Sometimes “coal” comes in strange forms.
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. Just the other day, I saw Santa Claus. I said, “Hey Santa, I want a best seller. Just one best seller. That’s all I ask. That’s all I work for. Can you help me out?”
On Christmas morning I found a Stephen King novel under my tree. A used one at that.
Filed under cartoon by author, Monday morning writing joke, no respect, writer
What is a succinct way to say the main course of your meal, your entree is not up to expectation?
You can stick any number of adjectives before the noun. For example, bad entree, lackluster entree, limp entree. But in our fast-paced society, maybe there is a need for a one-word noun that covers the issue.
That’s why we, to collective perspicacity of this blog suggest this new word: “untree.”
For example, “Waiter, my untree.”
That is all you would have to say. You wouldn’t have to say, “Waiter, my entree is unacceptable.”
Just say: “Waiter, my untree.”
Sometimes breakfast is the most untree of the day.
Filed under new word, Photo by author
Christmas Time
By David E. Booker
Christmas comes but once a year
As songs and calendar make clear;
And then the bills come blowing in,
Heralding a new year, amen.
So out into the cold I go,
Fighting wind and debt and snow
Bringing Christmas joy and cheer
’Til my bank account is clear.
Then the credit cards come out
And out and out and then about
The time I think I’ve spent enough
There is a present that I’ve muffed.
So back into the store I go
For my tale of substitute woe
Where the clerk tries to smile
And I feel I’m in Kafka’s Trial.
The guardians of tradition wait to ensure your every move is the right one.
O’ Christmas becomes a time surreal
When some dance and some kneel
And oftentimes my intentions digress
And I come out feeling less and less.
As the stories of Christmas past
Tell tales of deeds that truly last.
Try as I might, I come to the day
Watching the show now on display
And feel as the tree tops glisten
And children listen, that I am missing
A moment of my own to clasp,
Something sweet and ethereal to last.
For it’s those moments ill-defined,
When a smile is given un-timed,
When the heart is opened to the moment,
That the soul finds console-ment
That this season means more than here
And those people you wish to hold dear
Find their place and their own rhyme
In your heart, beating in a new time.
[Editor’s note: This poem was first published in a small publication in 2007.]
Filed under Christmas, Photo by author, poetry by author, Silly Saturday
The blathering idiot was thinking about the Mayan calendar, the supposed end of days soon to be at hand, and of his recent failed run for the highest office in the land and asked himself: What polka goes best with the end of time?
Filed under blathering idiot, Photo by author
TerMoiAll thought of the day: “This job is getting to me — I’m beginning to understand it.”
The jackass and the giant were outside chewing the fat. At a time when Christmas decorations were the focus of buyers, they were barely tolerated by the shoppers and passersby.
“Do you ever miss it?” the jackass asked when they were alone.
“Oh, sometimes,” the green giant said. “Particularly now that I’m working on my memoir. Brings back a lot of memories.”
The jackass and the green giant were outside chewing the fat.
“I didn’t know you wrote. Didn’t even know you knew how.”
The green giant blushed slightly red on the green. Made him look a little orange in the face. “Taught myself on the sly. Had to. I wanted to prove I wasn’t just another alien here to take their money and take a job away from a local.
“Then my contract came due and since I could now read, I could figure out that was working for beans. So, I demanded more money and they didn’t renew the contract.”
“They fired you?!” the donkey asked, his eyes wide.
“Pretty much.”
“They can’t do that.”
The green giant smiled. “They found somebody who would do it for less.”
“Why, those corporate mules!”
“Something like that.”
The jackass kicked back a hind leg and almost broke a door.
The green giant didn’t say anything more.
“You’re shorter than I expected,” the jackass said. “I thought you’d be taller.”
“A trick of modern film editing.”
“So what’s your memoir going to be called?”
The man smiled. “The memoir of a has bean. How I sold my soul a little green, but got stuck in the brown.”
The jackass nodded. “Catchy. ‘Specially that stuck in the brown part.”
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 ….
Filed under cartoon by author, CarToonsday
Sometimes the white hot heat of passion is misleading.
Filed under cartoon by author, Monday morning writing joke
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
“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
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