Having A Panic Sale

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES
IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES

As March blew in like a lion, it blew a bit of Christian desperation, depression, fear, and entitlement, into the daughter’s house.

In the days previous, both the wife and son had been phoned, to do a survey about how various political parties and levels of Government had – or had not – been handling COVID.  The daughter got a phone call, and an unctuous female voice asked her if she had some time to talk about COVID.

She assumed that this was just another polling company.  The first few questions seemed – normal – How was COVID affecting her?  Did she go out often?  Since she had been locked indoors for most of the winter, she had the time and inclination to converse with someone.

Suddenly, the question was, Do you believe that COVID, and all the other terrible things that are happening, are the beginning of the end?  The sign of the Apocalypse??  The coming of the Rapture??!  Ah, a frightened Christian Fundamentalist – She just said NO.

How can you not believe that it’s The End Of The World?  “Because it’s all natural progression.  We’ve seen it all, dozens, hundreds of times before; we’re seeing it again, and we will see it in the future.”

I’d just like to leave you with some words from the Good Book, to make you feel better.  The daughter told her that she wasn’t feeling bad, and she already had “a book.”  She just didn’t tell her that it was one from Dr. Seuss, for adults.  It as easily could have been the Wiccan Bible, or the Pagan Prayer-book.

Ms Bible-thumper persisted.  You should just read Psalms 29, v 16-17.  The daughter replied, “That would be pretty hard for me to do, since I don’t have a Bible in the house.”  She told me, she could almost hear the fit of apoplexy coming on.  You don’t have a Bible??!  “No!  But thanks for calling.  Bye.”

Christian callers to podcast shows like The Atheist Experience, and Talk Heathen, accuse them of ‘trying to take away their religion, and their faith in Christ.’  One host rebuts this by saying that they only accept calls.  They do not make outgoing calls.  They do not go door to door asking, “Have you stopped believing in Christ yet?”  Apparently some Christian Missionaries won’t return the favor.

We had the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago.  Millions died but the world didn’t end.  We had the Black Death – The Plague – 500 years ago.  A third of the population of Europe died, but the world did not end.

The fear-mongering prediction of The End Times is almost a Christian cottage-industry, sold to, and bought by, fear-stricken followers with great gullibility, panicked imaginations – and absolutely no memory, or understanding of History.

One of the earliest recorded predictions of the end of the world came from Simon bar Giora, a member of the Jewish Essenes sect, about 66/70 CE. These years were a period in which the Jews of Judea rose up against the Romans who were in control of the area. The prediction ran that this fight would be the actual end times battle that presaged the coming of the Messiah.

Some people claim that Nostradamus (1555) predicted the end of the world, but careful study of his entertaining poetry will reveal that he made no such declaration.   Jeff Nilsson wrote about the Mother Shipton predictions in 2011. A new collection of the 16th century oracle’s visions was published in 1873.  Despite the fact that the publisher later admitted that he made the whole thing up, people still bought into prediction that the world would end in 1881 as it said in the book. Contemporary evidence seems to indicate that it did not.

Between 1996 and 2011, Televangelist Harold Camping made not one, but four, successive Apocalypse predictions.  His Christian broadcaster was finally forced to quietly give him the boot, and wash their hands of him.

The religious side of the Y2K panic made even less of an impact than the electronic one – especially since fearful followers got the dates wrong.  More bad dates (Not on Tinder) let the 2012 Mayan Calendar disaster pass without occurring.

In the long history of doomsday predictions, the apocalypse has been cancelled repeatedly over the centuries. From comets to computers to calendars (mainly Mayan), a surplus of expected end times has been available to every culture. And yet, as far we can tell, we’re still here – no thanks to Christian doomsayers.

A Shot Of One-Liners

Just found out that I qualify for the Pfizer vaccine….
….Apparently if you buy 20,000 Viagra a year, you’re a preferred customer

To err is human….
….To blame it on someone else shows management potential.

The main purpose of a child’s middle name….
….Is so that they can tell when they are really in trouble.

I dumped my girlfriend….
….He said, ruthlessly.

Be careful with the chainsaw….
….He said, offhandedly.

I finally heard the joke titled ‘From Minutes to Hours’….
….It’s about time.

Three things I want to do before I die….
….1: Swim with piranhas.

I got kicked out of the hospital….
….Apparently the sign STROKE PATIENTS HERE meant something quite different.

If it weren’t for Arabs, we wouldn’t have 9/11….
….Instead, it would be IX/XI

To err is human….
….To forgive is against company policy.

A man has his will….
….A woman has her way.

Behind every great man….
….Is a woman, rolling her eyes.

Behind every great woman….
….Is a load of dirty laundry.

Give a man a gun, and he’ll rob a bank….
….Give a man a bank, and he’ll rob everybody.

Some puns make me numb….
….But math puns make me number.

I wanted to be a monk….
….But I never got the chants

I went to this horrible bar called The Fiddle….
….It was really a vile inn.

My friend David had his ID stolen….
….Now he’s just Dav.

I was kidnapped by mimes….
….They did unspeakable things to me.

The meaning of opaque….
….Is unclear

I was going to get a brain transplant….
….But I changed my mind.

So what if I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘Apocalypse.’….
….It’s not the end of the world

A relief map shows….
….Where the washrooms are.

Flash Fiction #259

PHOTO PROMPT © Brenda Cox

LOCKDOWN KNOCKDOWN

Good grief, what happened?  I hadn’t heard of any tornadoes, especially inside a mall.

The Governor finally signed the bill that ended the last COVID lockdown.  It was like a Taylor Swift concert.  People were lining up at the doors at 4:00 AM.  We had extra security, but Commerce was King.  Some folks showed excessive exuberance in revived retail therapy, getting rid of COVID haircuts at the salons, and walking out with new shoes.  It was all we could do to shove the last of them out at closing time.  No sense repairing it.  It’ll be like this again tomorrow.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

The Man With The Golden…. Silence

It’s still ‘A Penny For My Thoughts,’ but it’ll cost you a buck to get me to shut up.

My chiropractor recently got stuck with a coin that wasn’t a Canadian $1 Loonie, so he stuck me with the job of finding out just what it was.

I didn’t have my eyes glasses with me when I went in.  It’s difficult to lie face-down on the torture table with them on.  I could make out what appeared to be an indigenous person on it, and the wife said that she could read the word ‘Dollar’ on it, but places like Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Timor, Micronesia, Australia, and New Zealand all have dollars.  I had to wait till I got home and used a magnifying glass, and the son’s jeweler’s loupe.  Then I dove into a maelstrom of unfettered hype and promotion.

This was an American Sacajawea, or Native American dollar.  Since 2000, for 20 years the American Mint has produced them.  They first came out for collectors only, but in 2002 they went into general circulation.  Each obverse (heads) side, with Sacajawea and papoose, is identical, but the reverse (tails) sides are all different.  In 2009 they removed the date, and the mint mark, but the arrows identify this as a 2010 version.

This coin has no edge milling – little grooves.  I understood that, from 2009, there was supposed to be words engraved on the edge, yet this one is plain and bare.  Close examination of the edge shows that it is an Oreo coin.  Both flat sides are a manganese-brass golden color – which quickly dulls.  The ‘filling’ is a cheap ugly copper.  As an American coin, it is medal-struck, that is, its front and back are upside-down compared to each other.  Canadian coins are coin-struck, with the top of both front and back being adjacent, along the edge

These coins were produced at the same time as a series of Presidential Dollars, both intended to bring in Mint revenue from gullible collectors.  The results of the 2008 financial slump may still be being felt.  Initial productions of millions per year, have dropped to mere thousands.

Americans in general may be poorer, but the bureaucrats are no less dumb.  Some coin collector nuts aren’t poor, but they still seem dumb.  A pristine, untouched exemplar of this coin recently sold on Etsy for $23,000 US.  Someone said that, if the Government were put in charge of the Sahara, within five years there would be a shortage of sand.  It is no wonder that things like Black Lives Matter spring up.  This coin has the Indian word ‘Haudenosamee’ on it.  This means ‘Longhouse dwellers,’ ….  in New York and Ontario Iroquois.  Sacajawea was a Lemhi Shoshone who guided Lewis and Clarke after she met them in North Dakota, 1500 miles away.  😳  Details, details.   🙄

I won’t guide you astray if I ask you to come back in a couple of days.  Please remember to bring a dollar or two with you.  We’ll be having a Telethon.  Your donations can help stamp out verbosity.  😉  😆

’21 A To Z Challenge – F

 

There is no “English Language!”

I tried to explain this to a reader, recently.  I don’t think that he understood – or believed me.  Every word in the English language came from somewhere else.  Some are just more obvious than others.  Take, for example, the word

FRANGIPANI

A flower of the tropical American tree or shrub, Plumeria rubra, of the dogbane family
The tree or shrub itself
A perfume prepared from or imitating the odor of the flower

The word is in every English dictionary – yet it is obviously Italian.   It entered the language circa 1860 – 65 from French, who spelled it frangipane – after Marquis Muzio Frangipani, a 16th-century Italian nobleman, the supposed inventor of the perfume.

The true, original meaning of the Signor Frangipani’s name is bread-breaker, as in, to break bread with others, a banquet-giver, a host, or merely, a good travelling companion – another Latin-based word which indicates togetherness, and bread.

Google’s translation department would have you believe that the word means bread-crusher – a totally different concept.

Stop back again in a couple of days, after you’ve had a sandwich that you tried to make by putting cold butter on fresh bread.  I’m going to try for a scratch-and-sniff post using Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop “This Candle Smells Like My Vagina.”   😯

goop x Heretic This Smells Like My Vagina Candle | Goop

Flash Fiction #258

PHOTO PROMPT © Alicia Jamtaas

PEACE AND QUIET

Keep driving.  The GPS says that it’s just a little further

Are you sure this guy exists?  I thought they lived on mountaintops.  Rural Postal Route #22??!  I’m not happy with directions that say, “Turn off the paved road, and drive till the radio goes Ttthbbbrrst.”

There’s his cabin!  Stop!
O Wise Wizard of the Woods, what is the secret of everlasting serenity?

Silence and Solitude!!  How’d you guys find me??  Why don’t you bugger off and find your own patch of bush??!  I guarantee I’ll feel a lot more serene when I see your tail-lights disappear in the distance!

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Smitty’s Loose Change #15

There are many people in this country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane.  Most of them are Atheists.

***

And God created the universe it expanded exponentially. Then god divided this sky from the sea that then created life and he told it to multiply. After this he added man and subtracted his only son.

Standing back he looked on in confusion and wondered why this equation didn’t work… At this point a mathematics teacher came over and said, “You forgot the brackets ( ).”  And that was the last time God worked with BEDMAS.

***

I recently got within touching distance of two original Volkswagen Beetles, within hours of each other.  I found the first at a French fry wagon.   (Don’t tell the wife! She thinks I’m still on my diet.) It was greenish-yellow, in decent shape, with a little rust, mostly in the rain-gutters above the doors.  The owner said that it was a ’75 model, and it had custom license plates that read KAFER VW.  That’s a deficiency of the License Bureau.  Kafer, translated from German, means ‘coffee(maker).’  What it should have read, was KӒFER VW.  The addition of the umlaut over the A, changes the meaning to ‘beetle.’

The next one I saw was Fire-Engine Red, and in pristine shape.  I saw no rust.  Even Beetles had year-to-year (tiny) model changes.  Slightly smaller and different-shaped tail-lights told me that it was pre-’73.  It had Historic license plates, and its owner said that it was a ’68 version.

FUN WITH NAMES

The service tech at my Kia dealership is named Faucher.  It’s a French verb that means to mow (grass) the lawn.  His Father worked for, then purchased and ran, a landscaping company, all his working life.

A farm boy that the school bus picked up on one side of my town, was/is named Coulter.  I recently discovered that a ‘coulter’ is a plowshare, a cutting wheel or bar, in front of an actual plow.

A farm girl that the school bus picked up on the other side of town, was/is named Collard.  Back then, I did not know of the cultivation and, mostly Southern culinary, use of collard greens.

***

To err is human, but to really fuck up, you need a computer – with a bureaucrat running it.  Locally, we have been blackmailed into recycling green waste.  Garbage pickup has dropped to every two weeks, but blue-bin and green-bin waste is collected every week.

The region has issued every dwelling two green bins – a small one to put kitchen scraps in, and a larger ‘garage’ one to repeatedly dump the smaller one into.  Compostable-plastic-lined paper bags to hold wet waste are available at all local stores.

The larger bin is 12” X 13 ½”.  The Region-approved bags are 8 ½” X 12 ½”.  No wonder it must be dragged to the curb each week – the bag isn’t big enough to fill!  The smaller one, which I use for cat-shit – (it’s compostable) – is 6” X 7”.  The bureaucrat-authorized bags for it are 3 ¾” X 7 ½“– so long that they partly collapse when inserted, causing loss of volume, and barely half wide enough, causing more lost space.  I sense two different departments, each too self-important to communicate with the other, (You change!  No, You change!) involved in this, and Dilbert in the middle, shaking his head.

***

We’ve all seen the movies, or TV shows…. The CSI forensic technician enters the crime scene.  He/she plucks one dust mote from the air, and a couple of tension-filled moments later, gives the age, sex, name, address, phone number, and shoe color of the culprit.  What then to think of this newspaper story??!

A body was pulled from a lake.  She (at least they got the sex) was 28 to 50 years of age.  28??!  Why not 25?  Or 30??  How in Hell did anyone come up with 28?  Was someone converting from metric??  She was between 4’ 5”, and 5’ 1”.  😯  😳  Put her on an autopsy slab and measure her!!

They didn’t give her weight, but did publish a nice photo of a bead bracelet she was wearing…. Oh, and she might have been Asian, based on the keen observation of her yellow complexion, and lycanthropic epicanthic fold at the eyes.

Remind me, if I die of suspicious causes, I should do it in the big city, not in West Hickstowne, where an exciting day for police is one that has a moose fall into someone’s pool.

***

N.B.

In the above VW story, I downloaded a capital A with an umlaut over it, and put it in my post.  For some reason, WordPress separated the A and the two dots, into two adjacent spaces, and I don’t know how to get them back together.  Just try to visualize it correctly.   😳

Monkeying With Comedy

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head monk to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, “You make a good point, my son.”

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held in a locked vault. Hours go by and nobody sees the head monk. The young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing.

“We missed the R! We missed the R! We missed the R!”

“Father!” cries the young monk. “What’s wrong?”

The head monk with tears in his eyes replies, “The word is celebrate!”

***

A man was shopping in a nearby supermarket when he noticed a package that said “Olympic Condoms”. He bought it, and told his wife about it.
Wife: “Olympic Condoms? What’s so special about them?”
Man: ”They have 3 colors: Gold, Silver and Bronze.”
Wife:”And what color are you going to wear tonight?”
Man:”Gold, obviously!”
Wife:”Why not Silver? It’d be great if you came second, for a change.”

***

“How does my new toupee look?” Noah asks his family. “Honest opinions only.”
His son says, “It looks great, Dad!”
His wife says, “It looks totally realistic!”
His uncle says, “It looks like something crawled up and died there.”
Noah throws his uncle over the side of the Ark, never to be seen again. Coming to his senses, he apologizes, then turns to the animals. “And how does my outfit look? Honest opinions only.”

The horse says, “Great! The colors really go together.”
The parrot says, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
The unicorn says, “Bozo called, he wants his tie back.”

***

My neighbor is in the Guinness Book of Records.  He has had 44 concussions.
He lives very close, in fact, just a stone’s throw away.

***

A trucker in Newfoundland stops at a red light, a blonde catches up. She jumps out of her car, runs up to his truck, and knocks on the door. The trucker lowers the window, and she says “Hi, my name is Heather and you’re losing some of your load.”
The trucker ignores her and proceeds down the street. When the truck stops for another red light, the girl catches up again. She jumps out of her car, runs up and knocks on the door. Again, the trucker lowers the window. As if they’ve never spoken, the blonde says brightly, “Hi my name is Heather, and you are losing some of your load!”
Shaking his head, the trucker ignores her again and continues down the street. At the third red light, the same thing happens again. All out of breath, the blonde gets out of her car, runs up, and knocks on the truck door. The trucker lowers the window. Again she says “Hi, my name is Heather, and you are losing some of your load!”
When the light turns green the trucker revs up and races to the next light. When he stops this time, he hurriedly gets out of the truck, and runs back to the blonde’s car. He knocks on her window, and as she lowers it, he says “Hi, my name is Kevin, it’s winter in Newfoundland and I’m driving the SALT TRUCK!”

***

Just as the graveside service ended, there was a huge distant lightning bolt, accompanied by a tremendous rolling peal of thunder.  The little old man looked calmly at the Pastor and said, “Well, she’s there, and it’s His problem now.”

***

I usually work the evening shift, finishing close to 11:30 p.m. I normally have to run to catch the 11:30 bus. Last New Year’s Eve, I finished work and raced to catch the bus, but by 12:10 it still hadn’t come, so I figured I’d likely missed it.

I turned to a man who had been waiting alongside me the whole time and said, “Sir, how long have you been waiting?”

He looked at his watch and said, “Since last year.”

Flash Fiction #257

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

MOUNTAINS OF MOLEHILLS

Chris didn’t know why most people hated him.  In fact, most people felt that Chris didn’t know that they hated him.

There wasn’t a comment or request that he couldn’t read out of context, and take personal affront with.  A simple request for a work-file, had him running to HR with accusations of harassment.  There was always plenty of Guilt, and Blame, and Fault handed out.

Seemingly asleep on most Social Justice Issues, he still managed to stridently surf the crest of the Woke wave.  While not belonging to any, he constantly voiced loud opinions on BLM, LGBTQ+, and Feminism.

***

If you’d like to join the fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Another Near Cats-Ass-Trophe

Our beautiful boy was kidnapped.  Our beloved baby was snatched from us, causing 48+ hours of anxiety and worry, waiting for a ransom call for our feline hostage.

You’d think we’d know better.  You’d think that we’d learned from experience.  He wasn’t really kidnapped.  We ‘misplaced’ Mica, our oldest, and prettiest, Bengal cat.  The only time I left the house one night, was at 1 AM, to pick up the newspaper from the driveway.  I saw the cat perched on top of the humidifier, at 3 AM.  I say that it was the son’s fault.

I went to bed at 5 AM.  The night-shift-working son came home at 8 AM.  He says that he came in, locked the door as usual, and didn’t go out again.  It must have been me.  While we think that the cat is gorgeous, he has medical conditions that we dose him with four different medications for.

The son went to bed at 1 PM, which told me that it was time for me to get up.  I went to the kitchen and got juice and pills for the wife, and dropped a capsule in a shot-glass with a bit of cooking oil, for the cat.  I hold him, and the wife shoves the capsules down his throat.

I went back to the laundry room, where he has taken to sleeping on a pillow that now has to be washed.  He was not there.  Oh well, he’ll be back downstairs in the wicker basket on top of the storage cupboard.  He was not there.  I opened closets and cupboards.  He might be sleeping in the storage area under the stairs, where I can’t see.  He might have taken refuge behind the gas fireplace in the basement.  He might have climbed up on the suspended ceiling in the rec-room.

Two of his meds are to keep him from getting hyper.  Soon, he’ll be out, pacing and yowling.  By 7 PM we had to reluctantly admit that he’d somehow got outside.  He has no interest in the deck beyond the French doors.  One way or another, he must have got out the front door.

“Lost” cats remain around their home for a couple of days.  I put the wicker basket with a cat bed on the front porch.  “Put out something with your scent.”  The son added a pair of my socks from the laundry, and I shucked a sweaty tee shirt.

I put a water bowl and a plate of cat food beside it.  The wife felt that was a horrible idea.  Skunks…. and racoons…. and…. and…. hyenas will come to eat it and attack the cat.  The next morning, when the veterinarian suggested it and she authorized it, it was suddenly a great idea.

She even thought of a great addition to it.  Roll up the garage door a few inches – enough for a cat to get in, but not dogs or neighbor kids – and put food and water out there.  I got to check each door every five minutes quarter hour.  Now the list of chores begins.  Our pets are all micro-chipped, so call our vet.  Call the nearest animal hospital, in case someone brings him in.  Call the Humane Society and report him lost.  Use their online form to add a photo to the ‘Lost’ notification.  Get the daughter to put up a notification on Facebook and a couple of other social media sites.

The wife used the above photo to produce a “Lost Cat” poster, and printed a dozen copies.  With the help of the son and a roll of packing tape, we plastered 6 community mailboxes within a couple of blocks, and light poles at street corners.  Took a copy to the animal hospital.

Not only is he a handsome cat, but Bengals are expensive and valuable.  We were lucky to get ours at deep discounts.  Anyone who enticed him into their home might want to keep him.  The posters said that we loved and missed him and wanted him back.  They also added that he had health problems, and required medications.  Such a cat is far less likely to be kept.

All day, I wore a rut to the front and garage doors, checking.  I finally got to bed at 7:30 AM.  At noon, my first action was to open the front door to look.  I must have whipped it open a bit vigorously.  Something brownish streaked from the food dish, past the end of the garage.  Was that Mica??  I unthreateningly followed onto the common driveway with the other half of our semi.

Dogs are dumb enough to come if you call their name.  Cats…. not so much.  There I stood, like a fool, going, mrowr – mrowr – mrowr.  I looked all around, but couldn’t see him anywhere.  I got down on hands and knees, and looked under our car – Nothing.  I turned my head and looked under the neighbor’s car – and two bright eyes below two perky ears looked back – and answered, mrowr?  Mrowr?

I carefully backed toward the garage, constantly talking to him.  Slowly, he emerged, and slinked under the door.  I quickly went inside, and opened the inner door.  He’d skipped the food and water, and was sniffing at the junk along the far wall.  I sidled past him, pulled the cord to disengage the door, and pushed it down tight.  SAFE!!!  Now we have to undo all that we have done – call the vet’s, call the animal hospital, call Humane Society, get them to remove notification, pull down all the posters – I’m too busy stroking Mica.

Two days in the wilds of suburbia to get him all hyped up – two days without medication to take the edge off – he was a bit wound up.  After a couple of rounds of fresh food and water, we finally got him back on his meds cycle.  Always a bit stand-offish, for the first several days back he was never more than arms-length away.  Even now, he’s a far more sociable cat.