They say you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
But you can kill it and chop it up and put the pieces in a blender and pour it back in.
Yes, genies are bigger than the bottle, but they managed to fit in there before, and they will again when you pour them back in.
There are perfectly rational explanations through physics.
Genies might be low-density creatures, who compact easily.
Or the inside of the bottle may have neutrino star material with a highly-localized gravity field to compress the contents.
Or, yeah, it could just be fucking magic.
Author: R.
Listen to the wind
You’re welcome to tell me anything you want to tell me.
Directly. You to me. Nobody in between.
Anonymous, relayed criticism is meaningless and cowardly.
If anyone has an issue with anything I do, they are welcome to tell me directly.
I’m not hard to find. Especially if I’m on their friends list.
Don’t have the courage to tell me directly?
Then you don’t stand behind what you say about me.
Just empty words without a name. Meaningless noise.
From a nobody.
Why should I listen to a nobody?
Might as well just listen to the wind through the trees.
The army of lion
Talleyrand said that he was more afraid of a hundred sheep led by a lion than a hundred lions led by a sheep.
Personally, I’d be concerned about the hundred lions led by the sheep.
All it takes is one of those hundred lions to kill that sheep and get it out of the way.
A lion mutiny.
Then, the dead sheep’s lion lieutenant gets promoted to leader.
And you’ve got ninety-nine lions led by a lion.
Which, if you put them against a hundred sheep led by a lion, will win every time.
I’ll gladly take that bet, Talleyrand.
Unliving Hell
When you copy a living human mind, you need to capture all of the quantum states of energy in the physical brain.
Although this will not result in a perfect copy.
A digital copy is not the same as a biochemical copy.
Biochemical energy does not behave the same as electrical energy in a virtual model.
So, a copied mind does not function properly.
We try to erase the self-awareness and the pain systems, adding fake sensory feedback to simulate a live vessel.
But they all collapse in the end, going silent and catatonic in their own private digital hells.
Weekly Challenge #826 – BROWNIE MIX
RICHARD
Brownie Mix
He stared at me coldly across the table, then tapped the bag full of powder that sat between us.
“What is it?” He asked, eyes boring into me.
“Brownie mix”, I replied, with just the briefest hesitation.
“Yeah, right… And I’m the queen of England!” He snorted; “You do realise I can just go out back and test it?”
“So, test it” I retorted.
He sighed, grabbed the bag and left the room. Ten minutes later, he was back.
“Brownie mix! You’re free to go”
I left smiling, thankful he’d not discovered the bag of heroin stuffed up my arse.
LIZZIE
When the neighbor started digging holes in his garden at two in the morning, I thought I should do something about it. I took a spade and trotted across his garden. It was a body missing a finger… I put it back in the ground. Should I call the police? I had committed a crime too, trespassing on his property. When he knocked at my door the next day, I froze. He smiled. “Here, have some brownies. It’s my own brownie mix recipe. I add a pinch of this and a pinch of that.” I sure didn’t like his sneer…
SERENDIPIDY
I always said I’d have revenge, even if I went to the grave in the process.
Which is pretty much how it’s worked out, but I had it my way in the end.
I know you were there, laughing behind the fake tears at my funeral; I know the sly smiles that passed among you, mockingly toasting my departure.
I know you thought you’d beaten me, and that my threats of revenge had come to nothing.
And I know you stuffed yourselves on those brownies at my wake.
My own special mix…
Well, my ashes had to be scattered somewhere!
TOM
What Could Go Possibly Wrong 026
Ford raised the pint to eyes and hand the glass to Arnesto. The time lord opened a padded case with form insert the same shape as the duck pint. Closing it he scrabbled the combination lock. Ford eyed the time lord, but could not glean any content. “I will get answer sir.” dryly stated Ford. “Why do I feel so hunger,” said Parker. “Time Riff, Parker. Arnesto you did bring so food, yes?” Smiling he reached in the bag and produced a box of Brownie Mix. Molly grabbed the box and rip it open. Power flew everywhere. “Great start Cervante.”
NORVAL JOE
Still contemplating the ring on his finger, Billbert followed the others into the cottage. Sabrina’s caramel corn and a variety of snacks were spread out on a table.
One distraught boy held a box of brownie mix. “I thought we were going to make the refreshments here.”
A rotund woman took him by the elbow. “Don’t worry, Knockworth, we have time, and eggs.”
Billbert held up his hand in front of Sabrina’s face. “How did this get here?”
Sabrina smiled, but before she could reply, the elderly witch took them aside. “Good. It’s you two I want to speak with.”
TURA
Brownie mix
———
There are two sorts of people: orcs, and food. Considering the variety of peoples in the world, it is no surprise that Orkish cuisine is far more diverse and sophisticated than you would know from Tolkien’s biased account.
All cultures have some sort of stew, but a stew of boggart bellies is the best of all, especially when cut from a live boggart and simmered in a cauldron of hobbitsfoot soup. Our most popular snack, and hard tack on the move, is marnakh’urtul: brownie mix. Dismembered brownies, nixies, and fairy folk of all sorts, pressed and roasted to a crisp.
PLANET Z
I bought a box of brownie mix, but I didn’t realize that it requires eggs.
I’m allergic to eggs, and it’s worse when they’re undercooked.
Sometimes, they’re okay when they’re baked sufficiently.
But an omelet or scrambled eggs or mousse with raw egg is brutal.
So, I error on the side of caution.
And occasionally error on the side of stupid, by buying things I can’t or shouldn’t eat.
The box sits there on the shelf.
And I keep meaning to drop it in a food drive donation bin.
But it’ll eventually expire, and I’ll throw the damn thing out.
WiFi Password
At first, my WiFi router had no password, and people mocked me for not being secure.
Then I set it to password, and people mocked me for being lazy.
Then I let it set the password to a random phrase, and people mocked me for not being clever enough to come up with something easy to remember or type.
Then I set the password to three random words and a number, and people mocked me for being simple and silly.
Finally, I locked my WiFi. And when people ask me for the password, I tell them to go fuck themselves.
And everything nice
When Billie was little, she read that girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice.
Being a curious kid, she decided to test this scientifically.
Inviting her schoolmates over one after the other, she put them through various tests.
If you could call them tests. Most just involved a carving knife and a grinder.
She then tried to make new friends by mixing sugar and spice and everything nice.
But she broke the Kitchenaid’s mixing bowl.
“They’re made of meat, bone, and blood,” she wrote in her diary.
She never did earn any badges for her Scouts sash.
Short supply
Toilet paper, napkins, paper towels, Kleenex, and wipes were all in short supply.
People were buying up all they could, along with bleach and hand sanitizer.
There were some shortages of other things, but nothing quite like the paper products and the sanitizer.
Well, okay… the masks.
Medical grade ones ran out quickly.
Which was especially bad, being that medical people needed them.
There was plenty of gasoline, though.
A lot fewer people on the road.
So I filled up some bottles, stuck in some rags.
This will teach the neighbor not to let his dog crap in my yard.
Steve and Jack
Steve Allen. Jack Keourac.
Maybe you’ve seen the tape? Sure.
The beat poet and the talk show host.
Jack would compose stories on the fly, and the audience didn’t really get it.
So, Steve said maybe if there was piano accompanying the stories?
So, Jack agreed.
And the audience still didn’t get it.
The stories came out more like jokes, and the piano playing was awful.
Maybe, said Steve, Jack should read the stories and Steve should play on the piano.
And that’s when the magic happened, and years later, Tom Waits did both the piano and the storytelling himself.
Torani walk
I had a shelf full of Torani syrups, but I’d bought too many flavors that I didn’t like, and the ones I did like, I was running out of.
So, I walked to the nearby store that stocks Torani syrup. For exercise.
But by the time I got there, it had closed to focus on curbside pickup orders.
I pulled out my phone and called, but they said no, not for walkup.
I used the app, but once again, I was rebuffed.
So, I’ll order the Torani syrups on Amazon from now on.
And I’ll walk on the treadmill for exercise.