Promises

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The Promises Van: a steel hulk raised up on massive wheels.
It rolls from neighborhood to neighborhood, collecting promises between citizens.
Nobody knows what Central Authority does with the promises.
Some say they keep a file on everyone making promises and what they’re promising.
Others say they’re planning a celebration soon, and the Promises Van will delivering on the promises.
But the Promises Van never goes to Central Authority. It just goes in a circuit, over and over.
It never opens. It never stops.
It just rolls.
That’s when I realized: it’s just a huge robot that runs on paper.

Gray Hair

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I remember when I discovered my first gray hair.
I was looking in the mirror and I saw a flash of something.
So, I stopped and looked around for a minute, and I found it.
A gray hair, tempting me to remove it.
I plucked it out.
Pretty soon, there were too many to pluck out.
Eventually, the gray hairs outnumbered the black hairs.
Now, I search and search, and only find gray hairs.
Except for one.
I look at it, and it tempts me to remove it.
So, I get the tweezers, and pluck it out of my nose.

Every 20 minutes

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Every 20 minutes, the timer goes off and I do 20 situps.
Sure, diet and walking can shed the pounds, but I carry my weight in my gut, so I needed to get better about targeting my trouble areas.
Situps are easy to do, and setting a kitchen timer to force myself to do reps over and over has been great about keeping the pace.
However, after a while, you can overdo it.
Hernias can be repaired, but lethal strokes can’t.
The timer goes off, and I feel a poke from the demon sitting on a stool.
“Do another twenty!”

Weekly Challenge #230 – Drabble Like A Pirate Day

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Thirty, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was… was…. um…
It’s DRABBLE LIKE A PIRATE DAY!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
TJ
Freereed
Tom
Zackmann
Steven
Abigail
Norval Joe
The Dread Pirate of Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):


TJ

My investigation into the financial disaster of 2008 had turned up a lot
of dead ends. Wreckage doesn’t begin to describe it. Forensic
accounting is just words when entire trading floors lie smoldering in
ruins. Hostile takeovers left smaller investors at sea, desperate to
stay afloat. I caught a lead in a darkened boardroom, where the
hollow-eyed shell of a CFO cowered under a table. “Hats,” he
breathed. “We’re not wearing enough hats.” That and an unexploded
portfolio, I knew my quarry. Such is the reign of terror left in the
wake of the Crimson Permanent Assurance. Yo. Ho. Ho.

Freereed

CaptainSqueakSears was missing half his right-middle-finger. He’d sneak behind a sailor, jab the stump hard-between-their-ribs and growl, “Arrggg, there’s no swimmin back!”
Every six months TheOnyx would put-sail-to-home. From deck Squeak could see his four-storey-clapboard-monstrosity looming over NewBedfordHarbor.
He’d stomp into the sitting-room shouting “Abigail@!Abby@” And out would run the FulsomeAbby and her ScrawnySisterFern.
After supping-drinking-smoking-slobbering-snoring-swearing, he’d steer to the vast-billowy-ocean of their marriage-bed and plough-through-the-waves of his plump wife’s flesh.
Then in the wee-hours, he’d sneak up the-old-stairway to enjoy the ScrawnySister. While teetering back down to his wife… “Damn@! That stair@!” and that’s how Squeak got his name.

Tom

Welcome to Pirate as a second language. I’m your instructor R L Stevenson. I known many of yee r new to Belize and hope immersing yourself in r colorful and reductive language will speed your assimilation into r hyper profiteering culture. Remember: Rome wasn’t sacked in day. Little pirate humor.
Let’s begin with pirate Epistemology
Y-I-R?
C-I-R.
B-I-R!
Y-U-R?
R-U-B?
We-B-R!
Now for a bit of rancorous, but common pirate exchange
I-C-T.
We-C-U-P.
Remember R can be used as a verb, possessive, and agreement

Zackmann

Welcome to our ship “The Wobegon.” Have some of that there hot dish and lefsa. We are here
to make the bug bucks, ya sure you bet ya. If ya live, becoming rich as a troll is pretty much a
dun deal then.
Say that captain doesn’t really talk like a pirate? He sounds more Keillor than Keelhaul.
Sure the captain comes from a long line of pirates who have been raiding these waters since Leaf
Erickson discover the new world. The captain and most of the crew are from Minnesota don’t
you know. That is except TJ

Steven

The first defendant wore a “home taping is killing the music industry”
shirt. “Plea?” I asked.
“Not guilty! Information wants to be free! ”
“Innocent by reason of insanity.” I said. “Ideological idiots. Next!”
The man had candles in his black beard. “Yarrr, me letter of mark
from the Queen here says – ”
“Dry him out in the drunk tank. He reeks of rum. Next!”
The third defendant wore a suit and tie. “I don’t understand. I just
ran the subprime CDO desk at an investment bank.”
I leapt up. “Hang him. Hang him by the neck until he’s dead, dead, dead!”

Abigail

When I first started playing tennis with him I wasn’t so bad. The trick they say is to get out of your head. I did. He had beautiful tan calves and his socks were pristine white. I plotted.
Later we played in earnest never actually keeping score but sometimes we’d paste a bullet, or body shot. I liked playing rough with him. But then he sliced. The back spin and warp on the ball pissed me off. I hit it.”Arg!” “Arg? Pirate Tennis?” he laughed slicing again. I tried to slice back, hard, The bruise lasted for weeks.
Love hurts.

Norval Joe

“Welcome to Mc Donalds, may I take yer order”
“Yes. I would like a ten peice, number ten, with a medium sprite.”
“Would ye like a Coke and barbeque sauce with those nuggets?”
“No. I would like a sprite and hot mustard sauce. Can I have three?”
“We only give two suaces with a ten peice. A third will cost ye two bits.”
“Fine.”
“Would ye like two hot apple pies for a dollar?”
“No, that’s all, thanks, and by the way, where’s the regular staff that works here?”
“Harr. They be sleepin in Davy Jones locker, the scurvy dogs.”

Planet Z

Susie brought her pet rabbit to Show And Tell.
Abdul brought a beautifully-painted flowerpot.
Billy brought a pirate.
Sure, it was just a homeless drunk in a pirate costume, but he growled and slurred and waved his plastic cutlass like a real pirate.
Later, the principal asked the teacher why she let the bum into the room in the first place.
She thought it was his grandfather or an actor he hired. and tried to laugh about it: “Taking off his eyepatch was somewhat educational about disabilities, right?”
“Yes, but taking off his pants and crapping in the flowerpot wasn’t.”

Typing

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I’m tired, and I’m out of ideas for stories.
So, I head to the writer’s group and sit at a typewriter.
Other writers are there, typing away.
The sound of the typewriters, humming and clacking, makes me relax, and I feel a little drowsy.
So I fold my arms on the desk and rest my head for a bit.
Sleep takes me, and I dream of The Woman With Typewriter Keys For Eyes.
I pull the ribbons from her hair, my hands come away stained with ink.
And…
I wake up, and my tongue is caught in the typewriter’s strikers.

Retraining

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I’ve tried to diet before, but it never worked.
I’d get back into the habit of eating junk food and it would all fall apart.
So, I trained myself to dislike junk food.
Now, instead of craving potato chips, I hate them.
When I see someone with a bag, I grab it out of their hands, throw it to the ground, and stomp them to bits.
This is rather violent and destructive, but it’s better than people who train themselves to fear foods.
After all, how do you think vampires got that way about garlic?
Stink-breath is bad for neck-biters.

Cave Paintings

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I am sitting in a cave, scared.
It is cold, damp and dark.
Every Winter solstice, the sun’s rays illuminate the wall so that the figures appear to dance.
I’ve tried it with flashlights, spotlights- but it has to be sunlight on this specific day.
I say it’s a magic spell, cast by a long-dead shaman.
Light peeks in through the cave’s entrance… and then it gets darker.
I hear thunder.
Damn. Awful time for a rainstorm.
Except… there’s no rain.
It gets darker, the figures dance, and I hear chanting.
Raising my spear, recognizing faces- I rejoin my tribe.

Organized

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I refuse to be a part of any organized religion.
So, I’ve joined a highly-disorganized church.
I’m not sure of the name of it. The signs all say different things.
One sign suggests that it’s a military research facility. Perhaps at one time it was, but I have yet to have someone from the military research me during a service.
Pews are scattered about, there’s no telling what kind of book you’ll read from.
I’ve got a phonebook this week.
There is no choir. People sing when they want to, what they want to.
I said “asylum,” right?
Church?
Oops.

Shoulders

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Most people have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, giving them advice as they go through their lives.
I have two angels on my shoulders. No devil.
All I get is good advice and admonishment when I don’t follow it.
If I have two angels on my shoulders, is someone out there with two devils on theirs?
Instead of getting a constant stream of goodness, they’re under the influence of evil.
That’s why I kidnapped you. You look like a two-devil person to me.
The angels are telling me not to shoot you.
I disagree.

Weird

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Mrs Jones knocked on her neighbor’s door and asked for a cup of weird.
“I’m having some trouble keeping up with the weird bill,” she said. “You know, with the rates going up recently and Henry and I being on a fixed income after he was laid off before he could retire early and get his pension-”
The neighbor made a hand gesture suggesting One moment, please and went down into their dungeon.
A minute later, they came back with a glowing, steaming mug of weird.
“Oh, thank you,” said Mrs. Jones, and went back to her upside-down pyramid home.