Day: October 4, 2022

The Cockroach

Fandango19 Comments

“In my culture, it’s not appropriate to kill another living creature,” Asma said.

“What about a cockroach?” Hal asked. “Isn’t it okay to step on and squash a lowly cockroach?”

“No, not even a lowly cockroach,” Asma said. “Cockroaches have an integral ecological role. They are professional recyclers, feasting on just about anything, including dead plants and animals, and animal waste.”

“Okay, well what about a werewolf?” Hal asked. “In your culture is it okay to shoot and kill a werewolf with a silver bullet?”

Asma shook her head, and thought, this conversation is turning surreal. Then she looked at Hal and said, “You know that werewolves are fictional beasts and don’t really exist, don’t you?”

“That’s irrelevant,” Hal said. “Answer the question. Is it permissible to shoot a werewolf with a silver bullet?”

“If you want to shoot a mythical creature with a silver bullet, knock yourself out, Hal,” Asma said. “Just not a cockroach.”

“Whatever,” Hal said dismissively. “I’m thirsty. Do you want to share a lemon-lime soda?”

Asma nodded and Hal took her by the hand and they walked into kitchen. When Hal turned on the light, Asma screamed when she saw a big cockroach streaking across the kitchen floor. Hal ran over and quickly stepped on it. Then he turned to Asma and sheepishly asked, “Are you angry that I killed that cockroach?”

Asma smile and said, “No, but I would have preferred it if you’d have used a silver bullet.”

Written for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (culture), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (squash), Your Daily Word Prompt (integral), The Daily Spur (wolf), Word of the Day Challenge (surreal), and E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (lemon-lime).

Truthful Tuesday — Traditions

Fandango15 Comments

Melanie, of Sparks from a Combustible Mind, is back again as our host for the Truthful Tuesday prompt. In honor of Halloween month, Melanie wants to know…

How do you feel about candy corn. She says, “Hate it, love it, it’s one of those things seen around a specific time of year and everyone has an opinion one way or another it seems.”

I remember that when I was a kid I used to love candy corn and couldn’t wait until Halloween season when all of the stores had loads of candy corn on their shelves. I’m not sure when, exactly, I grew out of my craving for candy corn, but it’s been decades since I last had any.

Until last year, when my son bought a bunch of individually-sized bags of candy corn to hand out to trick-or-treaters. I was hit with a rush of nostalgia. I said to my son, “I used to love these when I was a kid,” and he tossed me a bag and encouraged me to open it and eat the candy corn.

I put two or three pieces in my mouth and thought, Eww, these are disgusting. So that is how I feel about candy corn now. I don’t love it. I don’t hate it. I just won’t eat it anymore.

Unless someone comes out with cannabis-infused candy corn. Then I might reconsider. In the meantime, I’ll stick with fun-sized Snickers to give to our trick-or-treaters.

5 Things — Annoying Clichés

Fandango12 Comments

Dr. Tanya, over at Salted Caramel, has this prompt called “5 Things,” where she asks us to list five things about a particular topic. For this week’s topic, she’s asking about five clichés that we find annoying. I find most clichés annoying, but here are five that I chose:

  • At the end of the day…. Means the same thing as another cliché: “When all is said and done.”
  • It’s a zero sum game. One person wins while another loses by an equal amount.
  • It’s a win-win situation. The opposite of zero sum game. Both people win.
  • It is what it is. Maybe the old fashioned way of saying “Whatever!”
  • You need to think outside of the box. The opposite of “Don’t color outside of the lines.”

I admit to having used all of these at one time or another and possibly multiple times. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Am I right?

By the way, if anyone finds “Whatever floats your boat” an annoying cliché, I won’t be offended that you find my overall philosophy of life annoying.

Fandango’s Story Starter #66

Fandango11 Comments

It’s time for my weekly Story Starter prompt. Here’s how it works. Every Tuesday morning (my time), I’m going to give you a “teaser” sentence and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build a story (prose or poetry) around that sentence. It doesn’t have to be the first sentence in your story, and you don’t even have to use it in your post at all if you don’t want to. The purpose of the teaser is simply to spark your imagination and to get your storytelling juices flowing.

This week’s Story Starter teaser is:

She knew he was going to give her a long, deep kiss, but she was surprised when he…

If you care to write and post a story built from this teaser, be sure to link back to this post and to tag your post with #FSS. I would also encourage you to read and enjoy what your fellow bloggers do with their stories.

And most of all, have fun.

FOWC with Fandango — Squash

Fandango14 Comments
FOWC

It’s October 4, 2022. Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “squash.”

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. Show them some love.