At first, airlines allowed passengers with disabilities to bring their helper animals on board.
You know, blind or crippled people with their dogs.
Then, people claimed to need emotional support animals.
They claimed that they were trained, but emotionally-unbalanced people lie, you know.
So, they brought cats and chickens and lizards and snakes and ponies.
To the point where their desire for emotional comfort caused massive emotional unrest among the other passengers.
That’s when some clown claimed that they should be allowed to bring their emotional support elephant.
“Get a fucking life, asshole,” said the airlines. “And take the train.”
Author: R.
Mindy Blake
Did I know Mindy Blake?
Yes, but I knew the Mindy Blake from a parallel dimension.
She looked the same, but the other Mindy Blake took chances, took risks.
She lived life to the fullest.
Such a shame I had to kill her.
It was either that, or the universe ending.
Because of that Mindy Blake.
As opposed to this Mindy Blake, the one here.
Craven little thing.
“You’re a disgrace to the name of Mindy Blake,” I said.
She wasn’t on my kill list, but she deserved it.
When I’m done, I’ll come back.
So you can thank me.
The bakery
It was an honest mistake at the bakery.
On the same day, they had to deliver a bunch of cakes.
A graduation cake, a gay wedding cake, a baby shower cake, a retirement party cake, a birthday cake…
Pretty much, every occasion you could think of, there was a cake that had been ordered.
And the bakery labeled each of the boxes wrong.
Oh, the chaos that ensued. Hilarious, tragic… the bakery’s reputation was ruined.
The fact that nobody opened the box to look at their cake to make sure it was right, well, that was the real mistake, right?
Keeping memories
Back in the days of video tape, I’d use the handycam to record a lot of important things.
Weddings. Birthdays. Those things.
I’d also record a lot of shows that I didn’t have time to watch or were going on at the same time as something else I wanted to watch.
The problem was, I’d run out of tapes, or I’d accidentally record over something I wanted to keep.
Nowadays, you record stuff digitally, although for a while you could run out of disk space, now you can store it all in the cloud.
Now, what was my fucking password?
Sharing is bullshit
Every time my dad came home from a convention, he’d bring all kinds of neat stuff.
Keychains, flashlights, strange decks of cards, and other things.
One year, he came home with a frisbee-sized foam-rubber nickel.
“It’s a flying nickel,” he said. “You two can share it.”
My brother grabbed it and threw it around the house.
I asked for a chance to play with it.
He shoved me to the floor, and I screamed.
So, my mother took it away, yelled “SO YOU TWO CAN’T SHARE?” and tore it in half.
Thank god she never did that with the dog.
Weekly Challenge #798 – DISCARD
- Lizzie
- Richard
- Tom
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Jared
- Planet Z
TOM
Magic
Over the last two years what has kept me sane, while sheathed in place and
a half dozen gigs getting canceled is: the practice. Run tricks over and
over. Refining the patter, removing steps, shifting point of view. Moving
from process, to practice, to presentation has been leaps of effort. I’ve
discovered I have a deep river of fear, that the brain is not aware of,
but the hands sure are. I can’t even duplicate the tremors in my fingers
while I seem to be totally at rest. Luckily I can fall back on the
knowledge about Dis Card though.
RICHARD
Magical
My uncle Albert is the worst magician in the world.
Let me give you an example of just how bad his tricks are: He’d shuffle some cards, hold them out and ask me to pick a card, any card.
Then he’d remove my card, put it face down on the table and discard the rest of the deck, before pointing at the remaining card with a flourish and asking, “Is that your card?”
It all ended very badly though…
Last week, he tried the classic ‘detachable thumb’ trick.
After the hospital re-attached it, he vowed never to do magic again.
LIZZIE
Warm and cozy. Discard.
Tea brewing. Discard.
Books and more books. Discard and discard.
That’s what he had said. Discard.
But she loved her warm cozy room. Books were her life. How could she discard all she cared for?
And then she would hear his voice, roaring inside her head, discard, discard, discard.
Had he discarded everything too, she asked in a barely audible voice. He turned to face her. If looks could kill…
Discard, you hear me.
And she did.
Becoming a secret agent was not for her, but they sure taught effective ways of.. getting rid of anything.
SERENDIPIDY
I’m very proud of my green credentials!
I try not to throw anything away, and do my best to restore, recycle, repurpose and reuse things that most people would treat as junk.
It makes me feel good, so much so that I’m more than happy to collect all the crap in the neighbourhood that other people discard, and recycle that too.
Especially what they abandon in the local cemetery. All of that good meat going to waste… It’s a crying shame.
Not any more though!
And my new meat pie business is doing a roaring trade too!
Totally environmentally friendly!
JARED
‘No Free Lunch Goes Unpunished’
Speeding down another side road, he checked his rear-view mirror again in a way only obsessive paranoia can provoke. He again replayed the linchpin moment his life now pivots on:
“I found a tool bag after the last time one of you guys was here. ‘S’it yours?” The office manager casually gestured to a tattered canvas tool bag sagging in the corner, my employer’s faded logo on the side.
I didn’t know who left it, but then I thought ‘Hey, free tools!’ So, I gave a nod, shook his hand, and loaded it onto my cart.
Shouldn’t have looked inside…
NORVAL JOE
Billbert was speachless at the girl’s odd response. What more could she help him with, besides showing him to his homeroom class?
He held up the paper. “All I really need is to get to my homeroom.”
She smiled again. Her teeth appeared unnaturally white. Was it because of her glowing yellow eyes? “You can get rid of the paper. I’m in all of your classes. You can follow me.”
Billbert wasn’t ready to discard his schedule just yet. She’d hardly looked at it and he wanted to insure that she was taking him to the correct rooms each time.
PLANET Z
There’s a bronze statue in the middle of the university of some wise old man standing there, one hand holding a scroll and the other arm outstretched, palm up, gesturing to something.
One Friday afternoon, the students put a six pack of beer in his palm.
A tradition was born.
Every Friday afternoon, a six pack of beer appears.
At first, some student would put it there.
Then, increasingly elaborate ceremonies.
Runners relaying the beer around campus like an Olympic flame.
The thing is, nobody has ever seen what happens to the beer.
One moment it’s there, then it’s gone.
The Good Catholic
My girlfriend Megan’s a magician’s assistant.
She’s a good Catholic, and she’s saving herself for marriage.
So, she borrowed two sets of Mismade Girl boxes from her boss.
Her roommate Sally got into one set, and Megan separated her into four sections.
“Now do it to me,” she said, getting into the other set.
She then had me put her head on Sally’s body.
I opened Sally’s head box. “Are you okay with this?” I asked.
“Fuck her brains out,” she said, grinning. “God, she needs it.”
So, I did.
I ended up marrying Sally.
Because her blowjobs were spectacular.
Winning it all
When I drive in to work, there’s a billboard along the freeway that displays the jackpots for the Powerball and the Mega Millions lotteries.
I usually buy a ticket on Wednesday afternoon and don’t look at it.
Then, on the next morning, when I look up at the billboard on the way to work, if the number has reset, maybe it’s me that won the jackpot.
And I can delude myself into thinking I can arrive at work, look up the numbers, and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.
As opposed to when I tell them to fuck themselves anyway.
The condemned
After the trial, Gul was dragged out of the courtroom and into the dungeon.
Tradition was that the court would take three days to deliver their verdict.
It came in the form of a dish of sherbet.
White for not guilty, red for guilty.
And condemned to death.
After three days, a guard arrived with a napkin-covered dish.
“Here’s your sherbet,” said the guard, sliding the dish under the bars.
Gul removed the napkin, and saw…
“I’m sorry, but I’m color-blind,” said Gul. “Is it red or white?”
The guard stabbed Gul, splattering blood on the dish. “Now it’s red.”
Put a finger on it
Fister Blake couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on anything.
He could point. But when he tried to put his finger on things, he’d miss.
Made it hard to use fingerprint recognition on his phone.
And when he tried to tap in a password or on an icon, well, he’d miss.
He used a lot of voice commands, but those only work so much.
So, he used his toes. He put his toes on things.
He could do that all day long.
But he stepped on and crushed his phone more than once.