“Young man you have a Flagrant Disregard for the facts” rail his master’s advice Dr Maxwell Anderson. “But sir we have a number of Historical Inaccuracy, as I have cited in my work. Take Bukowski.” “BUKOWSKI. The man claimed Stanton meet with Booth on three occasions. Total rubbish.” “Look at the photo copies.” Anderson slid a formal looking sheet of paper towards the grad student. Upside down he could make out the Georgetown seal. “Perhaps a refutal of Bukowski is in order,” said the student carefully. “I sure the committee will look favorable on your work. Good luck at Georgetown.”
Author: R.
A Wise Man
A wise man once said that it you’re fat, surround yourself with people who are even fatter and you’ll look thin by comparison.
This works for people who are any kind of extreme in appearance.
If you’re tall, hang out with taller people.
Or if you’re short, hang out with smaller people.
Dark skin, light skin, any color skin, really.
If you’ve got green skin, find a freaking Martian to stand next to, and you’ll look less green.
Sounds crazy, right?
Not really. Because I’m standing next to a bunch of crazier people.
They have knives. And wicked, evil grins.
Just Passing Through
Bill was a quiet man. In must cases he just nodded, or smiled with a quiet reassurance. People liked being around Bill, he was elected to many of the communities boards of directors. Bill was active in his church. He was an arch deacon and was 13th holder of gold rose. Oddly no one knew anything about Bill. Where his family came from. Where he when to school. No one even knew what Bill did for a living. When the mother ship came in the night no one saw Bill go. In fact no one remembers aaaaa what’s his name.
The Game Of Life
When I was little, I’d try to spin high numbers in The Game Of Life.
Spin! Make the car go faster!
Graduate college!
Spin! Make the car go faster!
Get married!
Spin! Make the car go faster!
Have kids!
Make the car full of pegs go faster faster faster!
Rush headlong along the winding path!
Away we go!
And then…
The game’s over.
Wasn’t that fun?
Want to play again?
That Game Of Life, wherever it is, gathering dust… I learned one thing from it:
Spin low, take your time and enjoy the ride.
Make it last. Make it count.
Over Troubled Waters
If you live under a bridge, water, is something simply not taken for granted! The easiest thing one can do in to reroute the flow. To change the vast power of the tide, so you are not broke upon that tide. As his possessions disappeared on by one, Timmy was down to a red 1937 yo yo and his Aunt Mary’s Ming vase. As the waters pull away his grip on the blue porcelain he bellowed “You Broke My Vase”. When they found him at the edge of the ocean he still had his yo yo. Way to go Timmy.
Weekly Challenge #284 – Coffee
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com. I’m your host, Laurence Simon.
This is Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Eighty-Four, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was Coffee
And we’ve got stories by:
Thomas
Paladin
Chris Munroe
Tom
Gideon
Abernathy
Jeff
Zackmann
Danny
Norval Joe
TJ
Planet Z
And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.
Thomas
The waitress set our coffee down. We both poured the cream and emptied the sugar packets into the hot brew, stirring and banging the spoon on the rim of the heavy, white mug. Ted dropped his spoon into the cup, and it disappeared. He fished around, and couldn’t believe what he saw. He dropped the salt shaker into the cup. Whoosh. It was gone. Then I dropped some coins and more utensils into the cup. Whoosh. Ted dropped in the bottle of Tobasco sauce and the little, sugar packet holder. Whoosh. We were at the home of the bottomless cup.
###
The coffee enema was the low point of our stay at the Golden Globes Spa in West Hollywood. As the attendant gathered the equipment, she joked, and asked if we wanted cream and sugar. My girlfriend chuckled. I didn’t think it was funny, because taking my morning brew in the keester from an old Mexican woman wasn’t appealing. We signed up for aromatherapy, salt glows and the loofah scrub. The attendant left us, perturbed, as I was grumbling through the whole procedure. I didn’t notice the little Mexican flag sticking out of my behind until I got up to dress.
Paladin
It was coffee. Just coffee. Later it might be a dark crowded room and a great silver screen. It might be a long stretch of empty highway and wind blowing our hair back. Perhaps soft murmurs and nervous, anxious, eager exploration. Maybe somewhere private. Maybe somewhere public. The ending may come in mere minutes. Or some hours. Or several years. It could end in this cafe or on my doorstep or hers, or on some porch in some future. But the beginning is here, with coffee. Just coffee.
Chris/Munsi
I’ve had three cups today, and I’ll hit Starbucks on the way to work.
Latte, I think. Venti.
There’ll be a pot waiting when I arrive, and when it’s gone I’ll honestly try to remember to start a fresh one. It’s inconsiderate to drink it all without replacing it for my coworkers.
It’s just hard to remember things sometimes. Gets harder every day.
I hate the taste of coffee, it’s like hot tar in my mouth. But I’ll choke back as much as I can.
Because they come when I sleep, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.
Tom
We at Black Tie Industries are proud to announce an addition to our beverage line. The power of chocolate, the calming effect of caffeine and the sure pleasure of cocaine the chemists of Caleb Consortiums have chained the best of these along a running chain of CH3s to give you Chocolate flavored Cocaine Coffee. Get twice the stuff you need to get done in half the time. And all with out losing that mild awareness that the collective forces of the universe are conspiring to ruin your life. CHocoCoCo in the 64oz can, have two, or get left in the dust
Gideon
I interviewed for a job with a software company yesterday.
I think I did well on my part of the interview.
At least well enough for Joe, my prospective boss, to start selling me on the company.
He explained the well designed benefits package and gave me a tour of the offices,
At the end of the tour I had one question, “Where are the coffee machines? I did not see one during our tour”.
Joe took me back to the cubicles and pointed, “See?”
Yup, coffee. Delivered via IV tubing to every cubicle.
I’m going to like it here.
Abernathy
Stumbling into the kitchen, Willie greets the coffee pot with sleep crusted eyes. It’s where she keeps the instant coffee now. She doesn’t brew her own java nowadays. She had turned into a lazy person at fifty four. The coffee a symbol of her life now. Instant. She needed the ritual of having a cup or five. She ran the kitchen faucet until it became considerably hot. Scooped out two tall mounds full of the instant and stirred them in her cup. Tossed the spoon into the sink brimming with dirty dishes, Drinking down the the coffee and her failures.
Jeff
I sat quietly, legs folded awkwardly, and focused my mind on the Zen koan.
As much as I tried I could not untangle the meaning hidden within the simple words. I even tried not trying by focusing my mind on the various muscles of my body; using that intensity of concentration to empty my mind in hopes of reaching sunyata.
I complained to my teacher that emptiness would not come and he reminded me that I need to unfocus and concentrate on nothingness. Seeing my frustration he mumbled something about samsara and endless suffering.
I punched him in the throat.
Zackmann
“ Why did you buy that, you don’t even drink coffee?” she said.
He replied “Was it not you who asked me to go to the After Coffee Day Sale? Since they switched to thermos style coffee makers at work they have less coffee makers that I have to worry about being neglected and starting fires. I was amazed at how long the pots kept drinks warm. Of course unlike work we will not need two dozen Thermos coffee pots.”
“Dearest when you put a hot thing it a thermos in stays hot, cold things stays cold, how does it know?”
zackmann
Back in the late seventies the Canadian government spent millions to see if extreme amounts of coffee could give a person superpowers. They chose a child and gave him so much coffee he that he became know as The Encaffeinated One. As you may suspect he did not gain superpowers but he became weird. Well he did not actually became weird as obsessed with weird things and interesting ideas. He also had an urge to share them with the world. The young man first discovered the wonders of radio then podcasting.He now lives at The Weird Show dot Com
Danny
“You’re STIll drinking coffee? AT THIS HOUR!?!? The sheer volume of her question imposed the unreasonable state of mind she whipped herself into. My girlfriend was hell bent on blaming this self-imposed state of mind on yours truly. Unwilling to accept fault for my addiction, I responded curtly, “What!? I’m only on my 4th cup of coffee today. I fail to see what you are getting yourself so worked up about!” In hindsight, at 2:30 in the afternoon, I probably should have responded differently, since I was on the brink of finishing my 4th pot of coffee. Oh well.
Norval Joe
“They’re following us,” Esmerelda Flinch, supposedly of the Women’s Trade Federation said. “We need to throw them off your track.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fly Paper Boy asked.
“The cops,” She said, “They’re on to you. When we pass through this tunnel, we’ll slow down, you jump out and run down the hill to the cafe and wait for us. It may take some time, and you’ll need to stay on your guard and ready. So buy some coffee and stay alert.”
He jumped when told to, and ran, off a cliff and plummeted toward the jagged rocks below.
TJ
Ellen from Chicago, Tanya in Baltimore, Amber from… Surrey. Oh, just
up the road here… wait. Surrey.. ENGLAND? *dials Hi, eMusicalChairs?
TJ here. I’ve been looking at these suggested matches and I said I
wanted matches within 30 miles of here. “Are you really willing to
overlook the love of your life if she’s more than 30 miles away?”
*slurps coffee I dunno, are you really asking me to define a metric
you’re going to then proceed to completely ignore? “But for optimum
compatability you may need to…” I’ve done the long-distance thing.
Narrow these search parameters please. Thank you.
Planet Z
The best part of waking up isn’t Folger’s in your cup.
There isn’t any best part to waking up, really.
Especially when the ship’s navigation computer thinks we’ve arrived back home and we’re in the middle of deep empty space.
The Cryogenic Bends hurt like a motherfucker, no matter how many green pills you take or algae packs you suck on.
Every move, every thought, even just sitting still is agony.
Try doing four-dimensional astrogation by hand on top of all that.
Worst of all, the only coffee is in the terraforming module, waiting to be planted on Earth Two.
Going back to college
I’m going back to college.
After years of shit menial jobs, it was time I went back.
They’d been asking me for a while now, but my pride kept getting in the way.
You see, I was a football hero. Set school records and all.
Then, in the Rose Bowl, trashed my knees scoring the winning touchdown.
No pro career.
No diploma.
No future at all.
There were medical bills, lawyer bills.
When all was said and done, I pushed mops and brooms and stayed drunk.
Now, I’m goin back to college.
Classes? No dice.
To be a janitor there.
Extreme Crazy Eights
The only way I could get my sister to play cards with me is letting her pick the Wild Cards. There was never just one wild card. Further wild cards with wild cards could produce outcomes outside the scope of the game. Two of clubs and suicide jack three neighbors’ poodles weren’t come home tonight. An ace of diamond and two of hearts, the pawn shop was getting grandma’s wedding band. My sister’s favorite hand was a double full boat. Years later I learn it was called waterboarding. Laura teaches probabilities at the School of the Americas. The Joker’s wild
Curiosity
Curiosity killed the cat.
Then, Curiosity killed the dog.
Next came the goldfish. Curiosity put those in a blender and hit the big red button.
After that mess was flushed, Curiosity went outside with an air rifle and started shooting birds off the telephone wires.
She ran out of ammo right around the time we got home.
“Check on the babysitter,” I told my wife.
She went inside, found her tied up in a chair, and checked for a pulse.
“Weak, but it’s there,” she said.
Still alive?
Strange. Usually, Curiosity kills them.
I scolded her: “You’re getting sloppy, kid.”
Saving Throw
We’re having a fundraiser at work for the American Heart Association.
Make your own Ice Cream Sundaes.
Ice cream for heart research, right?
Makes as much sense as candy bars for Diabetes or strobe lights for Epilepsy.
I’m on a diet and can’t eat ice cream. But I love it so much.
So delicious.
So tempting.
NO! I cannot do this!
I must not give in! Stay strong!
I must make my saving throw against ice cream.
Work… work… work… do not think about the ice cream… work… work…
Then, I realize it’s time to go home.
Saving throw made.