Faster than plummeting sales, stronger than a bad review, able to leap a tall stack of rejection slips in a single bound. It’s … it’s … it’s ….
Monday morning writing joke: “Strike while hot”
Sometimes the white hot heat of passion is misleading.
Filed under cartoon by author, Monday morning writing joke
The blathering idiot and Santa’s lap
The blathering idiot stood in line to sit on Santa’s lap.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?” the young mother asked of the man standing with her as they tried to control three squirming kids dressed in wise men outfits.
The man grunted.
“We can always stop.”
The young woman was very pregnant.
The man grunted again.
For some wishes there isn’t enough magic in Santa’s cap … or lap.
The blathering idiot had never sat in Santa’s lap when he was a kid. Since losing the election for the highest office in he land, he decided he would do some of the other things in life he had never done before. Sitting in Santa’s lad was the first thing on his list.
He did not tell anybody: not Zoey, not Xenia, not Lydia, not anybody.
One of the kids in front of him squirmed away from her parents and was toddling away. The mother ran after her. The mother had to pick the daughter up and bring her back, kicking and screaming all the way. It was then that the blathering idiot realized all three of the kids were girls. Still, they looked as if they had been dressed to be miniature wise men.
“Are you sure?” she asked again.
She was staring hard at her husband.
He stared back. He did nothing to help control the kids.
The blathering idiot could detect a cold silence between them as the line crept forward.
As they neared the head of the line, the kids increased their antsiness.
Then they were next in line. It had been almost thirty minutes.
The boy on Santa’s lap burst into tears. After two attempts to calm the young man down, Santa looked at the mom, who, slightly red in the face, stepped up from the other side of Santa’s thrown and retrieved her son.
An elf in a pea green costume with bells on the ends of his up curled show tips and a five o’clock shadow across his downturned chin, stepped up to the red velvet rope and unhooked it from one of the poles.
“Last chance,” the woman said.
“Next,” the elf said, stepping back, clearing the way up the two steps to the dais on which Santa sat.
The man hesitated, then surged forward.
The mother and the three girls followed. They walked up to Santa, the squirmy one still in her mother’s arms, and the other two fidgeting as they moved. Then, they walked past Santa as the man, the husband, the father sat in Santa’s lap.
Seeing the man plop himself into Santa’s lap and Santa struggling to handle the size and the weight, the blathering idiot no longer had a desire to sit in Santa’s lap.
“Santa,” the man said, “I want you to bring me a baby son for Christmas.”
Then the blathering idiot suddenly felt antsy. He couldn’t remember what he wanted to ask Santa for.
Filed under blathering idiot, Christmas, Photo by author, Story by author
Silly Saturday: “Santa’s Setback”
This is a note to tell you
that Wall Street has taken away
the things I really needed:
my workshop, my reindeer, my sleigh.
I now make my rounds on a jackass;
he’s old and crippled and slow.
So, if you don’t see me come Christmas,
I’ll be out on my ass in the snow.
Santa mounts a new challenge.
Filed under cartoon by author, Christmas, poetry, Silly Saturday
Freeform Friday: A Christmas photo or two
House in my neighborhood, Old North Knoxville, decorated and lighted for Christmas
Lighted archway and walkway in Old North Knoxville. Decorated for the holidays.
These are a couple of photos in my neighborhood decorated for the Christmas Season.
Filed under Freeform Friday, Photo by author
Haiku to you Thursday: “Heart”
Take apart my heart:
blood vessels, valves, and muscles.
Your love beats there still.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
“Fixing” Christmas
“None of the girls wants to get boy cooties,” my daughter said.
She was explaining why the girls were making the boys hold their sleeves instead of their hands when the boys in the 4th grade class and the girls in the same class performed a brief dance number as part of the class’s participation in the school Christmas show.
Their hands only touch briefly and for three, maybe four times, the teacher explained. Still, it had not stopped a fourth grade boy from writing a note to the teacher saying he didn’t want to participate because he could get girl cooties.
Christmas time is often about fixing things as well as getting or giving new things. And while some of the things being fixed aren’t trains or tricycles, doll houses or even decorations, they are still important to nine year olds.
Fortunately, I came upon a solution: gloves. They were already supposed wear scarfs as part of their costumes. What was more natural than gloves to go with the scarfs? I purchased six pairs of inexpensive bright pink gloves and proposed their use to the teacher. Each girl would wear a pair to practice and maybe even at the performance, insulating them from the dreaded “boy cooties.”
My daughter was immediately taken with the idea, and once the teacher approved, the problem was solved. Or, at least, I hope so. The performance is still a week away and who knows what viral debasement those young boys may yet let loose upon the world of girls. There mere existence is proof of an aberrant decline of fourth grade, if not all of humanity.
Unfortunately, the other challenge I’ve been asked to fix may not turn out as well.
I have taken a vow of silence — batteries not included.
I came home from work last night to find a stuffed dog in a striped winter scarf sitting on the sofa in the foyer. He held a note that read: “I need help please fix me!”
From what I can gather, his push button voice module was no longer working. How long had it been non function my daughter did not know. She possesses quite a collection of stuffed animals, ranging from finger puppet stuffed animals to a pink unicorn large enough to use as a pillow.
The dog could have recently gone mute. Or he could have taken a vow of silence many months back in protest to being ignored. The “you won’t speak to me, so I won’t speak to you either approach to communication.”
I have opened up the dog, inspected his battery cage, which appears to have a missing on/off switch, and I have followed the wires from the battery cage to what I believe is the voice module. It is inside a white sack sown snuggly around the module.
I have checked the batteries, tried jumping the connection to bypass the switch, and have even mostly freed the module from it sack in order to try to examine it.
It is a cramped space inside the bear and my fingers are not the type with tapered types. About as wide as they are long (from the base of the hand to the tip of the middle finger), they are more suited from tracing around to make hand turkeys than they are for operating in a confined, stuffed dog, chest cavity space.
I could slice the dog open, but I am not sure that would fix anything or make me any the wiser about the operation of the voice module.
I will take another look at the dog, but not tonight. He is still a viable stuffed dog, even if mute.
He may have to remain that way.
I guess I could always buy him a pair of gloves.
Filed under Christmas, Photo by author, Story by author
Monday (morning) evening writing joke
Sometimes, good things take time; and awful things can take even longer.
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. A few months back at a writing conference, I happen to talk to an agent and I asked her what was the most important thing she looked for in a manuscript. She said, “Good writing.”
When I got home I immediately sent her my manuscript.
Then I heard nothing.
And after a few more months, I still heard nothing.
Eventually I caught up with the agent at another writing conference and I was about to ask her why I hadn’t heard from her, when she raised a hand and said two words: “Still looking.”
Filed under Monday morning writing joke
The Devil’s Dictionary: Abstainer, Adage, Age
In our continuing quest to revisit a classic, or even a curiosity from the past and see how relevant it is, we continue with The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Originally published in newspaper installments from 1881 until 1906. You might be surprised how current many of the entries are.
For example, here are definitions for Abstainer, Adage, and Age. The Old definitions are Bierce’s. The New definitions are mine or somebody else contemporary. The new definitions can also be simply examples of The Devil’s Dictionary definitions. From time to time, just as it was originally published, we will come back to The Devil’s Dictionary, for a look at it then and how it applies today. Click on Devil’s Dictionary in the tags below to bring up the other entries.
Old Definition
Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Adage, n. Boned wisdom from weak teeth.
Age, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the enterprise to commit.
New Definition
There once was a man, an abstainer,
a four-square, by-the-book refrainer,
who couldn’t live up to the adage —
something wise and about cabbage.
He refused to believe it was a sustainer.
He did not believe he must dine
without a proper glass of red wine.
Upon such a stewed mess,
boiled and very plain no less:
the adage about cabbage, he declined.
He now hangs out in a ratty ol’ garden,
but eats only his own private slumgullion.
Yet, to all who pass by
and not wanting to know why,
he says cabbage has made him well again.
Filed under Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary, poetry by author
Freeform Friday: “Bah … Festival”
Bah … Festival
[Poet’s note: My poetic response below is to the message in the link above.]
Happy festival of planets and stars
of magic men that travel from afar
of little people who slave all night
in the cold so someone else can take flight.
Happy festival of growing debt
of presents you don’t want or haven’t seen yet
of holiday cheer without smiles
of jammed parking lots and lines for miles.
Yes, Merry Christmas to you and yours,
attending parties that feel like chores.
Yes, Merry Christmas and presents, too,
and the tree that lights: red, green, and blue.
You say, “Merry Christmas is all I’ll hear,
and please don’t feel less of any good cheer.
Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, well they’re just fine.
You have yours and I’ll have mine.”
So in this season of brotherly love,
of peace, good will, and stuff from above,
when a big fat man dressed all in red
driving flying reindeer and a toy-laden sled
slides down your chimney in the middle of the night,
even if you don’t have any, though you just might,
coming at the moment when your dreams are strong
and hope has it greatest chance to belong,
I hope you have a Merry Christmas without dread
and don’t let Happy Holidays play with your head.
For if you do and you then let it stew
your heart will miss out of the headiest of brews.
Have a ho-ho-ho-whole lot of fun this Holiday Season.
Filed under Freeform Friday, Holidays, poetry by author
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