Just as fast food commercials lure you into eating food that causes diabetes, heart disease, and strokes, the Hallmark Channel movies lure you into feeling guilt, regret, and a mistaken desire to forgive and reconnect with the toxic people who fucked you up as a kid. I’d love to see a parody of these movies where someone goes back to that small town, sees how shitty everyone was and still is to them, doesn’t fall for their nostalgia trap, and leaves. Oh, and they bang that still hot old flame guy/gal who’s now conveniently single or widowed or whatever.
The tambourine player
Billy played bass.
Roger played the drums.
John was lead guitar. And he wrote all the songs.
Mark did keyboards and vocals.
And Janet did the tambourine.
Everybody got paid equal shares.
After a while, John got pissed off at Janet because she didn’t want to sing.
“You just bang a tambourine,” he said.
Sure, she looked good on stage.
And on the posters and album covers.
But getting paid the same as the songwriter-guitarist and the keyboard-playing vocalist, they got mad and let her go.
Janet banged her tambourine solo, and made a fortune.
While her former band folded.
Like a bad neighbor
When I see some famous athlete or celebrity in an insurance company’s commercial, I hope that they suffer some grievous injury or loss.
A season-ending break, or a raging wildfire that destroys their mansion.
And they have to suffer through the same claims process and rejection that ordinary people suffer through.
But the thing is, they won’t.
They’ll scream how they’re the famous athlete or celebrity in the commercials.
And get special treatment.
The insurance company paying out more millions to them.
While the rest of us are stuck on hold, or waiting for a rejection letter in the mail.
Give a shit about
I don’t give a shit what you are, what color your skin color is, what gets you off (as long as it’s not kids), what you pray to, and where you are.
All I care is: do the job.
Go to the toilet and pray to Neptune the sea god for all I care.
Just get out of the way when I need to take a shit.
As for your multicolored separate diversity flags, the only flag I fly is at Pancho’s Mexican Buffet which is used to signal the wait staff to bring more chips and refills for drinks.
Grimbles
Grimbles Academy boasts an excellent teaching reputation, graduation rate, and college placement test score averages.
This is due to the massive Alfonse Grimbles Endowment.
They can afford the best of everything.
The best facilities, the best teachers.
But not quite the best students.
You see, the Endowment requires that at least one Grimble is enrolled at all times.
Which is awkward, since Alfonse left everything to the Endowment and left his descendants destitute.
The well-to-do student body harasses these kids, and there are frequent fights.
The lawyers worked up a plan… enroll the Grimbles, but keep them on permanent suspension.
Weekly Challenge #1015 – Five stars
- Richard
- Lizzie
- Tom
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
RICHARD
— Star quality —
We started rating the kids’ chores around the house: one to five stars.
It’s gives them an incentive to do things well, and the number of stars they get is reflected in their pocket money.
It’s working well. Dishes are always washed, bedrooms are kept remarkably clean and tidy and any time there’s an errand to be run, there’s no shortage of volunteers.
In fact, it’s worked so well, I suggested using the system for the wife.
Meals, cleaning, shopping and so on, all rated, and rewarded with… sex.
“Can’t see the point” she responded, “You’re two stars, at best!”
LIZZIE
Five stars for what, crappy food?
The food was not bad, said the receptionist.
No? What about that horrid thing on the wall?
The receptionist looked up at the bull head skull. It was a sculpture, not the real deal. Besides, continued the receptionist, we are not in the business of eating the decor.
Insolent! The client’s always right!
Not here. You see, sir, here we rate the clients, not the other way around, and you are a 0.
What?!
Would you like the bull head skull wrapped to take, so you remember us, since we won’t allow you back?
SERENDIPIDY
Five stars, shining brightly in the night sky, never seen before, not part of any known constellation.
They gleam and twinkle more brightly than any other. What could they be?
Meteors? Asteroids? Comets, perhaps?
Or maybe they aren’t natural at all.
They could be satellites or space debris, burning up in the atmosphere as they fall to earth.
They aren’t satellites, although they are man-made.
But who made them? That’s the big question
Was it the Russians? Are they Chinese? Could they be American or from distant North Korea?
We’ll find out, soon enough.
Once they hit their targets.
TOM
The Game
The rules were simple. Five cities. Five riddles. Five Stars. You could have five members on your team. And most importantly was the Five hundred thousand dollars. Linda was the first to figure out New York was the first city to explore. Better she had narrowed it do to a particular area in what was once Five Points. An old map showed that once there was a body of water in the city. “We find the center of the Collection Pond we will find the star.” Said Linda. Bill asked “Any idea what it will look like?” Not a Clue.
NORVAL JOE
“You’re going to do us a favor,” a gruff voice said from behind Patrick.
“You’re the shooter from the meadow,” Billbert said when the man stepped into view. “You should be in prison.”
He just sniffed. “Your friend is going to help us obliterate the Five Star Sisters and their coven. They’ve interfered with the Black Knights for the last time. We know your girlfriend is most powerful when you’re touching each other, so, you’re going to put your hand on Sabrina’s neck, and I’m going to tell Sabrina what to do.”
Billbert hesitated. “And what if I don’t cooperate?”
PLANET Z
Normally, when you see a movie with five stars, it’s probably some Hollywood woke garbage that ticks all the diversity boxes and hates Republicans, conservatives, Trump, religion. everything the left preaches. So when I saw a well-known conservative reviewer give one of those leftist propaganda movies five stars I was completely flabbergasted. I wrote him asking why, and he said, he thought the movie was a parody of leftism in a comedy and not actually trying to be serious and he laughed all through it at how ham-fistedly stupid the writer and director and actor all had been.
The shitty cook asshole
I hated Brussels Sprouts.
I also hated any boiled vegetable.
Raw, I liked. Put a salad in front of me any day.
But boiled vegetables? Awful.
Still think that these days.
So, when my mother said “Well, you need to try different things” and I tried it and hate it, what kind of asshole MAKES IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN?
What? It doesn’t taste like mushy vomit the second and third and eleventy billionth time?
And if I don’t like it, I’m the one who’s wrong? What?
No, mother… you were a fucking asshole.
And you were a shitty cook.
Faith healer
Ah, faith healers. Claiming to do God’s will.
The thing I’ve never understood about faith healers is when they grow old and end up in the hospital with something terminal.
“Can’t you just heal yourself?” I want to ask them.
But I already know their answer.
They all say it… God wants them back.
Then why go into the hospital?
I mean, if it’s God’s will, why resist with doctors and nurses and medicine and surgery?
But I know it’s all a lie… because I was a nurse.
And I gave a faith healer sugar pills.
And the fucker died.
Think about eating
I’m on a diet due to a few health issues.
High blood pressure, high blood sugar.
That kind of thing.
So I need to be careful about what I eat.
I need to think about the things I eat and look up their calories and protein and other nutrients.
Of course, thinking about eating things is a lot less calories than actually eating them.
So I do a lot of thinking about eating and very little eating.
When I think about things to eat, okay, so I let myself go a bit.
Steaks and ice cream sundaes and fudge brownies.
A poet
I know a poet.
She’s been writing poetry for years.
In her personal notebooks and diaries.
Reading them at a coffeeshop.
Handing out leaflets and pamphlets.
Submitting them to magazines, receiving rejection letter after rejection letter.
And then, she gets published.
A magazine here, a university collection there.
Submitted for a few prizes, until she wins a few.
Then the commissions roll in.
Write a thousand words on this, two thousand on that.
From self-published books to a publishing deal.
All the while, she’s been sharing them with me.
And I’ve been deleting them.
I’m not all that into poetry.