[Author's note: this was a 15-minute sprint. I may rewrite it as I would like to lean into FDR's Four Freedoms.]
“You can’t do this to me! I have rights! I’m an American!”
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“American?”
“A citizen of the greatest nation on Earth! The Land of Liberty! The birthplace of democracy. An American dammit. How do you not know that?”
“We don’t know many things. Please tell us more.”
“No. First you tell me! Who the fuck are you and where the fuck am I?”
"Do I have COVID?"
"What do you mean?"
"I can't seem to smell this."
"What's this? And yes, losing smell is a symptom of COVID."
"Well, I suppose I can smell other stuff, just not this."
"Again, what's 'this'??"
"This thing here - it's gold."
"That may be the issue."
"But 'a rose by any other name would smell so sweet!'"
"You're holding a compass rose, dumbass."
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| Art by Jorge |
"Feel what, Jim?"
"I don't know man, the world seems fuzzy."
"Fuzzy?"
"Yeah, wobbly."
"Are you feeling okay? How long have you been feeling this way?"
"Since I've been sitting here on the rim of this glass."
"That's weird."
"What's weird?"
"I just meant that conversationally, but now that you mention it, what's in that glass?"
"Koninck - a beer, I think."
"Well shit, Jim - you're buzzed!"
[Usual rules apply - each person writes a sentence. All the participants had the ability to read the previous sentences, though I'm not sure everyone actually did.]
"Gimme a citywide," the hot dog head man said. "I've had a hell of a day. You'll relish the tale."
"Best I can do is one of these paper cones they inexplicably use for hydration purposes even though they are embarrassingly small," the bartender replied and handed HDHM the libation. The condensation made it slippery.
As the man stared into the cup, he began to reflect on the horrific day he had experienced. Never in his life had he experienced anything like it.
You ever hear of elevator accidents? That's how the real Avril Lavigne died.
"What's your stance on Israel & Palestine?" I asked the bartender, ready to make my horrific day worse."
Just as the bartender was about to speak, a cat jumped on the bar and dashed across, knocking over the tiny paper cone and spilling well whiskey on the man with the hot dog head.
(If you're having trouble following this story - ketchup!)
"You're still going to have to pay for that," the bartender said.
And that was it, the man had had it.
I paid then the bouncer asked me to leave.
The whiskey suddenly combusted, ripping right to my rippling testicles nestled in my scrotum; tumbling in horrific fiery pain like a 9/11 ferris wheel.
I vomited on my own shoes.
The expert, one Dr. Knuckle, explained that the demographic distribution of humanity has been trending in such a way that more and more births have been successful in the sterile and controlled environments of our various space-faring projects. The number of successful births on Earth, however, have not been increasing at the same rate, despite pollution mitigation efforts started in the past century.
"Contaminants appear everywhere," Dr. Knuckle explained. "It hasn't even been a year since the lipstick and foundation recall and many of us remember the Algae-tea debacle." The doctor asserted that the closed systems of space-faring life were more able to detect and dispose of hazardous materials where we are still discovering world-ending caches of contaminant buried and forgotten by past generations on Earth.
Dr. Knuckle ended the studio interview encouraging a positive outlook and an eye toward the future. The doctor closed by saying "Despite the struggles we have faced and the consequences of our ancestor's actions, we have the opportunity to improve the lives of those who come after us - more and more of whom will never know the feeling of standing on humanity's home and looking up at humanity's future."
There was a place called El Bar
Where PBR was the star
I fucked up this poem
Put a slug in my dome
I could have ended with PBR
&&&
Blustery Bullshit
and fabricated facts
each truth welcomed
with a flurry of smacks
There's no profit in honesty
Money flies toward lies
If we end up surviving
It'll be a surprise
[Author's note: I'm in a weird space here. Unlike a lot of other sprints, I feel like this could morph into something good. I don't know if I have the talent to make that happen, however.]
