The 100 Word Stories Podcast

Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb.
Instead, he and his staff performed thousands of experiments with different filaments to determine the most efficient, cost-effective, and longest-lasting filament he could use.
He went through all those thousands of experiments, looking for something simple, cheap, and effective.
I wonder about those thousands of failures.
Did he just grab anything and try it?
A piece of bacon from breakfast? Hair from his head?
His wife’s dildos?
As some point, he must have been tearing out his hair, ripping up his shirt.
And that’s where the carbonized cotton filament came from, right?

I’m sure you’ve heard Melvin Tune’s songs. The man is a wizard with words.
The songs, they’re played all over the world.
Those familiar instrumental ditties that accompany your stroll through grocery stores, elevator rides, and journey around other places that play ambient background music.
For some reason, composers ask Melvin for lyrics to their compositions, he scribbles up a few pages, and hands them over.
The composer tweaks their song, turning it from good to great.
And then, they record it… and when they remove the lyric tracks, it’s just… well…
It’s just perfection.
And Melvin cashes the checks.

I worked for a company that built its own vacation calendar and ticket system.
They said it was cheaper to build their own compared to contracting with an off-the-shelf system.
And they were right. It was cheap to build.
To maintain it, though, was a nightmare.
The workplace rules and regulations, all the connections with the payroll system (which they built themselves, too)…
It took an entire development staff to maintain and update.
So full of bugs. I spent so many hours getting them to fix incorrect information.
My current job uses an off-the-shelf system.
And everything works.
Including me.

The irony of the movie Free Willy is that the whale who played Willy, Keiko, wasn’t free at all.
Born and bred in captivity.
Sick a lot of the time, but still forced to perform tricks and act in television and movies.
People were outraged, and a campaign started to free Willy.
Eventually, after a few years, Keiko was freed.
And lonely.
The whale came back, playing with kids in the water.
Which scared the crap out of them.
Keiko eventually got sick again, was recaptured by veterinarians, and died.
Thankfully, Hollywood isn’t rebooting Free Willy movies anytime soon.

You won’t find Teddy in Housewares.
He’s usually sneaking a spray paint can or two back by the dumpster.
And when he comes back, yeah, he’s got that smile on his face, total blissing out.
It’s been happening for weeks, and when customers finally complained about broken seals on the cans, the manager fired Teddy.
Then he went in back and saw the wall… the mural… it was… gorgeous.
Teddy was an instant celebrity, invited to spray his masterpieces everywhere.
Then one morning, he was found dead in an alley.
That smile on his face? He’d also been shooting heroin.

Long ago, I worked in the call center for a hosting company.
They offered dialup access, webhosting, a server farm, and domain registration.
Every call needed to be verified.
If the caller didn’t know the password, we’d send them to Customer Service to verify.
Some would say they didn’t have it with them, others would say their tech person quit.
Didn’t matter. Everyone had to be verified.
Sometimes, the CEO would call, trying to get into a customer’s account to test us.
He’d scream and yell and threaten.
I’d just say “Transferring to you to Customer Service…” and hang up.

In the comics, nobody knows Pigpen’s name.
My theory is that his last name is Thigpen, but people keep mishearing him because of a speech impediment.
You don’t hear it in the television specials because they didn’t do that kind of thing back in the Sixties and Seventies.
Maybe they’ll do it now and call it a diversity and inclusion effort?
While race-swapping half the characters, including Charlie Brown’s sister Sally.
Maybe Charlie Brown’s mom had a thing for Franklin’s dad or something.
Make Snoopy trans, self-identifying as a cat, and reboot Pigpen as gay.
(Which would explain the lisp.)

Martin got himself another book deal.
It’s his fifth, and like the previous four, he’s dedicating it to vodka.
You see, Martin can only write when he’s drunk.
It’s doing a number on his liver, but there’s the numbers his publisher tells his agent, and the numbers in Martin’s bank account.
Those numbers are a factor, too.
Martin used to write in a nearby bar, but he got into way too many fights.
So he drinks alone, writes alone.
Wakes up on the floor and looks at what he’s scribbled up.
And sends it off to the publisher to decipher.