You used to have to make cheese and macaroni with your own cheese and macaroni.
Then, Kraft came out with that blue box kit.
You know, the one with the orange powder.
Add your own milk and butter.
Now, if you don’t have your own milk and butter handy, you could use a Velveeta or Cracker Barrel kit.
Or one of those special Kraft kits.
Those have orange cheese goop in them.
Better yet, just get the Stouffer’s or other premade frozen macaroni and cheese.
Or go to a restaurant and order it.
That’s what kids menus are for, right?
Weekly Challenge #670- SHARP
- Richard
- Serendipity
- Lizzie
- Tom
- Duane
- Laieanna
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LIZZIE
Someone said “To destroy is always the first step in any creation.”
So, he grabbed his sketchbook and drew. Whatever he drew, he destroyed.
The smile on his sister’s face for each time she made him look stupid. The ice-cream business of his friend who bullied him as a kid. The records his cruel cousin stored alphabetically. And he went on and on.
Then, he drew New York. He didn’t know why. He had nothing against New York.
So, he drew himself a pair of thick glasses and he never touched the sketchbook again.
New York survived with minor damages.
RICHARD
Parenting
When it comes to parenting, I’m a firm believer in the ‘short, sharp shock’ method for dealing with bad behaviour.
When my kids were toddlers, I wired up the high chair to a car battery to dispense the necessary treatment; then, as Tasers and stun guns became more readily available, dishing out discipline became a lot simpler.
Of course, for the most serious tantrums, the only solution is alligator clips, connected to the mains’ supply – works every time.
So what if my kids now spend most of the time drooling and rocking back and forth… they’re always impeccably behaved.
SERENDIPIDY
You need a carefully selected, exceptionally sharp, knife: one capable of slicing through skin and flesh in a single, smooth motion. Then the follow up of the sharp, acid touch of freshly squeezed lemon juice – so intense!
Finally, a Liberal application of salt completes the ritual.
Then… Sit and drink. Best enjoyed with a companion.
The perfect tequila slammer.
And afterwards, when the bottle is empty, it’s time to turn the knife on your companion: Slice them up nicely, then rub copious quantities of leftover lemon and salt into their wounds.
It’s well worth the hangover in the morning!
TOM
Left To Ones Own devices
Jack was a sharp dress man, but not in the way you would think of a fashionable man about town. True he was dress to the nines in his New York suit. What made Jack sharp was the vast assortment of sharped things he hand incorporated into said suit, his favorite a straight razor. Everyone wanted Jack dead, and he was having none of it. Now the universe, a truly funny external agent of fate. Had other plan for Jack. Few have gangster have ever been done in by a self-inflected paper cut. Bleed out all over that sharp suit.
DUANE
Sharp
Music: Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeod
I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. In boot camp I spent one week on chow hall duty. My job was filling milk dispensers with boxes of fresh milk from the huge walk-in refrigerator behind the chow hall.
I walked out of the fridge one morning to a female petty officer blocking the door.
“Is that the meat locker?” she asked.
“Milk locker” I replied.
“Are you sure that’s not the meat locker?”
“Yes.”
“I was looking for some meat.”
“Nope.” I was smiling and thinking how dumb she must be to not know where the meat locker was.
NORVAL JOE
When the three arrived at Linoliumanda’s house she ran inside and grabbed her butter beer mug. When she came out, it was clear something was wrong. “My parents are both gone. What do we do now?”
Roderick laughed. “Why don’t you fly?”
Billbert coughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Roderick folded his arms. “You’re as sharp as a tack, aren’t you Billbert. I know you can fly. If you want to get to school on time, you’re going to have to do it.”
Billbert scowled at Roderick but went inside the house and used the phone to call his mother.
LAIEANNA
Finding a pink slip in my locker after hand to hand combat was a
devastating discovery. It was my third year at spy school and I had
been in the top ten for every class since I enrolled. Year three was
more advanced, but I was a dedicated student and still scored high
with the exception of Interrogations and Torture. It was the receiving
not giving kind of class. Yes, I struggled, but I just needed more
time to adapt. I have to be resigned to my fate and take the notice.
Ow, that’s sharp! Now I have a papercut.
devastating discovery. It was my third year at spy school and I had
been in the top ten for every class since I enrolled. Year three was
more advanced, but I was a dedicated student and still scored high
with the exception of Interrogations and Torture. It was the receiving
not giving kind of class. Yes, I struggled, but I just needed more
time to adapt. I have to be resigned to my fate and take the notice.
Ow, that’s sharp! Now I have a papercut.
PLANET Z
Milton Sharp.
Oldest man in the world.
Died at the age of…
Well, nobody’s quite sure.
Birth certificates weren’t a thing when he was born.
Which was a very long time ago.
We think he might have been a hundred and twenty.
Maybe a hundred and twenty-one.
There’s no way to be certain.
It’s not like we can hook him up to a polygraph.
Or inject him with truth serum.
Well, we could, but neither would do much good.
Because he’s dead.
Does it really matter?
What is it going to change?
And we all die in the end., right?
Fishmonger
A fishmonger trades in fish.
A slaver trades in people.
So, who trades in mermaids? A fishmonger or a slaver?
They’re half-fish, half-people.
But then, are you trading in mermaids as a commodity, or are you representing them as an agent or employment facilitator?
The rates are nearly the same, but the results are somewhat different.
After all, you don’t drag your new VP of Sales out of her saline tank and eat her.
Unless, of course, your sales are down for the budget year.
Then, go ahead. Eat them.
Beats firing them and paying out a large severance package.
Go get the lemons
I never liked the idea that if Life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade.
You shouldn’t wait for Life to hand you lemons.
Nobody goes around handing out lemons.
Instead, you’ll probably get handed some handbill for a protest, or some guy dressed up like a hot dog will hand you coupons outside of the James Coney Island.
Or, if you’re in Vegas, a hooker’s kid will hand you an ad for his mother.
The sidewalk’s littered with those ads.
Me, I never wait for lemons. Life’s too short, man.
I go to the grocery store and shoplift them.
Thrown under the bus
Okay, so your team threw you under the bus.
At least they threw you under a bus.
I mean, that’s public transportation, right?
Was that bus running on clean-burning diesel or compressed natural gas, or some other lower-carbon footprint power source?
It would have been better for the environment if they had thrown you under an electric vehicle.
Or, I suppose, a human-powered vehicle, such as a bicycle.
Under a bunch of jogging humans would have worked, too.
Although if a bicycle or joggers had run you over, you might have gotten someone else hurt.
We couldn’t have that happening.
Boring at the booth
The problem with coming up with a cool schtick for a conference exhibit is that you end up having to do it a few hundred times.
Over. And over. And over.
Yeah, I know. It’s funny. For you.
For me, it was funny the first few times, when I was coming up with the routine, but now that I’ve done it a few hundred times, I’m sick to death of it.
So, here’s the bottle. Here’s a jelly bean in it. One jellybean. Because we don’t play guessing games with your business hosting.
Ha ha. Funny, right?
Now go away.
SkyNet
SkyNet kept sending back terminator robots in human biological casings, and various members of the Connor family kept destroying them.
“It got smart,” was what Kyle Reece had said, but how smart is a musclebound terminator robot speaking in an Austrian accent?
So, after a while (which is a strange phrase to use when you’re dealing with time travel and paradoxes), SkyNet really did get smart. It stuffed a dog with Von Neumann nanobots and bangs it into the past.
The nanobots spilled out of the dog, built quintillions of copies of themselves, and took over the world.
The end.
Make my day
In the movie Sudden Impact, Dirty Harry Callahan says “Go ahead, make my day.”
He’s taunting a criminal to run so he can see if he’s got one bullet left in his gun.
However, the criminal could have made Dirty Harry’s day in a different way, like complimenting how nice his suit looks, or he could have given him some flowers.
Or maybe, he could have said “I don’t think I want to be a criminal anymore. I’d like to be a cop. Do you have a job application form that I can fill out?”
That would make my day.
Weekly Challenge #669 – MUG
- Richard
- Serendipity
- Lizzie
- Tura
- Tom
- Duane
- Jerry
- Laieanna
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LIZZIE
The mug was empty.
The cop sniffed it, after pulling it closer with a pen. He shook his head.
Then, they went through the whole house. Nothing looked out of place, except that one mug.
The cop sniffed it again.
“Whose drink was this?”
The old man shrugged, looking away.
“Your wife’s?”
He couldn’t remember, he said. Old age, you know.
When the police combed through the house again, they found it, the tin.
This was not a case of amnesia, but a case of death by hot chocolate, hot chocolate seasoned with a slight scent of almonds.
RICHARD
419
I’m no mug, so I tend to take junk mail with a large pinch of salt.
However, this latest one had all the hallmarks of being the real deal… For a start, he knew my name, and although I don’t make a habit of hobnobbing with Nigerian princes, I do work with a guy from Nigeria; so perhaps he passed my name on as a favour?
And yes, I am a trustworthy, kind and humble guy… Just like he said in his email.
Unfortunately, the wife is even less of a mug than me… and she controls the bank account.
SERENDIPIDY
The girls around here don’t like to go out after dark – there’s a story going around about some guy who will mug them in the shadows, abduct them without trace, and then dump their broken, lifeless bodies in the street.
That’s why I always offer to walk them home. It’s so much safer than going unaccompanied, and with my extensive experience in unarmed combat, I know they feel completely safe with me around.
Of course, that works very much to my advantage…
When the time comes for me to mug them in the shadows and abduct them, without trace!
TURA
Mug
———
Within its armored display case, it is traditionally titled “Lao-Tzu’s tea mug.” It much predates that sage, but it is said that he once held this vessel in his hands. Observe the random, fractally
The picture is always different.
Some viewers are struck with
This is why Lao-Tzu’s tea mug is held in the secret collections, accessible only to members of the Fiends of the British Museum.
TOM
Forever a Sweet Tooth
Mug Root Beer was my go to carbonated drinking. I wasn’t much a cola fan. Mug was produced by the Belfast Beverage Company of San Francisco. The company’s mascot was a dog named Dog. Pretty creative those marking guys. Of course the target audience was pretty much under 10. Not the most sophisticated consumer group. As a rule it was had a lighter taste then Hires, it was way less sweet then A&W. My first root beer was actually Dad’s which was produce just down the street from where I grew up the near north side. Not available in California
JERRY
Mug
——————-
Sara knew what Bob wanted. The way he entered a room, the swagger of his hips as he walked toward her. The tilt of his head. The little boy smile on his lips. The sparkle in those deep blue eyes. The long blonde hair with just a little natural wave in it. Even the dimples in his cheeks were letting her know what was going on in Bob’s mind. Sara knew that she would give him what he wanted. She could do no less.
A few inches away and the words come from his mouth.
A mug of decaf please.
DUANE
Mug
Music: El Mundo Submarino by The Mugris
The local police department has upgraded their mugshot camera. It now includes portrait mode and automatically touches up the photos. Been in a fight? The camera sets the lighting to take the rough of edges off your scrapes and bruises. Hair all awry from a three-day bender? No problem.This initially caused a crisis at the station with arrests spiking up. People would get arrested just to get a nice jailhouse photo for Facebook or Instagram. In the end, the police started charging for the shots and were able to cut back hours on traffic details and parking meter patrols.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliumanda turned to stare down the bully. “We’re going back to my house to get my mom to drive us to school. Besides, I forgot my
Our new dog, Delphi, came to us with a mysterious past as they say she
was a stray. Her face, though, might say it all. A stern mug of
downturn corners, short muzzle, and a touch of an underbite, she could
have been into anything. We like to think she was mob boss of some
local dog gang in the deep south, getting rich on stolen sausage
links, betting on squirrel races, and hiding a stash of toy offerings
from the minions she ruled over. She spent her time in doggy jail and
now it’s the leisure life of rehabilitation.
PLANET Z
The janitor cleaned out Detective Jansen’s desk
Not bothering to empty the World’s Greatest Dad mug, spilling stale coffee all over the other meaningless trinkets.
One day until retirement, he was.
No, he didn’t die in the line of duty.
No Hollywood buddy cop action movie here.
Sure, his wife and kids were dead, but that was in a car crash years ago.
Not by the hand of some drug lord or terrorist kingpin that Janson would bring justice to.
Just a heart attack, nothing more.
A sergeant would be promoted to take his place.
And life would go on.
Chase the lizards
The cats go outside and catch lizards.
Then they come inside and release the lizards.
The lizards run around, and the cats chase them.
Then, after a while, the cats tire of chasing the lizards, and they go back outside, or they curl up for a nap.
The lizards stay inside, and they crawl around on everything.
We store our glasses and dishes upside-down, just in case.
Out toothbrushes are in a closed medicine cabinet.
We find a lot of dead lizards in the laundry hamper. Or our shoes.
I sleep with a handkerchief over my mouth, just in case.