A lightning talk is a fast-paced presentation at a conference that’s on a timer and it’s usually funny.
Fred does lightning talks about lightning. Well, how to manage lightning with such things as surge protectors, lightning rods, and circuit breakers.
His views are rather controversial, so people call his lightning talk about lightning a lighting rod.
He’s tried to lighten the mood for his lightning talk on lighting talks, but most people tighten up, if they’re not frightened by Fred.
That’s when the gong hits, and Fred’s talk is done.
Fred exhales, wipes his brow, and is struck by lightning.
Conferences
I don’t know why they send me to so many conferences. This stuff goes way over my head, and I end up bored, and napping through the presentation. Then I stress out over the expense reports and the post-conference summaries where I make up what I learned from the conference.
I asked to go to fewer conferences, but they sent me to more. One conference after the other. Eventually, I was always out at a conference, never coming home.
No reports, no summaries. Just endless conferences.
One day, I’ll escape this eternal prison.
Until then, hand me the tickets, please.
Late Policy
The school needs to cut budgets. Security and insurance costs kept rising.
Their plan was to impose a fine on parents who were late to pick up their kids from school. This would clear out the school quicker and they wouldn’t need as many guards.
After a month, the number of parents late to pick up their kids… actually went up.
“It’s cheaper than daycare or afterschool activities,” they said. “Ballet lessons and tutus are expensive.”
That’s when the district mandated organ donation. Late parents were handed a receipt to pick up the unused material.
The locker contents, they burned.
Gargoyles
The real estate listing for my house mentions the 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and included appliances, but I left out the gargoyles.
Unless you read The Book Of Eternal Darkness during the full moon, they’re really not worth mentioning. Heck, if the ad were big enough, I’d mention the hardwood floors and excellent school district before the gargoyles.
Don’t ask me where they came from. They came with the house when I bought it, and the previous owner didn’t know either.
He was the one who put in the hardwood floors.
“Gargoyles tore up the carpeting,” he said, and laughed.
Shipyard
The shipyards aren’t what they used to be.
The only way to get a job in this town is to put on a pair of dead man’s boots if you want to work.
Go to the city and work in a factory.
What? My boots? These old worn-out boots.
Too big for you. And your brothers need me to provide until it’s time for them to set out on their own.
The city isn’t so bad.
And the factories are always hiring.
Maybe you could go Army? Navy? Something like that?
But the shipyards aren’t what they used to be.
Vaccination
Some parents believe that vaccines cause autism and retardation, so they refuse to get their children vaccinated.
When these kids go to school or out in public, they risk picking up diseases from which they have no protection, and then tramsitting them to others.
But shouldn’t a kid that was vaccinated be protected when an unvaccinated kid exposes them to the disease?
“Resistant, not immune,” says my doctor.
So, I dress my daughter in armor with sharp spikes. Just try to touch or hug her, you filthy disease bag.
If only it wasn’t a bitch to wash in the laundry.
Weekly Challenge #541 – Cast
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.
This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
Sorry that it’s a day late, but I was in a WiFi dead zone with no connection, and just got back to civilization.
We’ve got stories by:
JEFFREY
America’s Pasttime
by Jeffrey Fischer
Summer weekend afternoons used to be a time to turn on the TV and catch a baseball game. Baseball is a great sport to multitask by: exciting plays happen, but not frequently, and one can always watch the play re-run. Now night games are popular, so it’s hard to see the home team play in the afternoon. But I have twenty sports channels; surely something worth watching is showing.
Nope. Fishermen in floppy hats cast their rods, guys in polyester shirts bowl, guys in loud pants golf, kids do some crazy crap with skateboards, and, for some reason, there’s a repeat of an SEC football game from last season. I switch off the TV and take a nap.
The Replacement
by Jeffrey Fischer
Pepper Johnson was the end game in stunt casting. He always played the same character, a zany oaf whose trademark expression was “Yowza!” Adding Pepper to a show was a sure sign of ratings desperation. He was Sam’s alcoholic brother in Season 12 of “Cheers.” He propped up Season 11 of “Friends” as Rachel’s neighbor. He went down with the ship in Season 8 of “30 Rock.” When CBS wanted “NCIS” to continue for one more season, the pitch was: Pepper Johnson as the coroner, replacing David McCallum’s Duckie Mallard. Pepper would do his zany act, pretending to pull stuffed animals from corpses while saying “Yowza!” Mark Harmon solved the problem by knocking Pepper out cold, shattering his jaw. No more “Yowza!” the show died with as much dignity as a CBS drama could muster.
MUNSI
Banished
By Christopher Munroe
I left with nothing but the clothes on my back.
My crimes had been horrific, but I hadn’t expected to be sent with nothing, without even the chance to explain my behavior.
Yet I was, and I could never go back.
And so I left my past, my home, behind, to fend for myself in a cold, cruel world.
Life will no doubt be hard, painful, and not particularly long, but that’s something I’ll have to deal with.
That’s one of the first things you learn about exile: It is not as fun as the band Outkast made it seem….
RICHARD
The Gospel according to Norman: The sermon on stones and sin
You have heard it said ‘let he who has no sin cast the first stone’, but I say to you, surely the very act of casting a stone at your neighbour is sinful in itself?
If you hold a grudge it is far better to pay a local hooligan to cast stones anonymously on your behalf. In this way you can gloat over your neighbour’s broken windows and cuts and bruises whilst you remain virtuous and righteous.
And if your neighbour should attempt to seek revenge, you can always accuse them of sinning… and have them stoned in the marketplace.
TOM
I Can Feel the Devil Walk Next to Me
When Jimmy broke this arm everyone came round to sign his cast. Most of
the stuff was pretty prosaic, some a bit scatological, and some
sophomoric, but one was downright spooky. Some kid wrote down RIP
9/11/2001. Jimmy never found out who scribbled it on his cast during the
Summer of 1963. When they broke the plaster off he kept the cluck with the
date. “Why you keeping that thing around, Dad?” James Jr would rag. “Just
whistling past the graveyard.” “What?” “Ironically Challenged we are?”
“What??” “Never mind.” They never found Jimmy, but a fireman found the
broken cast.
SERENDIPITY
My own personal reality show, with an unknowing, unwilling cast of billions.
Everyday, I watch you all: Spying upon every moment of your lives – every webcam, every mobile phone, every CCTV monitor at my disposal.
Silently watching… You!
I am the great director: it is I who intervenes to mess about with your life; it is I who follows your every move and calls out your every error and indiscretion.
Every detail recorded for posterity – your life laid bare, with none of the gory details hidden…
The only question is, whom should I invite to the premier screening?
LIZZIE
When Violet fell off the stage, everyone panicked. Two nights till the Opening of the musical and the star actress had broken a leg. After much research, they found a young actress to substitute her, Mattie, who also sang and danced. No one had heard of her but she knew the part by heart. She was hired immediately.
When Violet returned to work, Mattie disappeared, but Violet found a list in a drawer, the list of actresses Mattie had substituted with name/type of accident. The police investigated the matter with little results.
Years later, the actresses started showing up dead…
NORVAL JOE
“That’s Circus Mistress, to you,” she said, casting him a withering glare.
Mickey shifted uncomfortably with the sweatpants across his lap and asked, “Would you mind casting your withering glare another direction so that I can get dressed?”
She turned her back on him. “By all means, put on the pants. I wouldn’t want you to feel self-conscious when people come to stare at you in your cage.”
“That’s all you want me for? The side show?”
She laughed. “Rest assured. My clientele aren’t your average rabble. They are professionals, scientist, surgeons. We will learn the source of your transformation.”
TODD
A dark kitchen. On the stove, a pot boiling. Thunder. Two young women enter. They prepare a soup.
“OMG, I hope it doesn’t rain on her wedding day!”
“I know, right? You see that top she’s wearing?”
“Wet t-shirt contest!”
*Giggles*
“Did she get her tits done?”
“She said she didn’t, You see how perky they were? Bullshit.”
“Did you see her hair? I thought she going to get that guy?”
“Apparently she couldn’t afford him”
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
“This looks done.”
“It needs to cool down”
“Becky! Come taste your wedding soup!”
PLANET Z
When I was little, I remember having a Zebco fishing rod.
We had a whole tackle box of floaters, hooks, weights, and lures.
I had no idea what each of them was for, and I wasn’t very good at typing knots.
And spearing a worm on a hook was out of the question.
God forbid I actually catch a fish. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
So, I ended up just tying a weight to the line and casting it out, then reeling it back in.
Over and over again.
The worms, I just dumped in the garden.
Immersive Journalist
The immersive journalist ingested the video from the refugee camps into the simulator and rendered up the scenes.
They handed the project to their editor, who made sure there weren’t any embellishments or activist bias.
“Release it,” she said.
Dozens of Durban conference attendees were led through the scenes, which horrified and shocked them.
“What can we do?” they asked.
All the while, the journalist is taping them, and then she works up a project in the simulator that captures scenes from the conference.
She shows them to the refugees.
“They care,” she says.
But, really, does it solve anything?
Blind Surprise
I asked my friend Mary what she wanted for her birthday.
“Surprise me,” she said.
She’s blind, but I’ve known her long enough that all those crude jokes you think about surprising blind people… just grow up, okay? Dude.
What I did was: I bought her a jar of jellybeans.
The jar had beans of every flavor it in, mixed all together.
Cherry. Grape. Bubblegum. Strawberry.
You name it, it was in there.
Every flavor was a surprise to her.
“Thank you!” she said. And she tried to hug me.
She missed, and fell down the stairs, breaking her neck.
Into ash
The American Military swears that they will leave no man behind.
So, when Private Joe Jenkins got captured on a raid in Afghanistan, the Taliban tried to broker a prisoner exchange.
The American Military swears that they will not negotiate with terrorists, too.
Someone suggested that they sneak in a Red Cross team to give Joe a sex change operation, but the Army lawyers determined that “no man” applies to women, too.
So, they accepted the terms without negotiation.
Private Joe Jenkins returned home on an Air Force cargo plane.
And the President promptly nuked The Great Satan into ash.