Lucky Charms cereal isn’t just bad for you because of all the sugar.
Diabetes. Tooth decay.
It also has so many colored marshmallows in it.
The most important marshmallow is the red balloon.
If your bowl has 99 of them in it, be careful.
Do not throw the bowl into the air.
Russian and American radar will mistake the cereal for some kind of missile attack.
And they will retaliate with a nuclear exchange.
So many people will die.
The survivors will be left to sift through the radioactive ruins.
And that’s why we eat plain Cheerios, you stupid kid.
Author: R.
His next meal
Benji Peletel always knew where his next meal was coming from.
Through the slot in the door of his solitary jail cell.
He also knew what his next meal would be.
“Step back,” said a voice from the speaker in the ceiling.
Benji stepped back from the door, the slot would open, and a tray would slide in.
On it, a stale brown block of some kind of meat and bread and other things, but as for what was in it, that’s another matter.
When he was done, the slot would open and he’d slide the empty tray back out.
The Horse
I always wondered how the Greeks got out of the horse.
Was it the mouth? Did it look like the horse was vomiting soldiers?
Or was it out from the butt? Like the horse was pooping them out.
Perhaps it was from under the horse, so it looked like the horse was giving birth to a bunch of soldiers?
It’s too bad that the Trojans guard was asleep.
Because if someone had seen it, I’m sure they’d have gotten a laugh from such a silly sight.
Well, besides the whole getting murdered and the army being let in the gates.
The orchestral battle
Long ago, composers and orchestras got along great.
Composers wrote symphonies to make orchestras sound good, and orchestras did their best to perform those symphonies to make that composer look good.
Then, something went sour.
Composers began to write more and more difficult and discordant symphonies.
Symphonies left their instruments at home, just made all kinds of noise.
Audiences left in droves.
They came to a stale peace eventually.
But composers would throw in long solos.
A whole orchestra booked, but only one working.
Everyone staring at the violinist, frittering, and thinking I got my drycleaning rush just for this?
Andu
When the Andu banish someone, the banishment is complete.
No Andu will have anything to do with the banished.
They cannot return to the Andu homeworld, and are not welcome at any offworld Andu establishment.
Andu medicines, Andu technologies, and Andu libraries are all off-limits to the banished.
Anyone who breaks the prohibition, knowingly or not, is subject to severe punishment by the Andu.
Which is why Andu civilization collapsed.
Everyone eventually was banished.
Except for one: Emperor Anduval the Third.
Alone in his palace with his robotic servants, sipping his wine, and watching triple-sunsets with a quiet heavy sigh.
Weekly Challenge #844: BLOCKER
RICHARD
Dunno!
“That’s cheating!”
“What do you mean, cheating? It’s a perfectly legitimate use of the word!”
“Yeah, hardly in the spirit of things is it? ‘Detective Jim Blocker was the precinct’s finest cop…’ If the prompt had been ‘hashtag’, would you call him Detective Jim Hashtag? Of course not. Just make the effort, will you?”
“I’ve tried, but I just can’t come up with anything.”
“Well, if you ask me, that’s just a copout! If you’ll excuse the pun.
The thing is, when you have writers’ block, you can’t give in. You’ve just gotta find a way to remove that blocker.”
LIZZIE
“The bike?”
“Yes! She took it. She says the oddest things. She listens to what I say and reorganizes everything in her head only to spit out sentences filled with hatred. And she says one thing one day to say the exact opposite the next, but swearing she never ever said what she said first. She is crazy. So, I blocked her. There.”
“I wasn’t talking about her. And I said blocker, not block her.”
“Oh… Well, I suppose I’m a pop-up blocker then. She won’t pop up in my life again, that’s for sure. Sadly, neither will my bike.”
SERENDIPIDY
Desperately, I flushed a third time, only for the water to rise perilously close to the top of the pan, whilst the offending, massive, pipe-blocker, obstinately refused to disappear.
I weighed up my options: I could just admit my crime, but that would be goodbye to any second date. Escape through the bathroom window? No, that was plain stupid.
And no way was I going to attempt to shift it by hand.
Only one thing for it.
I returned downstairs to my date.
“I’m sorry to say this, you won’t believe what your sister left in the toilet bowl!”
NORVAL JOE
Not wanting to be late for class, Billbert got to the scoreboard well before school. Sabrina’s eyes lit up when she saw him and broke off from other students standing in a cluster.
Billbert held up a hand. “You’ve never explained why physical contact is so important for your magic use.”
She shrugged. “Fair enough. It clears away the parascomps. Their like beta blockers and prevent the reuptake of magical energy expended the previous day.”
Billbert looked at the other student who only held hands. “Okay. But why kissing?”
Sabrina wrapped her arms around his chest. “Because I like it.”
PLANET Z
The Walther PPK was James Bond’s gun.
Bond started with a Baretta, but Q suggested that he switch to a PPK.
And you know boys and their toys.
Elvis gave the guy who played Felix Leiter a gold-plated PPK.
And Elvis himself owned a silver-plated one.
It’s the gun he shot his TV with when Robert Goulet totally botched the national anthem.
Many armies and police use it today.
You’d think it was some kind of hero’s gun.
Did you know it was Hitler’s sidearm, too?
He shot himself with one.
Good. Bad.
It depends on the hand it’s in.
Reduplicated
Wally hated reduplicated words.
Born in Walla Walla, Washington, he moved to New York, New York.
He refused to play with his yo-yo or go out for putt putt golf.
When he saw a cheerleader with a pom-pom, he’d tear the things up.
When he saw someone with a mahi-mahi, he’d jump on the fish.
When he saw Pizza Pizza at a Little Caesar’s restaurant, he burned the place down.
When he saw someone dancing the Cha Cha, he’d trip them and break their legs.
The cops arrested Wally, he was convicted, and sentenced to ten years in Sing Sing.
George and the wigs
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Still, he did his best, and sometimes, well, he’d manage to win a fight.
The only thing more shocking was his ransom demand: all the officers’ powdered wigs.
He’d bring the wigs to the hospital and hand them out to patients who needed them.
Well, not all of the wigs.
Some had powder burns. And bloodstains. Ew.
George had lots of leftover pirate bandanas, though
And the kids looked cool in them.
The adults, well, maybe cooler than that guitarist, Steven Van Zandt.
Because, seriously, that dude looks creepy.
Hair Fair is an event in Second Life which features dozens of hair and accessory designers selling exclusive new designs. A portion of every sale is donated to Wigs for Kids, which is a charity that helps children who have lost their hair due to illness.
For more information, go to the Hair Fair website.
Pool parties
Ned threw the best pool parties.
All Winter long, it’s what we all looked forward to.
The deck, the furniture, the firepit, the landscaping.
The sound system and the lights.
It’s better than any Downtown club.
All Summer long, the party never ended.
Until it did. Ned and his family moved.
New people moved in.
They had kids our age, but homeschooled.
We tried to introduce ourselves, and they were polite, but shy. Almost reclusive.
We offered to throw the parties for them.
No thank you, they said.
Jenny has a pool. And throws parties.
But it’s not the same.
Favorite day of the week
If you ask people what their favorite day of the week is, most would reply with Friday.
Very few replied Monday.
You know, because it means going back to work. Or School.
Dan liked Sunday.
“It’s because of church,” Dan said.
But it wasn’t the confessionals. Or the choir.
Or the church softball league.
And the potluck brunches, those were truly awful.
They taught choking and CPR classes after those, they were so bad.
Dan put a dollar in the collection plate.
And took out a twenty.
“My favorite day of the week,” he said, putting it in his pocket.