Month: November 2019

Car alarm

I drive a truck that’s seventeen years old.
I can’t customize the alarm sound on it because the alarm just honks the horn over and over again.
For a while, it was a hassle, trying to differentiate the truck’s alarm from all the other alarms in the parking lot.
Now, people have fancy whoops and bleeps and blaps and even apps that silently warn them on their phones.
Which I wholeheartedly approve of.
Because, while their cars are performing some kind of Kraftwork concert, my truck is the last vehicle left that honks its horn, and I know it’s mine.

Madness

Robin Williams once said that we are all given a little spark of madness, and we must do everything we can to keep that spark from going out.
After he killed himself, I knew what I must do.
I must preserve his spark of madness.
With a few phone calls, I determined that he was going to be cremated.
I took a flight to San Francisco and hired a taxi to the crematorium.
With not a moment to lose, I climbed the roof and stood at the chimney.
And I breathed in as much of his madness as I could.

Kroger Lot

The grocery store parking lots are crazy the week of Thanksgiving.
Last minute shoppers, desperate for stuffing or green beans or some kind of spice they forgot.
Rolls! Dinner rolls! You forgot dinner rolls!
Fights over the last can of cranberry sauce.
Then, on Thanksgiving, they’re closed.
When they reopen, they’re crazy again.
Because nobody wants leftovers.
Then, they’re even crazier, because Christmas tree delivery trucks fill part of the lot with trees.
And then people trying to tie the trees to their cars or trucks.
It’s a madhouse.
So, fuck it. I just order pizza until New Year’s Eve.

George the Active Listener

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was a good active listener, though.
Active listening is different from passive listening, because you’re not just saying “Uh huh” and nodding your head.
You’re repeating back key phrases and showing an interest in what they’re saying, prompting for more.
The other pirates would tell George their problems, and he’d listen, and keep the conversation moving forward.
Pretty soon, George learned a lot about his fellow shipmates and their lives.
He came to realize that they were all scallawags, brigands, and thieves.
You know, because they were pirates.

St. Amateur Night

It’s St. Patrick’s Day.
St. Patrick’s Day is Amateur Night for drunks. Stay away from the pubs.
Just like Valentine’s Day is Amateur Night for lovers.
Stay away from the restaurants. And flower shops.
Black Friday is Amateur Night for shoppers.
Stay away from the malls. Shop online, until the online stores crash, and you can’t go there anymore.
Christmas? New Year’s Halloween?
They’re all Amateur Night.
Every night is Amateur Night here.
Except one.
There’s only one night for the professionals: April Twelfth.
Nothing happens then.
Nothing that you know of, that is.
Nothing that we let you know.

Click Clack

Jack compulsively flicks his lighter open and shut.
Jane compulsively flicks a switchblade open and shut.
They do this everywhere: at the diner, at the bar, while walking on the street.
Especially when they walk on the street.
There’s a rhythm to it. They’re in sync.
Click clack. Click clack. Click clack.
All day long.
they took baths instead of showers so they could keep flicking and clicking.
Jack would refill his lighter.
Jane would sharpen her switchblade.
And then they’d flick them open and closed again.
Sitting there at the retirement home.
Click clack. Click clack.
All day long.

Weekly Challenge #709 – OPTION

Sleepycat

LIZZIE

“No,” shouted the elderly lady, forking up a luscious pumpkin pie.
“Yes,” replied another.
The living-room of the Club was packed. All the ladies talked at the same time, tea cups held in a precarious fashion.
Suddenly, the door bell rang…
The rest of that night was spent at the police station where an important decision was made.
No more meetings after a night out at the local pub. The neighbors were such twats.
That was actually the word they wrote on a piece of paper, when they got back, and glued it to the neighbors’ door, chuckling like teenagers.

RICHARD

Ctrl, Alt, Delete

I’ve always wished life had been created by Microsoft, rather than poofed into existence by some divine entity, forged from random interactions of molecules, or pooped out of the butt of some pan-dimensional being… Whichever creation story you ascribe to.

At least then you’d always have the option to undo your last action, restore a better version of the past, and a handy pop up confirmation to confirm any drastic action you might have committed to.

Of course, life would also crash randomly, lose everything you’d done so far, and update itself at inconvenient moments…

No worse than now, really!

TOM

The Most Delicious Strawberry I Have Ever Eaten

You’ve undoubtably heard of the story of the monk chased by a tiger, driven over a cliff, held between heaven and hell by a single strawberry plant. Nice story. Didn’t happen that way. Being said Monk I will not enlighten you, a little Buddhist humor there. What started as a Koan on the options we must all chose in life, a paradoxical statement or question used as a meditation discipline for novices got way out of hand. This is the skinny. I plunk the strawberry, hit the tiger in the eye, he went over the cliff, and I waved goodbye.

TURA

Option
———
“I built this house myself,” my host said proudly.

I was puzzled by this statement. The house was part of a recent development of about two hundred residences, obviously built by a single developer. All the houses were slightly different but all were much the same, and they were built so closely together that only a thin person might be able to sidle between them.

“In other words,” I said, before I managed to hold my tongue, “you selected plot 37 on the developer’s site plan, house style 4, with options 6, 11, and 17?”

I was not invited back.

SERENDIPIDY

You should take the easy option: A shot to the head or the cyanide pill. Either way it will be all over soon, but the odds are firmly in my favour.

Or, if you’re feeling lucky, we can load the chamber, spin the barrel and take our chances with a last ditch game of Russian roulette – it halves the odds, but of course, I could still win.

Then again, you might fire the fatal shot, but that makes you a murderer – and we still have the death penalty around these parts for that particular crime…

Take the pill!

NORVAL JOE

Sure. Lifting off from the school grounds and flying Linoliamanda home from the school dance was not the only option open to Billbert. And probably not the smartest one. However, with the confusion of children complaining about wet hair, firemen and their trucks arriving with sirens blaring, and students all trying to phone their parents at once it was probably the easiest way to get out of there.
Besides, it had been a week since he’d last flown and Billbert really liked it when Linoliamanda held his hand.
Marrissa stood below them, her mouth wide open, watching them fly off.

PLANET Z

Paper or Plastic?
Are these my only two options?
What about if I use my own canvas bags?
How about just putting all this stuff back i nthe cart?
I’ll dump it out into my trunk and then empty my trunk when I get home?
How about wooden barrels?
I can roll a wooden barrel, can’t I?
Can you load this all into a catapult and launch it at my house?
I have a volleyball net I’m not using.
That could catch everything.
It sure caught the volleyball every time I tried to play.
I wasn’t very good. Or tall.

Poor Dan

At first, Dan kept saying “I cannot believe my eyes!”
Then, he’d say “I cannot believe my ears!”
Rarely did he say that he could not believe his nose, tongue, or skin.
I guess he didn’t smell, taste, or feel much.
It was when Dan said “I cannot believe my accountant!” that he was in trouble.
Dan was way behind in paying his taxes.
“I cannot believe my lawyer!” said Dan as he was dragged out of court and off to jail.
Let’s just say that his cellmate made sure that Dan believed that he was in jail.
Poor Dan.

Build the wall

Instead of building a wall along the border, why not something fun?
Perhaps a ball pit, like they have at Chuck E Cheese and McDonalds.
Then, families trying to cross the border will have to fish their kids back out of it.
“COME ON, MOM!” they will shout. “FIVE MORE MINUTES! PLEASE?”
And then it will get dark, and they’ll have to get home.
If they leave the kids behind, they will sink to the bottom of the ball pit.
And fall through chutes to The Organ Havresting Factory.
Oops. I meant to say The Ice Cream and Unicorns Room.

The Voltmaster Laughing

“Follow the wires.”
These are the first three words that every child in Mirkwood learns.
They look up at the gigantic mains that pass near every village, and down to the substation as the voltage is stepped down.
“Follow the wires, and you will find The Voltmaster.”
He used to harvest his power from the clouds, but with the help of giants and ogres and dwarves, he constructed a dam across The Eternal Falls.
Within, machinery like windmills, but for water, convert the flow into energy.
Precious energy.
The lights flicker, then return.
They say this is The Voltmaster laughing.