Day: April 9, 2019

Get Off of My Lawn!

Fandango9 Comments

hiresIf I had a lawn, which, living in the city, I don’t, I would be the epitome of that cantankerous old man who would yell from his front door, “Hey, you kids, get off of my lawn!”

It’s a natural byproduct of the aging process. The older you get, the more crotchety, cranky, and cantankerous you get. And there’s a good reason for that. When you have many fewer years ahead of you than behind you, you just don’t have the patience (or the time) to suffer fools, to kowtow to idiocy, and to silently abide by stupidity.

And that is why I have so much antipathy toward Donald Trump and all of the GOP enablers and sycophants in Congress and in his cabinet. We have a president who is mean, vindictive, divisive, nasty, and moronic. He is turning the United States from a representative democracy into an autocracy. Meanwhile, we have Republicans in Congress, the branch of the government that is supposed to serve as a check and balance against excessive president power, sitting by and turning a blind eye at the illegal and unconscionable acts of Trump.

One doesn’t have to be particularly brilliant to see what’s happening. Donald Trump is power-hungry and will stop at nothing to consolidate that power and tighten the reins on those who speak out against him. Every day, it seems, he says or does something that tops the crazy things he’d previously said or done. And it’s so very disheartening.

I may be old and cantankerous. And if I did have a lawn and those young whippersnappers were treading all over my finely manicured grass, you’re darn tootin’ I’d be out there yelling at them to get off my lawn.

But when it come to Donald Trump, I have no blurred thoughts at all. He needs to be removed from office as soon as possible.

Written for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (cantankerous), Your Daily Word Prompt (brilliant), Ragtag Daily Prompt (hungry), and Word of the Day Challenge (tops). Also for Go Dog Go Café’s Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge (blurred thoughts).

We Are The World

Fandango16 Comments

0B3DAE7A-9F02-45CC-B9B9-2159E65AF36EMaybe this is cheating. But then again Hélène, in this week’s What Do You See? challenge, says the we can post poetry, stories, or whatever we see/feel about this photo.

And when I look at the photo above, I see a world in perfect harmony. This is what came to mind.

I think I’ll go have a Coke.

Let It Bleed — If These Walls Could Talk

Fandango31 Comments

D5DA1170-D1E5-4270-A143-DEBBD5088234“Sarah, what the hell are you doing?” Jim shouted when he came home from work and found his wife smashing holes in their bedroom wall with a hammer.

“I can hear them in the walls!” Sarah screamed.

“Them? Who can you hear in the walls? What are you talking about?” Jim grabbed the hammer away from Sarah and she collapsed on the bed, crying hysterically.

Jim walked over to the bed, put his arms around his wife, and said, “Shh, baby. It’s going to be okay. Now tell me what you are hearing in the walls.”

Still sobbing, Sarah said, “I don’t know, Jim. It’s a constant scratching sound, like there are mice or rats or maybe squirrels in the walls.”

Jim stood up and walked to the wall that Sarah had been pounding holes into just a few minutes before. He put his ear next to the wall and listened, but heard nothing. “Honey, I don’t hear anything. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t hear it anymore, either,” Sarah admitted, “but I wasn’t imagining it, I swear.”

“I’m going to get you a sleeping pill and I want you to take it so you can relax and get a good night’s sleep, since I know you haven’t been sleeping well lately,” Jim said. “Tomorrow I’ll stay home from work to look after you and I’ll patch up the holes in the wall.”

Once Sarah was asleep, Jim called her mother and told her about Sarah’s having pounded holes in the bedroom wall with a hammer and expressed how worried he was about her mental health. Years before, Sarah been institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital for delusional behavior, and Sarah’s mother became concerned that her daughter might be having another mental breakdown.

“I’ll drive down tomorrow and take her back with me to see Dr. Steiner,” Sarah’s mother told Jim. “If she’s having a relapse, he might want to admit her again.”

When Jim hung up from speaking with Sarah’s mother, he called someone else. A woman answered the call. “Hello, darling,” Jim said. “My plan is working. The audio recordings of the scratching sounds that I hid inside the bedroom’s heating duct have pushed her over the edge and her mother is coming to pick her up to take her to see her shrink tomorrow. When her mother sees the damage Sarah did to the bedroom wall, she’ll probably ask the doctor to re-admit her to the asylum. Once there, you and I, my darling, can be together at last.”

Written for the Let It Bleed Weekly Prompt Challenge prompt from Saumya Agrawal’s Randomness Inked blog. The prompt for this week is to write a post containing this sentence: “I can hear them in the walls.”

H is for Human Being

Fandango34 Comments

DE0EB7B8-5A7E-48F4-BBE8-F0803FC70D56Just in case you were wondering, I am a human being. I’m not a bot. I’m not an alien from another galaxy far, far away. I’m also not a deity. As a human being, I am not perfect. I am fallible. I make mistakes. I make typos.

Yes, it’s because I’m imperfect, fallible, make mistakes, and am human, that my posts may occasionally contain typos, misspellings, improper grammar, or misused words.

It’s not that I don’t know better. I do. And it’s not that I don’t carefully proofread my posts before I publish them on my blog. I do. But my mind works in mysterious ways. I find that when I proofread my own work, my eyes will sometimes see what my brain expects them to see rather than the words that actually appear on the page.

For example, even though I know the right and wrong usages, I have typed the word “to” when I should have used “too”; “there” instead of “their” or “they’re”; “your” instead of “you’re.”

And then there was the other day in one of my posts when I used the word “heat” instead of “hear” (thank you, Jim Adams, for letting me know), or when I wrote “male carrier” when I meant to write “mail carrier.” It’s goddam embarrassing is what it is.

So, why am I pointing out my human foibles so publicly? It’s simple, really. I’m asking you, my readers, to come to my aid. If you see one or more typos or other errors in any of my posts, please let me know so I can fix said faux pas.

Hence, this is my personal plea. 5C8A7500-4865-4FF9-8F02-14C839960894Yes, if you see something, say something. Let me know in a comment on the post. Or go to my contact page and send me a note. Either way, I welcome your corrections.

To borrow from the 18th-century English poet, Alexander Pope, “To err is human, to constructively point out when a blogger has erred so that the err can be corrected, is divine.”

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

Twittering Tales —Ground Hold

Fandango10 Comments

117CA20D-CD5D-4D2B-BE5F-043E63EF29AE“This is your captain speaking. Thunderstorms have moved into the area and air traffic control has put a ground hold on flights. We will remain on the tarmac awaiting a weather update.”

Mark looked at his watch. “Dammit, I’m going to miss my son’s birthday party. I hate this job.”

(280 characters)

Written for this week’s Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: Adhitya Andanu at Pexels.com.