Day: April 3, 2019

#100WW — It’s Just Stuff

Fandango4 Comments

0CC0E761-1511-4E40-AB1E-C61E3C53AC05“I can’t articulate how pissed I am at you!” Neil shouted. “My collection of antique typesetting pieces is ruined and it’s your fault. You were going to take care of the leaky roof, but you didn’t and now everything is drenched.”

Alan felt penitent. “I have some contacts that I can reach out to who might be able to salvage things.”

“You are the worst,” Neil said. “You’re irresponsible and I can’t count on you for anything.”

“If that’s how you feel,” Alan said. “I’ll pack my things and move out.”

“Don’t worry about it, Alan. It’s just stuff.”

(100 words)

Written for the 100 Word Wednesday prompt from Bikurgurl. Also for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (articulate), Your Daily Word Prompt (drench), Word of the Day Challenge (penitent), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (contacts).

Fish Story

Fandango37 Comments

CDC40A5D-77CB-4252-A499-072919C08EE4Rory, aka A Guy Called Bloke, has this new game he calls Spin the Keyboard Yarn. Rory has asked us to create a 300-word yarn and today’s yarn is to be based on this topic:

“I caught a fish … it was THIS big?!”

At the end of my 300-word story, you, the reader, will be asked to vote, on a scale of one to ten, how believable my story is, where one is not at all believable and ten is totally believable.

Got it? Good! So here’s my 300-word fish story.

When my cousin and I were about 12, my uncle rented a boat on a lake near St. Louis one summer to introduce us to fishing. It was a large, beautiful lake and my uncle told us that the lake was teeming with bass, crappie, bluegill, and catfish.

By mid afternoon my cousin, my uncle, and I had managed to catch around a dozen fish and we were stoked. We were also sweltering, as it was very hot and muggy. Since none of us was wearing bathing trunks, my uncle suggested we strip down to our skivvies and jump into the lake to cool off.

Unbeknownst to us, a fish native to the Amazon basin, the pacu fish, which has human-like teeth and can weigh up to 55 pounds, had been spotted in the lake.3D6F049D-91FB-4A49-B074-85D80743247BPacus use their teeth to crack the tough shells of nuts and seeds. But Pacus have acquired the nickname, “ball cutters,” because they have developed an affinity for using their human-like teeth to crack a different kind of nut — human testicles. Honestly, I’m not making this up. Google “pacu fish” if you don’t believe me.

But back to my fish tale. The three of us had dived into the water to cool off when my uncle started screaming. My cousin and I swam over to him, saw lots of blood in the water, and somehow managed to drag the man over to and onto the boat. What we saw sent chills up and down our spines. A huge fish’s mouth was clamped shut on his ball sack. I picked up an oar and pounded on the fish until it eased its grip and then my cousin threw the fish back into the water.

My uncle lived, but, according to my aunt, their sex life was never the same after that.

Now it’s audience participation time. In the comments, please tell me what you think of my story. And most important, please rate my story. Out of ten, how believable do you think my story is?

Thanks!

C is for Chronological Order

Fandango40 Comments

A0D7DDCE-DF70-46FD-8993-D737913FFC33Have you ever heard the inventory control acronyms FIFO and LIFO? FIFO stands for “first in, first out,” meaning you distribute the oldest items first. LIFO stands for “last in, first out,” meaning you ship out the newest items in inventory before the older items. In other words, FIFO means handling inventory in chronological order, while LIFO is in reverse chronological order.

When it comes to most matters, including blogging, I prefer the FIFO method because chronological order makes the most sense. Something happens first. That leads to the next event, reaction, or response. And that leads to what follows after that. It flows. It’s logical. It’s easy to follow. Perhaps that’s why, when I was still working, I enjoyed creating process workflows. One thing follows the next.

Comments on blog posts, for those of us who read them, can be the best part blogging, especially when the post is of a controversial nature and generates a lot of different responses.

To follow the thread, the sequence, of the discussion, doesn’t it make sense to read the comments in the order in which they were posted, or oldest first? Of course it does.

When comments are displayed in chronological order, you can easily follow the conversation, see the interactions, the reactions, the responses, and the replies in the order they were made.

Yes, it may be convenient to show the most recent comment at the very top of the comments section, but then the latest comment may not have context, particularly if it was posted in response to an earlier comment.

Thus, posting comments in reverse chronological order, with the most recent comments first, is just bass ackwards. I mean, seriously, do you read a book by starting on the last page and working your way to the front? No, you don’t.

Do you open up a newspaper to the comics section at the back of the paper first? Well, okay, maybe that’s a bad example.

My point is that the natural flow of any conversation is from start to finish, not from finish to start. So why would anyone want to have the newest comments first, rather than starting with the oldest?

As a blogger, do you post comments in chronological order, from oldest to newest? Or are you a fan of having the most recent comment at the top? What do you do on your blog? And what’s your rationale?

Previous A to Z Challenge 2019 posts:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

One Liner Wednesday — Told You So

Fandango12 Comments

91446090-31EF-4A4B-9059-FCBC88D9094A

“The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.”

American writer Gore Vidal

Are you an “I told you so” kind of person who rubs it in when you were right about something and another person was wrong? Or are you silently gracious about it?

I would be an “I told you so person,” but, according to my wife, I’m so rarely right about things that I have few opportunities to gloat.

And that’s when I explain to my wife that, while I’m not always right, I’m never wrong.

Written for this week’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt from Linda G. Hill.

FOWC with Fandango — Contacts

Fandango30 Comments

FOWCWelcome to April 3, 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 “contacts.”

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.