The government store ran out of bread.
The government store ran out of meat.
The government store ran out of potatoes.
The government store ran out of fish.
The government store ran out of toilet paper.
The government store ran out of soup.
The government store ran out of lettuce.
The government store ran out of carrots.
The government store ran out of baby food.
The government store ran out of wine.
The government store ran out of everything.
Except for forms. Lots of forms to fill out.
They’re only good for wrapping fish.
Which the store is out of.
The black line
When you drop something on your foot and cause a bleed under your toenail, or jam your foot against something in the dark, it’s interesting to document the months it takes for the line of black to grow out from the root.
Clipping a little off every few days, taking a snapshot with your phone, the line eventually comes to the edge, and you file off the last of it. And you’re back to normal.
And swear to always wear socks and shoes everywhere.
Until you head off for bed, trip over something, and jam your toe against something else.
Buffet of death
A lot of tech companies offer subsidized cafeterias or free delivery lunches.
Ours offers credits for snack vending machines and a daily lunch buffet.
However, with the coronavirus fears, shared buffets like that could lead to some dangerous situations.
And coming to the office may become a hazard in and of itself.
Especially when there’s one or two troglodytes who don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom.
Truly disgusting.
So, they’re having people work from home and they’re offering an allowance for meals to be delivered.
Which works out fine… until the people at the delivery services get sick.
Weekly Challenge #799 – MISNOMER
- Lizzie
- Richard
- Tom
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
RICHARD
Misgnomer
I’d been called to the office of the Head of Design Control. I had a feeling it wasn’t to congratulate me on the quality of my work.
He gestured for me to sit and unceremoniously dumped one of my creations on the desk.
“What’s this?” He queried, eyebrow raised enquiringly.
“Oh, that’s my latest design in the ‘Gone Fishing’ series”.
“Yes. But what exactly is it?”
“Erm, it’s an elf.”
“Dickson, this is ‘Gnomes Unlimited’! We produce garden gnomes, fishing gnomes, dancing gnomes. Gnomes of every kind! Not elves, not orcs, not dwarves!”
“So, as for these elves… Let’s see gnome more!”
LIZZIE
They called her Butterfly not because she was gracious but because she liked to see things fly. Often enough, people had to scatter in all directions when something came flying towards them. When she upgraded from apples and pears to dishes, someone yelled “not the butter”. She couldn’t care less and off it flew, the dish with the butter on it. It flew straight towards the head of the good old fisherman. He was never the same again. His grumpiness disappeared and he only had eyes for Butterfly who, still today, keeps making things fly. Her latest achievement… a bicycle!
SERENDIPIDY
It would be something of a misnomer to call me evil.
Weird, dangerous, perverse, cold, calculating and unfeeling are certainly words that could be aptly applied, but evil? Not at all.
If we’re being scientific about it, then you could almost certainly define me as psychopathic and sociopathic, neither of which, I would argue, necessarily make me evil.
You see, to be evil, one requires a sense of morality. Without it, how can I know whether my intentions and actions are immoral, wrong or downright nasty?
What you class as evil, is perfectly normal to me.
I think, I’m lovely!
TOM
Close But No Banana
How can you be under a misnomer? Further can you be over or between a
misnomer? Exactly how many prepositions can you interact with? I could
spend all day in this loop, deeply drilling down through context, or is
that content? Basically, we live in the land of misnomers. Failing of
update and cling to social nomenclature so we can coalesce in a group
consensus. Take the singular use of “they” not a they is a group, I mean
are. No they is a young non-bin girl-boy. Or is that a girl-boy. Is they
now a ubermisnomer or a hypernomer?c
NORVAL JOE
Billbert followed the strange girl down a crowded hallway. He cleared his throat. “I’m Billbert. What’s your name?”
She flashed him a smile. “I’m Sabrina.”
He laughed. “Like the teenage witch?”
Her smile was much weaker now. “Yes. Like that. But witch is such a misnomer. It implies we throw newt’s eyes and chicken gizzards into a boiling cauldron.”
Billbert swallowed with difficulty. “Huh?”
Sabrina stopped. “Look. I’m just a girl with specail talents. Is that so hard to understand?”
Billbert shook his head. “No. I understand better than you’d expect.”
She pointed at a door. “Good. Here’s our class.”
PLANET Z
The whole class had the wrong names.
Joy was a miserable child.
Chastity was a total flirt.
Angel was a total devil.
Christian was a sinful boy.
And Faith and Hope had none.
Honor was a deceitful little shit.
Scarlet was a pale shade of blue.
Grace was clumsy as hell.
Autumn was born in the spring.
So was Winter. And Summer.
Melody and Harmony couldn’t sing for shit.
Rose, Daisy, and Jasmine all smelled like garbage.
River and Brook couldn’t swim.
Only one kid had the right name.
Amber sat in the corner, encased in a glassy tan resin.
Faraday
Michael Faraday, the scientist, discovered and invented many things.
One such item was the Faraday Cage.
It’s a cage made out of electrically conductive material that blocks magnetic fields.
It is not a cage in which to keep Faradays.
That was something private between Michael Faraday and his wife Sarah Barnard.
Especially considering how if word got out about that particular cage to his Sandemanian Christian congregation.
A deacon and elder of the church behaving in such a depraved fashion?
His secret was buried with him… because, instead of a proper coffin, he was buried in that naughty little enclosure.
Emotional support
At first, airlines allowed passengers with disabilities to bring their helper animals on board.
You know, blind or crippled people with their dogs.
Then, people claimed to need emotional support animals.
They claimed that they were trained, but emotionally-unbalanced people lie, you know.
So, they brought cats and chickens and lizards and snakes and ponies.
To the point where their desire for emotional comfort caused massive emotional unrest among the other passengers.
That’s when some clown claimed that they should be allowed to bring their emotional support elephant.
“Get a fucking life, asshole,” said the airlines. “And take the train.”
Mindy Blake
Did I know Mindy Blake?
Yes, but I knew the Mindy Blake from a parallel dimension.
She looked the same, but the other Mindy Blake took chances, took risks.
She lived life to the fullest.
Such a shame I had to kill her.
It was either that, or the universe ending.
Because of that Mindy Blake.
As opposed to this Mindy Blake, the one here.
Craven little thing.
“You’re a disgrace to the name of Mindy Blake,” I said.
She wasn’t on my kill list, but she deserved it.
When I’m done, I’ll come back.
So you can thank me.
The bakery
It was an honest mistake at the bakery.
On the same day, they had to deliver a bunch of cakes.
A graduation cake, a gay wedding cake, a baby shower cake, a retirement party cake, a birthday cake…
Pretty much, every occasion you could think of, there was a cake that had been ordered.
And the bakery labeled each of the boxes wrong.
Oh, the chaos that ensued. Hilarious, tragic… the bakery’s reputation was ruined.
The fact that nobody opened the box to look at their cake to make sure it was right, well, that was the real mistake, right?
Keeping memories
Back in the days of video tape, I’d use the handycam to record a lot of important things.
Weddings. Birthdays. Those things.
I’d also record a lot of shows that I didn’t have time to watch or were going on at the same time as something else I wanted to watch.
The problem was, I’d run out of tapes, or I’d accidentally record over something I wanted to keep.
Nowadays, you record stuff digitally, although for a while you could run out of disk space, now you can store it all in the cloud.
Now, what was my fucking password?
Sharing is bullshit
Every time my dad came home from a convention, he’d bring all kinds of neat stuff.
Keychains, flashlights, strange decks of cards, and other things.
One year, he came home with a frisbee-sized foam-rubber nickel.
“It’s a flying nickel,” he said. “You two can share it.”
My brother grabbed it and threw it around the house.
I asked for a chance to play with it.
He shoved me to the floor, and I screamed.
So, my mother took it away, yelled “SO YOU TWO CAN’T SHARE?” and tore it in half.
Thank god she never did that with the dog.