- Lizzie
- Richard
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Tom
- Rick Thomas
- Planet Z
LIZZIE
Beans, the shark, swam across icy waters, happy to be alone.
His buddies preferred the South. They also enjoyed scaring people.
Beans didn’t. Too bloody, too messy, too loud. He could chew a leg as an appetizer, true, but the chaos was unbearable.
One day, Beans spotted a diver.
“No, don’t,” he thought.
He looked away. He looked away some more while swimming towards the diver. Then that scent of the diving suit…
When he swam away in shame, he decided to go farther North and become a hermit. That decision lasted… 3 days. That’s when he spotted another diver.
RICHARD
Jack
Jack was a lazy oaf. Unable to secure a job, he drove the household to the edge of poverty. One morning in desperation, his mother forced him to go to the market to sell the family cow and raise funds for food.
On the way he met a tramp who persuaded him to sell the cow for a handful of magic beans, assured to secure him an untold fortune.
His mother was singularly unimpressed, and flung the beans into the garden in a temper.
The beanstalks they produced, all wilted and died – Jack being far too lazy to tend them.
SERENDIPIDY
Who writes this stuff? I mean, it’s rubbish, just designed to shock with no thought for realism or authenticity.
Take this drivel I’ve been reading – ‘The Silence of the Lambs’: Almost believable up to the point Lecter gloats, “I ate his liver, with some fava beans, and a nice chianti.”
Complete nonsense!
Come on… Human liver, with a side of fava beans?
You need a rich accompaniment for human liver, fried onions along with a generous helping of crispy, fried bacon.
Thinly sliced back bacon is best. I’ve some curing in the cellar right now; carved from my latest victim.
NORVAL JOE
Billbert leaned over Linoliamanda and saw she was still breathing.
Nuclear Fission screamed. “Beans. Get him.”
Billbert looked. A tall slender man ran toward him. Suddenly, vines and tendrils grew from his fingers and wrapped around Billbert’s arms and chest.
Billbert panicked for a moment before leaping into the air and dragging String Bean up with him. He carried the struggling man to the superheroes gathering from the rubble of their former headquarters.
“Billbert. What are you doing here?” his mother gasped.
“Fighting super villains,” he said, and ran back toward Nuclear Fission and her companion hiding behind their car.
TOM
Where Am I going I don’t? All I know is I am On my Way
I get my love of musical theater from my mum. In the days when the average person owned a handful of albums, for the millennials amongst us that a streaming Mp3 craved into a circle of plastic, she had three Rogers and Hammerstein cast recordings. As I got older I added newer musicals to my playlist. High on that list was “Paint your Wagon” the principles were Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. Image Dirt Harry and the Dirt Dozens as a musical. One of the rather sillier tune was called “Out the window go the beans” A song for our times.
RICK THOMAS
Bertha’s House
Berta did the cooking, big smile, big pots, that smell in the air. Many pitched in. It’s a neighborhood thing, we help our own, and folks get that. The homeless, junkies, runaways, unemployed, the working poor … if you’re hungry … come eat.
Beans of all kinds. Baked, black, pinto, Navy, kidney, and doctoring the beans was commonplace … onions, peppers, veggies and spices … on a good day meat!
Slice of bread, plastic spoon, a napkin.
Berta’s house … Loving thy neighbor … TODAY!
In this house …
We feed the hungry
We touch the lives of others
In this house we give thanks to God!
PLANET Z
I eat a lot of salad.
Probably not enough salad, considering my recent weight gain, but I still eat a lot of salad.
I chop up lettuce and vegetables, and then I store them in plastic containers in the refrigerator.
I also open cans of chickpeas, beans, and corn and put them in plastic containers so they’re ready for a quick salad.
Still, it’s a lot easier to tear open a bag of chips or pretzels and eat those instead of the salad fixings.
And a taco salad made with greasy tortilla chips is hardly a healthy salad at all.