Why is it so hard to get all of your ducks in a row?
Because ducks naturally prefer columns. When ducks line up to cross the road, it’s in a column, not a row.
Problem is, a column takes longer to cross the road. Ducks crossing as a row all reach the other side at the same time.
But then, a column of ducks offers a lesser profile, and are harder for you or your car’s radar system to see. So, if one gets hit, they all get hit.
When it comes to rows and columns, I don’t get ducks.
Author: R.
Cracked corn
Jimmy cracked corn, but I didn’t care.
Jimmy cracked corn, but I didn’t care.
Then Jimmy cracked a nasty joke at the mayor’s wife. I didn’t vote for the guy. So, I didn’t care.
Then Jimmy cracked the bank’s safe, but it wasn’t my bank, so I didn’t care.
Then Jimmy cracked a tooth while chewing ice. I’m not his dentist, so I didn’t care.
Then Jimmy cracked the nuclear launch codes. Almost started World War Three.
So, I cracked Jimmy over the head with a shovel.
His body’s in the crawlspace.
Now, I care. Because he’s beginning to stink.
Travel stuff
I don’t travel much, but I do have to travel occasionally for my job.
So, I use the opportunity to get rid of anything that’s worn out or needs replacing.
I buy new shoes, or a new toothbrush. That kind of thing.
And if something worn out and needs to be pitched at the end of the trip, I just leave it in the trash bin in the hotel room or in the trash at the airport.
Well, not everything. Guns and knives, for instance.
But when I get out of jail, I’ll get a new toothbrush and new shoes.
Waltons
The Waltons always ended with the family wishing each other good night.
But you never saw them waking up after partying hard the night before with a bad batch of moonshine.
“Who the fuck broke the coffee pot?”
“The goddamned toilet’s backed up!”
“What the hell are you doing in bed with your sister?”
You’d think they’d explore the dark side of country living to scare people out of moving out of television reception range, but back then the networks had standards.
These days, they’d never say goodnight. It would end with a shooting or an orgy.
Good night, standards!
Davy Jones’ Locker
Davy Jones was the lead vocalist for the band The Monkees.
When people said that his locker is at the bottom of the sea, he’d shrug and smile and say:
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Maybe it belong to David Bowie? After all, his name was David Jones before he changed it to David Bowie.
You know, because he didn’t want to be confused with Davy Jones.
He’d also shrug and smile and say “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I guess neither wanted to have to explain why there were so many dead sailors in it.
Weekly Challenge #543 – Pick Two!
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.
This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
We’ve got stories by:
JEFFREY
I’m with the Band
by Jeffrey Fischer
Sally played the oboe. She wanted to play in the high school marching band, but the band had no need for her instrument. Mr. Ryan, the director, suggested she learn another one. “How about the xylophone?” asked Sally. Mr. Ryan looked at her chest – in a purely professional way, of course. He wasn’t certain this would work, but gave his assent.
At band practice, some of the boys laughed as Sally tried to strap on the bulky instrument over her breasts. Mr. Ryan told her not to let those boobs bother her. “Er, I mean the boys, of course,” he clarified.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Sally and her xylophone were the hit of the season.
Spelling Counts
by Jeffrey Fischer
“The world is shrinking” is a cliche, but the globe doesn’t seem like it’s lost any size when one is stuck on an airplane. An old friend sent a mysterious text to meet him at the Frankfurt airport, so I hopped on the next flight out. When I staggered off, bleary-eyed, I couldn’t find him in the waiting area. I texted: “In Frankfurt – where are you?”
His reply was quick: “Am a little west of you. In Kentucky. Damn autocorrect changed the ‘o’ to a ‘u’.”
I’m sure I’ll laugh about this one day.
SERENDIPITY
Colonel Sander’s eleven secret herbs and spices that flavour Kentucky Fried Chicken batter aren’t quite so secret once you’ve spent some time behind the scenes in one of his kitchens.
Most of what goes into the recipe is plain old salt; you probably guessed that anyway. The remaining ten ingredients are a little more exotic.
There’s a fair helping of saliva and snot, dispensed by disgruntled, underpaid employees. A shot of fresh blood from the multitude of cut fingers; stray hairs; and the tears of young waitresses, unable to pay their way.
You really don’t want to know the rest!
MUNSI
Too Much/Too Soon
By Christopher Munroe
I fell out of the bed and onto the floor, completely naked, as she pulled the blanket up to cover her… self, suddenly embarrassed where moments before she’d been so uninhibited.
I shrugged at her, trying to play it off as though it were nothing, but I could already tell it wasn’t going to fly.
“You promised you wouldn’t make it weird.” She said, reproachfully, and I had to admit, it had gotten weird.
I’d made it weird.
“What can I say?” I told her sheepishly, “I like my women like like I like my Margaritas. Completely covered in salt…”
RICHARD
Slammers
I’ll never drink tequila again!
Blame that night in some nameless strip joint down Mexico way. It started with regular Slammers then progressed to irregular ones.
Somehow we talked one of the girls into joining us – the idea was simple: Lick the salt off her boobs, take the shot, retrieve the lime from her lips – no hands, of course – and slam the glass.
After my seventh shot, things went badly wrong.
I licked the lime, poured the shot on her lips, took the salt and slammed her boobs.
Needless to say, the local roughnecks then slammed me!
JEFF
My grandfather worked in a gigantic red brick building located on the edge of downtown. The nearest bridge over the river was a monstrous steel trestle beast straddling a river that bizarrely seemed to flow slowly and swiftly at the same time, causing strange whirlpools and eddies which were mesmerizing when watched from the banks as if they were storms in the river. The smell, as one approached, was a mixture of pig manure, dead fish, and smoked hickory. My grandfather was a purveyor of death in a factory of bacon and ham. The pigs screamed as they were killed.
TOM
A Love Supreme
Jack played the Xylophone. He got Coltrane, something I never fully got. Jack did this thing with a box of Morton Salt and a black light. Up and down the scales the crystals would dance in the light. Each note had an off center ringing that decayed in an off center measure. Damn near put you into an altered state. Worked amazingly well live, but never showed up on the master tracks. Folk didn’t seem to mind. It was the mark of a true fan to come out to the club to listen. Tried it on my bass, didn’t work.
LIZZIE
The truck traveled slowly. Attracting unwanted attention was the last thing Indigo wanted. Released after twenty years in prison, and… He steals a truck… He walked around the corner and there it was, keys in the ignition, begging to be stolen. When Indigo spotted the police behind him, he knew he was in trouble. However, it was only when they lifted the blanket that he realized how serious it was. In the back, there was the body of one of the jurors in his trial. He sighed. He’d have plenty of time to figure out who had framed him.
TURA
Indigo Salt
———
Every product wants to be a commodity, but a new breed of entrepreneurs is turning conventional wisdom on its head.
“Our latest project is indigo salt,” says Senza Sordino, a 20-something graduate of Udemy and Kickstarter. “No foodstuff is naturally blue, you see, so blue salt makes it less appetising, so you’ll use less salt. It ticks every box: healthy, organic, vegan, sustainable, chemical-free (our little in-joke), nut-free (ditto), and the key essential: a 2000% markup.
“Our next project might be water filtered through billion-year-old rock,” Sordino continues. “Make anything expensive enough and enough people will think it’s worth it.”
NORVAL JOE
Mickey ran his tin cup along the bars of his cell like a mono tonal xylophone. He walked to the center of the cell and wrapped an indigo blanket around his bare shoulders, waiting for the observers to enter.
Two men walked toward the bars.
“I’m Dr. West and this is my assistant Harold Salt,” the first said. “I have some questions.”
“You’re a couple of boobs. But I’m in here and you’re out there. Ask away,” Mickey sneered.
Salt squinted at Mickey. “Don’t you work at Kentucky Fried?”
“Nope. Chicken King,” Mickey said. “That proves it. You are boobs.”
PLANET Z
Most kids got caught using a flashlight to read dirty magazines under their blanket.
But when I was a kid, I would play the xylophone.
I tried to be quiet, mind you, but there were times when the music would take me over and I’d be hammering away like a maniac.
“Why can’t you be like other kids?” my dad would say, grabbing the xylophone and handing me a stack of dirty magazines.
I’d sigh, turn on the flashlight, pull down my pajama pants, and dread all of the lawns I’d have to mow to afford to buy another xylophone.
Last Call
Steve the barkeep shouts LAST CALL, and everybody laughs.
This is a cop bar. Who’s gonna tell Steve that he’s in violation for serving after… what is it now? Two? Three?
Shit, who cares, right?
City doesn’t need us anymore. There’s no more drug problem, no more gangs, no more littering and loitering.
Cameras, drones, robots, and that weird shit they play on tv and computers and phones that makes people good.
The union contracts, though, those keep us oldtimers going. So, we drink. We hold retirement parties. We hold wakes.
Robots play the bagpipes now.
Amazing Grace, my ass.
The new fifty
I can’t believe how fast time flies.
Things that were ten years ago are popping up as twenty years ago. And twenty years ago is the new thirty years ago.
Heck, I’m hearing a few forty years ago things I remember from when I was really little.
So when someone tells you that forty is the new twenty and fifty is the new thirty and all that crap, tell them yeah, okay. Then try to give them a twenty when the bill is fifty bucks.
You’ll get three to five for that, unless five is the new three these days.
Horse
Four hundred years ago, surgeons transplanted the first heart.
If they saw what people can do now with nanobots and universal tissue printing, their jaws would drop and never come back up.
And they don’t even need a surgical team. Just schedule some time in a bodymod tank, and your nanobots can pretty much work up anything you can imagine.
Just make sure you run morphology backups before you get fancy. My cousin Jake went centaur and he had to wait a week while Central Archives dug up his file.
I swear, his apartment still reeks of rancid horse poop.
Dinner Time
There’s nothing quite like the feeling when you go out to the grocery store, come back with a trunk full of food, and after you put it all away, you don’t feel like eating anything you picked up.
So, you order a pizza, but when you put it on the counter and open the box, you don’t want it, either.
You get in your car and drive out to restaurant row in your town… fast food, sit-downs, diners… none of it jumps out at you.
You drive back home, crack open a beer, and watch the game.
Maybe tomorrow, okay?