So, a cop took a fentanyl addict with hypertension and a heart condition to the ground and knee-pressed the guy’s neck.
City coroner said heart attack. Family’s hired coroner said asphyxiation.
But, hey, the science is settled, right?
“I CAN’T BREATHE!” were his last words.
Protests. Riots. Burning. Looting.
Peaceful, right?
I watched a fat black elderly protester holding up a sign that says MY LIFE MATTERS.
In a dense crowd. No gloves, no mask. Hugging strangers.
The other side of her sign said I CAN’T BREATHE.
It’ll come in handy when she catches the Coronavirus and ends up intubated.
The crying of Lot Devil
So, my parents finally sold their house.
But they didn’t sell the wooded empty lot next door.
They had bought that lot to preserve their peace and quiet.
It didn’t sell along with the house, though.
They gave the lot to me.
And I need to sell it.
The golf course it’s near doesn’t want it.
They gave me an insultingly low offer.
So, I told them thank you, but I’m going ahead with my plans to build a shrine to Satan.
And their golfers are welcome to pray there, of course.
I’m sure they’ll rethink their offer pretty soon.
Violin
I used to play the violin. But I didn’t play it well.
“Maybe I need a better violin?”
So, I’d buy violin after violin, until I had a Stradivarius.
It didn’t have a name, though. It was a badly-damaged body that was refurbished.
Still, it sounded great.
But I didn’t play it well.
I paid for lessons, practiced a lot, until I finally got good with it.
Then, I broke my elbow and lost a lot of range of motion.
The surgeries and rehab were expensive and I had to sell the Stradivarius.
Now, I play “Violin” playlists on Spotify.
Mickey
Mickey Mantle jumped the line, got a new liver, but it didn’t do him much good.
He got sicker and sicker, and former teammates came to Dallas to wish him goodbye.
The orderlies moved his body to a gurney and rolled it into an elevator,
Down in the basement, they moved his body to a cabinet in the morgue.
It took a day for his final exam.
They carved him up, pulled out his organs to examine and weigh them, including the liver he’d received, and sewed them all back into him.
And off to the funeral home he went.
Weekly Challenge #1029 – Broken light bulb
- Lewie
- Lizzie
- Richard
- Lisa
- Tom
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LEWIE
George had an idea.
It wasn’t a bright idea.
It wasn’t even a good idea.
In fact, it wasn’t even a bad idea.
Suffice to say, if you could see the physical manifestation of it, you would only find a broken light bulb above George’s head.
The idea wasn’t original.
It was common.
Or… at least, it used to be.
George’s idea was no longer with the times.
People moved on.
They found better lighting.
They upgraded.
George was in a closet, alone in the dark.
He was trying to find a light switch when most people talked to Alexa.
LIZZZIE
At the thrift shop, he spotted an artist’s mannequin with a lightbulb for a head, leaning against a tarnished mirror. It’s broken, they said. But he bought it anyway, and placed it on the mantelpiece. There was just something about that small fragile wooden figure. The next day, the mannequin was gone. Who took the mannequin, he shouted. Not me, everyone replied. He searched the whole house, and found the mannequin leaning against the full-body mirror in the bedroom. He could’ve sworn that there was a faint glimmer in that lightbulb. Perhaps the mannequin wasn’t that broken after all.
RICHARD
Light bulb moment
They say Christmas is for kids but I’ve never agreed, although these days it’s really not like it used to be.
Forget the old clichés about commercialisation or the true meaning of Christmas; it’s technology that’s ruined it for me.
Specifically, LED fairy lights.
Back in the day, it was almost a yearly rite of passage to dig out the fairly lights and spend hours of frustration hunting for the one broken light bulb in the tangled mass, before the satisfaction of seeing them burst brightly into life upon finally finding the culprit.
And now, it’s just not the same.
SERENDIPIDY
The glass from the broken light bulb crunches underfoot, a disquieting sound in the darkness.
The light from the officers’ torches bounces haphazardly off the damp walls, casting eerie, confused shadows on the scene, colours muted and unnatural.
It’s hard to make anything out. You act on instinct, reliant on your senses and an indefinable gut feeling for anything that might be out of place and unnatural.
Something feels, very unnatural. Very out of place. Very wrong indeed.
A sudden gasp at your side, and the sweeping torches pause, all focussed on a single spot.
Then you see the blood.
TOM
It was a dark and stormy night
Sheets a rain broke against the roof. You could hardly make out the edges of homes down the street. Then the light show commenced in earnest, ragged forks of lightening coming from the east. The thunder was freaking the cat out. She bolted into the lamp, sent it hard to the floor. Broken light bulb shards everywhere. I lit a candle and grabbed a broom to sweep. The glass tinkle like tiny bells. This was that last sound I remember hearing before the wind removed the roof. The last thing I saw was glass shards dancing toward the funnel cloud.
LISA
Tuesday
I spent the night in darkness with the cold clasping my hand. I’d pulled my jumper up over my nose, partly for warmth; mostly for its comforting smell.
A small window illuminated my new world. When the sun rose I was grateful for the dark night and was glad I’d not explored – broken glass glittered on the floor from a broken light bulb waiting for my bare feet to find it.
Grim and dirty. Bin bags spilling random belongings piled high.
It was a room with a story no one wanted to hear.
There was nothing to do but wait.
NORVAL JOE
Mandi tiptoed up the stairs to the guest room and flipped on the light switch. With a pop, the light went out. She could ask Billbert’s mother to get a new bulb, but that would draw attention to the fact that Sabrina was not in the room, too.
A streetlight outside the window illuminated the room enough for her to see her way around, and she crossed to a dresser and slipped the magnifying glass into the upper drawer.
She lay down on the bed and tried to figure out how she would explain Sabrina’s sudden absence in the morning.
PLANET Z
Only about 300 feet of water separates Little York Island from the mainland. People like things kept simple. The island is only ten minutes walk around. Everybody bikes or walks the paths. We built a footbridge a while back. Frank Henderson wants to widen it, we voted him down. if you got something big, the main post ferries it over and there’s a grocery at the other end of the bridge. There’s a doctor and dentist and a small general store. At night everyone turns out their lights and we watch the stars and sacrifice goats to the Chaos Gods.
Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis once said that every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
In spite of his Socialist tendencies, Sinclair Lewis liked to put on stilts and act like a complete tyrant.
“I AM KING!” Sinclair would shout. “BOW DOWN BEFORE YOUR KING!”
It made sense when he’d put on an Uncle Sam suit and march in the Fourth of July Parade, but he wore them year-round.
This made it awfully awkward for him to sneak into meatpacking plants as part of his investigation for The Jungle, let alone go to the bathroom.
Traitor Cat
When my sister in law comes to visit, I set up a bed in the spare room.
And the cats check it out.
At bedtime, Tinny the cat becomes a snuggle cat.
And she sleeps on the bed during the day, too.
Usually, Tinny is my sofa companion while I work.
She can be a pest and gets in the way, but when she’s being a traitor, I miss her.
So when it’s time for my sister in law to go home, I put away the bed.
Instead of snuggling with me, Tinny goes into the other room and screams.
Trejo
Some kids want to be policemen, others want to be astronauts.
Joey wanted to be boxing champion of the local prison.
He trained and built up his body and police record.
Winning fight after fight, and losing case after case.
He climbed the ranks outside the walls and inside.
Until his manager told him to lose.
He refused, and killed him.
Life in prison for murder.
Joey walked through the gate, smiling wide.
“I’m going to own this place,” he said.
“Guess again,” said a voice in his ear, and he was stabbed a dozen times. “We own this place.”
Crazy Pills Cashback
The Apple card is three percent at Apple, Exxon, and Walgreens.
I don’t need a new iPhone, I’m not going to use it on an insecure gas pump.
But Walgreens? Sure.
I have a lot of prescriptions. All my crazy pills.
When I read my last statement, I only got one percent last time.
I yelled at Support, and they said I need to use Apple Pay, not the physical card.
The co-pay on all my pills is a dollar.
Which means instead of three cents cashback for each, I was getting one cent.
I guess the pills aren’t working.
Sysco
The sysco truck has the motto follow me to your next grade meal on its back. I’ve got time to kill. So I did, thinking that it was gonna stop at one of the restaurants in this small town. But to my great surprise, it’s next stop was at the local prison. I don’t know whether it’s telling me that I’m going to jail or that they’re picking up prisoners to chop up and put in the beef soup, that hardly call that or ringing endorsement. Maybe I’ll just stick to the local Whataburger or DoorDash a bunch of salads.