50 Word Thursday —Blasphemous

Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Mobile, AlabamaThey said that God wanted him to be president, that he was a gift to America from Jesus, and they began to worship him. As he achieved his political zenith, he declared it to be a crime to openly criticize him. It was considered blasphemous to even speak his name in any negative sense.

As a blogger, I thought I would be safe. But then some of my more outspoken fellow bloggers began to mysteriously disappear. Through April, May, and into June there was no word of John, Ross, Giles, and the others. They simply vanished from the face of the Earth.

I knew that if I wanted to avoid that same fate, I would have to be careful. I didn’t want to be labeled a heretic, which is punishable by imprisonment and possibly death. But I still needed to speak my mind on my blog. I would just need to camouflage my messaging in such a way as to avoid detection by the ever present thought patrol who searched the blogosphere for any blogger who dared to stand up to him.

A week later I was arrested for a critical post I wrote. I’m now in jail awaiting trial.

(200 words)


Written for this week’s 50 Word Thursday prompt from Kristian. Kristian’s rules:

  1. Completed piece must be in multiples of 50 words – maximum of 250 words. Anything is acceptable – poetry, story, anecdote.
  2. There will be a photo and a random phrase that I will take from the current book I am reading – you can use either or both
  3. Please pingback and tag 50 word Thursday, so I can do a summary.

The random phrase Kristian chose was: Through April, May, and into June there was no word of John, Ross, Giles, and the others. It was taken from “Outback Heroes” by Evan McHugh.

Here is the picture that was included in the prompt:759ddf07-a203-48ee-81b2-4377948f5ef2I couldn’t figure out a way to fit this into the story, so just imagine that this is the alley the narrator lived next to before he was hauled off to jail.

I also managed to fit in three daily prompt words into this dystopian tale: Word of the Day Challenge (zenith), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (heretic), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (camouflage).

JusJoJan — A Few of My Favorite Things

3da20072-b747-43b1-8485-c1aa0a2b4761Oh my goodness. Today is the very last day of January, which means that today is also the very last Just Jot It January post of 2019.

For this final JusJoJan post, Linda has challenged us to post about our favorite thing/part/blog post of last year or last month. Talk about what we did or discovered that gave us happiness and/or success.

Alrighty then. There are a bunch of things from last year that gave me happiness. The Golden State Warriors won the NBA championship in June and the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in October. The Democrats soundly won back the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. My daily FOWC With Fandango prompt, as well as my weekly Fandango’s Provocative Question prompt, have been well-received.

As to this month, the New England Patriots won the AFC championship and will be heading to the Super Bowl for the third consecutive year on Sunday. Go Pats!

But what gave me the most happiness this month was seeing how the newly installed Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, totally spanked Donald Trump over his whole border wall vanity project. That was a true marvel. Nancy was masterful and Trump was totally humiliated. That must have stung Trump even more than when Stormy Daniels spanked him on his big, fat ass with that Forbes magazine with him on the cover.

It just doesn’t get any better than that, does it?

In Other Words — Out of Reach

pot of gold with rainbowShe is my secret treasure.

Although I cannot tell you who she is; she’d be furious with me.

I can tell you that she is dainty and that she is glamorous, the kind of woman who can inspire a man like me to be my very best.

But my secret treasure suffers from an unbridled wanderlust.

And I fear that, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, my secret treasure will always be just out of my reach.


Written for the In Other Words prompt from Patricia’s Place. The challenge this week is to write a story or poem of five lines or fewer using the words “secret treasure.” I also included these one word prompts: Daily Addictions (furious and inspire), Your Daily Word Prompt (dainty and glamorous), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (wanderlust).

FOWC with Fandango — Heretic

FOWCWelcome to January 31, 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 “heretic.”

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.

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

Booyah!

Cheryl, aka, The Bag Lady, is a wonderful blogger who I’ve been following for quite a while. If you’re not already following her, you should check out her blog. Anyway, Cheryl wrote a comment on my post from this morning where I was whining about the high volume of spam comments I’ve been getting for the past five days. Cheryl wrote:

“Have you gone into your site profile and set up certain words or site names you block? I have done this and it helps a lot.”

So I took Cheryl’s advice, went to the “Discussion” menu in my Settings, and added “CBD” to the comment “blacklist.” Lo and behold, all those spam comments started going into my trash folder rather than into my spam folder! Yay!067fda2d-1960-40c8-8608-9e0923ddcb82Now, my trash folder is filling up, while my spam folder is practically empty. How cool is that? I feel much more comfortable doing a bulk delete of the items in my trash folder than doing so in my spam folder, where some valid comments might get incorrectly tagged as spam.

So, Cheryl, thank you, thank you, thank you, for your suggestion. I owe you! Bigly!