Gutter

639156

Hi. My name is Gus Gustafson.
I design gutters. The best in town.
If you need a gutter, get Gus!
That’s on the side of my truck.
I put a lot of thought into my gutters.
You could say that my mind is always in the gutter.
And you’d be right. When I’m not designing gutters on my computer, I’m using it to download and watch hardcore pornography.
While watching a midget amputee rape a donkey, I notice that the gutters on their bungalow are uneven and sagging.
So is the midget, but there’s nothing I can do about that.

The Blood

639159

Hallways of history’s horrors, collected to remind future generations of the evils of the past.
Never again, we all say.
Gunfire!
Get down. Now.
Get behind something.
We see two men, guns drawn.
A guard. And a madman.
Both fired.
Each man falls to the floor, blood flowing from where they’d shot each other.
A madman with a lifetime of hate, his blood slowly mixing with the guard’s blood who had stopped him at the cost of his own life.
He sees the dead stare, and then their blood together.
Black. White.
If only this were the last to spill.

Two Hundred Grapes

719733

She waved a bony hand over the glass, refilling it with wine.
The demon she’d summoned was a gossip. He’d have told her anything, even without the wine.
“I just enjoy the company,” he said. “But the wine helps.”
“Tell me more,” says the witch. “Please,” she added.
“There’s nothing more to say,” says the demon. His red, scaly hand wraps its talons around the glass, raises it to black lips over yellowed fangs, and he sips. “What’s new with you?”
She nodded, broke the circle around his chair with a heel, and they had a nice quiet evening together.

Get a clown

639161

If you need a birthday clown, you look in the Yellow Pages for one.
On the other hand, if you need a demon clown, you draw a pentagram with silly string and sacrifice a balloon animal.
It’s not easy spraying a decent pentagram with that stuff, but with a little practice and a steady hand you’ll have your clown army of darkness.
Why you want a clown army of darkness, I won’t ask. I just teach these summoning spells. What they’re used for, it’s not my problem.
Here’s a can of silly string, a balloon, and my spellbook.
Good luck.

When you wish upon a shotgun

639177

I was rubbing the barrel of an old shotgun when a genie came out of it.
“Shouldn’t you be in a lamp or a bottle?” I asked.
“I was drunk,” he said.
He’s offered me three wishes, but would you accept wishes from a genie who can’t find a decent lamp to live in?
Especially one who’s a drunk.
And, boy, does this genie drink.
“I thought you cleaned the shotgun,” he slurs. “Man does this place stink!”
“You’re not in the shotgun,” I say. “You’re up my dog’s ass.”
So, once again, I’ll trade you for that monkey’s paw.

Weekly Challenge #163 – Death by Pineapple, Revenge shall be mine, failed Wolfram Alpha queries.

16553242

Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Sixty-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 Death by Pineapple, Revenge shall be mine, failed Wolfram Alpha queries..
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Planet Z
Guy David from http://guydavid.com
Laurie
Tom from http://footnote.libsyn.com
Leanna
Anima from http://www.zabbadabba.com
Platinum Lighting from http://sites.google.com/site/platinumlightningshow/
Terrence from http://www.mcleanweb.ca/neverwas
Lynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.com/
Norval Joe from http://norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com
Justin from http://www.thespaceturtle.com/
Daphne from http://www.daphneabernathy.com
Mike P from http://mjpaxton.com
Danny from http://dannymachal.com
Jeffrey from http://GreatHites.blogspot.com>
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Planet Z

The song’s changed.
Who used to live in a pineapple under the sea?
The sponge had gone too far with his jokes, and this time someone had hung him out
to dry.
Was it the squid? The squirrel? The starfish? The plankton?
Maybe it was the crab.
Nobody knows. Not even the superheroes in the retirement home.
I have my suspicions, though.
The whale. She’s a teenaged nympho, and the sponge couldn’t handle it.
Died with his squarepants down.
A nice family of fish is looking at the place.
Tell them about the neighborhood schools.
But nothing about the murder.

Guy David

Hacker typed a query into the new search engine. The result for “Death by Pineapple” turned out to be “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” Hacker sighed and typed another query, “Revenge shall be mine.” At that, the image of a bus appeared on screen, approaching. As it got closer, hacker could make up the details. The bus was a patchwork of electronics, seemingly unrelated moving and rotating pieces, all working together to create this monster vehicle. Eventually, the bus filled the screen, then broke out of it, accumulating the computer and making Hacker his passenger.

Laurie

“She had the perfect childhood, nothing to summon revenge.
Beautiful, friendly and always smiling”. that’s what the papers will say about me when i am arrested. A sweet evil grin finds my face as she orders another rum drink,the kind with a pineapple wedge and cherry swizzle. It will be her last. She pulls me close and I ask her to dance.. She grabs my hand and leads me through the dance floor out into the parking lot….The next morning was perfect.. like artwork the sun chased the shadows off our blood splattered walls. ..tangled together…our tresses …our legs ..our fingers…but …only one heartbeat. I shower, gather my things and gently press against her chilled blue lips. The familiar craving for whimpers and screams returns. Again, I consult Wolfram Alpha…”How can I control this dark hunger?”

Tom

Joshua Dimwald loaded the wolfram up with the usually cocktail: Z80 AF register cascade NAND Gate LD (IY+56),78. Up popped failed Wolfram Alpha queries. He had pour over the cmos in the years after the Mitchell challenge had been unclaimed. Joshua got a shop in Taiwan to build a chip for him but he hadn’t figured out the single byte roll over bug. Dimwald cursed Mitchell for ruining his life with this silly pacman challenge. “Revenge shall be mine.” He smirked from his grandma basement. Dimwald noted a odd footnote by Jeffrey R. Yee in Vidiogamers magazine: Death by Pineapple.

Leanne

Fed up with working on failed Wolfram Alpha queries, I went to visit
Mavis, as I always do when I think my life is tough. She collects
gruesome stories. She’d sit puffing away, recounting horrific details. I
remember one she called Death by Pineapple. Some girl on a diet ate
nothing but pineapple. Her hair and teeth fell out. The acid ate through
her insides. She eventually starved to death. Horrible way to die, said
Mavis, chuckling. But revenge is mine, says the Lord. Lung cancer got
Mavis in the end and that, too, was a horrible way to die.

Anima

? Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with you input.
“100 word challenge”?
? Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with you input.
“Laurence Simon?”
? Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with you input.
“Anima?”
Noun: (Jungian psychology) The inner self (not the external persona) that is in touch with the unconscious.
Finally, an answer. The wrong answer, but at least my question has been acknowledged.
I might not know how to ask a query, but I sure know how to wreak revenge, I think, as I pull the pin on a pineapple grenade. Stupid computer!

Platinum Lightning

Giant pineapples are everywhere. Nobody knows where they came from, but they’re killing everyone. My friends and family are dead, and I want nothing more than to kill those pineapples back. I’m hiding in a bomb shelter with a computer. Allegedly, only Stephen Wolfram knows how to kill them. He mysteriously disappeared a while ago, but the answer is supposedly in Wolfram Alpha. “Kill pineapple alien.” Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with my input. Damn.
“We’re not aliens”, says Stephen Wolfram’s voice from behind me. “Just British people.” Brits are actually evil pineapples. That’s weird.

Terrence

“If you knew my neighbour you would understand the great hatred I have for him. Each day we would both enter our yards, or what might be better terms as, the battle ground.
At night I would searched for a suitable strategy. Google, Yahoo, Bing none of these could produce a result worthy of my greatness, so I turned to Wolfram Alpha, death by pineapple.”
“That would explain the fruit salad shrapnel.” the doctor said. “I hope you have learned your lesson.”
“I have,” I told him. Now, I could see the failures in the results. “Revenge shale be mine.”

Lynda

The term kebabs originated in 1813. I have a thing for dates. So did my boyfriend…1980 to 2008. We did something wild to celebrate our collective 49 years of life and went to Hawaii for their 49th anniversary of statehood.
Clayton jumped up to dance the tamure with some hula dancers and they became so enraged at his geographical error one impaled him on a flaming pineapple kebab. I don’t know what came over me but I set fire to the hotel and ran away.
I can’t figure out how long I can hide in this tree with Wolfram Alpha.

Norval Joe

Princess Ka’iulani watched the sun set through the screen windows of her lanai.
An assassin placed a fast acting poison into her nightly fruit drink. The bitter taste was effectively disguised when mixed with guava and passion fruit juices. The mixture was then poured into the hollowed half of a pineapple and served with macadamia shortbread cookies.
As the sun set geckos crawled across the screens, chirping, searching for food.
She raised the drink to her lips as a gecko grabbed and swallowed a large cockroach.
“Disgusting,” she shouted and threw her drink, taking out the screen and the gecko.

Justin

Raif’s face contorted with furious anger, fist striking the table.
“That rake!”
He crumpled up his ex-fiancee’s letter. Jared stole everything from him, promotions, sports victories, now even Laura.
He drove his beat up car to Jared’s huge ridiculous mansion. He grabbed the tire iron from the trunk then kicked in the door, rage empowering him.
He found Jared facing the office computer. Raif spun the chair, iron poised to strike. Jared slumped, face swollen. Raif looked at the screen. Wolfram Alpha sat there, unable to answer the question “What do I do if I ate pineapple and I’m allergic?”

Daphne

It was just a game, someone said “Death by Pineapple”. Google replied “Two Million Eight Hundred Thousand” Yahoo laughed “Eight Million, Two Hundred Forty Thousand, How about you W-A” WolframAlpha just said “Isn’t sure what to do with your input.” Google mumbled “Typical. What about you MSN, I mean Live, I mean Bing.” Bing said “W-A and I are not search engines. He’s a Computational Knowledge Engine and I’m a Decision Engine” “Whatever, give” Google said “One Million Four Hundred Fifty Thousand” then Bing whispered “One day revenge shall be mine”

Mike P.

Quentin and Robert rounded the corner a few steps ahead of the zombies and ran into a vending machine. At the top it was labeled “Wolfram Alpha”. A sign read “Ask And You Shall Receive.”
“Gimme a shotgun,” Quentin said. Nothing happened. “I’ll effing kill you, effing machine!”
Robert threw a cinder block at a zombie. “Ask a question.”
“Why didn’t you give me a shotgun?” Nothing. “I swear I’m coming back for you, effing machine!”
Robert leaned over. “What can we use to kill zombies?”
A pineapple appeared.
“Eff,” Quentin said. He chucked it at a zombie’s head. “Next?”

Danny

We are little people.
My Father never hesitated to point out the things we weren’t capable of.
The constant mental abuse battered against my Mother’s mental ramparts.
She might be a small midget, but her pride was as large as a full grown man.
Smuggling a syringe from her work, she would make him a special Hawaiian pizza that night.
I typed the word ‘arsenic’ into the WolframAlpha frame work after we got back from Dad’s funeral.
No results were returned about it killing anyone.

Jeffrey

“Revenge shall be mine?” it came out as a question. And how could it not. The man was throwing fruit at him now. What kind of idiot was this? “You shall not defeat me with your fruity goodness,” The caped man said dodging an orange and series of pineapple rings. Did the fool actually think that he was hurting him with these things.
“Back to hell with you, you Failed Wolfram Alpha Query you,” came the scream from behind the buffet table.
“What?” Clearly he was a loon, only one way to win, feign death by pineapple and capture him.

Zaleski

639157

There is a package on my desk.
Inside rests the most unusual trophy I’ve ever seen.
Silver loving cup, red marble base, and a odd figurine mounted on the top. Two javelins pierce its chest, and it holds what looks like an electric coffeepot in its left hand, right fist to the sky in triumph.
Engraved on the base is the word “ZALESKI.”
Is this a name?
Is this a sport?
What have I done to earn this?
I place it on my desk, raise a fist, and shout “ZALESKI!”
My officemates shout “ZALESKI!” and we go back to work.

Dustsucker

639161

We used to clean these buildings by hanging a scaffold for guiding men with powerwashers and squeegies.
Now, we release Dustsucker Beasts on the ground, and they slide up the building to the top floor, leaving a streak of clean windows and bricks.
The trainer then leashes each beast, rides the elevator back down, and starts again.
It takes a third of the time and, when you consider insurance costs, much cheaper.
Until some idiot left a window open and wanted to pet a Beast.
So furry, so cute.
So acidic.
Inside rubber gloves, the trainer’s burnt, scarred fingers clench.

Obsidian Falls

639164

Obsidian Falls is really in Oklahoma, but through a surveyor’s error and a history of stubborn city councilors, they remained a Kansas municipality.
Mapmakers never could find a solution that satisfied the residents. Usually, they’d mark the region as Oklahoma, include Obsidian Falls on Oklahoma maps, and ignore the protests and death threats.
So, Obsidian Falls moved.
Every brick, every tree, every sidewalk and every fence.
It took over a year to complete, block by block vanishing and reappearing 3 miles North.
The surveyor didn’t have the heart to tell them they were still 2 miles short of their goal.

Daisy 5.1

639159

Daisy looked in the mirror and made a list of everything wrong:
Hips wide.
Gangly. Matchstick arms.
Freckles.
Thin hair.
Yuck.
And the chest. She said B, not D.
“No” she says.
A doctor nods, and the umbilical disconnects.
Back in the jar, her brain linked up the body catalog and browsed the new styles.
She’d always wanted green eyes.
“Maybe I’ll wait for Spring,” she thought.
The simulator worked up a sketch, and she scanned it for an hour before authorizing a growtank to begin.
Another tank quietly recycled Daisy 5.1, crediting her account and waiting for another order.