Weekly Challenge #203 – Desperately Ostentatious and Disconnected?

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Three, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was… was…. um…
It’s Desperately Ostentatious and Disconnected? !
VOTING

Which were the best stories this year?
Zachmann
Steven
TJ
Norval Joe
Anima
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Zachmann

See my great coal powered zeppelin. Your tax dollars at work. Do you know how many teachers we fired to afford this? It’s for my job with one of the local departments in charge of enforcing environmental laws. I use my coal powered zeppelin to search for and report people breaking the spare the air law and using a fireplace or pellet stove on cold nights. You might think a zeppelin is desperately ostentatious but I think my bosses in Sacramento are totally disconnected from reality. At least they replaced the Hummer H1 that was so unpopular with the public. zackmann (next topic “you Know what you did”)

Steven

Danielle watched the officers unplug her robotic daikaiju.
It’s giant arms stopped waving to the children on the ferris wheel.
The roar faded as the speakers fell silent. Neon eyes flickered into
blank darkness.
Mark’s hand fell on her shoulder. “Danielle, it was too gaudy for the
state fair. The wreckers will be here tomorrow.”
Danielle’s fingers wrapped around the remote. Her fingers caressed
the single large button.
She pushed it.
Giant batteries flared to life. The monster’s eyes lit up, feet
rising, breaking free.
Danielle smiled, running toward her monster’s waiting arms.
They had a rampage to go on.

TJ

“Come in, come in, come in to my Oscar Night party! We begin with the champagne and caviar – oh you’ll love my caviar it’s from the same supplier as Crofts but I get a deal. And the tuna mousse, oh I swear by my tuna mousse it’s like a cloud. Yes, you, Snowdrop, you sit there like a little lady and Mr. Boots, so handsome, so good you could join me! And oh, Mittens, try the pate!”
Crispin Glover popped his warped, worn tape of the 1985 Oscars into his dusty VCR amid his stuffed, long-dead kitties, and hit “play.”

Norval Joe

“Look at him.” Henry said to William. “One would suspect a person of hgh posistion, as he claims to be, would be more aware of social mores.”
“Indeed, William,” the other replied after savouring a sip of wine. “His choice of attire is desperately ostentatious, and entirely innapropriate for evening wear.”
“Well said, my good fellow,” Henry added, “he appears either physically lost, or at least disconnected from reality. Does he think he’s Richard the Lionheart?”
The winos scrabbled backward in the garbage filled alley as teh man pull a sword from its scabbard.
“Actually, I’m King Arthur,” he said.

Anima

“Felix, “Desperately Ostentatious” for two hundred…”
“Susan, this pop icon underwent numerous skin and facial transformation surgeries, and finally overdosed last year”
“Michael Jackson!”
“That’s not in the form of a question. Steve, you’re up”
“Desperately Ostentatious for eight hundred”
“This Philippine beauty queen, aka the “Steel Butterfly”, encouraged the poor to plant flowers and declined to purchase the Empire state building in the 80’s…”
“Who is Imelda Marcos!”
Nicely played…. One moment folks – the judges are conferring… Unfortunately, that last clue should have been for the category of “Socially Disconnected” and will not be counted– buzzers at the ready…”

Planet Z

Shirley Winston? Not her.
We can’t have her bidding on the art.
Which is her agent? Point him out.
He’ll never represent ever again.
You remember the stunt she pulled last season? She bought up an entire lot, and then had it burned, smashed, and displayed in a run-down abandoned warehouse.
I know she’s angry at losing her husband in the accident, but this is madness.
Four billion dollars in the hands of an angry sociopathic cripple.
We can’t stop her. She pays to keep the doctors and lawyers from committing her.
Which is her agent?
No! All of them?

The Mermaid Feast

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Old Captain Jack was a friend to all creatures of the sea, so when he died, they took his boat out thirty miles from shore and cast him into the briny deep.
Six mermaids caught his shrouded body and escorted him over the horizon.
The crew set course for port, but winds blew them back out, and they came across the mermaids.
They were feasting on Jack’s corpse, hands drenched in gore and blood.
The crew wanted to fire their cannon to scatter the mermaids, but instead they just watched.
Watching half-naked cannibal women are better than nothing, I suppose.

Fooling Osiris

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Rameses knew he was a royal dick. His heart was heavy with guilt. So, he constructed a fake from red feathers.
“That way I pass Osiris’ Test of Balances and go into Paradise,” he said.
On the day of their master’s death, his assistants did as he wished. They tore out his heart, put it in a jar, and carefully implanted the feather construct.
Then, they were put to death and buried with him.
Osiris looked at the feather-heart.
“Light, isn’t it?” said Ramses.
“Yes,” he said. “Pretty.”
Then, he took out a jar. “But this one says you’re fucked.”

Clown Fights

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Billy and Bobby live next door to each other. They have the same birthday, too.
That’s caused problems.
You see, Billy and Bobby hate each other. And those feelings boil over when they have their birthday parties.
One year, they each got a pony. Cute, right?
Wrong. It ended up in a jousting duel.
This year, they’ve each got clowns. Bobby slashing Billy’s clown’s tires got things off on the wrong floppy-shoed foot.
The rubber chickens and balloon animals are flying. I’ve seen a few clods of dirt and bricks.
Better bring the cake inside. And get me my shotgun.

Olympic Medalist

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Sally trained hard for years, dreaming of the day that she’d win the gold at the Olympics.
Her family sacrificed so much for her, giving up so much so she’d have the best trainer and the best equipment.
They paid off the Board Of Education so that her training would count as school credits.
No need for math and science when there’s a medal to be won, right?
Which, that summer, she won.
And promptly then fell off the medal podium, shattering her leg.
No endorsements. No career.
Nothing.
For years, she used that medal to scratch off lottery tickets.

New Phone

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I bought a new phone.
It has a lot of features, but instead of sitting down and reading the manual, I’m going to power it up and then complain about how hard it is to use.
Yes, I’m that much of an impatient dick. Instead of spending a little time now to save a lot of time later, I just like to hear the sound of my own angry, bitching voice.
The box says it’s supposed to have all sorts of stuff. Including a stun gun.
But I don’t have time to read about it… hey, my first call!
YEOW!

The Right Religion

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After thousands of years of praying, sacrificing, killing, maiming, and suffering through gospel music, mankind had finally determined which of all religions was the right one.
The Global Address System, normally reserved for planetwide emergencies, was turned on as the researchers revealed their findings.
“We have determined that the Supreme Being is the 2917k5b Asteroid,” they said. “This mighty rock may not be the creator of our universe, but it will certainly be our destruction.”
Riots and chaos spread across the globe, and billions of people died.
“Nice joke there, Dr. Walters,” said a scientist. “Solved that pesky population problem.”

Weekly Challenge #202 – Bats

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Two, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was… was…. um…
It’s Bats!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this year?
Zachmann
Vince T
Jeffrey
Steven
TJ
JRadimus
Justin
Norval Joe
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Zachmann

Son said You should checkout @ASAHiCon. Ate(atA) as in sister? No, @ as in twitter. You can link to the website. We want Anime Society of Antioch High Convention on March 20th 2010 in Antioch California to be a success. I asked if anyone planned to come dress as the Joker or Bats. No, but people wearing video game and Anime costumes are likely. I will go because Son worked really hard last year. I rarely see him do that a home. Think Son will hit someone with a bat if talked into wearing that dress again this year.

Vince T

Gramps always had a way with words.
Kids would be playing ball on his lawn and he’d walk out onto his porch and yell.
“Hey you slackers, why don’t you go and play on the highway where you belong.”
The kids would leave and yell back: “You crazy old man, do you have bats in your head? The highways aren’t safe.”
Later that day, Gramps had to run to the store to pick up his glasses.
As he backed out of his driveway, he hit a kid!
“You see! Now that wouldn’t have happened if you played on the highway!”

Jeffrey

“Bats.”
“What?”
“You asked what I was afraid of, bats.”
“Brad, that was four months ago.”
“Yeah.”
“It took four months to determine what you’re afraid of?”
“Well I was busy, you know I had other things on my mind.”
“What other things. I mean the computer runs the ship, we have less to do than Dave and Frank, and I asked you four months ago, what were you thinking about?”
“I’m not really afraid of much, and I was cleaning my toe nails, I don’t want to effect a new world with that.”
“Yeah, you know bats, not scary”

Steven

The church looked down at the ranch home in the next lot. “Excuse you.”
The house blushed, the sounds of copulating echoing from inside.
“Human infestation,” it said. “It happens.”
“Balderdash!” said the church, raising its voice above the moans from
next door. “They are sent by God to afflict the wicked!”
“You’re nuts!” said the house. The church scoffed, its humans raising
their voices in praise and song.
When night came, a black cloud came close – bats flying back to their
church steeple home. The house giggled to itself.
“I knew you had bats in your belfry,” it said.

TJ

“Bats!”
“You’ve got bats … in the belfry!” said McBatt. “You’re bonkers!”
“Not the belfry! The baffroom!” said Betsy McBatt.
“What, off the boudoir?”
“No! Back of the balcony!”
“We haven’t got a balcony. You’ve gone birdy.”
“Oh, that big whatyoucallit, then, behind the balustrade!”
“Oh off the landing, in the guest baffroom?”
“Yes! They’re driving me batty!”
“Short trip. I’d better be after them. Where’s the bat?”
“Bertie? You’re not sending my cat after them!”
“Not Bertie. My bat!”
“Check behind the Barcalounger.”
“Right-o.”
And with that, McBatt did wield his bat and banish those bats from the baffroom.

JRadimus

Every spring, I relive my greatest shame. When I was 9, I heard there would be try-outs at Yankee Stadium for “Batboys”. I couldn’t believe it: my lifelong dream of the past 6 years had come true. Amidst daydreams of patrolling our fair city by moonlight alongside our own caped-crusader (one I didn’t even know we had), I prepared my home-made costume for the auditions. It had to be perfect, naturally. I was so excited I could barely eat. I arrived an hour early; upon seeing the other kids, I refused to get out of the car. I hate baseball.

Justin

I wound up and pitched. She batted her eye right back at me. I dodged it, she made it to first base.
Making the giant zombie spider hitters use one of their own eyes as a ball lowers their sight advantage, but only a little bit.
You might think using an eye is cruel, but the zombie flesh regenerates when it is replaced.
We’ve got to win this game. Another loss means we have to feed more people to the spiders. It’s the only way to keep them from just overrunning us all. Who knew spiders loved baseball so much?

Norval Joe

“It would be so cool to be a bat,” she thought. “I could fly around and no one would see me.”
She climbed onto the back of the couch, hooked her legs and tried to hang over, upside down. She immediately dropped on her back. Before she could control it, a yelp escaped her lips.
“What was that?” Rebekah mumbled from where she sat across the room.
“If I was a bat, I could have a really cool name,” Fluffy thought to herself as she crawled from behind the couch, sat, licked her paw and acted like nothing had happened.

Planet Z

Moonlight Graham.
One plate appearance in the majors, then the season was over.
He went back home, got married, and became a doctor.
For fifty years, every cold, broken bone, and baby born. That was his work.
When he died, they found a closet full of blue hats he never got around to giving his wife.
They also found closets full of gloves, bats, and baseball memorabilia, broken and defaced in nightly fits of rage.
Then, in the crawlspace, all the children who’d gone missing over the years.
They quietly buried the baseball junk and bodies.
And the ugly truth.

The Dying Killers

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We smuggle the temple priests, women, and children out of the village under cover of darkness.
The jihad strikes at dawn, mercilessly killing everyone.
The children and women are told not to cry, lest we be spotted.
They cry silently, never sleeping.
The next day, we wait and watch the jihad march South.
Then, one by one, the killers drop dead in the sand.
Returning to the village, we see the destruction… blood everywhere, animals slaughtered, men cut in half, and buildings burned.
And the false granary, full of poisoned seed, empty.
The priests bless the dead, and we rebuild.

Fungusville

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There’s nothing unusual about Fungusville.
It’s a typical small town just a half mile or so off the freeway.
There’s houses, schools, businesses, and even a Main Street.
City Hall has a square with a cannon, a fountain, and a statue as part of a war memorial.
They have two churches, and they have a softball game on the Fourth of July every year.
No matter how many people I ask, nobody knows where the name Fungusville came from, or why someone would name a town after fungus.
Rubes!
I shrug and hop on the bus back to Hemorrhoid Falls.