Despite the cold, I will go out today. I do this every Christmas.
I bundle myself up with a thick coat, woolen cap, gloves, and scarf.
Then, I walk the streets, handing out ten dollar bills to the homeless.
“Go get yourself something,” I say. “Merry Christmas.”
They smile and thank me: “Bless you!”
I don’t wait. I keep walking, handing out more bills.
When I run out, I put my cap, scarf, and coat on a sleeping drunk.
Yeah, they money’s counterfeit. Witnesses will point this dumb sap out to the cops.
Time to move to a new city.
Baby Brother
Lisa’s parents knew what would be on the Christmas List.
The same thing she’d asked for every year: a baby brother.
Her birth had been difficult. The doctors had performed a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding.
And her parents didn’t want to adopt or hire a surrogate.
“You’re plenty enough,” they said to Lisa.
So, she took matters into her own hands.
Sure, the paper said it was an electrical short from the tree.
Lisa said she saw smoke, rescued the neighbor’s baby first, couldn’t go back in because of the flames.
Just wait until she wants a baby sister.
Downsizing
Remember “Peace on Earth, Good Will To All Men?”
Well, there’s a new phrase making the rounds this holiday season: “Do More With Less.”
Everybody’s suffering. Even Santa’s workshop.
He laid off a bunch of elves. Elf unemployment’s awful The cookie and shoe manufacturing industries have been automating production and moving factories to China.
He doesn’t need the reindeer either. Now he just delivers stuff through Fedex or UPS, whatever’s cheapest.
Pretty soon, he’ll just do it all through Amazon or iTunes.
Mrs. Claus wants to retire to Florida.
Real estate’s cheap there.
And not a fucking frozen wasteland, either.
Everybody wants
I remember when the Christmas gift that everybody wanted was a new electronic toy or gadget.
Teddy bears that played storytelling tapes.
Video games.
Plastic spiders you could throw at the wall and watch them crawl down it.
As computing and materials sciences advanced, so did the latest and greatest holiday gifts.
Everybody wants it. And so do you.
Now that things have taken a turn for the worse, you’re lucky to get clothes, used or new.
Or, for the truly desperate, somewhere warm to sleep…
No, the world doesn’t end with a bang or a whimper, but Christmas carols.
Summertime
As you freeze your ass off in the dead of Winter, someone down in Australia is working on their tan in the peak of Summer.
The doctors look over your fingers to see how bad the frostbite damage is.
You’ll recover. Just get better gloves for the next time.
The Australian, however, won’t know about the spot on her back for months.
By then, it’ll be too late. The melanoma will have spread into her lungs and pancreas and…
It’s hard to dig a grave in winter.
What do you care? You’ll be on the beach, tanning.
Need some sunblock?
Outsourced
Up until now, I helped move call center jobs to India.
But that wasn’t enough for the shareholders, and they wanted more return on their investment.
So, I worked with a friend at Temporal Labs, and we started up a helpdesk based on workers in the future.
“It’s a quantum tunnel communications channel,” I said. “Expensive, but permanent. The great thing is, they know how things turn out in the future, so they can send answers back to us.”
I guess leaving our debts to our grandchildren wasn’t enough. Now we make them answer all of our stupid questions, too.
Weekly Challenge #243: Inspiration
Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Forty-Three, 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 Inspiration!
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.
Zackmann
Wow, one of my shows won the Emmy. I knew cross-genre fiction had become popular but
I never expected this. Thanks to my staff. Thank you Jonathon and Gary of Notes Form
Coode Street for whatever you said that inspired me to write Stargate CSI, StarShip CSI, and
CSI Mars Station. I also want to thank Frank Darabont for making some very talented writers
available to help me with three of this years Emmy nominated shows. Finally , thanks to Justin
Lowmaster and Lawrence Simon for getting me into drabbles since awards ceremonies now
limit acceptance speeches to 100 words long.
Dave
“Feeling inspired yet?” she asked with a smirk in her voice.
“That’s not really helping,” I groaned, wiping the last remnants of sleepy glue from my eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry ’bout that,” she purred. “Is there something I could do to help you get your creative juices flowing this morning?”
“Well, that is in your job description isn’t it?, I croaked semi-rhetorically, with a tinge of pathetic hope in my voice.
“Ok,” she replied. “Do you want to do this the hard way, or will you roll your lazy ass over?”
I sighed, opened my laptop, and began writing.
Helen
You inspired me with thousands of words written to make sure I never fell backwards. You helped me fight the deepest sadness, and depression. You grabbed me, stood me in front of a mirror, and said, “Look at yourself Helen, you cannot give-up or give in if you give-up then everyone else wins.”
Your heart flutters like butterfly wings. You have faced far worse situations, far worse conditions, and far worse heartaches. You wrote the book on inspiration, look at the beggar on the corner with no home at all.
Breathe, endure, believe, smile, and love …
Tom
I want to be the first zombie president.
Inspiration I bring you
Be more that the sum of your dissociating parts
I seek your undefined attention
Yes we can
Yes can can can
If elected I promise a brain in every pot and
Pot in every brain.
If elected I promise a ban on shotguns
Spear guns flame throwers
Axes lawn shears
And crochet hooks.
If you are tired of that pack of fake zombie
Wannabes drolling on excessively about health care
Elect a real rotter.
God Bless the arm I’m crewing on
And God Bless the United States of America
Justin
Back in the seventies when Games Workshop was beginning, they had an office, and therefore couldn’t afford an apartment, so they lived in a van until they could afford both. They started distributing TSRs game Dungeons and Dragons and this really pushed Games Workshop forward. When TSR wanted to buy Games Workshop, or stop distributing through them, Games Workshop decided to hold their ground, and Warhammer was born. Amidst all this, they made the Fighting Fantasy books, a sort of role-playing adventure you played in a book. I want to make a choose your own adventure style interactive fiction game.
Steven
She kicks me out of bed, rumpled rolling tangle onto the cold floor.
I cover my face as the cheap pen and notepad arc over the edge of the
mattress.
My voice is a croak. “Now?”
She looks over the comforter. “Yes.”
I have fifteen hundred words when she leaves. She rotates among us.
“Write,” she commands. “Write.”
We write until our fingers bleed. We have to.
I was the first to discover she didn’t like alcohol. As I drank and
smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, she snorted at me.
“You and Hemingway,” she said. I ginned, free of the muse.
TJ
We had to call it the Inspiron processor because some other company had
already called their processor the Inspiration. What they’d actually
done is torn a transistor radio apart and stuck the various components
together with the innards of a calculator into a piece of green plastic.
It burst into flames after like five calculations but because their
uncle actually worked in the patent office or something, “the
Inspiration” predated ours by three days. We take consolation in the
fact that we know how to build computers, and certainly the gajillion
dollars our processor made helps to ease the pain.
Norval Joe
Ashton’s writer’s block was so persistent that the once prolific author hadn’t penned a single story in ten years. He even considered taking Viagra since it always helped when he lacked sufficient romantic inspiration.
Wallowing in self pity he watched old movies on Net Flicks, day and night until he came upon “Forest Gump”.
Ashton hit the streets in a brand new pair of running shoes. It worked for Forest, it could work for him. Just yards from his home he tripped on uneven ground and plowed into the dirt head first.
He stumbled back home to try the viagra.
Planet Z
If you toast my health, toast my bad health.
I am allergic to many things, and when I am not careful, welts and sores open up along my thighs.
To some, they would seem a burden, but to me they are an inspiration.
All of my paintings, poetry, music, and sculpture are a result of examining and exploring the revolting landscapes on my legs.
The only form of art that does not benefit from my malady is dance.
Instead of being inspired to dance, I do my best to stay as still as I can to avoid chafing and infection.
Seeds
On the eve of her return to the land of the living, Hades thanked Persephone for her company.
He handed her a map with some wine and food, in case she got hungry along the way.
The next morning, Persephone began her journey.
It took longer than the journey to Hell, and she sat by a stream to rest.
She drank some wine, ate some food.
Then she realized: it was the rest of that apple.
“Six more seeds,” grinned Hades. “That makes twelve. The world is mine.”
Far above them, leaves turned brown again, and snow began to fall.
Imagination
I’ve been told that when you turn 100, The King of the World grants you a wish.
Every day, I imagined what he’d look like. He grew more magnificent each day, silken robes and a golden crown with shining gems.
Until, one day, he was there. At my hundredth birthday.
“Make a wish,” he said.
“To be young,” I replied.
He laughed. “You imagined me all your life. As youth is imagination, so then you are young.”
I blew out the candles on my cake, watching the smoke twist and curl into flying dragons and magnificent castles in the clouds.”
Same Shit, Different Asshole
Election Day is over, and we’re sending a new guy to Washington.
The old guy, who never did anything, packs his stuff and comes home.
The new guy is full of enthusiasm and ideas, and he gets immediately to work.
Well, not yet. He needs new furniture for the office. He has to hire a staff. He has meetings to attend.
When he’s ready to sit down and get to work, he gets up and… heads off on the campaign trail.
It wears him down, and after a few terms, he’s accomplished nothing.
The old guy laughs at us.
Suckers.