Canvassing answers to canvas questions

/ Doug Jacquier

These two pieces were written in response to the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘canvas’.

Canvassing answers to canvas questions

  1. Are all arguments about canvas in tents or are some just coarse and loosely woven?
  2. Does shopping at a Russian canvas store increase the likelihood of Red sails in the sunset?
  3. When your dog is a boxer, should you get him a canvas doggy bed or would that be bad for his self-esteem?
  4. Is that self-portrait on canvas genuine art or did the painter just knock himself out while shadow boxing?
  5. Does ‘circus tent’ have a certain ring to it or do you think all that romance is rigged?
  6. Is camping under canvas now history, with all those guy tropes banned as people flap on about pole-itical correctness?

Blank canvas

After his gripping opening line about T E Lawrence’s alleged unnatural interest in camels, several hours later Wright A. Tome (doyen of the groaning airport book carousel) was still cussing the blinking cursor in a stentorian roar that could be heard in the next county.

His writer’s block had taken on the proportions of the Three Gorges Dam and he imagined that behind it lay a freshwater ocean of effortless plot development, illuminated by brilliant prose and a cast of characters that would have Hollywood producers killing each other to secure the rights.

Perhaps, he thought, if I reverted to my pre-laptop days and started again on paper this would trigger the literary floods of yore and I will soon be white-water rafting to another masterpiece.

A waste paper basket that filled and then began to resemble the abominable snowman soon put paid to that theory, so he wandered the room talking into a voice recorder, only to find the replays were as intelligible to him as haiku (Scottish highlands odes to cows).

Desperate, he fossicked out his old Royal Quiet de Luxe typewriter and, armed with a case of scotch and a carton of cigarettes, he tried to emulate Hemingway, only to wake with a splitting headache and QWERTY stamped on his face where he’d face-planted and slept like a petrified tree.

Deciding literature was a lost cause, he took up painting and became the new darling of the art world, especially after the Tate Modern paid $2 million to acquire his ironic modernist no-oil-on-canvas masterpiece,  ‘Polar bear in snowstorm’.

40 thoughts on “Canvassing answers to canvas questions”

  3. First 6, straight up….our classic, clever and comedic correspondent, Doug, strikes again! Like this list and per usual, brings a smile to my face. And I needed one today, lol

    2nd Six just as entertaining, Doug 🙂 I totally identify with sentence 3!! We are nothing, if not inventive in diverting our attention sufficiently to allow our creative self to take a seat at the table.

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  7. What a fun read! A double SSS at that! Hilarious – QWERTY stamped on his face where he’d face-planted and slept like a petrified tree
    Thanks for all the words new to my vocabulary.😀

    Liked by 1 person

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  10. Fave line (not counting the punny phrases and ambiguous intimations

    “…just knock himself out while shadow boxing?”
    (Takes a little effort, but most excellent visual)

    Fun Six, yo

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  16. Excellent work Doug 😂🤣😁I own several ‘Polar bear in snowstorm’ variants. Is now the right time to start selling?

    6 for the win!

    “Number 6 was good, camp humour, with excellent a-tent-shun to detail to grab one by the ging gang goolies and break open another can of baked beans!” – so say world record breaking camping couple Harold and Pauline Tentpeg of Camp David, Billy Canada.
    “Hark, Pauline, is that the sound of the wind rustling our flysheet?”
    “No, Harold, it was me farting.”
    “Ta, Pauline.”

    Liked by 2 people

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