Month: August 2025

WDP — Why Do I Blog?

Fandango4 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Why do you blog?
View all responses

This has to be, far and away, the most commonly asked question posed to every blogger. WordPress posed this same question in 2024 and 2023. And I’ve answered this question dozens of times when asked by other bloggers.

So, at the risk of repeating myself, here is what I wrote last year in answer to this question.

I answered this last year, when this was the Daily Prompt question. And I talked about why I blog just three days ago, when the Daily Prompt question was “What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?” My answer was blogging.

But, once again, the main reason I blog is because I like to write. I like to write short stories (flash fiction). I enjoy writing letter-to-the-editor-type post wherein I share my opinions, views, perspectives, and outrage. And as a retiree, I am into blogging for the same reason my wife is into crossword puzzles: to keep my mind sharp.

As a retiree and a septuagenarian, I do worry about the possibility of my mind deteriorating faster than my body, and for me, blogging is like taking my brain for a workout at the gym. When I blog, I exercise my brain — my creativity, my imagination, my ability to think and to express my thoughts.

And of course, I blog because it offers me an opportunity to interact daily with a wonderful, supportive, and global community of bloggers who encourage me to keep on blogging.

OLWG Archive — Looking for Mister Big

Fandango8 Comments

Here is another story generated from one of TNKerr’s weekly Online Writer’s Guild (OLWG) prompts, this one from August 25, 2024. TN provided theses three phrases as prompts:

1. she’s drinking champagne
2. spilling whiskey
3. I gotta go.

From those prompt phrases I visualized another film noir type scene

So here is my unofficial OLWG tale using the three phrases above.

The joint smelled like sweat, smoke, and bad decisions. I walked in anyway. I couldn’t help myself. She was there in the corner booth, the kind of woman that makes you forget your name and your past in the same heartbeat. She’s drinking champagne, laughing like the world hadn’t already signed her death warrant.

The guy sitting at the table across from her was nervously eyeing her, hands twitching like piano keys in the dark. He was spilling whiskey with every fidget, leaving amber stains on the table that looked too much like bloodstains to be funny. I knew the type: desperate, cornered, ready to bite if you leaned too close.

He kept glancing at the door like salvation was running late. He had the look of a middleman, the kind of cheap hustler who talks big until the wrong shadow falls across the room. Whatever he was doing here, it had weight. I could see it pressing down on his shoulders, bending his spine.

I lit a cigarette, tried to play it cool, but the air had teeth and it was chewing me raw. She caught my eye, just long enough to remind me why I’d never be free of her. That smile wasn’t an invitation. It was a trap with a velvet lining.

When the nervous guy stood up to leave, I knew I had to leave, too. Perhaps he could lead me to Mister Big, the guy calling the shots and who wanted the dame in the corner booth dead.

I ground out the cigarette and muttered, “I gotta go.” I don’t know if she heard me, but I felt her eyes boring into me as I walked out.

We both knew I’d be back. Men like me never really leave joints like this and nor do dames like her.

Image conjured using ChatGPT.

Song Lyric Sunday — Looked at Life

Fandango20 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim Adam has asked us to find a philosophical song.

Back on February 28, 2021, I featured this same song on my response to that day’s Song Lyric Sunday prompt. The song was “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell. On my response today, I’m not going to do my usual background story on song and singer. If you’re interested, you can read that here.

Instead I’m going to focus on why I think Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song is a great example of a philosophical song. “Both Sides Now” examines how perspectives shift with experience, and how the nature of reality and truth changes as one matures.

The song deeply explores the nature of perception, change, and the limitations of human understanding. Mitchell structures the song around three central themes — clouds, love, and life — and for each, she examines both romantic illusions and harsher realities, ultimately concluding that, despite seeing “both sides” of all of them, she still doesn’t truly understand any of them.

The song’s hallmark is its meditation on duality. Mitchell considers each topic from opposing perspectives, yet acknowledges the uncertainty that remains. This refusal to claim certainty, and the acceptance that knowledge is partial and ever-evolving, is profoundly philosophical. It echoes existential ideas about the limits of perception and the inevitable coexistence of opposites.

“Both Sides Now” resonates as a coming-of-age reflection on how ideals and lived experience often contradict, and wisdom can be found by embracing those contradictions. The lyrics capture a “philosophy of impermanence,” inviting listeners to accept the complexities of life, love, and loss. Mitchell’s own interpretation underscores this, as she has described the song as evolving from “a meditation on romanticism to a kind of surrender to reality,” reflecting how the song’s meaning deepens across a lifetime.

By admitting “I really don’t know life at all,” the song crystallizes its philosophical heart: true wisdom comes from recognizing how little we know, even after experiencing the world from many angles.

I believe that this beautiful song has endured for decades because it captures something universal and deeply human: the bittersweet tension between youthful idealism and the disillusionments that come with experience and age.

Here is the song, followed by the lyrics.


Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show
You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

FOWC With Fandango — Revel

Fandango12 Comments

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “revel.”

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. Please 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. Show them some love.

SoCS — You’re Toast

Fandango10 Comments

For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has challenged us to respond using the word “toast.”

It used to be that the word “toast” simply meant to stick bread in a toaster to brown and crisp it. The word comes from Middle English “tosten,” via Old French “toster,” which means to roast or grill, originating from the Latin “torrēre” meaning “to burn.” So the traditional use of the word innocuously referred to browned bread and also to giving a drink in someone’s honor, as in, “Let’s toast the bride and groom.”

But in 1984 something happened to broaden the definition of toast to something entirely different.

In the movie “Ghostbusters,” Bill Murray famously ad-libbed the line “This chick is toast,” which popularized the phrase as meaning someone is doomed or finished.

As a result, “toast” entered the lexicon as a slang sense of total defeat or destruction. The idiom draws on the imagery of food that is “done” — once bread is toasted, it cannot be “untoasted,” just as trouble or defeat can be final.

Interesting, huh?

Weekend Writing Prompt — Perfectly Acceptable

Fandango7 Comments

“Hey, Boss, did you get my report today?” Lenny asked. “I emailed my final draft to you last night.”

“Yes, Lenny, I got it and it’s cromulent,” he responded.

Lenny got a distressed look on his face.

“Relax, Lenny,” his boss said. “It’s perfectly acceptable.”

Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where the challenge is “cromulent” in exactly 45 words. Image generated using ideogram.ai.

WDYS — Snack Time

Fandango10 Comments

In the parking lot situated on the left side of the museum sat the Mr Whippy truck. It each day at around 11 in the morning and remained there until sunset was approaching and the crowds had disappeared for the night.

All day long, children, families, couples, and singles who were out enjoying the park and the museum were served refreshing treats and cold drinks. The brightly colored Mr Whippy truck itself was almost as much of a draw as the park and the museum, with some people coming there specifically to enjoy a cone of soft-serve ice cream dipped in a chocolate topping that turned crispy upon contact with the ice cream.

High above the ground, on the steep slopes of the museum’s roof, sat seagulls and other birds peering down at the crowds below being served all kinds of sweet treats. The birds were watching and waiting for a child to drop his or her ice cream cone or to spill the contents of a bag of chips in order to swoop down for their own snacks.

On the ground or from the air, human or avian, there was something for all to savor at Mr Whippy’s.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Top photo credit: Ben Wicks @ Unsplash. Bottom photo credit: Eugenia Pankiv @ Unsplash.

FOWC With Fandango — Videotape

Fandango9 Comments

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “videotape.”

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. Please 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. Show them some love.