Month: May 2019

Another Clown Show

Fandango12 Comments

 

F1A2D0EE-B615-4D19-972B-97B1751FF7AB“He’s doing another rally somewhere tonight,” my wife complained. “It’s like he thinks he’s a rock star going on tour.”

“That’s exactly what he thinks,” I responded. “Just ask him. He’s not at all bashful when it comes to telling anyone who will listen how great he is, how he’s an ‘an extremely stable genius,’ and not merely a ‘stable genius.’ He’s a moron.”

“Yes, and then he starts reciting verbatim the things he heard Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham on Fox News say,” my wife added, shaking her head.

“Right,” I said, “and as if following some sort of invisible prompt, the lemmings in the audience applaud whatever he says, no matter how incoherent, idiotic, inane, or uninformed it is.”

“I’ll turn on the TV, you go get the popcorn, and let’s watch him,” she said.

“Yeah, another one of his clown shows should be good for a few laughs,” I said.

Written for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (tour), Your Daily Word Prompt (bashful), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (verbatim), Ragtag Daily Prompt (prompt), and Word of the Day Challenge (applaud). Caricature by Niall O’Loughlin.

50 Word Thursday — Always in a Hurry

Fandango12 Comments

B9C54A9B-38A6-4AE0-B344-11B1062D3FB6“Have you ever been to the Island of Rügen on the Baltic Sea before?” the old woman with a heavy German accent asked us.

“This is our first time,” I responded. “It’s beautiful.”

“Would you like to rent a Umkleide?” she asked.

“A what?” I asked.

“You change into your swimming suits. It’s a, what do you call it in English, a dressing room,” she explained. Then she pointed to what looked like a gypsy wagon on wooden wagon wheels.

“Ah,” I said. “No, danke schoen. We’ll be leaving in a little while.”

“Oh, that is too bad,” she said. “Rügen has one of the finest beaches Germany has to offer.”

“I can see that,” I said, “but we really must be going. We have other places we need to see. We never stop anywhere very long.”

“Americans,” the old lady muttered as she walked away. Always in a hurry.”

(150 words)

Written for this week’s 50 Word Thursday prompt from Teresa at The Haunted Wordsmith. The idea is to find our muse within the photo above (from cocoparisienne at Pixabay) and the line, “We never stop anywhere very long” (from Darren Shan, A Living Nightmare), and write a story or poem between 50 and 250 words, in 50 word increments.

Friday Fictioneers — The Blowing of the Conch

Fandango39 Comments

AA23BE06-29D7-44E7-8CE2-AD081F895F59At the same time every afternoon, he would shimmy up the bent trunk of the palm tree.

He would work his way out on the palm’s trunk just high enough to get a wide angle view of the horizon.

He would survey the sea, his eyes scanning from the south to the north and then back again.

And he would patiently wait until he saw the first signs of the outriggers breaking the horizon.

Then he would pick up his conch shell and blow loud to notify the villagers that the fishermen would be arriving home with the day’s catch.

(100 words)

Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt from Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Photo credit: Susan Eames.

Fandango’s Friday Flashback — May 31

Fandango3 Comments

Time for something new…for me, anyway. Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year. I’ve had this blog for two years, so I have only 2017 and 2018 to draw from.

If you’d like to reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year, please write a comment with a link to that post. If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 31st) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

Be sure to tag your post #FFF.

I originally posted this one on May 31, 2017 and it was the first time that I responded to one of Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompts.

handshake

“Each president gripped the other’s hand with considerable intensity, their knuckles turning white and their jaws clenching and faces tightening.”

Philip Rucker, a reporter for the Washington Post, was in the room for the now somewhat infamous handshake between French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump at last week’s NATO meeting in Brussels. The sentence at the top of this post is how Rucker described that handshake.

I suppose it could have been worse. Instead of competing with an intense handshake, these two world leaders could have had an actual pissing contest!

FOWC with Fandango — Verbatim

Fandango19 Comments

FOWCWelcome to May 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 “verbatim.”

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.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might 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. You will marvel at their creativity.