I paid fifty bucks for the pay-per-view fight.
Ordered a bunch of pizzas and picked up a keg.
Moved the big TV to the patio, dragged out the sofa and chairs, and rented some more.
Put out some lawn games, cornhole, that kind of thing.
Put up a chalkboard for anyone who wanted to make any wagers.
Winner. Loser. Round. Knockdowns and knockouts.
People parked in the driveway, the yard, along the street.
Neighbors came over, too.
The fight lasted twenty-six seconds.
But the party lasted all night long.
Help me get everything back inside and take back the keg?
Simulation
There’s no such thing as a good car wreck
All my money couldn’t change the past.
But it could buy a future of a sort.
After some experiments with holograms and robots, they worked up a simple screen simulation.
“It will be like talking to her over the phone or on a Skype,” they said.
And there she was. On the screen.
My princess.
“It was all my fault,” my daughter said. “I’m so sorry. Stop beating yourself up.”
We cried for a while, said we loved each other.
Then they shut me down and went back to their experiments.
Terrible Twos
My mother said that when I was a little kid, my terrible twos were truly terrible.
Where my brother was an absolute well-behaved saint, I was a holy terror, and she broke a kitchenware store’s supply of wooden spoon on my ass from all the spankings.
However, the beatings happened long after my twos, and more often for my mother’s transgressions, not mine.
Many years later, my parents came to Texas to manipulate and blackmail me into supporting them.
I disowned them both.
If my terrible twos were terrible to my mother, then my terrible fifty-twos are a well-deserved nightmare.
Unbalanced
My washing machine makes a lot of noise.
The repair guy came by and said that it’s unbalanced.
He gave me an estimate of two hundred dollars, but I told him to go away.
I can fix it myself.
You see, my therapist said I was unbalanced.
And he prescribed some pills, yoga, and meditation.
They work for me, so they should work for the machine.
I put the machine on a yoga mat.
And toss in some of my anti-anxiety pills.
It didn’t work.
Why?
I didn’t take it to my therapist.
Sadly, he doesn’t make house calls.
Belushi
Looking back at the talent and the box office returns, one can easily say that the wrong Belushi died.
John Belushi was a force of nature, producing cult classic after classic.
And his final two films, while not smash hits or cult classics, still brought in money.
James, on the other hand, started awful and took a nosedive from there, ending John Hughes directorial career along the way.
His sitcom was unwatchable, filling a timeslot until something better came along.
Jim retired to run a cannabis farm a few years ago.
For all our sakes, let’s hope he stays there.
Weekly Challenge #929 – Benefits
The next topic is car crash… which I forgot to tack on to here. Did any of y’all notice? Did any of y’all write me about it?
LISA
A Missing Man.
It’s agreed – no one is uncomfortable. No one is really that distressed. Apart from some of us missing family, or pets, or partners the benefits of being here far outweigh the cons. It’s an odd thing.
Anything we want he brings us. I’d asked for pen and paper so am at last able to write this down. We agree it’s the not knowing why we’re here that worries us.
Strangely we haven’t seen him for a few days. We have enough snacks and drinks down here so we relax a bit more talking about him, knowing that he’s not listening.
RICHARD
WLTM
‘Good looking, thirty something blonde with GSOH would like to meet sane, solvent man, as a friend with benefits.’
The ad stood out amongst all the others. Unlike them, she didn’t come across as desperate, and I liked how it was short, snappy and to the point. She seemed confident. Just the kind of woman I liked, and the complete opposite of my ex-wife.
Messages were exchanged and a meeting was arranged.
The night of our date, I’ll admit I was nervous. Flowers… Chocolates? Check. Then the doorbell rang.
“Hi honey” HE said! “Ready to have a good time?”
LIZZIE
Love is such an illusive word. It’s not a word, she promptly said, it’s a feeling. And there I sat, wondering what she meant. She had never loved anyone and here she was, full of herself, pontificating about love. I just sat there, chain-smoking, which she hated. She pretty much hated everything about me. I’m not sure why she married me. In the end, love is such an illusive word, isn’t it? It just means that sometimes you do things for love. She wouldn’t have to suffer with my wrong-doings. That hammer was indeed sturdy, as promised at the store.
SERENDIPIDY
Fringe benefits, that’s what I call them. The sort of things that some would pay a lot of money for: Privacy, solitude and the contentment that I’m rarely going to be bothered by cold callers and strangers at the door.
And all I have to do to enjoy these benefits is to continue perpetuating the stories that circulate about ‘the mad woman in the corner house’.
My reputation goes before me, and people avoid me like the plague, which suits me absolutely perfectly.
It’s a great lifestyle and I have no complaints, which is more than my neighbours can say!
TOM
Progressive Rock
In 1970 my mother was the manager of the record dept at our local department store. So she got a 20% discount very cool. I bought Tull’s Benefit, think it was like $3.75. It was a bridging album pointing to what was to come. A little stretch into the creative process. If you hadn’t had Benefit it would have been unlikely Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, or A Passion Play would have seen the light of day. Paul Stump, in his History of Progressive Rock, said that Benefit ” offered the listener new bearings in his or her music search.
Carl
In 1921 the Czech playwright Karel Čapek coin the term robot from a Czech word for forced labor. His play R.U.R. Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) focus on the evils of corporate greed. The robots in RUR are more Blaid runner than Terminator. Organic structures from the dark landscape of eugenics. The Play was a worldwide success. In the American production Spencer Tracy and Pat O’Brien played robots. One critic described Čapek’s robots as epitomizing “the traumatic transformation of modern society by the First World War and the Fordist assembly line. O brave new world, That has such people in’t.
NORVAL JOE
The 911 operator continued, “I don’t know how it benefits you delinquents to waste first responders’ time and taxpayers’ money. You’re not wasting ours.” She hung up.
Billbert flew back to the meadow and low over the grass.
The shooter faced away, talking to the Black Knights.
Billbert crept over to the old woman. “Buhmilda?” He touched her side and she fell over, her glassy eyes staring blankly.
He went to Sabrina. She moaned. Blood oozed from the wound in her leg.
Billbert looked up to see Linoliumanda running to him.
The Black Knights were too busy talking to notice.
PLANET Z
The Benefits Department handles all the insurance and other stuff for the company.
They also offer referrals to legal services, relocation experts, and even one of those New Age Feng Shui weirdos.
So, I figured, why not?
This short bald man in a robe arrived in my office, walking around, and he lit incense and tapped a small gong.
Then some guys came to move all the furniture around until it was in harmony with the energy lines of the universe.
My productivity went up. My blood pressure went down.
Everything was great.
Until I tripped over the end table.
Build a Cheesecake Factory bear
The Build-a-Bear store in the Galleria is right across from the Cheesecake Factory.
But they won’t let you stuff the bear with cheesecake.
No matter how much of their overpriced wine you’ve had with your overpriced, unhealthy dinner.
The same goes with their overpriced Thanksgiving plate.
Made for people with too much money and not enough family or friends.
You can’t stuff the stuffing into a bear either.
Not that you’d have anyone to give it to, if you’re eating Thanksgiving at a restaurant.
Except yourself, hugging your pathetic stuffing-stuffed bear.
Cranberry sauce and gravy leaking out of the eyeholes.
Homeless ping times
I buy a lot of gadgets and crap.
It all ends up in the closet.
Lots of keyboards and headsets.
And cords and plugs to things I can’t remember.
They used to go into the trash.
But I got all green and put them in the e-waste bins at Best Buy.
Thing is, I wondered if they’d end up reselling the junk on eBay. Or the shelves.
So, I took it all to Goodwill for a writeoff.
To benefit all the homeless gamers needing keyboards and headsets and cords.
With 5G, they can get good ping times for deathmatches, right?
Marshall
The team’s plane crashed two miles from the airport.
Among the dead: players, coaches, boosters, faculty, and the flight crew.
And six unknown passengers.
For years, investigators tried to figure out who those six were.
Checking missing persons reports, looking through paperwork.
Looking for any personal belongings.
But no family came forward for any of them, nobody came looking.
Later, as technology advanced, DNA evidence still didn’t solve the mystery.
The six dead hookers, hired by the boosters for the players, going seat to seat, blowing the players, would remain nameless.
The ultimate sacrifice, literally going down for the cause.
Whiskey Rebellion
The Adams Family was a lot more like the Addams Family, the scandal of Braintree.
“It’s a miracle that the country voted you Vice President,” said General Washington, shaking a sheaf of papers at John Adams. “But you will ever become president with this hanging over your head.”
John drew up plans to split off his homestead from Braintree and name it Quincy.
“And then I can lose the police records in an accident,” he said, grabbing the papers from the General.
“What about the rumor-mongers?” said Washington.
Adams quieted them with a few troops borrowed during the Whiskey Rebellion.