A Strange Request at a Piano Bar [1]

Ray: "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
Man: "I thought my request was pretty simple. I'd like the two of you to battle to the death."
Ray: "Sir, we're dueling pianos in a 'playing entertaining music' sort of way. We don't actually duel or anything."
Man: "I brought ceremonial daggers!"

Options

"What kyna roast?" the barista stated.

I stared, unprepared for the question. A pause and a look ensued.

"Dark, medium, light. What kyna roast?"

"Oh, uh, dark?"

"Great. NEXT!"

Frumpy dipped a dabble down

Frumpy dipped a dabble down. Rain and wet and bloodred ground. Eyes askew he sat on bum, very far from aplomb, sadness wet and drippy.

Frumpy'd rode and heaved hell hard. Pushed and cracked and worked the yard. Moved'm tons mile and mile, but nary once a meager smile, shoulders grunched and gloppy.

Bureaucracy

"I live to stamp, sir."

"Oh?" I wasn't sure what, if anything, I should object to - living versus existing, 'stamping' being a play on 'serving', or even the double-whammy of changing 'live' to 'love', which only raised the issue of a created being's ability to feel love.

Twas the Night Before Friday

[Written Round Robin style in March 2017. Many coauthors. Some small corrections, but mostly untouched. You decide if anyone knew how rhyming couplets work!]

Twas the night before Friday, and all through the Coop, the redditors gathered to consume some soup. I looked over the menu, in search of something tasty. I needed a menu item clarified, so I asked the guy next to me - yeah, the guy that's pasty. When I looked in my hand, I saw that I had a beer, a wine, and a whiskey that's bland. And then, all of the sudden I heard my favorite band. Radio isn't dead, at least not the FM band!

So I jumped to my feet as the funky music blared, not one person noticed - no one cared! I'm disappointed Simon didn't paint the Eagles on the side of his car. But Jesse gave no fucks, as he talked to Nihar.

An Assessment

Where am I at today? I feel like it's another glass-half-empty day, though there's no real reason to feel that way (other than, perhaps, a bit of a hangover). My objectives of the day were: do my taxes (complete), go to Cooperage (complete), bring my laundry up from the basement (to be completed), and podcast (failed). I'm in a weird place emotionally; I feel like my insides are being squeezed. I'm a mess - and unwarranted stress and the feeling of not having accomplished anything twist me up inside.

The doodle on this particular document.

I must produce something soon something soon. It feels like every obligation - from eating to laundry to friends to work - is a fishhook ripping at my skin as I try to walk forward. I am impatient for success but lazy in pursuit. This impatience, however, has not bred haste; rather it's only fed frustration, planting a seed around which other stresses have grown. Around which my waistline has grown.

The Squire

I was sweating so much even shifting my weight produced an audible squish as the soaked padding squeezed between iron and flesh. It was at this point I realized I just wanted him to kill me.

Him, of course, referring to Sir Kim. A master swordsman from the orient, he had come to our little section of the world to challenge the best fighters we had to offer. A tripartite pursuit of knowledge, fame, and wealth had thus far earned him a reputation in hundreds of taverns, scores of courts, and dozens of languages. He was undefeated and, I suspected, would remain so after this particular fight.

Entropy

Entropy, amusingly, creates crystal and chaos. It takes all matter and reduces it slowly to its most stable form. This is often called its "ground state".

Tom was feeling his ground state this morning. He strained to open one eye to survey his surrounds - he knew he was on a carpeted floor, but wasn't entirely sure whose floor it was. The lanky man did his best to push through his half-dream haze to recall what had happened the previous evening. For every certain memory, however, a half dozen false memories had to be flushed out - he was certain, for example, that he hadn't done shots with his ninth-grade biology teacher, but he was certain shots had been involved.

Curiosity Rover

[Third of three. Written Round Robin style on 16 Feb '17. JM & WW coauthors. Some small corrections, but mostly untouched.]

Few enthusiasts remembered the original Curiosity Rover, one of the earliest unmanned missions to Mars. It had been nearly a century since its last transmission - or, at least, since we had received a transmission. That is why the lab was in a frenzy - we had received a transmission!

The frequency was ancient, as far as anyone knew, but NASA didn't receive this one - it came from SETI.

"Sir! We've finally decoded the signal!"

Inspiration art by me.

Butts. Buttholes

Butts. Buttholes. Fucky shitwits. Groaning gut guzzlers. Fucking five finger flowmax furbies. Suck monsters. Major dickwad. Duncan dipshit. Double dick Derek decides dumb drumroll - PLEASE! Hunkajunk funky bunch in the trunk. Farts.

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Might have a bit of writer's block. Wrote this instead of writing. Now I'm posting this instead of writing.