Day: May 11, 2019

Hammering Things Out at the Grocery Store

Fandango9 Comments

51A57B8E-DD57-408A-9992-3287615F2DB3George walked into the grocery store, pulled out a hammer from his belt, and started banging it against the base of the frozen food unit. An older woman with her hair in a single braid, ran over to where the man was hammering. “You can’t do that here!” she yelled.

“You don’t understand,” George protested. “I was here last night and noticed that this cooling unit is not functioning properly. As a result, the foods contained in it are going through a slow thaw. As a gourmand, a man who appreciates fine food, it breaks my heart to see all of these exquisite frozen goodies melting.”

“I have a guy I can call to take a look at the unit. I don’t want some customer coming into my store and taking a hammer to my freezer, so please stop,” the woman with the braid said.

“But when I lived in Canada, I worked for a refrigeration company and repaired units like this all the time,” George said.

“It will be a cloudy day in paradise before I let some random dude come in here in the guise of a refrigeration repairman and take a hammer to my freezer unit,” the woman said. “You’re crazy. Now get the hell out of my store before I call the cops.

“Suit yourself,” George said. He stood up, lifted his hammer into the air, and brought it down on the head of the woman with the braid. “You just shoulda let me fix it,” George said, looking down at her body.

Written for Paula Light’s Three Things Challenge, where the three things are “hammer,” “braid,” and “Canada.”

Also for The Haunted Wordsmith Prompt A (grocery store setting) & B (the sentence “You can’t do that here!”).

And for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (base), The Daily Spur (slow), Ragtag Daily Prompt (gourmand), Word of the Day Challenge (cloudy), Your Daily Word Prompt (guise), and Swimmers (now).

Weekend Writing Prompt — Word Tricks

Fandango10 Comments

F0D50403-556E-4427-B54C-A850AF4FCC83“It’s not just a river in Egypt, you know,” Donna said.

“What?” Rick asked.

“Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt,” Donna repeated.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rick said.

“That’s the problem, Rick, you never do,” Donna said.

“Then explain to me what the hell you’re taking about,” Rick said.

“I’m talking about a divorce,” Donna said. “Do you get that?”

“‘Divorce’? Is that another one of your word tricks, like ‘denial’?”

(77 words)

8FB80D63-A8AC-4CCD-9964-8382E7176E8EWritten for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where we are challenged to write a poem or piece of prose using the word “denial” in exactly 77 words.

Another Stats Anomaly?

Fandango24 Comments

You may remember that almost a week ago I wrote this post in which I noted that there was an unusually high number of views on my blog when I first woke up that morning. By the end of that day, my blog had received 935 views, almost twice the number of daily views my blog normally gets. I figured it was some glitch in the WordPress stats counter, especially since the next day my views were back in my normal range.

Well damned if it didn’t happen again yesterday.8C596E21-68D4-4680-AAD5-2691454BE143By the end of the day yesterday, my blog had received 1,556 views, or more than three times my average number of views.

I decided to do some digging to find out what might be behind these unusual spikes in my blog’s views. I noticed a strange anomaly deep within my stats. I saw that on May 5th, the day my views spiked to 935, almost half — 456 of them — came from Germany. And of my 1,556 views yesterday, more than 60% — 952 — were from Germany. Huh?

I went back and checked my stats for the first four months of this year and saw that from January through April, my blog had received a total of 440 views from Germany. And for the entire year of 2018, there were just 722 views from Germany.

But so far this month, my blog has had 1,453 views from Germany, 1,408 of which were on just two days, May 5th and yesterday.

So my blog has gotten 1,013 more views from Germany in just ten days in May than in the previous four full months. And more than double the number of German views during all of 2018!

What the hell is going on? Why Germany? I don’t know anyone who lives in Germany or who is even, to the best of my knowledge, visiting Germany.

This is just weird.

SoCS — Constraining Trump

Fandango41 Comments

9E567351-B700-48EA-ACC0-3DFC9AF4689AI have been under a lot of strain lately due primarily to all of the craziness, chaos, and corruption going on in Washington these days.

I worry that we as a nation are failing to constrain Donald Trump as he continues, without constraint from the Republicans in Congress, to turn our country from a representative democracy into a monarchy being run by Emperor Donald and his offspring in much the same way that Saddam Hussein, with his sons Howdy and Doody Uday and Qusay, ran Iraq before the Iraq War.

With all of the irrefutable evidence that Trump welcomed and encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election in order to help get him elected, as well as his blatant (and continuing) efforts to obstruct justice, I can’t comprehend how 40 to 45% of the American people still support him. How 80 to 90% of Republicans still support him. How virtually 100% of congressional Republicans not only still support him, but actively enable him.

What is wrong with these people? Don’t they care at all about the harm he’s doing?

I’m an old man — I’m Donald Trump’s age — and this constant strain of living in the era of the Donald Trump presidency might send me to an early grave. I truly think that there are only three things that can relieve this strain I’m feeling.

  1. Trump is removed from office as a result of being impeached, or
  2. Trump loses the 2020 election and willingly accepts the loss and goes along with the transition of power (which is doubtful), or
  3. Trump dies.

To be honest, and at the risk of sounding a bit morbid, I prefer number 3, because I think that’s the only sure way to constrain the man once and for all.

Written for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt from Linda G. Hill. We are asked to use “strain” in our posts.

FOWC with Fandango — Base

Fandango20 Comments

FOWCWelcome to May 11, 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 “base.”

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.

Note: some bloggers have had issues with pingbacks showing up lately, so if you don’t see it shortly after you published your post, you might want 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.