Eighty years ago, the Germans exterminated my village.
Today, we dig up the streets and pull out the underpavement.
It is made from the gravestones of my ancestors.
The Germans had ordered the cemeteries to be destroyed.
But now, we are reclaiming the stones.
Buried under the streets.
Pavestones for paths through the farms.
Grinding stones for plows and knives.
They all have writing on them.
We wash the stones, and rub shaving cream on them.
The white foam makes it easier to read the letters.
Their names are slowly revealed, and we kneel, and we pray for their souls.
Scammers
Almost twenty years ago, I got a support job at a webhosting company.
We packed hundreds of online scammer accounts on cheap servers.
Load averages were astronomical.
The only true solution was to stop overloading the servers.
But instead, we’d tell the caller that we were resetting the queue. Which did nothing.
If they wanted to stay on the line, we’d thank them, put them on hold, and forget about them as we picked up the next call complaining about overloaded servers.
I spent my time in between calls learning how to run my own servers.
And my own scams.
Baptism bungles
Dear Loyal Customer,
We regret to inform you that the licensed mumbo-jumbo provider at your local eternal life exchange performed improper service maintenance for the past 20 years.
New equipment and training have been dispatched. Please make an appointment with your nearest jiffy-prayer center to have the correct voodoo performed on your child, self, or parent.
Sadly, should the recipient of incorrect service maintenance have expired, they’re now in eternal damnation. Fill out the attached Form RMA-666 to escalate this issue with our upper management.
Thank you, The Church.
PS: At least the dude didn’t molest the kids… we think.
When people get old
When people get old and everyone around them has died, and even the ghosts stop coming around to haunt them, they get lonely, and they talk to the mailman or the gas meter reader or the guy at the meat counter.
Or 911.
“What’s your emergency?”
“Everyone I know is dead.”
If it’s not a busy day, the operator talks to them.
And if it is, they take down their number, call them back.
Some say they drank something. Others burn things in the kitchen.
So we hire them to take calls.
The hard part is keeping the conversations brief.
Weekly Challenge #957 – PICK TWO Role model, Beep, Curious, No annual contract, Conference, Ballet
TOM
Commissar’s Choice
It was the heady days after the revolution. All traditional preforming arts were deemed counter-revolutionary. No more Swan Lake. No more Nutcracker. Into that vacuum strove Yuri Petrova. His first offering was the blindly a vanguard work Beep Ballet. It opened in Moscow to less then glowing approval from the Commissar of Arts, all the same he deemed it a superior work for the working people of the motherland. The company along with Petrova were sent to Siberia the next week. No account remains of the Ballet. Petrova was rumored to have made his way to Warsaw before the war.
NORVAL JOE
Billbert walked into the bedroom and sat next to Sabrina. “They make fun of you at school?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve never admitted to being a witch. But with Buhmilda being my only real role model, I act as much like a witch as anyonee. They ask me embarassing questions.”
“Maybe they’re just curious,” Billbert suggested.
“Do you do ballet under the full moon, naked?” She said. “That’s not curiousity. That’s degrading.”
“Do you?” Billbert asked, then saw her angry glare. “Sorry, you made me curious.”
Sabrina pushed him off the bed, and lay down. “I’m going to sleep.”
SERENDIPIDY
I first came across him at a motivational conference.
Slick, persuasive, charismatic and a natural people person.
His inspirational message pretty much changed my life, and from that moment I decided he would be my role model.
Some years later, when the news broke about how he scammed his followers, his shady gangland activities, the prostitutes, drugs, violence and rumours of torture and murder, he lost all credibility.
But not for me.
In fact he grew in my estimation, and I saw no reason why he shouldn’t continue to be my role model.
Some might say, that’s a bad thing.
RICHARD
Buy now!
I can tell you’re curious, and believe me this is the deal of a lifetime.
Easy monthly instalments, free maintenance and upgrades, guaranteed performance and, best of all, no annual contract.
If you’re not entirely satisfied after the first twelve months, just give us a call, and return it in the original packaging, and that’s it. No obligation, no questions!
So, what are you waiting for? Just sign on the dotted line, pay a deposit, and we’ll deliver in seven working days.
And, once we have your first payment, we’ll tell you what you’ve actually bought.
Terms and conditions apply.
PLANET Z
Before video conferences, we held phone conferences.
The meeting started with a lot of beeps and people introducing themselves as they joined.
When everyone was on the conference, we’d start the discussion.
At the end of the conference, we’d all hang up, and the director would send out an email with a summary of the discussion and any action items.
Someone had the bright idea to suggest that we not do the conferences and just discuss over email or a private forum thread.
But that’s when video conferences got cheap, and we switched over, all keeping our cameras turned off.
Ghost guns
When Bob saw the gun buyback program, Bob saw an opportunity.
He priced out a room full of cheap used 3D printers and buckets of manufacturing resin.
Then he bought plans for a simple “ghost gun” and set the printers to rendering them around the clock.
On the last day of the buyback program, Bob showed up with a van full of the cheap printed guns.
The chief of police said “No way. Ghost guns don’t count.”
So, Bob pulled out a ghost gun from his pocket and shot the guy.
“Does that feel like it doesn’t count?” said Bob.
Packing the court
After years of contention, Congress passed legislation to expand the size of the Supreme Court and the president signed it.
The Court immediately tried to review the law and declare it unconstitutional.
But the House filled the airwaves with meaningless impeachment hearings, and Senate and President ignored the Supreme Court, nominating Associate Justices and holding confirmation hearings.
The opposition party protested the move, doing all they could to disrupt the meetings and votes.
When the new Associate Justices descended on the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice refused to administer their Constitutional Oaths.
Which party was which?
Does it really matter?
The hangings
We went to the town square for the public hangings.
By the time we got there, the crowd was shouting DEATH DEATH DEATH!
Three hooded and jumpsuited figures were on the platform, ropes around their necks and tied to a bar.
Nobody knew who they were.
Or what they had done.
A solder walked up a set of stairs to the platform, and shoved each figure forward, and they fell, and the ropes went taut.
One of them kicked for a minute, then went still.
Shit ran down from each of their pant cuffs to the ground.
The crowd cheered.
I won’t see you in Hell
Victor St. Vincent, my nemesis.
Before I stomped on his hands and let him fall from the bridge to his death, he said:
“I’ll see you in Hell!”
But now that I’m in Hell, I haven’t seen Victor.
I’ve seen Stalin and Hitler.
I’ve also seen Gandhi.
It’s the shit they don’t tell you in school, the stuff with his nieces, that did him in.
And me, I did worse things. So much worse.
Victor, well, he was a pretty decent guy.
Which is why he kept trying to stop me.
Hey, did he end up in the other place?
Possums
The thing I like most about working from home is being able to look out the window and watch the possums wander around.
Sure, my work office had a nice wide window, but the odds of possums wandering around outside 8 floors up are rather slim.
And any circumstances that would lead to possums outside that work window aren’t good, ranging from hallucinations to some sort of “possum hurling” criminal on the loose.
Or someone dropping possums from the roof.
I think of these things when I’m at home.
But if I were still commuting, I’d think even worse things.