Day: June 27, 2019

50 Word Thursday — Art Versus Crap

Fandango12 Comments

E1F46B8D-5686-429A-A5CD-A0476298E181.jpegThey were at the Museum of Modern Art when Larry said, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

“What are you talking about?” Sandy asked.

Larry pointed to a painting and said, “This is obviously supposed to be a work of art, but the fact is, it’s crap.”

(50 words)

Written for this week’s 50 Word Thursday prompt from Teresa at The Haunted Wordsmith. The idea is to use the photo from Prawny at Pixabay.com, and to use the line, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,” from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in The Boscombe Valley Mystery, and to write a post that must be between 50 and 250 words, in 50 word increments.

By the way, that’s a lovely picture, so no offense meant to the artist by my calling the picture “crap.” This is, after all, flash fiction.

The Downward Trend

Fandango6 Comments

A91C99A2-9BF3-4783-A70B-7CAED48AE3B0The financial analyst stood up in front of the group of employees sitting in the small auditorium at the company headquarters. He began speaking in a sort of sing-song, almost melodious voice. His manner of speaking generated a few sniggers from the group in attendance.

He explained that he was brought in to analyze the company’s sliding fortunes. Sales were down, the stock price was tanking, and morale was low. His job was to come up with strategies to reverse the slide. He turned off the auditorium lights and projected a PowerPoint presentation on the screen, displaying graph after graph illustrating the company’s poor performance.

He talked about the need to halt the downward trend and to chart a course that would improve corporate performance. He encouraged the attendees to think outside the box, to use their ingenuity to get things back on track in order to charge up the corporate numbers. He droned on for about twenty minutes, using all the business jargon and corporate buzzwords that one could possibly conjure up.

At the end of his PowerPoint presentation the analyst turned on the auditorium lights. It should have been no surprise that nearly everyone in the room was asleep.

Written for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (analyst), Word of the Day Challenge (melodious), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (chart), Ragtag Daily Prompt (ingenuity), and Your Daily Word Prompt (charge).

Is This Really Necessary?

Fandango27 Comments

I understand that the folks who bring us WordPress have to make money. And since many bloggers take advantage of the fact that WordPress makes its site available for free, one way for the company to make money is by placing advertisements at the end of people’s posts.

But one would hope that those ads would not be disgusting to see. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case. As evidence, I present you with this example of what I saw at the end of one blogger’s post this morning.F6EBACCA-47B7-4D4A-88F8-7B8C45B7FC34Eww! Jeez, WordPress, is displaying such a gross ad really necessary? I was drinking coffee when I saw this and almost did a spit take.

This is one of the reasons I opted to upgrade to a paid plan. It doesn’t cost that much (I think they start at $3 per month) and it eliminates all ads. I figured that was a small price to pay to not expose my readers to vomit-inducing advertisements. I’m not suggesting that others should opt for a paid plan. I’m just making you aware what other bloggers might see when they go to visit your site if you’re using the free plan.

Something to think about.

FOWC with Fandango — Chart

Fandango25 Comments

FOWCWelcome to June 27, 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 “chart.”

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.