Author: Doug Jacquier

Leo delivers to his patron

/ Doug Jacquier / 10 Comments

This piece was written for Jenne Gray and C E Ayr’s weekly Unicorn challenge to write up to 250 words based on a photo prompt.

So where is this masterpiece you promised me, Leonardo?

You’re looking at it.

I can’t see anything except a ladder leaning against a wall.

That’s it. That’s your masterpiece, as ordered. ‘Ladder’ by da Vinci.

But it’s just a ladder. Did you make it?

No, I found it here. It’s called found art or objet trouvé as the French would have it. I’m an artist. I found it. Ipso facto, it’s found art. Did you bring the 50 florins?

You have to be joking. You expect me to pay you 50 quid for a ladder?

But it’s not ladder now, is it? It’s a da Vinci. Look, it’s against the rules for a found object but I’ll sign it somewhere discrete, so only the cognoscenti know. That’ll add even more value. I reckon that piece will double in price by next week. Canny investment that.

Not happening, Leo. You can keep your 5 quid deposit I paid and I’ll take the ladder. The gardener can always use at my villa.

Wait, you can’t move it, mate. It’s an installation. If you take it away it won’t be found art anymore.

Well, people can still come around to my place and see it. I’ll even tell the gardener to leave it leaning against a wall when he’s finished. Then if some muppet wants to fork out 50 quid for it I’ll split it with you. Can’t say fairer than that.

Philistine!

Adam and Eve in the Garden

/ Doug Jacquier / 4 Comments

This piece has just been published by Flash Frontier in New Zealand.

Adam lived in a weatherboard cottage, surrounded by his apple orchard.

Sales of his annual apple crop were declining due to the perfect storm of the market’s demand for certified organic versus the demands of their Japanese customers for unblemished perfection. As Adam’s hitherto simple life began to unravel, his nights became increasingly apocalyptic.

His nightmares always began with a tympanic pelting storm besieging his eardrums akin to being duct-taped to AC-DC’s concert amps, punctuated by thunderclaps of Biblical proportions and the sound effects of Cyclone Gabrielle.

The overflowing water flooding into his brain began to short out his synapses and sizzling spark-fests criss-crossed his lobes in a chain lightning reaction.

The ventricles of his heart began to sport stalactites, transported via the ice in his veins, and driven by the Antarctic blizzard invading his gasping mouth.

He loved God but now saw him as a sadist.

Then, miraculously, a new day dawned in his head and the Sun came out, heralding the arrival of Eve, carrying a backpack, and asking if he had any work available. Adam was immediately smitten and invented a job on the spot, with no idea how he was going to pay her.

He needn’t have worried because Eve immediately took stock of the situation and re-positioned the business as ‘Hissy Fit Cider – The Asp-irational Drink’ and she appeared on the label, picking apples, naked.

Now Adam welcomed the cyclone of orders that kept him up all night.

WWWally’s everywhere

/ Doug Jacquier / 9 Comments

This piece was written for Jenne and ceayr’s new photo prompt up to 250 words challenge. Check it out and join in.

WWWally: ‘Well, if it isn’t old Stop-Slow-Go himself. Come down in the world have you, down with us peasants on the footpath. What happened? Your life support system run off to be a pole dancer? Bet that made you down in the dumped. Har, har, har.’

Triocular: ‘Not at all. I’ve simply decided to hibernate for a while to consider a new non-trinary life, one which lens itself to a more nuanced view of the world, one less cynically cyclical. A sort of paradise shift if you will.’

WWWally: ‘So what does all that gobbledygook mean when it’s at home?’

Triocular: ‘It means the lights are not on because the old me is no longer at home. With the guidance of my patron saint, St. Oscar of Wilde, I’m here in the gutter looking up, through the glass darkly, at the stars.’

WWWally: ‘You’re mad. And you’re a wanker.’

Triocular: ‘Perhaps you’re right on the first count. As for the second, I’m here alone because I no longer wish to participate in the mass debating that passes for conversation amongst the World Wide Witless.

WWWally: ‘Think you’re better than me, don’t you? Well, you’re going to get yours when the Trump-ettes sound at the Second Coming. And, believe me, that’s not fake news.’

Triocular: ‘Oh, I know. My mind’s eyes have seen the glory, glory, hallelujah. And that’s why I’ve decided to no longer be joined at the lip. Now move on. You’re holding up traffic.’

Min Min is no more

/ Doug Jacquier / 9 Comments

Dear small but perfectly formed band of followers, it is with some regret that I advise that the Min Min Challenge will no longer continue. The technical challenges that befogged this bear of little brain are not the cause. I’ve simply decided to take my own writing seriously for a while and remove as many self-inflicted distractions as I can. It’s been fun while it lasted and it’s me, not you. Fare well and write on.

Min Min Prompt – 17 March 2023

/ Doug Jacquier / 5 Comments

This week’s prompt is ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’.

While you might have been expecting a prompt related to that well-known Irish snake charmer, a far more significant event took place 50 years ago with the release of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. Take the prompt wherever you like; something dark, something moony, something pinky, something floydy, something 50. As Jerry Driscoll, the doorman at Abbey Road, famously said in the background on the album: “There is no dark side of the moon really; as a matter of fact it’s all dark. The only thing that makes it look alight is the sun.”

Just remember

  1. Responses can be anywhere between 100 and 250 words.
  2. You can either simply post your contribution in the Comments section below or add a link to your blog or both. In other words, you don’t need to have a blog to participate.
  3. As always, if you are new to Min Min, please read the guidelines in About Min Min before you post.

Japandemonium. A poem for Fukushima.

/ Doug Jacquier / 1 Comment

My poet friend, Bill Engleson, from Denman Island in British Columbia, Canada, penned this superb piece and reads it sublimely. Enjoy.

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Da_iPXvHEU30%26fbclid%3DIwAR2Ez4pBueCnOVu59lKIYsCH6oO9_4SQTGcxQQMo_z9GLFeiymCszd8hebc&h=AT2NP6gF-Ml1pux2Lmx1UZ6XDy5wXIpIHvI_7Yjl1FarAQCRg_j_c8x2WD6uOHFGsBE2dFf-ILGenAgGOb2BagITUWLazqxszeM7hk6yfFiSHqTmQeKFvuCeYMbFI92j5o3Mfis3iWALcb-bkE-I&tn=H-R&c[0]=AT21NxtBfMFvlLGFyfLO-q4AiTklSdDy1dNrr3hnd_MIgsu1Tu5XhuBdJXdjT6TJ7tnbr8ZwnpSnh46dHV33rcrxCk4xjV0LP2_lGHdO64Bo4MGZH1J_EkuItWhLvbFX9HESHYOMVUNSJjmL1_7tfGyvRTo

Here’s the text for you to listen along.

I crawl into a vacant cubbyhole

in my brain (I have plenty of storage space there)

and sit cross-legged on the part of my jellied

noggin that can visualize;

I am by the sea. On a Friday afternoon,

there is a rumble, a tumble, an angry grumble

somewhere, off in the distance,

beyond my sight,

some devil , cresting

some sea ulcer erupting…

and I shimmy and shake.

I want to run

away from the sea, away from the rising wave tower,

soaring like some grotesque Godzilla, some wide-winged Mothra,

some namby-pamby Bambi meeting Tsunami Gorgonzola Godzilla,

the drilla killa,

a high speed freight train doom-zooming in from the spoiled and twitchy

sea; this irradiated gorilla-whale,

this hulking nuclear devil

this tsunami-commie who has no purpose

other than to lumber in,

in all its atomic beauty,

to come juggernauting over the

people who live by the sea and have expected nothing

less since Hiroshima Nagasaki Mon Amour…

I know it is coming.

Even in my mental exercising,

my legs rubberize,

I stall,

my bones and my being freeze up.

I see myself, footsteps in front of me,

feet falling ahead of me,

helmet cam capturing the way I will

run, fearing to look back,

knowing Godzilla fella

will scoop me up and rip me

apart and drown me,

and toxify me,

and break me into a million human twig parts

and eat me and kill me.

My Ja-panic escalates

as I sit cross-legged in the crawl-space part of my jellied noggin

that visualizes;

cross-legged and marvelling at the courage

or the inertia,

that would keep millions living by the

sea knowing Godzilla is always

impatient, always ready to roll;

to roll in and crush.

And I think,

as we all likely think,

there, but for the Ace of

Spades, or better grades,

or a different air raid,

or a jug of grog,

or a bump on a log,

or the face of a

dog, or

the Grace of any old

God, go I

True Colours

/ Doug Jacquier / 11 Comments

This piece was written for Weekly Min Min Prompt for March 10, 2023, ‘paint it black’.

When David Warren (inevitably nick-named Rabbit) invented his device, the initial response from the airlines was less than whelming. ‘Experts’ placed it only slightly higher than the perpetual motion machine, a flying car powered by ice cream, and an electronic worldwide network for sharing cat pictures on the scale of likelihood of being feasible.

So for trade fairs and product pitches he introduced some novelty features.

When it was first switched on, a jack would pop out of the top of the box and shout ‘Houston, we have a problem’. When the ‘Print Report’ function was activated, the end of the cylinder would open and eject the local newspaper. The bottom section concealed a drawer where you could store useful things for an emergency, like a pad and pencil so you could hastily write your will and a copy of the Common Book of Prayer and a cyanide capsule, in case you felt a bit squeamish at the thought of dying in a plane crash.

When his invention finally got the recognition it deserved, he made it available royalty and patent free and he promptly disappeared from aviation history. Of course, unimaginative manufacturers totally ignored his one and only request: ‘Paint it black’.

Footnote: David Warren was very real. I’ve made up the purportedly amusing bits.

The black box: an Australian invention that nearly didn’t happen (theconversation.com)