Day: September 15, 2018

And The Rest Is History

Fandango11 Comments

Red Sox Cap I wondered into the retail shop just to kill some time until my buddy was supposed to meet me. “Can I help you,” she said. She was quite stunning and I was at a loss for words. I looked around the sports store and saw the tent department and pointed to it. “You’re interested in a tent?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “A tent.”

“What size?” she asked.

“Um, seven and a half,” I said.

“That sounds more like a hat size than a tent size,” she said, a knowing smile lighting up her face. “What kind of hat are you interested in?” she asked.

“A, um, baseball hat,” I answered.

“Our baseball caps are over there,” she said, pointing to the other side of the store. “Would you like me to show you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like that very much.”

She grabbed my hand and led me to the area where the baseball caps were on display. “What’s your favorite team?” she asked.

“The Red Sox” I said.

She reached over and grabbed a Red Sox cap from the rack and put it on my head. Then she put her hands on both of my shoulders, leaned in close, and whispered in my ear, “Mine, too.”

Written for Teresa’s Three Things Challenge, where the three things are tent, retail shop, and hat.

Weekend Writing Prompt — Seashells

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85AE0665-1414-4409-AFF6-768FB5C835A1Here is a shell from Sally, who sells seashells by the seashore.

(12 words)

09538A75-ABDC-491E-8E59-31367EB06D48Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt.

Today’s challenge is to “write a piece of flash fiction, a poem, a chapter for your novel” using the word “shell” in exactly 12 words.

Photo credit: PositiveVibrations @ Flickr.

Vetting the Nominee

Fandango7 Comments

174A6206-3BB2-454A-B7A3-13F71C9E0944“You call what you did a thorough background check?” The senator asked. “It’s clear that you did a slapdash job in your vetting process. You weren’t even able to ferret out that shameful sexual misconduct scandal that plagues the nominee.”

“Well, senator, we actual did ferret it out, but we decided that it wasn’t relevant to the hearings,” the researcher said. “And, not to make excuses, but the member of my staff who looked into that was verdant.”

“Verdant?” the senator said. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean he was a rookie,” the researcher responded. “You know, green, inexperienced, wet behind the ears.”

“But it was your decision to withhold the facts from this committee,” the senator said.

“Yes, it was my decision.”

“So, because of your deceit,” the senator said, “you are essentially aiding and abetting the nominee in his effort to abscond from the responsibility of his onerous behavior, a behavior you knew about but tried to hide from the committee,” the senator said. “That’s deplorable.”

Written for the following one-word prompts: Daily Addictions (ferret), Word of the Day Challenge (verdant), Ragtag Daily Prompt (slapdash), Your Daily Word Prompt (abscond), and Scotts Daily Prompt (background).

After Further Consideration

Fandango14 Comments

DE80DA90-10E4-4EF2-AE81-66089046DF5DEarlier this morning, in response to Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, I referenced my very first post on this blog. In that post, I referred to myself as “a logical, rational, and reasonable person. I am not ruled by emotions but by facts, observations, and evidence.”

But now, after reading the headlines in my newsfeed, articles in the newspaper, and seeing highlights of Trump’s latest toilet tweets, I realized that what I wrote about how I’m not ruled by emotions is aspirational, not factual. Because when it comes to Donald Trump, my prized rationality is supplanted by unbridled, raw emotions.

I get so angry when I read about his tweets and his behavior that I want to toss my iPhone into the toilet. It takes every bit of self control I can muster to not throw the remote control at the TV each time I see his visage or hear his voice.

And so, for the sake of my own mental and emotional wellbeing, and using every ounce of logic, rationality, and reason I can generate, I have decided to abstain from writing any more posts about Donald Trump.

For the rest of the day, anyway.

Written for today’s Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, “abstain.”

SoCS — All About My Posts

Fandango23 Comments

80396071-78A6-45ED-AC89-D5F7918B17A9Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt today calls for us to use “post” as a word, or find a word that uses it as a prefix. As a blogger, when I hear the word “post,” I think about something I’ve been doing three to five times a day lately: writing posts.

My very first post on this blog was published sixteen months and one day ago, on May 14, 2017. It was one of seven posts I published in that first month. D0608CD7-2DF2-41AB-8C63-5F737C94C02FThe post was intended to introduce me and my new blog.

In that post I wrote, “I describe myself as a logical, rational, and reasonable person. I am not ruled by emotions but by facts, observations, and evidence.”

That first post received one “like” and no comments. Since that first post, I have published 1,638 additional posts, including this one. That averages out to just over 100 posts per month since I started this blog and 160 a month since I began posting my daily one-word prompt, FOWC With Fandango, in June.

What is even more amazing, to me, anyway, is that my 1,639 posts contain more than 393,000 words! That’s like having written six 65,000 word novels in 16 months!

By way of contrast, in my previous blog, which was live from July 6, 2009 until April 10, 2015, I wrote only 907 posts, more than 60% of which we’re written in 2014 and the first 3 1/2 months of 2015. Between 2009 and 2013, I averaged around 70 posts per year, or fewer than six posts per month.

The other interesting thing is that my word count per post in that previous blog averaged around 675. In my current blog, my average word count is only about 240.

Anyway, unless you’re me, and I know for a fact that you are not, you no doubt find this stream of consciousness post to be of little interest. Therefore, I’m going to end this post now so that you can get on with the rest of your day.

Enjoy your Saturday.