My Fruitless Quest for a Nobel Prize

It has long been a dream of mine to win a Nobel Prize. Well, time’s a wastin’ and I STILL don’t even have one. But, it was the LAST STRAW when my best friend and poker-buddy, Denis Mukwege Mukengere, won the Peace Prize for some nonsense about the treatment of women in Congolese war zones. I have to do something about that smug face staring at me every other weekend and, because my imagination is on life-support, I’ve decided that the only way to show him is to win a Nobel of my own.

First Attempt, Peace Prize: If Denis could do it, why not me? So, I heard, from none other than the president of the United States, that hostilities were to the point where Mexico was going to PAY FOR A WALL ON THEIR NORTHERN BORDER. Now, the problem with negotiating something like this was that no one in Mexico had ever heard of me, as far as I know. So, the president would not take my call. I had to leave a message. So, I said, “Just tell him that Charlie says, cut it out!”. Well, it took a few days for my message to reach his desk, but eventually he stated publicly that he would NEVER pay for a wall on his northern border. Did I get credit? Take a guess…

Prizes won: 0

Second Attempt, Literature: I was sure I could figure this one out logically. Hemingway wins after he writes The Old Man and the Sea. Obviously, I couldn’t write the same book with the same title, or someone might suspect. So, I changed the old man to a hot young girl, the giant fish with a trout. The Hot Young Girl and the Trout Stream probably would’ve won, if only I could’ve gotten it published; but, the publisher wanted me to remove the chariot race from the book and I told him that I’d see him in Hell first…

Prizes won: 0

Third Attempt, Medicine: Okay, this one was a long shot; but, I felt there was a void left by the previous awards in that they didn’t involve homeopathic medicine. I thought that it would separate me from those who dabbled in legitimate medical research and help ensure my prize. Not only was I wrong, but I was industrial-strength wrong.

Prizes won: 0

Fourth Attempt, Physics: With only some undergraduate training in physics, I didn’t expect to have much of a chance; then, it occurred to me: Quantum Physics! It requires virtually no proof AND you can basically make it up as you go along. Problem was, all the good boson names had been copyrighted already, mostly by other physicists… but a couple by the Disney Corporation…

Prizes won: 0

Fifth Attempt, Chemistry: This one might’ve been a sure thing: I developed a serum that would split a person’s personality into its good and evil components. I had almost completed my research when I burned my lab down in a murderous rage… well, it wasn’t EXACTLY me who did it…

Prizes won: 0

Sixth Attempt, Biology: My paper on The Homologous recombination-mediated repair of DNA double-strand breaks and IP(3) receptor-mitochondria connection in apoptosis and autophagy presented a problem: Frankly, I cannot tell a mitochondria from the horse it rode in on. I managed to fake it for a few pages, but the last sixteen pages are just an angry indictment of the founders of Calvanism. The effort proved to be moot, anyway, because there is no Nobel Prize in biology.

Prizes won: 0

Seventh Attempt, Economics: I finally figured it out… it wasn’t my research methods or topics or persistent phone calls to President Enrique Nieto. It was MY NAME. It wasn’t Nobel enough. So, I decided to name-share with economist William Nordhaus. If he won on the basis of his paper, Projections and Uncertainties about Climate Change in an Era of Minimal Climate Policies, it would be a win for both of us… in that I’d show up to receive the award. At that point it would be matter of wills… who wanted it more… Spoiler alert: It was him…

Prizes won: 0

Final Attempt, Physics/Literature: The scattergun approach. Try for two categories at the same time. The book, Neutrino Wars, was chock full of sex, violence and differential equations. It explains gravity waves, time travel and what happens to those little needle-teeth that puppies have. Plus, there’s a chariot race…

Prizes won: STILL ZERO