I’m having trouble writing.
I try to think of things to write, but I just can’t find inspiration.
So, I went out for coffee.
There was a girl there with bandaged hands, and she was barely able to hold her coffee.
“Carpal tunnel,” she says. “Surgery messed up. Six months.”
I got her a frozen coffee with a straw, and we talked.
She’s also a writer. Has lot of ideas, just can’t write them all down.
I offered to transcribe them for her.
“Oh, I’ve got a voice to text program,” she said, getting up. “Thanks for the coffee, though.”
I Am A Rock
I feel the pull and a slight warmth upon me. Its pattern is exactly 28 units long. It arches over me and changes the flat about me. I wonder if it is round like me. What makes her move above me? She is too far for us to touch unlike the small bits that shift below me. I sense we had the same beginnings and will come to the same end. But not today for the rock, a child’s hand has carefully placed it in a paper bag and it will be for a time separated from its harsh mistress.
Bananas
I like bananas.
Twice a week, I buy bananas.
I go so often because I eat a lot of bananas and they go bad so quickly.
I’d go once a week, but by the end of the week, all that’s left are bananas I don’t want to eat.
Brown bananas. Blech.
Plus, I walk to the store, and buying so many bananas at once can be a burden. Or they get mashed up from being so heavy in the bag.
I wish someone would deliver bananas.
Maybe I can order a banana pizza and tell them to hold the pizza.
Blood Brothers
Mucus and Eyes Like An Owl lay on their backs and watched the stars slowly cross the sky. Mucus always grumbled that his name really sucked. Eyes Like an Owl liked to point out oozed would be a better adjective. Mucus would punch him in the ribs and Eyes would laugh which pissed Mucus off even more. A low growl emerged from the tree line. “I got a bad feeling about this,” said Eyes. He turned toward Mucus, but Mucus was gone. From far enough away Mucus watched the bear eat Eyes Like an Owl. No one likes eating Mucus.
Yogurt
I’m on a diet, and I need to eat yogurt.
So, to get me into the habit of eating yogurt, I hired a guy to tie me to a chair every morning and force me to eat yogurt.
He did that “Here comes the airplane!” and “Here comes the choo-choo train!” thing with the spoon, but I said that was silly.
He said I was being a bad boy, and dragged me in the chair to the basement.
The good news is, I’ve lost a lot of weight.
Maybe I can slip out of these ropes and escape some day.
Eight Weddings And A Funeral
Elizabeth Taylor’s publicist announced that the Academy Award-winning actress died at the age of 79.
What does she do now?
No, not Elizabeth. Her job’s done.
Sure, there will be endorsements, licensing, and re-releases of her movies until the end of time, but that’s for her estate to do. The woman has a funeral or two to attend, and that’s it.
I’m thinking about the publicist. Unless she’s got other clients, her gig’s done.
Some folks are praying for the soul of Elizabeth Taylor.
Me, I’m praying for the publicist. I hope they get work soon in this awful economy.
Making Yesterday Better
Want to know how to make today better?
Look at it in hindsight tomorrow.
Everything’s better once you get past it.
The bad stuff, well, it’s over. Lick your wounds and move on.
The good stuff, you have memories of. Helps you to get through the bad stuff.
Either way, no matter what you’re going through, it’s always better when it’s in the past.
As for the future, that’s another story.
Who knows what will be in your path, and if you look far enough ahead, the path’s eventually going to come to an end.
Race you to the finish!
Weekly Challenge #267 – “Ocean”
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com. I’m your host, Laurence Simon.
This is Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven, 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 Ocean
There’s an error with PollDaddy and WP-Polls at the moment, so here’s the authors for this week:
- Searaven
- Guard13007
- Tom
- Kyle
- Zackmann
- TJ
- Daniel W.
- TerrazaByte
- Monroe J.
- Norval Joe
- Peisi The Wannabe
- Steven the Nuclear Man
- Planet Z
And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.
Seaeaven
Hiking on the ocean is beautiful. After we set up camp at the end of a day, I went to gather wood for the fire.
“Be careful,” said the Scoutmaster. I listened to him about as much as I ever did.
I walked along the path, gathering wood. Rounding a bush, I almost ran into a black bear five feet away.
We stared at each other. Then, we each turned and ran in opposite directions.
That night, as I lay there, I knew every sound I heard was that bear looking for me. Even the waves crashing on the sand.
Guard13007
Could there ever be? Such a wonderful thing as the sea? The poem died after that, a stupid grin on my face. The ocean was so lovely, but I still couldn’t come up with a poem to encapsulate its wonders.
I walked down the street to the heavy wall blocking the beach from the city. Too bad I could never find a way around it, every time there was a way, the bodies showed the way to close it, and they always closed it quickly. Someday I will make it, I will get around to see the monsters for myself.
Tom
Danny Ocean was cool, well actually Frank Sinatra was cool. Here’s a man who pretty much puts Las Vegas on the map and he makes a movies about robbing said city. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. That’s cool. Event the remake with George Clooney, Danny Ocean was cool. American’s have this love affair with heist films. We can resist the man with a plan. My personal favorite has Maximilian Schell in the Danny Ocean role with a plan to rob the Topkapi museum. What’s cool about every iteration of Danny Ocean is the plan does them in.
Kyle
I fell over the side of the boat and felt the cool ocean water embrace me.
Beneath me I saw a sea turtle. He gestured for me to follow. I swam down; the water rushed by like wind over my skin. I couldn’t believe how fast I was going.
My hands felt weird. I saw that there were webbed membranes forming between my fingers.
My feet stretched and my toes became flippers.
I felt calm.
I sped along and saw the turtle beside me. Our eyes met and I remembered my old friend.
I exhaled bubbles and I could breathe.
Zackmann
Martin was in the middle of the ocean which was really weird since there has been no ocean in
North Dakota for thousands of years.
He saw a squarish ship. Thankfully someone threw him a rope and pulled him out of the water.
On the deck an older man asked “Have you seen my son?” another said “Beware of ” Martin
asked “the one legged man?” “Don’t be silly boy, be ware of the hairy mango!” “What sort of a
ship is this?” Uniformed man said “Hello, I am Captain Cheyenne. I am afraid your stuck in a
story ark”
TJ
More than simple surveillance, Martin knew part of being a spy is
learning leveragable information. So it was with this dark motive he
targeted Chelsea Ocean, a senior. The mission he set for himself was to
discover intimate knowledge of her person and threaten to tell a geek,
so the geek would then seem to have intimate knowledge of her person. He
installed the video transmitter in the broken towel dispenser in the
girls lockerroom. Mission failure when the gym mistress, Miss Harch,
stood in front of that dispenser. However, he did learn Miss Harch
enjoyed watching the girls shower.
Daniel W.
“As it turned out, it wasn’t global warming that caused the ocean levels to rise; it was the return of Atlantis. The reappearance of the continent caused tsunamis and flooding along both coasts of the Atlantic Ocean–”
“Yes, yes – we know that,” the Senator snapped. “Your expedition was to find out how and why Atlantis returned.”
“According to the Atlantians, every five millennia a continent is set adrift through the multiverse, hopping from one dimension to the next at random intervals. When it returns, another takes its place…” I hesitated before delivering the bad news. “North America is next.”
TerrazaByte
SeaWorld in Orlando, FL is home to Bob & Tony, the smartest dolphins in the world. Yesterday, a famous oceanographer was testing his latest device that interprets the dolphins’ clicks and squeaks into an audible speech that we all can understand.
This device confirmed Bob & Tony’s true intelligence.
“Hey Sly, why do you think they keep calling us Bob & Tony?”
“Not sure Floppy Fin, they’re not the brightest of species that we’ve had the opportunity to train.”
“Now for this training session, let’s work on getting them to climb a ladder over our pool and serve us dinner.”
Monroe J.
The Ocean of Ideas is a rocky one. Rolling waves and cresting swells of ideas and concepts churn the deep fathoms of the subconscious. However, reality is a seagull that pecks you in the head distracting you from this Posidean rollercoaster. I swatted the gull away and I got hit starboard side by an idea for a story. I almost capsized. I altered my course and pointed the prow of my boat towards the glistening horizon determined to master this Ocean of Ideas. It was then I saw a friend whizz by in his clockwork speedboat. Ah dammit. Splash!
Norval Joe
Kelp swayed back and forth as the dark green water rose and fell among the pilings of the pier.
“You can’t talk to me, Skip,” Feruncula whispered. “You know my dad will flip if he sees us together.”
“Well, run away with me,” Skip said with unhindered enthusiasm. “Forget Daddy and come explore the oceans with me.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Feruncula said. “I’m a barnicle and your…. planton. Besides, I don’t love you.”
She must have seen the stricken look in his beady eyes.
“Don’t be sad,” she said, “there are plenty of fish in the sea.”
Peisi
She sighed. The sight. A patch of blue embellished with tiny sparkling jewels of sunshine that twinkled like stars in the heat. A cloud of white stretching across the sky to form that parallel in the distance that never ceased to grow. As a child, she would watch it shimmer as she worked to bury her feet in the sand. She would lie on her back with her eyes closed as she willed for the salty waves to take her far away. But as the waters turned redder and herself older, she realized, that it was never going to happen.
S.T.N.M.
The oceans of Venus slip over my head. Finally, I can breathe properly again.
Raina slides into the thick atmosphere to my right. Her shape, like mine, resembles the long cylinder of a porpoise. Radar and telemetry keep us together despite the waves and currents of the thick atmosphere. I remember the fiction of my father’s youth.
“It’s like the orbital elevator ships are fishing,” I commoed.
Her right eye fixes on me. “The only thing to fish for in this hellhole is us.” A flick of her tail sends her toward base.
I still watch out for Venusian kraken.
Planet Z
In fourteen ninety-two
Columbus sailed
The ocean blue
That’s what your teachers would like you to believe.
Worthless rubbish.
He never went with his first three expeditions.
Too cowardly.
Instead, he paid off the harbormaster, and he was ferried out to the ship before it docked.
By the time the fourth voyage was ready to set out, Columbus wanted to see all the wonders of the New World with his own eyes, instead of relaying them secondhand from his explorers and sailors.
Bad idea.
Stranded in Jamaica for a year, his men told him “No more voyages, you incompetent fool.”
Never see you again
You said you never wanted to see me again.
So, I went down into my basement workshop and invented an invisibility cloak.
Which didn’t work out so great. It’s just a sheet you couldn’t see.
I mean, yeah, that’s kinda cool, but doesn’t really get the job done.
I thought about bringing you down into the workshop with me and then turning off the lights so you couldn’t see me, but I still wanted to see you.
That’s when I decided to go with a third option:
Keep that blindfold on, Janey, or I’ll have to tear your eyes out.
Limits
Mom said that life is all about limits.
Some of are hard limits, like the speed of light.
Others are soft limits, like the speed limit on the highway. You can go faster than that, although you might get pulled over.
With experience, you learn which limits are hard and which are soft.
The cop isn’t impressed by my story, and he hands me a ticket for speeding.
I thank him and check the cargo.
The hyperdrive in the trailer is fine.
The boys at the lab are going to love this one, I think, and start the truck up.