Month: October 2019

Trick or Treat

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965CB478-B002-410F-91CA-EEC7A35B505B“Is it Halloween already?” Ralph asked.

“Almost,” responded his wife, Anita. “Did you get the candy yet? I need to put it in a dish next to our door for all those ebullient kids in their cute costumes who will be trick or treating.”

“How naive are you, Anita?” Ralph asked. “No trick or treaters ever come to our door. They all are afraid of this old house. They think it’s haunted.”

“And you do nothing to change that perception. You should be ashamed of yourself for being so mean to these little children on Halloween. They so look forward to it each year,” Anita said.

Ralph shook his head. “So you’d welcome all of these little rugrats in their cutesy little costumes falling all over themselves to fill up on candy, huh?”

“Yes, I would,” Anita said. “Besides, the candy will lure them in here and then we can snatch up the plumpest of the lot and throw them in the cauldron of boiling broth for our main course at our annual Halloween feast”

“Fine,” Ralph said. “I’ll pick up some candy tomorrow.”

“No,” Anita insisted. “Halloween is the day after tomorrow. I don’t want you to procrastinate another day. Get your old fogey ass to the store right now.”

Written for these daily prompts: Daily Addictions (dish), Your Daily Word Prompt (ebullient), Word of the Day Challenge (naive), The Daily Spur (ashamed), Ragtag Daily Prompt  (falling), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (procrastinate).

Twittering Tales — Bad Karma

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A9DE5C0D-7F13-4A3F-AEDC-2699EE247C6B “I don’t think I want to do this,” Al said.

“But it’s our Halloween tradition,” Ed said. “We pick a cemetery and tip the tombstones.”

“Did you read the dates on these? 1858, 1863. They’re really old. It just doesn’t seem right. It’s bad karma.”

“And karma’s a bitch, right?”

“Right!”

(279 characters)

Written for this week’s Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: Kalhh at Pixabay.com.

FOWC with Fandango — Procrastinate

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FOWCWelcome to October 29, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “procrastinate.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.

#writephoto — Wildfires

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A1264AC8-030A-4711-9549-D7C0FFF460EE Debra could feel the heat from the fire that was engulfing her house, the only home she’d ever known.

“Come on, sweetie, we have to go,” Debra’s father, Greg, called out to his daughter. “We need to evacuate now.”

Tears were flowing down her cheeks. “I don’t want to go, Daddy. Why is this happening to our house?”

Greg walked over and grabbed Debra’s hand and started to lead her away from the burning house. “It’s wildfire season, sweetheart,” he said. “The lack of rain all summer has made all of the grasses and underbrush very dry. And high winds blew down some trees, which fell across power lines. These power lines fell to the ground and sparked brush fires. Then those same high winds rapidly spread the flames of the fire.”

“Why do we live in a place that has wildfires, Daddy,” Debra asked.

“It’s close to my work, baby,” Greg said. “Besides, no matter where you live, there are weather-related risks, whether it’s blizzards, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, thunder and lightning.”

Greg was interrupted by a firefighter. “Sir, you need to get yourself and your daughter out of harm’s way before we lose control of the fires in this area.”

Debra looked up at her father as they ran to his car. “We’ve lost everything, haven’t we?”

“No Debra, sweetie,” Greg said. “We lost stuff, but it’s all replaceable. But we still, and always will, have each other.” The two of them hugged, got in the car, and Greg started the engine. “Now let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, “while we still can.”

Written for Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompt.

Share Your World — Childish and Halloweenish

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Share Your WorldMelanie, over at Sparks From a Combustible Mind, has given us another Share Your World challenge, with a bit of a focus on childish hobbies and Halloween. Let’s she what she’s asked us to share, shall we?

Where’s the line between respectful disagreement and being downright mean (bullying) to someone?

I draw the line when I’m talking to anyone who supports Donald Trump. I am unable to disagree respectfully with someone who finds anything redeemable about that moron.

Would you prefer to live in a world where alcohol was free or where politicians were honest?

This is an easy one for me. I’m not much of a drinker, so I would absolutely prefer a world with honest politicians, which, in our current world, is an oxymoron.

What’s one habit you have that your family or friends think is rather childish?

To be honest, it’s blogging. My wife and kids think I spend too much time on my iPhone writing posts for my blog and reading posts from other bloggers. But I keep telling them that the older you get, the more fun it is to be childish. Am I right or what?

Would you rather go to a big party and rub shoulders with the rich and famous or go to an amazing, quiet garden that hardly anyone has ever visited?

Definitely an amazing, quiet garden where I can do childish things like sit with my iPhone and write posts for my blog and read those from other bloggers to my heart’s content.

Halloween Question: What do you think of the idea of “trick or treat” or money for a charity as a way of making Halloween more useful?

When it comes to Halloween, as a responsible and altruistic adult, I think giving money to charity is a noble gesture. But as a childish senior citizen, give me the damn candy!

Weekly Song Challenge — Satire Theme

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Musical notesFor this week’s Weekly Song Challenge, Laura has asked us to post videos of satirical songs, less popular songs from our favorite artists, and TV show or movie themes.

Her rules are:

Copy the rules and add them to our own post, pinging back to Laura’s post.
Post music videos for our answers to the musical questions.
Tag two people anyone who wants to participate!
So here goes.

1. Post a song that is a satire of a hit song.

You can’t beat Weird Al for satires of hit songs. And, being a word nerd, this is one of my favorites.

2. Post a song that you love by an artist that was not one of their biggest hits.

I’m a big Jackson Browne fan, but this is one of his lesser known songs.

3. Post a song that was featured in a tv show or in a movie.

Do you remember the TV hospital drama St. Elsewhere from the 80s?

Okay, your turn.

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #38

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FFFCWelcome to “Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.” Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenge bloggers to write a relatively short flash fiction piece inspired by the photo. While there are no definitive style or word limits, I suggest trying to keep your posts to under 300 words.

I want to sincerely thank everyone who has participated in these challenges so far. Your posts have been very creative. I hope this week’s image will also generate some great posts as well.

So now it’s time for this week’s Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge. The image below is from Fandango at fivedotoh.com.150347B6-A40D-499B-9B2D-958A794574E5For visually challenged, the image shows a sand drawing of two people, a dog, a cat, and some circles.

If this picture inspires you and you wish to participate, please write your post, use the tag #FFFC, and link back to this post.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

Please take a few minutes to read some of the other responses to this photo challenge.

FOWC with Fandango — Regular

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FOWCWelcome to October 28, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “regular.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.

The Grand Opening

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FB6BB9F9-C3B9-427D-834F-6DEBAA4B93BA“The grand opening is in two weeks,” Danny said. “I can’t believe how fast it’s approaching and I hope that we’ll be ready. Do you still think it’s plausible that we’ll make the date?”

“Oh yeah,” Jack said. “This whole thing is coming together like a beautiful rhapsody. There ain’t nothing that can derail this train, buddy.”

”I hope you’re right,” Danny said. “It’s just that putting Craig in charge of the website has me worried. He can be kind of flaky, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Jack admitted. “But I think he learned his lesson from the last time.”

“I hope so,” Danny said. “The last time we opened a barbecue chicken place, he used the domain name juicybreasts.com and it linked potential customers to a porn site.”

Written for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (opening), Daily Addictions (fast), Your Daily Word Prompt (plausible), Word of the Day Challenge (rhapsody), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (derail), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (flaky).

Who Won The Week? 10/27/19

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10CC3057-4EEA-4C80-B8C1-700C0FC6C906It’s time for another Who Won the Week prompt. The idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

My pick for this week is hypocrisy.

Yes, hypocrisy, folks. A recent poll showed that 72 percent of white evangelical Protestants now believe that a person who commits “immoral personal acts” can serve effectively in public office. That figure has skyrocketed from a mere 30 percent in 2011.779536BC-AD49-4225-80DA-32E253668B7DHmmm, I wonder what — or who — has precipitated this change in attitude. Care to take a guess?

And this fall, 72 percent of Republicans, despite his immoral and illegal acts that will result in his impeachment by the House of Representatives, said they want their party to keep Trump as the Republican candidate in 2020. Within this group, white evangelicals were among the voters most likely to want Trump on the ballot, at 82 percent.

I can’t think of anything more hypocritical than that, can you?

And now it’s your turn, folks. Who (or what) do you think won the week?