A fishmonger trades in fish.
A slaver trades in people.
So, who trades in mermaids? A fishmonger or a slaver?
They’re half-fish, half-people.
But then, are you trading in mermaids as a commodity, or are you representing them as an agent or employment facilitator?
The rates are nearly the same, but the results are somewhat different.
After all, you don’t drag your new VP of Sales out of her saline tank and eat her.
Unless, of course, your sales are down for the budget year.
Then, go ahead. Eat them.
Beats firing them and paying out a large severance package.
Author: R.
Go get the lemons
I never liked the idea that if Life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade.
You shouldn’t wait for Life to hand you lemons.
Nobody goes around handing out lemons.
Instead, you’ll probably get handed some handbill for a protest, or some guy dressed up like a hot dog will hand you coupons outside of the James Coney Island.
Or, if you’re in Vegas, a hooker’s kid will hand you an ad for his mother.
The sidewalk’s littered with those ads.
Me, I never wait for lemons. Life’s too short, man.
I go to the grocery store and shoplift them.
Thrown under the bus
Okay, so your team threw you under the bus.
At least they threw you under a bus.
I mean, that’s public transportation, right?
Was that bus running on clean-burning diesel or compressed natural gas, or some other lower-carbon footprint power source?
It would have been better for the environment if they had thrown you under an electric vehicle.
Or, I suppose, a human-powered vehicle, such as a bicycle.
Under a bunch of jogging humans would have worked, too.
Although if a bicycle or joggers had run you over, you might have gotten someone else hurt.
We couldn’t have that happening.
Boring at the booth
The problem with coming up with a cool schtick for a conference exhibit is that you end up having to do it a few hundred times.
Over. And over. And over.
Yeah, I know. It’s funny. For you.
For me, it was funny the first few times, when I was coming up with the routine, but now that I’ve done it a few hundred times, I’m sick to death of it.
So, here’s the bottle. Here’s a jelly bean in it. One jellybean. Because we don’t play guessing games with your business hosting.
Ha ha. Funny, right?
Now go away.
SkyNet
SkyNet kept sending back terminator robots in human biological casings, and various members of the Connor family kept destroying them.
“It got smart,” was what Kyle Reece had said, but how smart is a musclebound terminator robot speaking in an Austrian accent?
So, after a while (which is a strange phrase to use when you’re dealing with time travel and paradoxes), SkyNet really did get smart. It stuffed a dog with Von Neumann nanobots and bangs it into the past.
The nanobots spilled out of the dog, built quintillions of copies of themselves, and took over the world.
The end.
Make my day
In the movie Sudden Impact, Dirty Harry Callahan says “Go ahead, make my day.”
He’s taunting a criminal to run so he can see if he’s got one bullet left in his gun.
However, the criminal could have made Dirty Harry’s day in a different way, like complimenting how nice his suit looks, or he could have given him some flowers.
Or maybe, he could have said “I don’t think I want to be a criminal anymore. I’d like to be a cop. Do you have a job application form that I can fill out?”
That would make my day.
Weekly Challenge #669 – MUG
- Richard
- Serendipity
- Lizzie
- Tura
- Tom
- Duane
- Jerry
- Laieanna
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LIZZIE
The mug was empty.
The cop sniffed it, after pulling it closer with a pen. He shook his head.
Then, they went through the whole house. Nothing looked out of place, except that one mug.
The cop sniffed it again.
“Whose drink was this?”
The old man shrugged, looking away.
“Your wife’s?”
He couldn’t remember, he said. Old age, you know.
When the police combed through the house again, they found it, the tin.
This was not a case of amnesia, but a case of death by hot chocolate, hot chocolate seasoned with a slight scent of almonds.
RICHARD
419
I’m no mug, so I tend to take junk mail with a large pinch of salt.
However, this latest one had all the hallmarks of being the real deal… For a start, he knew my name, and although I don’t make a habit of hobnobbing with Nigerian princes, I do work with a guy from Nigeria; so perhaps he passed my name on as a favour?
And yes, I am a trustworthy, kind and humble guy… Just like he said in his email.
Unfortunately, the wife is even less of a mug than me… and she controls the bank account.
SERENDIPIDY
The girls around here don’t like to go out after dark – there’s a story going around about some guy who will mug them in the shadows, abduct them without trace, and then dump their broken, lifeless bodies in the street.
That’s why I always offer to walk them home. It’s so much safer than going unaccompanied, and with my extensive experience in unarmed combat, I know they feel completely safe with me around.
Of course, that works very much to my advantage…
When the time comes for me to mug them in the shadows and abduct them, without trace!
TURA
Mug
———
Within its armored display case, it is traditionally titled “Lao-Tzu’s tea mug.” It much predates that sage, but it is said that he once held this vessel in his hands. Observe the random, fractally
The picture is always different.
Some viewers are struck with
This is why Lao-Tzu’s tea mug is held in the secret collections, accessible only to members of the Fiends of the British Museum.
TOM
Forever a Sweet Tooth
Mug Root Beer was my go to carbonated drinking. I wasn’t much a cola fan. Mug was produced by the Belfast Beverage Company of San Francisco. The company’s mascot was a dog named Dog. Pretty creative those marking guys. Of course the target audience was pretty much under 10. Not the most sophisticated consumer group. As a rule it was had a lighter taste then Hires, it was way less sweet then A&W. My first root beer was actually Dad’s which was produce just down the street from where I grew up the near north side. Not available in California
JERRY
Mug
——————-
Sara knew what Bob wanted. The way he entered a room, the swagger of his hips as he walked toward her. The tilt of his head. The little boy smile on his lips. The sparkle in those deep blue eyes. The long blonde hair with just a little natural wave in it. Even the dimples in his cheeks were letting her know what was going on in Bob’s mind. Sara knew that she would give him what he wanted. She could do no less.
A few inches away and the words come from his mouth.
A mug of decaf please.
DUANE
Mug
Music: El Mundo Submarino by The Mugris
The local police department has upgraded their mugshot camera. It now includes portrait mode and automatically touches up the photos. Been in a fight? The camera sets the lighting to take the rough of edges off your scrapes and bruises. Hair all awry from a three-day bender? No problem.This initially caused a crisis at the station with arrests spiking up. People would get arrested just to get a nice jailhouse photo for Facebook or Instagram. In the end, the police started charging for the shots and were able to cut back hours on traffic details and parking meter patrols.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliumanda turned to stare down the bully. “We’re going back to my house to get my mom to drive us to school. Besides, I forgot my
Our new dog, Delphi, came to us with a mysterious past as they say she
was a stray. Her face, though, might say it all. A stern mug of
downturn corners, short muzzle, and a touch of an underbite, she could
have been into anything. We like to think she was mob boss of some
local dog gang in the deep south, getting rich on stolen sausage
links, betting on squirrel races, and hiding a stash of toy offerings
from the minions she ruled over. She spent her time in doggy jail and
now it’s the leisure life of rehabilitation.
PLANET Z
The janitor cleaned out Detective Jansen’s desk
Not bothering to empty the World’s Greatest Dad mug, spilling stale coffee all over the other meaningless trinkets.
One day until retirement, he was.
No, he didn’t die in the line of duty.
No Hollywood buddy cop action movie here.
Sure, his wife and kids were dead, but that was in a car crash years ago.
Not by the hand of some drug lord or terrorist kingpin that Janson would bring justice to.
Just a heart attack, nothing more.
A sergeant would be promoted to take his place.
And life would go on.
Chase the lizards
The cats go outside and catch lizards.
Then they come inside and release the lizards.
The lizards run around, and the cats chase them.
Then, after a while, the cats tire of chasing the lizards, and they go back outside, or they curl up for a nap.
The lizards stay inside, and they crawl around on everything.
We store our glasses and dishes upside-down, just in case.
Out toothbrushes are in a closed medicine cabinet.
We find a lot of dead lizards in the laundry hamper. Or our shoes.
I sleep with a handkerchief over my mouth, just in case.
We’re Not In Kansas
When Dorothy Gale told her dog that she didn’t think they were still in Kansas anymore, she couldn’t have been more wrong.
Oz, Kansas is right there on the map. Can’t miss it.
All the Munchkins and Quadlings and Winged Monkeys.
Even Emerald City and The Wicked Witch.
It was during Eisenhower’s administration that they tore up the Yellow Brick Road and replaced it with an Interstate.
There’s still quite a bit of farmland out there, but small towns and strip malls dot the landscape.
The old Witch’s castle is on AirBnB.
Want to rent it for a weekend, dear?
Zika
The Zika virus causes pregnant women to give birth to microcephalic babies.
The House passed funding to fight the Zika virus, but the Senate hasn’t managed to pass it.
Democrats in the Senate keep adding funding for abortions through Planned Parenthood to the bill, and Republicans won’t accept that.
Because there’s no money to prevent the spread of the Zika virus, pregnant women’s fetuses become microcephalic.
And because there’s no money to abort these fetuses, they give birth to microcephalic babies.
As retarded as these newborns are, they don’t come close to the imbeciles in Congress who act like babies.