One of my better efforts for 100 Words Or Les Nessman, completely ignoring the theme and making a cheap joke at the expense of Major League Baseball, Congress, and Idaho.

Doctor Odd received the express written consent of Major League Baseball on Monday.

By Wednesday, Idaho was gone. Totally vanished. Nowhere to be found.

The market reacted quickly. Prices for potatoes skyrocketed. "Would you like fries with that?" was whispered only among the wealthy.

Congress held weeks of hearings, but they never did receive an adequate explanation from the baseball commissioner or Doctor Odd.

He said he was just being patriotic and trying to make Syria vanish, but his calculations were off by a bit.

What I found strange was that nobody ever asked for him to bring Idaho back.

I think this is one of my weirdest and my best.

Something something about laughter something...

Hey, remember Doctor Odd?

I liked Doctor Odd. Let's have some fun with him!

"Ladies and gentlemen - observe!"

Doctor Odd wheeled the patient into the gigantic auditorium and began his presentation on the Applied Healing Power Of Laughter.

As the lecture progressed into carefully-orchestrated absurdity, thousands of doctors in the audience began to laugh.

And laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

Soon, the entire audience roared with laughter… into the Sonic Focusing Array!

Doctor Odd turned a few knobs, threw switches, and yelled "Now watch this!"

The patient's wheelchair shook, glowed blue…

And exploded.

Despite the setback, Doctor Odd still managed to get funding from the Pentagon.

Weapon of mass hysteria, they called it.

This one is a little late because I was futzing with a library in Hell, but "Jesse's Girl" came over the radio and it hit me all of the sudden...

Ever since he first heard the song, Dr. Odd has been working hard on getting Jesse's girl for Rick Springfield.

At first, he tried pheromones and hypnosis. That just made her confused and somewhat psychotic.

He considered violently removing Jesse from the picture, but that would just get the girl worried about Jesse.

Finally, he decided cloning was the correct route. Using accelerated growth tanks, be produced a perfect biological replica.

Without any of the emotional or intellectual experience of Jesse's girl, of course. Her mind was a complete blank.

As for Dr. Odd, well, success hasn't spoiled him yet.

Keep your theme ideas coming. I really need them.

More world-ending stories for your amusement...

I see you like the box. Would you like to know what it does?

Press the button once, and the box will buzz.

Press the button two times, and the box plays music.

Press the button three times, and the music stops.

Press the button four times, and the box will sparkle with pretty green lights for five seconds.

Press the button five times, and the box will emit a cloud of lemon-scented steam.

Whatever you do, don't push and hold the button.

What happens? Well, according to my blueprints, the world ends.

Fifty bucks?

You have yourself a box.

Maybe I'll follow this one up at some point.

Okay, it's time for another Doctor Odd vignette.

Doctor Odd held the eggs against the phase-regulated vacuum pump and flipped the switch.

"Watch!" he yelled.

The eggs vibrated for a moment, glowed red, and then their insides dropped into the skillet below.

"Success," said Odd, inspecting the shells.

Not a crack.

"You can't do this!" shouted his assistant. "This is madness! You cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs!"

"You're right," said Odd, looking at the bubbling eggy goop in the frying pan.

"Thank God you came to your senses, Doctor," said his assistant.

"What was I thinking?" said Doctor Odd. "It needs peppers and mushrooms!"

I may make a regular thing out of him. Or not.

I wrote a story like this a very long time ago, but it's time that it was formally added to the Oddiverse:

Doctor Odd looked at the destruction in the yard, sighed, and kneeled down to talk to his daughter. "Pumpkin," he said. "Remember when Daddy taught you about grafting?" Pumpkin nodded her head. "Well, there's a good kind of grafting and a bad kind. Good grafting is when you combine plant varieties to make bug-resistant species or crops that survive droughts." Pumpkin smiled. "Bad grafting is what you did with your friend Bobby, the lawnmower, and your dog." Pumpkin frowned. "Daddy will clean up this mess. Now go wash up for dinner." Pumpkin ran inside and squealed happily for tater tots.

Back to a little science fiction from the world of Doctor Odd.

Nobody wants to see-saw with little Harvey, so Dr. Odd programmed the teaching assistant robot to see-saw.

Kids love robots. Now every kid wants to see-saw with the robot. But instead of taking turns, they fight.

Fights aren't healthy, so Dr. Odd reprogrammed the robot to stop see-sawing.

Without the robot, the kids didn't want to see-saw anymore.

Except for Harvey. Poor Harvey, sitting all alone.

That's not healthy either. So Dr. Odd reprogrammed him, too.

Harvey's much happier playing tag and pulling pigtails with the rest of the kids.

How do you feel about that?

Sad? Well, hold still.

What sins keep Doctor Odd up at night?

Doctor Odd's red-rimmed eyes peered at the hundreds of monitors on the wall. "Why are you watching all of these science conferences at once?" asked his assistant. "I must remain current," said Odd. "I cannot allow ignorance to take a hold of my great mind. I must know everything." The assistant smirked. "Don't you need to sleep at some point?" "I am asleep," said the mad scientist, tapping the glowing green steel cap on his head. "This device allows me to dream all of this." His assistant shrugged, turned into a hot dog, and flew back to the Mushroom Kingdom.

How about a string of bad luck?

After years of research and experimentation, Dr. Odd managed to isolate the chemical compound which was responsible for luck.

He tried to bottle the stuff and sell it over the counter, but he kept running into all sorts of problems in production and distribution.

The Food and Drug Administration sprung a surprise inspection of his facilities and ultimately shut his labs down for a wide variety of violations.

"This is concentrated Bad Luck!" moaned Dr. Odd.

The Pentagon was very interested in a weaponized form of Bad Luck, so Dr. Odd shipped them a sample...

Back on September 10, 2001.

It's been a while since my last Dr. Odd story.

Did you miss him?

Would you let Dr. Odd stop your heart for a thousand dollars?

No, it's not permanent. Just for a minute.

Then, when the minute is over, he starts it right back up.

And you get your thousand dollars.

It would be the easiest money you ever made, right?

As I lay on the table and listen to the machines, I wonder if this is the right thing to do.

Sure, I need the money, but stop my heart for a minute?

Then, it hits me.

"Why are you doing this?" I ask Dr. Odd.

He smiles and flips a switch.

"That's the way the cookie crumbles," said Doctor Odd's mother.

"Why?" asked the Child Odd.

He was eight. Young, but still the sapling that would grow into the mad scientist the world would fear.

"I don't know," said his mother.

From that point on, Doctor Odd begged for cookies - demanded them.

Mother Odd gladly provided, watching her son meticulously test each batch, suggest adjustments to the recipe, and come up with various cookie-crumbling techniques.

On hear deathbed, Mother Odd asked her son what he'd discovered from all this research.

Doctor Odd smiled and patted her hand. "I prefer brownies."

Lucy couldn't wait to take the bandages off, but the doctors said she had a week to go before they thought her eyes would be safe to check.

Her eyes... her kaleidoscope eyes.

At first the colors and reflections of reality were exciting and mesmerizing, but the fascination ended quickly as she found herself completely helpless to perform the most simple tasks: reading and walking around.

Dr. Odd patted her shoulder.

"One more week," he said. "How would you like to listen to some music, Lucy?"

"Sure," she said.

And on cue, Billy Shears began to play out of tune.

Doctor Odd's wealth comes from a series of patients he's licensed the rights to.

If I told you what devices he invented, you'd be amazed.

You'd also be shocked to know that such easy-to-use devices were blamed by countless fools for causing grievous injuries.

They sued Doctor Odd for millions of dollars.

Doctor Odd responded by inventing one last, simple, incredibly useful invention.

Everyone in the world ended up buying one. In fact, each person born into this world is provided with one now.

Oh, and this invention - it also kills lawyers.

(Which makes it even more useful, I suppose.)

Everybody's trying to build a better mousetrap.

Me, I'm trying to build a worse mousetrap.

You can waste your time with engineering and materials science and physics and such, but after playing that old kids' game, I just want to make a mess and a whole lot of noise.

Who cares if it traps a mouse or not, right? Half the fun is getting there.

And mom always said that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Speaking of which, what else do you want with your omelet besides shredded mouse?

Yeah, I thought you'd want cheese.

I am re-mixing the Weekly Challenge #71 mp3 file because Laieanna noticed that the levels for the ending were way too low.

Doctor Odd watched the mice scurry around the maze, trying to find the source of the scent of cheese.

Unlike other mazes, there was no "center" or "goal" to this one. It was just a series of loops.

And as for the cheese, well, he had smeared the walls and floors of the maze with a cloth containing a cheese scent an hour before.

The mice kept going in circles, and Doctor Odd waited for one to just give up.

Sure enough, the mice were poking their noses through the mesh on top of the maze.

They'd learned to fail.