Day: October 18, 2020

MLMM Sunday Writing Prompt — An Annual Event

Fandango9 Comments

It was an annual event, but was it to celebrate or commiserate over? Well, I suppose that depended upon who you were asking. If you asked her, it was to celebrate something sublime. But if you asked me, to the extent that what I thought mattered at all, it was traumatic.

Still, every year, on the anniversary of our divorce, my ex-wife insisted on throwing a divorce party and she would invite me to attend. Why she wanted me there, I don’t know, and it was even a riddle to me why I always attended. Each year, her promises to not humiliate me in front of the other guests were broken, and she delighted in doing that to me.

But last year, after speaking with my therapist, who suggested that going to my ex-wife’s sadistic yearly divorce parties would hinder my recovery, I declined her invitation.

I heard that she was outraged when she received my declination, that she was livid, and went stark raving mad. She ultimately took her own life and today is the one year anniversary of her death. I’m not sure if that is something I should celebrate or commiserate over.

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt, where the lead off sentence is “It was an annual event, but was it to celebrate or commiserate over?” Also for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (sublime), Your Daily Word Prompt (extent) The Daily Spur (riddle), Ragtag Daily Prompt (promises), and Word of the Day Challenge (recovery).

Who Won the Week? — 10/18/2020

Fandango21 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 (or what) 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.

For this week’s Who Won the Week, I’m going with a sign of the times.There’s an app called “Nextdoor” that I have on my iPhone and every day there are multiple posts about people stealing their political lawn signs. Seriously? Why would people do that? If someone has a political sign for one candidate or the other, does anyone really believe that swiping that sign is going to make a difference?

Anyway, the one and only hard copy magazine I subscribe to is The Week. And in this week’s edition, I read two short blurbs on the topic of political lawn sign thefts that I thought I’d share with you.

An Iowa man who pleaded guilty to stealing a “Biden-Harris” lawn sign then stole hundreds of copies of the local newspaper that reported on his crime. After his name appeared in the Dickinson County News police blotter, the 70-year-old man took entire stacks of the newspaper from multiple stores, earning another conviction and a far lengthier write-up in the Dickinson County News.

A municipal worker in Michigan required 13 stitches after moving a Trump lawn sign rigged with razor blades. The sign was closer to the roadway than permitted by local ordinance, the town supervisor said, and when the worker put his hands on it, he initially “thought it was electrified,” and then “realized he was bleeding aggressively.” The homeowner has denied doing the booby-trapping.

So, yeah, this week’s winner is a sign of the times…and a rather sad sign of the times, at that.

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?

Hide the Body

Fandango15 Comments

The ever inquisitive Rory, aka A Guy Called Bloke, wants to know…

How many friends do you have in either real life, social platforms, and WordPress, that would help you hide the body?

Rory was kind enough to categorize “friends” into these brackets:

  • Intimate Friends
  • Bestest Friends
  • Close Friends
  • Friends
  • Casual Friends
  • Casual Acquaintances

First, let me say that I have a very small circle of friends in real life. I probably have fewer than twenty, excluding family members, across the top five categories Rory itemized. And as to “casual acquaintances,” helping me to hide a body is probably the last thing I’d ask a casual acquaintance.

Second, I assume that Rory’s question serves as a metaphor for someone who would do virtually anything you would ask of them and is not literally about hiding a body.

Operating under that assumption, I think the answer is one, and that one would be my one and only intimate friend, my wife. Note I said “I think” because I can’t be 100% certain that even she would go along with something she thought to be a bridge too far, such as, perhaps, hiding a dead body.

As to social media friends, the only Facebook friends I have are extended family members. I have no other “social platform” friends. While I have a lot of people I know from WordPress, many of whom I’d like to think are at least casual friends, I have never met any of them in real life. And since I blog anonymously, none of them even knows my real name. So I would hardly expect any of them to help me hide the body.

Bottom line, if I had a body to hide, I think I’d be on my own.

Song Lyric Sunday — Yes or No

Fandango15 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim has given us “yes” and/or “no.” Hmm. About a month ago, I used “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles for Jim’s SLS prompt, and that song might have been a great song for this week’s prompt. “You say yes, I so no….” But given that I have used that song twice already (including this post I did in January 2018 when Helen Vahdati was still hosting SLS), I figured I’d go in a different direction. I’m reaching way back to 1965 for the song, “Tell Her No” by The Zombies. It seems to be an appropriate fit for this “No” theme, as the word “no” was mentioned a total of 63 times in song’s lyrics.

“Tell Her No” was a hit single written by keyboardist and vocalist Rod Argent of the English rock band, The Zombies. The song was included on the band’s 1965 debut album, The Zombies. “Tell Her No” peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States in March 1965. It was The Zombie’s second biggest hit in the U.S., behind “She’s Not There.”

The song is very simple. The singer, worried that his girlfriend is likely to cheat on him, pleads with another guy to reject her advances…to emphatically tell her “no.”

Here are the lyrics to this song:

And if she should tell you “come closer”
And if she tempts you with her charms

Tell her no no no no no-no-no-no
No no no no no-no-no-no
No no no no no
Don’t hurt me now for her love belongs to me

And if she should tell you “I love you”
And if she tempts you with her charms

Tell her no no no no no-no-no-no
No no no no no-no-no-no
(Don’t take her love for your arms)
No no no no no
Don’t hurt me now for her love belongs to me

I know she’s the kind of girl
Who’d throw my love away
But I still love her so
Don’t hurt me now, don’t hurt me now

If she tells you “I love you”
Just remember she said that to me

Tell her no no no no no-no-no-no
No no no no no-no-no-no
(Don’t take her love from my arms)
No no no no no
Don’t leave me now for her love belongs to me

As a special bonus this week, I’m going to feature the aforementioned song by The Zombies, “She’s Not There.” This song also mentions the word “no” through the repeated lyric, “Well, no one told me about her,” although the word is not repeated nearly as much as in “Tell Her No.”

FOWC with Fandango — Sublime

Fandango23 Comments

FOWCWelcome to October 18, 2020 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 “sublime.”

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. Please 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.