I read a bedtime story to Lisa every night.
It’s always a new story. She never wants to hear the same story twice.
She cries when I box up the story books to take to the used bookstore. She wants to keep them all.
Her bookshelf filled up quickly.
And three more I bought her.
The books are in piles from floor to ceiling, filling every closet and room.
I can’t get down the stairs to the basement anymore. It’s also full of books.
So, we switched to eBooks.
I read a story from the Kindle, and she falls asleep.
Author: R.
Weekly Challenge #239 “Day Job”
Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Nine, 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 Day Job!
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
[polldaddy poll=4122760]
Tony
My eyes have become bloodshot staring at this living puzzle. Shift a room a couple of inches and the user’s psychological state shifts too. Enclose a space too much and the boss gets offended. Open it up and there’s a looming Orwellian/Hawthorne effect. Jesus, this office is too small to be driving me this crazy!
At least I don’t design homes. If a closet were too deep, the bathroom might not have a bath. Expand the size of the bathroom, and you’d shrink the living room. Or kitchen. Or bedroom!
I’d be too nervous to make changes. Way too nervous
Tom
My day job is playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a Furbee bar in mythic Connecticut. A happy tree friends version of Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s really hot, not sexual, its damn toasty wearing a corset over a chimmunck suit. I truly believe the two greatest words in the English language are “Musical Theater” It’s a bit of a drag that the pay doesn’t quite meet the bills. Thank god for my night job in The City. Senior Account for Goldman Sack lets me channel that wild and untamed thing. Don’t feel it be it. Just be it and steel it
Zackmann
Say that employment office you sent me to isn’t a job office anymore. It has been massage
parlor for over two weeks now. When the clerk asked me why I was there she wasn’t really
listening. I said I was looking for a day job since I am a writer and everyone who reads my work
tells me to keep my day job. Yes, it was one of those massage parlors. Of course I enjoyed it
but I would have really liked to have had a massage. She said “Hey, Writer Guy come back for
the Happy Ending”.
AM Earley
Claire really liked her day job. Oh sure she had to make her deliveries between midnight and eight o’clock, but she saw more morning hours than office workers.
She was liked so much, that one of her clients requested that only she delivered to them. Even over the guys who have been there for decades. She finally asked the scientist who always received that cargo why they preferred her.
“The live specimens always arrived calm when it is you driving.”
“Well,” Claire thought, “if they are calm enough that I’ve never known they were alive, I’m going to continue singing every song in my I-pod.”
Steven the Nuclear Man
I guess it sounds easy. Maybe even fun. But it’s not. I can’t do
the simplest chores – fill out your check BEFORE the cashier’s done,
you douchebag!I’m always busy. Hey – you! You park like a douche!
And I have to explain my job – no, ma’am, it’s not sexist because
douching was developed by our patriarchal culture. Douches aren’t
healthy for women.Some days, I wish I could just make widgets all day.
“Quit bitching about your job! You’re a douche!”
You’re a douche!
At least I have job security.
TJ
Frank made a donut. Jen grabbed it on her way to the office, where she
designed a luggage rack on a 4×4. Mark dropped some mail off at her
workstation and turned up his headphones. He was listening to Wendy
argue with Bill on the radio, powered by a wind turbine designed by
Annie and built by Warren, which Rachel had negotiated the easement for
on Harold’s farm. Harold reworked his wheat field to accommodate it
and Jake took his harvest into town. Jane milled his flour and bagged up
some of it for Frank, who made … another donut.
Norval Joe
The masked crime fighter crouched atop the bank in the moonless dark.
He watched the bank robbers back thier unmarked van up to the glass doors of the entrance.
By day, he was an unassuming Pest Control Agent.
As the would be criminals gathered and placed the explosive charge on the door, he dropped lightly onto one of them and clung tightly. One by one, the remaining three tried to pull Flypaper Man from their accomplice and joined him in his sticky fate.
Eventually a policeman arrested the clump of men and carefully peeled each criminal from the super hero.
Katwood
Most people were relieved when the governments crawled out of their bunkers and reclaimed the world. Not me. While the governments planned and strategized, I grew up in a world where fighting zombies was a given. Now, there are “too many” zombie hunters. All the agencies say they can only have “mentally stable” people in their employment. Stability doesn’t matter, killing zombies matters. I can kill more zombies in a day than those buffoons could in a week. Yet I’m stuck taking out the trash as a day job, only being able to kill zombies in my off hours. Idiots.
Planet Z
My day job was to keep the world from blowing up.
I managed the antimatter flow at New Edison Power.
The plasma ducts vibrated in unusual harmonies, and I recorded them.
My night job is with the radio station.
You’ve heard of The Doctor Power Hour?
I’m Doctor Power.
I mix my recordings, weaving the whistles of release valves and other generator sounds into trance music.
The audience grew quickly, and I started doing weekend concerts to hundreds… thousands…
Instead of keeping it safe, I tuned the Generator for music.
It exploded.
Oh well. I still have my night gig.
The Council
The Emergency Council of Hedgehogs was convened under the giant oak tree in the deepest part of the woods.
Panic ran rampant as teddy bears were stumbling around drunkenly after their picnic, grabbing hedgehogs and tossing them around.
It was decided that an emissary would approach the mommies and daddies of the teddy bears, pleading for help.
But instead of putting the teddy bears to bed to sleep off their stupor, the mommies and daddies got drunk and threw the hedgehog emissary around, too.
Angered, the hedgehogs burrowed deep under the giant oak tree and set the woods on fire.
The Angry Birds
I use my iPhone to play Words With Friends, but all my friends have given up on this Scrabble variant for a game called Angry Birds.
Apparently, these birds are angry because a bunch of evil pigs have stolen their eggs, so they attack various structures built by the pigs trying to kill them and take all the eggs back.
I loaded the game and tried to negotiate a settlement between the birds and the pigs.
And then I killed them all.
I smiled, had a huge plate of bacon and eggs for breakfast, and sat on a feather-filled pillow.
Where did the turkeys go?
Strange things are happening these days.
The strangest?
Where did all the turkeys go?
That’s the question everybody’s asking.
All of the grocery stores are out of turkeys.
There isn’t a turkey to be seen at any farm.
And if you bought a turkey already and put it in your freezer, you’re probably wondering why there’s a huge empty space in there now.
Even pictures of turkeys have vanished from everywhere. There’s no entry for it in the dictionary.
Oh well. I didn’t like turkey anyway. Forget it.
Pass the mashed potatoes and gravy, please. That roasted eagle smells wonderful.
The Games People Play
“O the games we play” reminisced Joey readjusting his titanium visor. As kids Frankie and Joey had invented the game GUNS. It came out of that totally symmetric kid logic that in kid game theory weather Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers no one wanted to be the stereotypic bad guy. So the game was everyone shot at everyone.
“I got you”
“You missssssed”
They quickly run through rubberband guns, bb guns, paintball guns. Finally live ammo. Thank god for Kevlar thought Joey drawing a bead on Frank.
“I got a new game.”
He turned.
“I call it BAZOOKAS”
Poetry In Motion
After watching girls roll around the track and beat the crap out of each other in what was billed as “Poetry In Motion”, we walked out of the roller derby and put together our own sport:
Rollerpoetry.
Instead of helmets and pads, we handed out berets and copies of Allen Ginsberg’s book “Howl.”
Poets would circle the track, sharing the verse in ways that teachers and Kindles couldn’t.
Opening night, the crowds gathered around the track and booed the circling poets.
One bumped into another. They started throwing punches.
My friends, there’s no avoiding the truth: Culture truly is dead.
The Balloon
There was once a balloon in Balloon Land who was unlike the others.
He was filled with mustard.
They all floated around and laughed at him.
So he rolled away, far away, until he reached the Kingdom of Hot Dogs.
Frightened, the balloon began to cry, and mustard dribbled on to a hot dog.
It made a pretty yellow squiggle.
Another hot dog saw this. “Put one on me!” it said.
All the hot dogs wanted squiggles, and eventually the balloon ran out of mustard.
“What good am I now?” it cried.
The hot dogs sacrificed it to their god.
I Am Cancer
I am cancer.
I will take your hair and drink your strength.
I will use your body as a battlefield, fighting you to the death.
I will hide behind you as doctors try to kill me, and you will suffer along with me.
I may take your skin as a trophy, rob you of your eyesight, and maybe take an arm or a leg if I feel like it.
I can take everything you have and everything you are.
Except one thing: those who love you.
I can never take them from you.
But I can take you from them.
Welch’s Brigade
22nd of January 1879 Rorke’s Drift South African John Chard of her majesties 24th regiment foot in command. Word has reached us of the Isandhlwana massacre. 2000 souls lost. Retreat unlikely will make last stand at the mission ….
Chard lay down his pen looked to the west. “Damn, Rain,” Colour Sergeant Bourne stated “That wasn’t thunder, that was 1000 infantry helmets being struck. The Zulu are sending a message. The storm is upon you.” Chard rebuttoned this tunic “I will met that storm with a hail of lead.”
11 members of the 24h were awarded the Victoria Cross for valor.