AL: (an eye surgeon) How does he know what he’s seeing are souls?

RP: True- they could just be vitreous floaters…

DT: (resident philosopher/pool guy) What if he wakes up and its all the result of bad anesthesia?

DH: NO! That’s the oldest trick in the book, Mr. David. KEEP PUSHING! GET YOUR BUTTS DOWN!! They are souls, and he has to figure out how to fight the Soul Ranchers..

TM: Wasn’t that the theme of the Matrix?

RP: Well there only really are 4 stories in the world, they just all get retold-

AL: Why do we always talk about the botched Lasik around me?

The story of the bald frog with the wig

Once upon a time in a kingdom not so far away there lived a prince. This prince had really pissed off some of the princess types in the kingdom by going to the ball with their ugly stepsisters. I mean, the prince wasn't all that; he had a big nose and no chin. Alls he really had going for him was a head full of luxurious locks of curly auburn hair. So just who did he think he was anyway, passing up the beautiful, fit princesses for their ugly, fat, evil stepsisters? One day all the princesses decided to get together and teach him a lesson. They snuck up on him as he lay snoring in the garden after a night out dancing with one of the ugly stepsisters, and using pruning shears that were lying nearby, they chopped off all that beautiful hair and knitted it into a dozen golf tee cozies. For some reason, this improved all of their golf games so they ended up living happily ever after on their winnings from the PGA Princesses tour. Meanwhile the prince, having woke up bald from his nap, went to see if one of the ugly stepsisters could do anything for him (she was the President of the Hair Club for Women). Unfortunately she was mad at him for stepping on her big ugly toe the night before so she turned him into a frog instead. As he hopped miserably away he thought he saw a few locks of his formerly beautiful hair lying on the ground so he fashioned them into an Elvis-like pompadour and went looking for a disco. But what he thought was his old hair was actually leftovers from a bloomin' onion-ring appetizer from the night before that the stepsister was saving for her extremely ugly and mean dog. Needless to say, the dog, spying his snack hopping away, pounced on it, ate it, and lived happily ever after.

The end.