Day: November 17, 2019

Sunday Photo Fiction — Beware of the Owl

Fandango11 Comments

A7B1A86D-47B4-4324-BF07-17A798363651“Jeez, what happened to your shirt, dude?” Eddie asked.

“It was freaky, man,” Steve said. “I was jogging along Telegraph Road when I saw this really weird sign warning about owls in the road. I thought it was so odd that I took a picture of it.” Steve whipped out his iPhone and showed the picture to Eddie.

“Yeah, that is strange,” Eddie said, “but it doesn’t answer my question about how you ripped your shirt.”

“So after I took the picture, I started jogging again when I heard a screeching sound above me and an owl swooped down and started chasing me,” Steve said. “I fell down, the owl landed on me, and it started tearing at my shirt with its talons. I tell you, Eddie, I feared for my life. I’m going to steer clear of jogging on Telegraph Road from now on.”

“Dude, I think you were having a bad trip,” Eddie said. “What kind of acid did you drop?”

Steve held up his right hand. “Nothing man, I swear!” he said.

Eddie just shook his head. “Listen, dude,” he said, “if you don’t want to tell me about how you really tore your shirt, that’s your business, but to go with some random tale about being attacked by a freakin’ owl? Seriously, Steve, you need to elevate your storytelling game.”

Written for Donna McNicol’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt and for these daily prompts: The Daily Spur (shirt), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (trip), Daily Addictions (steer), Word of the Day Challenge (random), and Your Daily Word Prompt (elevate). Photo credit: Morguefile.

Who Won The Week? 11/17/19

Fandango12 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 pick for this week is bow ties.

George Kent, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was the first witness to testify at this past Wednesday’s televised House of Representatives impeachment hearing. Kent is a very high-level official who oversees all U.S. policy over Ukraine and has a deep knowledge of the relationship between the United States and Ukraine.

He testified that Trump wanted Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to publicly and explicitly announce he’d be investigating matters involving Democrats, and he wanted Zelensky to use the words “Biden” and “Clinton.”

Kent testified that the White House’s effort to get Ukraine to root out “corruption” was actually an attempt to make them dig up dirt on Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, and a potential 2020 opponent, former vice president Joe Biden. He spoke of how “corrupt” Ukrainians recruited Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to attack U.S. officials with a “campaign of lies” about then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. And he made it clear that Donald Trump was willing to use his power and influence to go after his political rivals by threatening to withholding desperately needed military assistance in Ukraine’s struggle with Russia.EF523D53-E48B-4053-B0B9-05E5CCBB9A85But as damning as Kent’s testimony was for Trump and Guiliani and others doing Trump’s bidding, the most notable thing for those of us who watched the hearing, was Kent’s bow tie. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

I don’t know if Kent’s bow tie is going to stimulate a resurgence of bow ties in male fashion circles, but as far as I’m concerned, bow ties won the week.

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

No Way Out

Fandango8 Comments

AA21E4FB-FBC2-49EE-A12D-B7737BEFF2ABIn his Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Music Challenge post on Friday, Jim Adams gave us the Allman Brothers Band song “One Way Out” and asked us to use that song as inspiration for our own post.

As Jim explained, the song is about a man having an affair with another man’s woman in an upstairs apartment. He realizes that he is trapped when he hears another man has showed up downstairs. He figures that this is probably her man, so he decides to jump out the window to avoid any confrontation.

This reminded me of a similar “adventure” I had back when I was still a single man and was playing the dating game. I was seeing a woman, Judy, who was separated from her husband, the father of her two-year-old twin boys. She lived with her boys in a small, two bedroom garden apartment in Northern Virginia.

Judy had invited me over one night to watch TV. The twins were asleep in their bedroom, and Judy and I were on her living room couch, let’s just say, getting to know one another a little better. We were interrupted by a knock at her door, and Judy got up and looked through the peephole in the door. She turned to me and said that it was her husband and his mother.

Judy panicked, told me to go into her bedroom and suggested, once she let her husband and his mother in through the front door, that I exit through her bedroom’s window. Her husband was a big, beefy guy, and I was a tall, lanky guy. And like the man in Jim’s song, I wanted to avoid a confrontation. So once I heard her open her front door and let them in, I made my escape.

But there was something neither Judy nor I had anticipated. He brought his mother over to her apartment so she could try to persuade Judy to reconcile with him and to take him back. His plan was to leave the two of them alone to talk. So he dropped his mother off and left. He walked out of the apartment building’s front door at the exact moment that I had just snuck out through Judy’s bedroom window.

Needless to say, bedlam ensued when he spotted me crawling out through his wife’s bedroom window, and before I knew it, this big, beefy guy was pounding the shit out of me.

So thank you, Jim Adams, for triggering, with your post, this long-suppressed, very unpleasant memory.Music Challenge Large

Song Lyric Sunday — Do It Again

Fandango19 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has given us the theme words “Did, Didn’t, Do, Don’t, Does, and Doesn’t.” And with that, the song I chose is “Do It Again” by Steely Dan.

“Do It Again” was written and composed by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen and performed by their group Steely Dan. The song was released as a single from their 1972 debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill. It reached number 6 on the US charts in 1973, making it Steely Dan’s second highest charting single, behind “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.”

Some critics claim that it’s hard to make sense of the lyrics of most Steely Dan songs. This songs seems to be about some combination of addiction, second chances, and the inevitability of fate. It’s another example of a Steely Dan song that doesn’t make literal sense, but creates a mood. The group’s sound has always been considered to be unusual, and when asked to explain it, they sometimes described it as “smart rock.” I enjoy Steely Dan’s music because I like new age/light jazz music as well as classic rock, and I consider Steely Dan’s sound to be a fusion of rock, jazz, and blues.

Unfortunately, Walter Becker died in September 2017 at the age 67. Donald Fagen is still performing under the name Steely Dan.

By the way, an interesting factoid: Steely Dan was named after a dildo in William Burroughs’ 1959 novel, “Naked Lunch.”

Here are the song’s lyrics.

In the mornin you go gunnin’
For the man who stole your water
And you fire till he is done in
But they catch you at the border
And the mourners are all sangin’
As they drag you by your feet
But the hangman isn’t hangin’
And they put you on the street

You go back, Jack, do it again
Wheel turnin’ ’round and ’round
You go back, Jack, do it again

When you know she’s no high climber
Then you find your only friend
In a room with your two timer
And you’re sure you’re near the end
Then you love a little wild one
And she brings you only sorrow
All the time you know she’s smilin’
You’ll be on your knees tomorrow

You go back, Jack, do it again
Wheel turnin’ ’round and ’round
You go back, Jack, do it again

Now you swear and kick and beg us
That you’re not a gamblin’ man
Then you find you’re back in Vegas
With a handle in your hand
Your black cards can make you money
So you hide them when you’re able
In the land of milk and honey
You must put them on the table

You go back, Jack, do it again
Wheel turnin’ ’round and ’round
You go back, Jack, do it again