Day: September 15, 2019

Weekly Prompts — Photo Challenge — Line-up

Fandango9 Comments

The weekend’s photo challenge here on Weekly Prompts is “Line-up.” The challenge notes that there are lots of possibilities here: line em up and shoot em… photographs that is!

I was unsure of what to do for this prompt, as I am not a photographer and have no photographs of things lined up. I was feeling quite depressed about having nothing to use for this prompt. I decided that what I needed to overcome my profound depression was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream. That always makes me feel better.

So I walked to my local Safeway to pick up the ice cream. But guess what happened when I got there! It was very crowded with customers and there were very few cashiers. As a result…

drumroll please…

…people were lined up at the checkout lines.

And I took a picture…2BEDFB76-ECC1-4707-B2F7-C6A13E7BDC0F…of all the people lined up to pay for their groceries.

Booyah!

Sunday Photo Fiction — The Catastrophe

Fandango18 Comments

9C22FBEE-4567-460D-B33E-76F8813222F4“Your desire to indiscriminately cut costs and to stay under budget is what led to this catastrophe,” the mayor said. “The time to talk is over. We must take action in order to ensure that nothing like this happens again in the future.

“We’ve has this conversation before,” objected a city council member from the other party. “No one could possibly have anticipated that the scaffolding, which had been erected for additional seating at the music festival, would collapse when that sudden, violent thunderstorm blew through the fairgrounds.”

“Nonsense!” the mayor shouted. “Your council awarded the contract to the low bidder. You knew they had to cut corners in order to get the contract. Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no middle ground here. You need to take responsibility for this totally avoidable disaster.”

The mayor picked up a large blowup of a photograph that had been mounted on poster board and set it on a tripod. “Look at this devastation,” he said. “It’s a miracle that no one was killed from the collapse. Our role, as the city’s leaders, is to deal with this and I suggest that if you can’t stand the heat, you need to get out of the kitchen.”

(199 words)

Written for today’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt from Donna McNicol. Photo credit: Pixabay. Also for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (talk), Your Daily Word Prompt (future), The Daily Spur (conversation), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (middle), and Daily Addictions (kitchen). Sorry Word of the Day Challenge, but I couldn’t fit “sensual” into this post and still keep it to no more than 200 words.

Who Won The Week? 9/15/19

Fandango24 Comments

10CC3057-4EEA-4C80-B8C1-700C0FC6C906It’s time for another Who Won the Week prompt. The idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

My selection for this week is the former Democratic congressman from El Paso, Texas and current presidential hopeful, Beto O’Rourke.501761AC-09F7-487C-B566-DA29159900A3.jpegAt the Democratic debate this past Thursday night, when asked, “Are you proposing taking away their guns, and how would this work?”

“I am. If it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield — if the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body, because it was designed to do that.”

When asked the following day if he really would ban these weapons, O’Rourke reiterated his support for a mandatory gun-buyback program of assault-style rifles on Thursday and said, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore.”

Now before you all pillory me for being anti-American and opposed to the Second Amendment, let me make one thing clear. I am not opposed to people owning and keeping guns. When it comes to sport hunting and for protecting one’s home and possessions, owning a shotgun or a hunting rifle or a handgun is okay by me.

But I am opposed to permitting everyday citizens to possess, as O’Rourke called them, weapons designed to kill people on a battlefield. That is military style, semiautomatic, high capacity assault rifles.

There is only one purpose for such weapons and that is to inflict as much carnage as possible in the shortest amount of time. And I see no reason that our citizenry should be permitted to be armed with such weapons. It’s overkill, pun intended.

So, yes, Beto O’Rourke won the week for having the balls to say out loud what the majority of Americans think. Get those killing machines off of our streets so that kids will feel safe at school again. So that people can go to malls, to movies, and to their houses of worship and not worry that some nut job legally armed to the teeth will walk through the door and start firing away.

And now it’s your turn, folks. Who do you think won the week?

Weekend Writing Prompt — Delicate

Fandango7 Comments

72924BC3-E99A-4333-9F93-FF7BBAD1E46E“I can’t help it that I’m high strung. What can I say? I’m an emotional and caring person,” Charlotte said.

“First, Charlotte, you don’t have to be defensive about being a caring person,” Alice said. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to take care of your yard.”

“To me, the simplicity of yard work is very fulfilling,” Charlotte said. “Listening to the radio, tending to the flowers, the bushes, and the lemon and orange trees brings me so much pleasure. And it’s not something just anyone can do, you know. It’s delicate work. It take a special skill, a green thumb.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” Alice said.

(106 words)

B495597C-AB51-420C-A191-7ECE6044F5D0Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where we are challenged to write a poem or piece of prose using the word “delicate” in exactly 106 words. Because Sammi was generous with the word count for this prompt, I’ve included these daily prompts from yesterday: Word of the Day Challenge (emotional), Daily Addictions (caring), Ragtag Daily Prompt (simplicity), The Daily Spur (radio), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (anyone).

Also written for yesterday’s inaugural edition of Di’s Three Things Challenge, where the words were “first,” “orange, and “yard.”

Song Lyric Sunday — Another Brick

Fandango27 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday prompt, Jim Adams gave us the themes “Floor,” “House,” “Roof,” and “Walls.” I was debating between Paul Simon’s “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor,” and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).” I decided to go with the latter because I’ve used Paul Simon (or Simon & Garfunkel) songs for a number of Song Lyric Sunday prompts, but I hadn’t ever used a Pink Floyd Song.

“Another Brick in the Wall” is a three-part composition on Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera album, The Wall, written by bassist Roger Waters. “Part 2” was released as a single in November 1979 and it became Pink Floyd’s only number-one single, selling over four million copies worldwide. It was nominated for a Grammy Award, and was number 375 on Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”

According to Songfacts, Roger Waters wrote this song about his views on formal education, which were framed during his time at the Cambridgeshire School for Boys. He hated his grammar school teachers and felt they were more interested in keeping the kids quiet than teaching them. The wall refers to the emotional barrier Waters built around himself because he wasn’t in touch with reality. The bricks in the wall were the events in his life that propelled him to build this proverbial wall around him, and his school teacher was another brick in the wall.

Waters told Mojo in 2009 that the song is meant to be satirical. He explained: “You couldn’t find anybody in the world more pro-education than me. But the education I went through in boys’ grammar school in the ’50s was very controlling and demanded rebellion. The teachers were weak and therefore easy targets. The song is meant to be a rebellion against errant government, against people who have power over you, who are wrong. Then it absolutely demanded that you rebel against that.”

The children’s chorus that sang on this track came from a school in Islington, England, and was chosen because it was close to the studio. It was made up of 23 kids between the ages of 13 and 15. They were overdubbed 12 times, making it sound like there were many more kids.

Here are the lyrics to the song.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall

[Chorus by pupils from the Fourth Form Music Class Islington Green School, London]

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers, leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall

[Spoken:]
Wrong! Do it again!
Wrong! Do it again!
If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?!
You! Yes, you, behind the bike sheds, stand still, laddy!