Captured on pixels and only on pixels. Don't try this at home, unless you want to be silly.
Who says you need a professional photography to get a good portrait photo? suitable for framing, for use on resumes, or to simply impress a date on your dating web site page or personal blog. And for the mere price of three easy installments of $39.95 each, I will teach you the same tricks and tips that I know.
How come most of the “people” that want to follow me on this social medium are diet gurus, body part enlargement specialists, and get rich quick schemers? Don’t they know I’m a multi-plus sized coach potato with a sweaty beer in one hand, a twitchy remote in the other, and a wallet flatter than a left-over night of pleasure?
Filed under absurdity, beer, diet, guru, humor, Random Access Thoughts, Random thought, remote control, satire, social media, twitter, word play, words, writing
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The Cough Drop Kidd and the Kibitzer rode into town. It would have been in a cloud of mentholated dust, but because it was raining, it was in a slosh of mud and a cough laced with glycol. They were almost out of cough drops and the Kidd was not happy.
“Kibitzer,” he said between sniffles, “go get us some.”
“I’m only here to watch,” the Kibitzer said, “and for the popcorn.”
The Cough Drop Kidd pulled his six-shooter and pointed it at the head of Kibitzer’s horse. “You wanna observe riding or walking?”
The Kibitzer’s horse’s ears flicked back and forth as if trying drive away a fly. The Kibitzer blinked a couple times and finally said, “I’ll go watch the apothecary mix up a batch.”
The Kidd nodded and raised the barrel of his pistol skyward. “Be quick about it. I’ll be in the saloon getting a hot toddy. A little honey will help my throat.”
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The Kidd entered the saloon. It was beat up ol’ place with chairs that had legs that didn’t match and a bar rail so wobbly it had a hand printed sign hanging from it that said: Donut touch. That means u.
The floor creaked to the point he was sure it was talking to him, saying something like, “Donut go there.” But he paid it no heed as he stepped toward the bar. This part of the Wild Side was full of things that spoke when not spoken to. Some said it was haints. Others said it was spirits. And some even said it was bottled spirits. Even though he was wet all over, the Kidd was parched.
“Hey, dandy boy, wipe your feet. What do you think this is, your corral?”
A few people looked his way and a couple of folks chuckled, but most kept doing the mopping and card playing and lying they were doing before.
The woman yelling at him was tall and a little on the heavy side, which meant this business had been good to her. The Kidd liked that about her. She was standing behind the bar, so thus far what he liked was only from about the waist up. She was wiping out a glass.
When he was up near her, he whispered, “I’ll have a hot toddy.” His voice was about gone.
“Well, I do declare,” she said, “the dandy wants a hot toddy.”
“A what?” somebody at the bar asked. His back was to the Kidd, so the Kidd didn’t know what he looked like.
“A toddy. A hot toddy.” She said the words again and winked back at the Kidd. He wasn’t sure if it was a friendly gesture, or a twitch.
The man turned around. His face was as scuffed as the floor and as beaten up as the chairs. Tobacco juice ran out of one of the corners of his mouth. One eye was lazy and one earlobe looked as though a coyote had chewed on it.
“Dandy,” the man said, spitting on the floor, “we don’t serve your kind.”
It was that moment that the saloon went quiet, except for the gentle swinging of the saloon doors and the floor saying, “Told you.”
“Package,” a voice said. “Package for a Cough Drop Kidd. Is there a Cough Drop Kidd here?”
All eyes turned toward the Kidd.
The Kidd turned toward the delivery boy in his granny spectacles, gray cap with a black bill, and clothes too starched and too new to have been worn much in this town.
“One D or two?” the Kidd asked, lightening still flashing just outside the saloon doors.
“Ah,” the delivery boy looked down at the package, “two.”
“Good. The Kid with one D works the lower territory south of the divide. We call the divide the D-M-D for short.”
“And for long?” the boy asked.
“His D ain’t that long,” some cowboy shouted.
The others in the saloon chuckled.
The delivery boy turned bright red, dropped the package, and skedaddled out of the saloon, getting immediately struck by a lightning bolt. The box hit the floor and broke along one of its sides. It bulged open, spewing books across the hardwood, every last one of them different, one of each and each one about vampires.
“So, you a blood sucker, Dandy?” The floor-faced man stepped away from the bar and his hand rattled toward his holster. He had rattlesnake rattles in a band around his wrist and his hand twitched slightly.
The Kidd glanced around. The card games had stopped. The lying had stopped. Even the moping had stopped. The woman behind the bar twitched him another smile and then ducked down behind it. She moved quick for a big woman.
This town is cursed, thought the Kidd. But he didn’t have much time to think anything else. The floor-faced man’s hand was at the top of his holster.
Below are two haikus. The first one is written by Bob Deck, who posts at least one a day on his twitter account. His Twitter account name is bdeck. The second haiku is my response to his.
Email offer boasts
“Luxury Bronze Spray Sculpt Tan”
stupid as I look?
Your body now bronze
Success and neighbor envy.
Talk in muted tones.
Filed under bronze, call and response, fun, haiku, humor, poem, poetry, Random Access Thoughts, Random thought, tan, word play, words, writing
If I tried to marry Truth and Beauty, would I be any the wiser, or would I have simply committed philosophical polygamy?
Note to self: Should I ever reach this stage in my career, do not talk about it being time for me to retire in front of a group, no matter how small, of overworked, under stress employees who are working overtime just to stay behind.
Filed under absurdity, humor, idea, redo, retirement, when to talk
The blathering idiot stood in her kitchen listening to his sometime girlfriend Zelda debating with Xenia, her daughter, about which would be worse an invasion of aliens or an attack of zombies. Zelda said the invasion of aliens would be worse with their ray guns and flying saucers and killer robot armies. Xenia said it would be zombies because they looked “just like us, but would eat our brains out.”
The debate went on for another ten minutes or so, the blather idiot dozing off as he learned against the counter. Snatches of his head popping off, rotating fast, and zooming away like a flying saucer filled his snoozing, so he kept waking up.
Finally, to end the debate, they turned to him.
Domestic Dispute on a Cosmic Scale
“Which one, what?”
“Aliens?” Zelda asked.
“Or Zombies?” Xenia asked.
Now his head was really spinning. He couldn’t answer. He didn’t really care. It wasn’t even Halloween, so what did it matter?
They stared at him. He felt a rivulet of sweat run down the side of his neck.
It was like asking him to choice between toast with crunchy peanut butter and toast with smooth peanut butter. He liked them both. He also liked other things on his toast. Why did nobody even ask about the toast?
After what seemed like a day, Xenia harrumphed and left the table.
Zelda stood up, shook her head, and said, “Typical.”
She then turned and walked away from him.
That night, while sleeping along, the blathering idiot was visited by an alien ghost that told him he must decide or else. It was hard to understand the alien because of all the high-pitched tones and squeaks.
He woke up lying cross ways over his bed; it squeaked as her pulled himself around into the proper position.
When he went back to sleep, he was visited by a zombie ghost that told him, as best a zombie could, having no brain and all, that he had to use his head and make a decision. He woke up with part of his pillow in his mouth.
After that, he couldn’t sleep. He wondered if there were really aliens out there who might swoop down and invade the Earth, or even just his house. And zombies, well, while he was fairly sure they weren’t real, one could never be 100 percent sure about such things. After all, there were werewolves. He’d seen one at a carnival when he was six.
The blathering idiot went to the bathroom, and while looking in the mirror tried to figure out what was going on. He turned on the small light next to the sink and as it shined up on his face, he stared in the mirror. His pale face looked as if he had died. Pale, blank stare from empty eyes, he reached up and removed a piece of his pillow from his mouth. He then tried to speak, to say something to calm himself, but when he did, only a short squeak came out. It was then that he knew what his answer was.
He couldn’t wait to tell Zelda and Xenia. Neither could be disappointed in him.
When he got to their house, he walked inside and into the kitchen, and made his announcement. “It’s neither aliens nor zombies that I would fear,” he said. “It is alien zombies who would come to Earth, eat the Earth zombies and then starting eating the regular girls and mothers.”
First Xenia and then Zelda looked up at him and smiled. “We’re past that,” they said in unison. “Now we’re trying to figure out who would be a better kisser, an angel or a vampire? What do you think?”
The blathering idiot was about to take a flight. He rarely flew, so he was particularly concerned with the possibility of not landing, or not landing correctly. Especially with the recent spate of air traffic controllers falling asleep, discussions of Christian Armageddon/Rapture, Mayan End of Time, and general pronouncements from certain pundits that America was on the wrong track and headed for its death, he didn’t want to get caught short, though he wasn’t quite sure what short was or why getting caught short was a bad thing. Did that mean getting caught tall was a good thing? The blathering idiot was of middling height, so where did that leave him, he wondered.
The blathering idiot made all the arrangements. He wrote out a will, though he wasn’t quite sure how to test it so it could be will and testament. He made provisions for somebody to take care of his dog. He left a love note for his on again, off again, maybe again girl friend Zelda, and a few words of advice in a note for her daughter Xenia. He hoped that she would understand to definitely NOT take any wooden nickels. Though he had never seen one himself, he heard they were a bad thing. If nothing else, it might mean you’d one day reach your hand in your pocket and find you had a pocket full of splinters.
After all the other arrangements were made, there was still one the blathering idiot had not made: his epitaph. He had thought long and hard about this. What to say that would sum up his life in a few words. He spoke with different religious leaders of different faiths and even looked in several holy books, but nothing quite suited him.
He looked up epitaphs of famous people. He didn’t quite understand the one that read: “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” But maybe he would after he was dead. He looked at the epitaphs of the not-so-famous people in big graveyard near his house. (He did not discuss it with Zelda. Things were off again with her and what she would probably recommend would not be what he would want resting above him for eternity, particularly if her last words when they broke up were any indication.)
He asked a few of his friends. One said say something witty. Another said, why say anything at all?
As the flight time was fast approaching, in an act of desperation, the blathering idiot consulted books and documents. Over and over again, a certain set of words kept appearing. He wasn’t quite sure why there were on the pages they were on. These pages were often blank, except for these words. Maybe this was a sign. Also, he had not seen them on a gravestone before, so they might have the advantage of being one of a kind, and the blathering idiot liked the idea of being one of a kind.
The person who would have his headstone carved in the event of the inevitable looked at the words and then looked at the blathering idiot oddly. Finally, he shrugged and said, “It’s your funeral.”
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
Filed under absurdity, air, Armageddon, Blank, blathering idiot, Cartoon, Christian, End of Time, humor, imagination, Mayan, Random Access Thoughts, Rapture, satire, traffic controller, words, writing
photo of Mark Twain
Unfortunately, there are fewer editors around these days, the victims of corporate downsizing many of them, so you will probably have to do this yourself, but it might just work. Every time you want to write “very,” write “damn” instead, then read the story out loud. Just don’t do it at an open mike night.
To learn more about Mark Twain: Mark Twain.
Filed under advice, editor, humor, Mark Twain, words, words to be wary of, writer, writing, writing tip
If money were no object
Filed under blathering idiot, Cartoon, figment, humor, imagination, paycheck, satire, word play, words, writing
Booker's Blog 