RTO

Lexie was in her pajamas when she read the memo on her laptop.
“Return To Office” was the subject line.
The managers found managing remote employees too difficult.
Despite the improvements in productivity and employee retention.
So, instead of getting better managers, they wanted all the employees back in the office.
Lexie got dressed and returned the laptop to the office.
And she accepted an offer from another company.
Who didn’t have an obsessive return to office fetish.
She left a note on the laptop:
Thank you for stabbing me in the back.
No, you cannot have the knife back.

Coaching

When I got drafted out of college, I was the new kid on the team.
Some of the returning players saw me as a threat to their jobs, and they hazed and pranked me, and they did nothing to help me.
But the veterans who were at the end of their careers saw an opportunity in me.
To teach me all they’d learned and how to make me a better player and person.
Not only did it help me, but it helped them when they retired and were looking for coaching jobs.
Which is why I’m helping you now, kid.

Galazy

Some professor at some university discovered a new galaxy.
No other scientist had seen it before.
Until this guy did.
I think it was a guy. Could have been a chick.
The professor did research and published it, and got a lot of congratulations for it.
And named the galaxy something, I don’t remember what the name is.
You can tell I don’t really care about this shit.
What the fuck does a galaxy millions and billions of light years away matter?
I’m here. Right now. You are too.
Has anything changed now that we know that galaxy is there?

Play the dirty game

We like to disguise interrogators as Red Cross or lawyers or reporters, and they’d ask the prisoner if they wanted to send anything out to their family or the media.
More often then not, the prisoner would try to send out a message to their group.
Didn’t matter if it was encoded. We’d broken all their codes.
Then we’d shoot the prisoner, say they died trying to escape.
And round up the people they’d given up in their message.
So, you coming in here, ready to defend me against these war crimes charges…
I know your game. I ain’t playin’.

The hall

Every four years, the theme park’s engineers build robots for the exhibit with the robotic presidents.
They build the two partys’ candidates, vice presidents too.
So they’re ready for any circumstance in November.
The mechanisms are easy, they have dozens on the shelf that can be easily adjusted for height.
And the clothes can be padded to match their build.
It’s the faces that are the hardest… sculpting and molding and painting them.
Recording the voices is also easy. These people have been reading from a teleprompter for years.
And then, the reveal… and the park guests cheer and boo.

Dumb commercial

I don’t understand why that weight loss drug needed Serena Williams as a celebrity in their Super Bowl Commercial. If you have a working and safe weight loss drug, you don’t need a celebrity to peddle it. That shit will peddle itself and make you, like, gazillions of dollars.
What are they expecting some fat viewer to think? “Well, my insurance covers this weight loss drug and I’m horribly fat and sick all the time, but I’m still not completely convinced. Hey, wait… that tennis player uses this stuff. I’d better call my doctor. Um… okay, tomorrow. Because it’s Sunday.”

Weekly Challenge #1033 – Vanishing Point

The next topic is Experiment

RICHARD

Perspective
“Do you understand it now?”
The blank look on my face said it all. I didn’t have a clue. My art teacher sighed and tried again.
“Perspective is all about giving a realistic impression of depth, so you pick a single point on the horizon -the vanishing point- and imagine all the sight -lines converge at that spot.
I frowned in confusion. I’d always wanted to be a painter, but this was just confusing.
But, I did become a painter, of walls, doors, ceilings, skirting boards…
Not sure my art teacher would be impressed.
It all depends on your perspective!

LIZZIE

“Draw a circle. And another inside it. And another, and another. The vanishing point is a full stop. A full stop inside an O. The circle is gone, it has no meaning as a circle anymore. It became an O with a full stop in the middle.”
“What?!”
“Perspective. Interpretation. Meaning.”
“Excuse me, Professor, but…”
“You don’t see it? You draw a circle and it vanishes into an O! It’s extraordinary!”
They didn’t see it.
The Professor was forced to retire, but he smiled. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He could finally sail away, vanishing into the horizon.

SERENDIPIDY

“Mayday, mayday, mayday! Air Angel four six two, we have experienced an explosion on board and we have a serious cabin fire. Advise heading for nearest airport.”
I hit the emergency button, summoning my supervisor as I responded.
“Air Angel four six two, Jekyll Military Base is eight miles to your North, heading Two Eight.”
I stared anxiously at my radar; Air Angel a glowing dot, slowly traversing the screen.
Would they make it?
Then, the point of light simply vanished.
Inwardly, I smiled with satisfaction.
The bomb I’d arranged to have planted in the hold had done its job.

LISA

A packed room with standing room only. The smell of a long day’s armpit lingers.
“Well, this is the last known sighting since the latest…” the captain pauses for the right word, “…vanishing,” points at a local map on a whiteboard with photographs surrounding it. “It’s the Brotherhood place again.”
The room is quiet as everyone stares at the sea of blonde college girls.
“Sadie’s number nineteen. She may well be there voluntarily but we need to get into their compound and talk to her. And soon.”
The door opens. “Another three Sir, just reported missing from a local school.”

TOM

I don’t get much of an opportunity to use my classic training in art. So now I will carpe diem you all with knowledge like it was 1444. The first modern paint is the Baptistery. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 1907 is the first post-modern painting. Oddly the latter fails to have a vanishing point. Vanishing Point: The single spot on the horizon line where receding lines appear to meet. It replaced atmospheric perspective which was basically glosses of fuzzy blue. The Florentine Fillipo Brunelleschi painted it 1415, it depicted the Baptistery in Florence from the front gate of the unfinished cathedral.

NORVAL JOE

“I thought that since Sabrina’s gone, the ring might come off,” Mandi explained.

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Billbert tried to shake off the confusion of sleep. “She’s got to be here somewhere.”

“No. She’s trapped in a magnifying glass. Come see.” Mandi led the way back to her room.

She opened the drawer, wondering if Sabrina would appear, there, in the room or back at the vanishing point in the kitchen.

“Look.” Mandi held up the glass.

Billbert’s eyes went wide.

Not looking at it, Mandi shoved it back in the drawer, relieved that Sabrina had stayed inside.

LEWIE

As Jim drew lines on his drawing, a paradoxical view of stairs and archways started to form on the paper, similar to M.C. Escher’s Relativity stairs. The tip of his pencil came too close to one of the vanishing points, and it sucked it out of his hands.

Jim looked closer, confused as to what just happened. He tried to brush some graphite away from the area, and was suddenly sucked into the drawing.

Looking at his hands, half of them were drawn, and partially unfinished. He looked up to see a hole closing, peering back into his classroom.

LEWIE

As Jim drew lines on his drawing, a paradoxical view of stairs and archways started to form on the paper, similar to M.C. Escher’s Relativity stairs. The tip of his pencil came too close to one of the vanishing points, and it sucked it out of his hands.

Jim looked closer, confused as to what just happened. He tried to brush some graphite away from the area, and was suddenly sucked into the drawing.

Looking at his hands, half of them were drawn, and partially unfinished. He looked up to see a hole closing, peering back into his classroom.

PLANET Z

We found Jimmy hanging in his dorm room.
He hadn’t showed up to study group that morning, and Elise had his room key.
We cut him down, checked his pulse, and called the campus police.
They showed up, asked a bunch of questions, and the real police came and asked us more.
We shouldn’t have cut him down.
We shouldn’t have touched him.
We shouldn’t have disturbed the scene.
Meanwhile, Elise hanged herself in her room.
We got there in time to save her, but we did what the cops had told us, and she died before they showed up.

Reward stars

The teacher put reward stars on homework. Gold for great, silver for good. If you didn’t have a star, you had a problem. My brother was two years older than me, so my mother knew that this teacher put stars on homework. So I shoplifted a pack of star stickers from the office supply store and added them to my homework. Why I would be getting silver and gold stars for homework covered with red correction pen? So I made Xerox‘s of homework at the office supply store, filled it out twice, and put the stars on the clean copy.

A thief to catch a thief

It takes a thief to catch a thief, they say. So the FBI made the old swindler an offer. Pose as a rich Arab and bribe a bunch of crooked politicians, and we wipe your slate clean. And it worked out great, I mean, you’ve heard of ABSCAM, right? what I love most about the case is that the old crook would order corned beef sandwich sandwiches from his favorite delicatessen. When they asked why a rich Arab was eating kosher food, he said they were so delicious, and i can’t get any back at the kingdom, even with Delivery.

Summer evenings

On warm summer evenings, I like to walk to the abandoned golf course and stand by one of the ponds. The water is usually pretty clear, with a few lily pads floating on the surface. I can see the fish swimming around, and sometimes a heron or a pelican flies in from the beach and ducks its head under the water and comes up with a fish. I stand there, sipping my coffee, and let my mind slowly go quiet. When the sun sets, I finish my coffee and walk back home, and all is good in the world, right?