Day: June 21, 2024

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — Where Is Everybody?

Fandango8 Comments

For this week’s Mindlovemysery’s Menagerie Friday Faithfuls challenge, Jim Adams asks us to respond by writing anything about Fermi’s paradox, or if you think that Earth is more advanced than life that developed on other planets, or if you think that every civilization that reached our level of advancement self-annihilated, or the reason that we don’t see aliens is because inter-stellar travel is too difficult and just not worth the risk, or you could write about whatever else that you think might fit.

Last week Jim asked us about “liminal space” and now he’s asking about the Fermi paradox. He is making my brain hurt with these Friday Faithfuls prompts.

I actually embrace the first part of the Fermi paradox, which is based on the very high probability — the likelihood — that extraterrestrial intelligence exists somewhere else in this vast universe aside from planet Earth. But if that is the case, if there is intelligent life elsewhere, why haven’t we encountered any advanced extraterrestrial civilizations yet?

Jim already touched on several reasons why we haven’t encountered any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. Perhaps interstellar travel is too difficult or would take too long or is too risky. Maybe these intelligent life forms are, in fact, on their way to visit us, but their journey started many, many years ago and it will be many, many more years before they are close enough to make contract with us.

Or maybe they have already sent scouts to Earth, checked out human behavior and how we are destroying each other as well as our home planet, and have hightailed it back to their home planet.

I have no solution to put forth regarding the Fermi paradox. And I am not an astrophysicist with any unique insights about intelligent extraterrestrial life to offer. But personally, if I had to choose between (1) accepting that there is a supernatural, all-knowing (omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent), ever-present everywhere (omnipresent), and perfectly good and loving (omnibenevolent) being that created everything and who chose one planet — Earth — in the entire universe to populate with intelligent life, or (2) accepting that in the unimaginably vast universe comprised of billions and billions of stars and planets, some forms of intelligent life exists on at least some habitable planets, I choose #2.

But if there is extraterrestrial life in the universe, I don’t know the answer to the question, “Where is everybody?”

Friday Fictioneers — An Engineering Marvel

Fandango21 Comments

“Stop!” Bill shouted at Veronica, who stopped mid-step.

“What?” Veronica asked Bill. “You scared the bejesus out of me!”

“You almost walked right into an enormous spider web,” Bill said. “Step back over here so you can see it. It’s huge.”

Veronica stepped back to where Bill was standing. “Oh wow,” she said, “it is huge. I would have hated to step into that.”

“You have to appreciate it, though,” Bill said. “It’s an engineering marvel, isn’t it?”

“Whatever,” Veronica said. She picked up a thin tree branch from the ground and started slashing at the web. “I hate spiders.”

(100 words)

Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers prompt. Photo credit: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

Fibbing Friday — Merriam Webster

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Di (aka Pensitivity101) hosts Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, and be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. For this week’s Fibbing Friday, Di has recruited Melissa Lemay, who has provided words from the Merriam Webster dictionary for us to define.

  1. Narcolepsy — An undercover police officer focusing on infiltrating a narcotics ring and brining it down.
  2. Antediluvian — People who oppose bartenders who dilute alcoholic beverages with water.
  3. Serrefine — An ultrafine grade of sandpaper.
  4. Guetapens — A brand of refillable ink pens.
  5. Promiscuous — A prescription medicine used to diminish the appetite of chronic over-eaters.
  6. Tendentious — An inflammation of the tendons around the knee.
  7. Kismet — A person who has a tendency to kiss people he or she has just met for the first time.
  8. Autochthonous — A type of autoerotic sex play involving fish.
  9. Macerate — A type of face mask that has been rated highly effective by the FDA against the latest COVID variant, FLiRT.
  10. Gladiolus — A condition in which the metabolism of an individual results in chronic overeating that eventually leads to morbid obesity. Doctors often prescribe the medication Promiscuous (see #5) to people with that condition.

Simply 6 Minutes — The Five Muskateers

Fandango9 Comments

“I remember this photo,” I said aloud to myself when I found it under some papers in my desk drawer. It was taken, what, four or five years ago at Golden Gate Park. We sure did look like a happy group, didn’t we?

That’s me playing the guitar. And the girl resting her head on my thigh, that’s Jessica. Back then I was sure she was my soulmate. Danny and Donny, who are cousins, are the bookends in this photo. Danny was sitting next to me on my right. Donny, on the right in the photo, was married to Diana, the girl in the wide-rimmed straw hat who was sitting to my left. We called ourselves the “Five Musketeers” because we were inseparable and did everything together.

Danny was the fifth wheel or the fifth column or whatever that expression is for the odd man out. I was paired up with Jessica and Donny was married to Diana. But Danny was always alone. Despite his broad smile in the photo, he was a very unhappy kid.

It was probably a few months after this photo was taken that Donny and Diana got divorced. He found out that his wife and my alleged soulmate were having a lesbian relationship. He simply could not abide by that and convinced his cousin, Danny, to move out of state. They ended up in Texas, started a very successful house-flipping business together, and are now both very wealthy.

That left three of us, me, my soulmate Jessica and her lesbian lover, the newly divorced Diana. When Donny told me about Jessica and Diana, I was devastated and I confronted Jessica. “Is it true about you and Diana?” I asked. She admitted it was.

I told her I was breaking up with her, but she thought that dangling a three-way relationship with her and Diana might tempt me to stay. “You and I can have sex together. You and Diana can have sex together. Diana and I can have sex together. And the three of us can all have sex together. How does that sound?” she asked.

It sounded great to me, and it was great for a while. But it soon became evident that both Jessica and Diane wanted to be with each other more than either wanted to be with me. So I graciously left the two of them alone and I heard they got married last year.

Seeing this photo brought back a lot of fond memories, but it also saddened me that the Five Musketeers, once so close and virtually inseparable, had drifted apart and were no longer even friends.

Written for Christine Bialczak’s Simply 6 Minutes Challenge. Image credit: no attribution.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — June 21st

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about it? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on any day this past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on June 21, 2019

#writephoto — Society’s Burden

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First thing every morning, without delay, Doug would go to the tall stone wall. He’d take a deep breath and inhale the sweet fragrances carried by the breezes coming from the other side. The scents reminded him of his youth and the aroma from the rose garden in the backyard of his childhood home. The smells would only increase his desire to know what mysteries lay beyond the thick wooden gate. Always locked, though, that gate kept him inside of the perimeter of the old stone walls.

Doug had spent most of his life within the walls of the asylum. Society had deemed him, and others like him, to be too great a burden. The accident when he was five had cost him his mobility and confined him to life in a wheelchair. He was taken from his mother and father to be “cared for” by the State. It was in his and society’s best interests, his parents were told. They would have to sacrifice their son to the care of the State for the greater good of society.

It had been nearly twenty-five years since his confinement began. He was completely shut off from the outside world. They explained to him that, given his special needs, he would be too much of a burden to others and to society to be on the outside. The handicapped and disabled had unique needs and requirements, he was told, that could only be accommodated behind thick stone walls in asylums like this one.

But the State had limited resources and the law required that those who resided within the walls and who could not function on their own as able-bodied members of society by the time they were thirty would be humanely transitioned to the next world, where their spirits were not broken, as were their bodies in this world. In all of his time inside the stone walls, Doug had never known of any other “residents” who were reintegrated into the world outside.

Doug took one more deep breath and then slowly wheeled himself back to the residence building. Today was his thirtieth birthday and Doug knew that he would never again smell the scent of the roses.

Written for this week’s Thursday Photo Prompt from Sue Vincent. Also for these daily prompts prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (delay), Your Daily Word Prompt (inhale), Ragtag Daily Prompt (rose), The Daily Spur (increase), and Word of the Day Challenge (sacrifice).