Looking at the tractors and other machinery, my grandfather said “They don’t make ’em like they used to.”
Which, considering that the farming process used to involve human sacrifice into a volcano, I’d say is a good thing.
Especially when the human to be sacrificed would be me.
“Get a goat out of the pen,” he said.
I put a rope around a goat’s neck, and we climbed the side of the volcano.
“OH LORD PYRO!” shouted my grandfather. “ACCEPT OUR SACRIFICE TO BLESS THIS YEAR’S HARVEST.”
And I shoved my grandfather into the volcano.
Goats are expensive, you know.
Abandoned carts
I work for a company that’s all about helping companies engage with their customers.
The most interesting feature they support is abandoned shopping carts.
If you go to a web store, put something in your cart, and then close the window… that’s an abandoned cart.
Our software allows stores to send you texts or emails asking you if you still want that item.
I’ve noticed this before, and now I go to online stores and abandon carts just to see if they email me.
I also abandon shopping carts at the grocery store.
The employees gather them up, cursing me.
Weekly Challenge #969 – Mind
The next topic is PICK TWO Scorpion, Walking on eggshells, Turn, High pitched, News, Craftsmanship
RICHARD
— In the eye of the beholder —
“Well, really! Do you mind?”
The exclamation caught me by surprise, I turned around, white stick exploring the floor between us.
“Oh!” An embarrassed pause. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise.”
I cocked my head slightly, “My apologies, I seem to have startled you, miss. Is there something wrong?”
In a friendlier tone, she replied. “It’s just that, well I think you may have taken a wrong turn… Not your fault, at all, of course!”
“Oh?”
“Well, this is actually the ladies’ changing room.”
I apologised profusely and allowed her to escort me out.
She really believed I was blind!
SERENDIPIDY
How do I deal with it?
I suppose it’s really just a state of mind. Call it professional detachment if you will.
I guess it’s no different to being a medic, or cop or doing any of those jobs that exposes you to terrible experiences. You don’t allow yourself to become emotionally involved, you concentrate on the job at hand, and don’t let it get in to your psyche.
Then again, who am I kidding?
I don’t have to deal with it, because I thoroughly enjoy what I do!
But, you won’t enjoy it, when I do it to you!
LISA
A Meeting of Minds
Derek wasn’t traditionally good looking, but he was a successful hypnotist and that had brought considerable wealth. Heidi was a supermodel. The most beautiful face of 1972, 73 and 74. She had a body to match but no personality.
Heidi was attracted to Derek’s wealth initially. Then he did his finest work: making her attracted only to him, a mind control trick that would ensure she never looked again at another man – she was completely under his spell.
Derek aged well; unlike Heidi. She became a bitter hateful woman. And as he’d ensured, she never looked at another man again.
TOM
SomeThing
It wasn’t Billy wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. As a child he had a fever that messed up his hearing. What he heard often seem by other as quite amusing. Take his belove Grandma. She would tell him to Mind his manners. Billy heard Mine his manners. Confusing how you could execute this, Billy did his best to compile. He had quite a deep hole in the backyard, before Grandma looked over the edge and declare that his manners were quite exemplary. Later in life Billy founded the Manners Mining Company who hold the mining right on Mars.
NORVAL JOE
The butler walked into the waiting room and seeing them sitting along the wall, approached. “Is there any word on Mr. Withybottom, madam?”
“No John,” she said wearily. “We don’t know how long it will take to get results. Why don’t you take Linoliamanda and head home.”
“Really Mother. I don’t mind waiting here with you,” Linoliamanda said with a sideways scowl at the butler. “If it gets late, I can walk to Billbert’s house, and his parents can take me home.”
Perkins looked unhappy but nodded. “As you wish, Madam. I will wait for your call at the manor.”
PLANET Z
They say that the last thing that goes through a bug’s mind when it hits the windshield is its ass.
You could say the same about Andy Parker, the first man to ride on a rocket sled.
After multiple experiments with cadavers and animals, the scientists wanted to test rapid acceleration and deceleration on a living human.
The staff who volunteered drew straws, and Andy got the short straw.
The ink was barely dry on his contract and life insurance policy when the rockets fired up and the brakes were released.
What his actual last thoughts were, nobody will know.
The other side
They say that the grass is always greener on the other side.
The other side of what?
The other side of The Force?
Well, the good side of the force was in the Jedi Temple at Coruscant.
There wasn’t much grass on that planet.
Nor was there much grass on Mustafar, Darth Vader’s hideout.
What about The Far Side?
Gary Larsson drew it in black and white during the week, and only the Sunday editions were in color.
It turns out, they were talking about that movie The Blind Side.
Man, the grass at that rich private school was green.
The creepy dog
We have an awesome back yard and patio, but the neighbor’s dog stares through the chain link fence.
When it does this, it looks creepy and judgmental.
So, we replaced the chain link fence with a solid wooden fence.
The dog still finds a way to get up on the fence and stare at us.
And it looks even creepier.
No matter how high we build the fence, the dog still manages to get up there and stare at us.
We moved to another neighborhood.
No back yard. No patio. No fence.
And, thankfully, no creepy dog staring at us.
Radial design
There’s a difference between not liking a symbol and not liking the cause it represents.
I find the Isle of Man flag to be ugly, with its radial and rotational symmetry of freaky feet.
But as for the Isle of Man itself, I really don’t know much about it, nor do I care to learn.
Similarly, the Nazi flag also has rotational symmetry in the symbol.
It’s nasty. It’s sharp. And the people who use it are awful people.
I don’t care if it’s an inverted symbol for peace.
So, Clarence, these cookies are delicious, but I’m rejecting your design.
Peppermint Flatty
All the way back to the third grade, Miss Othmar’s class, you could see how Marcie would look at Peppermint Patty, calling her Sir.
Kids would talk, do horrible things.
You know how kids can be.
Patty may have been a tough tomboy in grade school, but when she got to high school, she started to blossom.
Marcie wasn’t cool with this.
Patty went on hormone blockers, had her breasts surgically removed.
She was scheduled for the bottom surgery when she found Marcie making out with Charlie Brown under the bleachers.
Patty killed them both with a field hockey stick.
The marketed moon
I’m a technical writer.
But every now and then, I get asked to write marketing copy.
I’m not a marketing writer. I’m a technical writer.
My mindset is explaining things and teaching, not selling and promoting things.
The marketing people say give it a try.
So, I do. And it’s awful.
But we work on it together, and it comes out not half bad.
We do this again and again, and I feel myself change.
I fall to the floor, my body contorting.
The marketers howl at the full moon.
And I, the newest member of the pack, howl along.
The day after
If The New Yorker weren’t horribly biased, I’d imagine a cartoon where a reporter is poking her head into an editor’s office and asking if President elect is one word, two words, or hyphenated, and you see through the glass that the editor has hung themselves.
But The New Yorker is nowhere near that self-aware or capable of self-deprecation humor.
Hubris is funny, until it happens to you and your narrow world-view.
Besides, I’m sure some cartoonist has already tried to submit a cartoon like this.
No idea if the editor hanged themselves, though. But would you really be surprised?
Weekly Challenge #968 – Blood Test
RICARD
— Bloods —
I swear that when you reach a certain age, it gives doctors a licence to prescribe a whole range of medicines they’ve been itching to give you for years.
So they ask you to pop in for a blood test.
A simple blood test. Nothing to worry about – just routine. Give us a call in a week and we’ll have your results.
Those results, once you reach that magic age, open the floodgates to a catalogue of woes – diabetes, heart problems, cholesterol, cancer… You name it, and you’ve probably got it.
Not me.
I switched my son’s samples for mine.
TANGENT
The world was due for cancer screening. A century prior, it had barely survived. From the fallout, symptoms were documented, and as the years of testing passed, the world was content that it would not return. Attention turned to its autoimmune disease. If left untreated, fever would come, and kill. A screening was missed while the autoimmune treatment plan was drafted, but the symptoms were minor, and the world was content.
The cancer, it turns out, had returned. Its presence accelerated the autoimmune disease, and the fever had started.
The world is dying, but it has survived worse. Have hope.
LISA
Six Months
It wasn’t the result anyone would have wanted. But there it was, unquestionable. She shunned all treatment feeling if it was her ‘time to go’ she should leave with grace. She contemplated speeding things up but didn’t want to leave anyone a mess.
She swapped a Netflix series for a brisk walk, a pint for a green smoothie, stopped smoking and started yoga.
So, sixth months turned to sixteen, turned to sixty.
She survived decades; then died as she crossed the road whilst engrossed in an article about a blood test mix up in her area, all those years ago.
SERENDIPIDY
To give them their due, they were very thorough.
They took swabs, they dusted for prints, they took hundreds of high resolution photographs.
And they found nothing.
Just the blood test to go.
I held my breath, and waited as they sprayed Luminol over every surface they could find.
They turned on the blacklights… And still found nothing.
Not a smear, not a spot, not even the slightest indication of blood anywhere.
I’d done my job well.
And, if they couldn’t find any sign of the murders, I was pretty certain there was no chance of them finding the bodies!
LIZZIE
She was in the tub. Went for a swim, someone joked. The blood test was inconclusive. Are you sure it was a person? He nodded. Melted in that tub, someone joked. It wasn’t funny. Where did he get the blood from then? The wall. Plenty of it. The acid took care of the rest. And now? Now, it was in their hands. That’s why you’re cops, he said, I’m just the coroner. Well, the blood wasn’t hers. It was his. That damn pocket knife he used to slit her throat first. Good thing no one noticed that he kept saying she.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliamanda, her mother and Billbert waited in the front lobby of the hospital while they admitted Mr. Withybottom. The nurse told them it would be an hour or more while he got his blood test, xrays, and possibly an MRI of his head, so they might as well get comfortable.
A group of teenage volunteers surrounded a small table, chatting, and waiting for their turn to push a patient or carry flowers to a room.
They were mostly girls and Billbert considered how some were very shapely, like Sabrina. While others had hardly any shape at all, more like Linolamanda.
TOM
Often discovery in less than amazing.
It was discovered in remote corner of Anatolia. Bronze Gears festooned with Lapis lazuli. After cursor inspection a sweeping claim was made, this was the world’s oldest safe. X-rays of the interior while clearly showing all the working part didn’t offer a clue how to open. In the heart of the safe was signal sheet of parchment. 10 years of exploring different methodologies the safe finally swung open. The Parchment took another 10 years to decipher. Seems the glyphs on the parchment were the combination to the safe. It ended up in a museum the parchment taped to the side.
968
There can only be one
Two go in, one walks out. Imagine the duel in Dune. Two form circling. Muscles coiled like steel springs. A fury of jabs failing to hit the mark. Glancing blows drawn no blood. Sweat rolling of arm. Finally, a countermove brings the point to the skin of the neck, but not quick enough. With a roll to the right and dropping to one knee she finds the tiniest of open. S jabs and press the plunger. Red fills the crystal chamber. The crowd screams. It is over, the blood test has been fulfilled. This one hell of a Nursing School.
PLANET Z
I order a lot of things online, and I get a lot of packages.
On recycling day, there’s a stack of cardboard boxes and padded envelopes on the corner.
Sometimes, I mail things out.
Warranty cards, returns.
Tests my doctor orders for this or that.
Most tests I take at the corner clinic, but some are tests I can smear some blood on a card and mail back to the lab.
Most bill my insurance, others take a credit card.
One lab requires that I write checks.
If they can’t process a credit card, how will they process my blood?