They had their best years out in the ranch together.
John died in 1950.
Ethel joined him in 2130.
No, she didn’t outlive him by 180 years.
After John died, Ethel went out to the islands.
She died out there a few years later.
As the oceans rose, the islanders moved back to the mainland.
They took with them everything. Even their dead.
Someone had a Bible with her name and John’s in it.
John and Ethel Musgrove. Musgrove Ranch.
They sent her bones back home, dug a grave by John, and lowered her down as the preacher read verses.
The Unfair
Every year, the agricultural fair drew thousands.
The best corn. The best melons. The best sheep and cattle.
The best that the farmers of the state produced.
They competed for prizes.
First place to that calf, that bushel of corn, and that pig.
When the fair ended, the judges kept everything.
“Administrative costs,” said the judges.
Year after year, fair grew.
And so did the judges. Their arrogance. Their bellies. Their demands.
Then, one year, the exhibitors didn’t come.
The judges howled with rage, and demanded an explanation.
The answer was fire, sweeping across the fairgrounds, consuming the judges’ palace.
The Beards
One of the good Astros pitchers has a huge beard, so when he pitches, they have a special section of seats where they give away special shirts and clip-on fake beards.
There’s a good player with the Rockets that has a huge beard, and that team has commercials where they tell people to fear the beard, but I don’t think they do ticket specials or fake beard giveaways.
As for the Texans, they have a quarterback who has a huge beard. But he’s really awful. JJ Watt is good, but he has no beard.
A championship would be nice, too.
The Next Train
She left Boston to teach in a one-room schoolhouse on the vast golden plains of Wyoming.
That’s when she met him, and he was forever smitten.
But she refused, and when the schoolyear was over, she went to her next assignment.
For years, he wrote her.
And she wrote him.
She rebuffed his advances, he kept pressing.
Until one day, she said yes.
She boarded the next train out West, and he waited for her.
And waited. And waited.
Finally, a coffin arrived.
She’d caught the fever, but her dying wish was to be buried out in the golden plains.
Sushi Wife
I like sushi. My wife doesn’t.
Is this a problem? No.
I have a sushi wife. She’s the person I go with to sushi restaurants.
You can have all kinds of wives and husbands this way.
A sushi wife. A movie husband. A French bistro wife.
And so on.
Of course, if your sushi wife isn’t available that night, you can always call out for a sushi mistress.
Or even a sushi escort. (Yeah, I know. She’s really just a high-class sushi hooker.)
Just remember that you’ll be paying, otherwise you might get your ass kicked by her sushi pimp.
Weekly Challenge #747: Beans
- 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.
Fresh herbs for bagels
I grow basil, chives, and other herbs on the patio.
This way, I can clip fresh herbs for my morning bagel.
Sure, it’s more expensive than buying herbs at the store and refrigerating them, but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I grow them myself.
Well, okay… I grow the seedlings that buy from the store. In potting soil and pots I bought from the store, too.
The bagels are from the store, as well as the cream cheese.
I don’t really make anything myself, really.
I should just stop by the bagel shop on the way to work.
Founding Fraudsters
Just as some say that Jesus never existed or that man had never walked on the moon, there are those who claim that Thomas Jefferson was himself a forgery.
A mere delusion of John Adams’ mind, who transformed from his childhood imaginary friend into the embodiment of his frustration and self-loathing.
Or maybe, a patsy to which he could obfuscate his creditors?
Regardless, the American people played along with Adams’ madness, and they helped the Founding Father maintain this ruse.
Adams penned letters to himself, to his dying day.
It was not coincidence that Jefferson died on that same day.
Hunters
Thanks to genetic engineering, we can reverse the extinction of many formerly lost species.
So, when hunters kill the last tiger, rhino, or other rare animal in the wild, we can bring them back.
Of course, this won’t stop the hunters from wanting to hunt that rare prey again.
This is why we offer hunting excursion packages in our private nature preserve.
We offer the opportunity… but the truth is, they’re just hunting our non-viable failures.
One hunter threatened to expose our scam.
So, we released a pack of raptors into his hotel room.
Accidents can be caused, you know.
Lifeguard
“I used to be a lifeguard,” said the old man. “I’d sit in a chair and watch, and jump in to pull people out.”
He pointed to the shelf, where a photo of the Rock River sat in a silver frame.
“I saved seventy-seven people. I cut a notch into a log to keep count.”
The old man reached for the photo, but he couldn’t get up from his wheelchair.
He slowly sank back down into the chair, holding the armrests.
“That was the best time of my life.”
He smiled, and slowly dozed off, the dust his only audience.