Min Min Weekly Prompt

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.

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)

Min Min Weekly Prompt 10 March 2023 – Paint it black

/ Doug Jacquier / 3 Comments

This week you can go dark, darkly comic, comically dark, catch up with the modern trend in painting feature walls or go somewhere entirely different. Be brave!

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.

This week’s prompt is ‘Paint it black’.

Go where the prompt takes you. This is where the Rolling Stones took it when Brian Jones was still alive. https://youtu.be/flSmiIne-4k

Dust in his eyes

/ Doug Jacquier / 8 Comments

This piece was written for the Min Min Weekly Prompt Challenge for March 3, ‘Long Ride Home’.

Jack came home after his second tour of Afghanistan to find his father, ruined by drought and abandoned by the Government, face down in the shed, with his shotgun by his side.

Jack was already damaged goods. He barely slept and interacted with as few people as possible. He’d thrown away the zombie pills. Life had become a biological condition, not a state of humanity. Then everything changed.

Returning from a night of kangaroo shooting, Jack slowed when he spotted a car and two police motorcycles stopped on the road ahead. One of the riders stepped off his motorcycle and unholstered his pistol.

Jack flicked on his spotlight to dazzle the rider and reached for his rifle. The rider turned towards Jack’s lights and fired a couple of rounds before advancing towards him. Jack swung his door open for cover and fired twice and the rider fell backwards to the ground. The second rider gunned his engine and sped away.

Jack approached the car carefully and saw three bodies with eyes that only the dead possess. Then a man Jack recognised emerged, blood streaming from a head wound, yelling ‘The Police .. they just stopped and then started shooting …I don’t understand…’

‘Yeah, well that makes two of us but we need to get you out of here.’

As Jack and his passenger drove into the night, Jack said ‘Get comfortable, Prime Minister. It’s a long ride home. And we need to chat.’

Good neighbour fencing

/ Doug Jacquier / 7 Comments

This is my contribution to the Min Min Weekly Challenge.

After some loud banging, I opened the front door to see Gavin from next door, red-faced and seemingly on the verge of explosion, brandishing a letter.

‘What’s this about you objecting to the new fence. What the hell are playing at?’

I checked the wire door was snibbed and said ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘But we agreed. We both wanted our privacy.’

‘No, that’s what you said. I just went along. But then I found out about you and your wife taking up nude Morris dancing and I thought that might be very entertaining when my wife and I sit outside to have our wine and cheese before dinner. Sunsets get a bit samey after a while.’

‘You are a certifiable lunatic. I want to know what’s really brought this on.’

‘OK, I’ll be honest. It’s because Brian over the road caved in.’

‘Caved in on what?’

‘The water fountain.’

‘What water fountain?’

‘The replica of the Statue of David that I want to use to water my rose bushes. He’ll be peeing on them, as it were. Artistically. So Brian’s decided, that seeing its art, he’s withdrawing his objection.’

‘Well, goodie for both of you but what’s that got to do with my fence?’

‘Don’t you see. I’ve had a cancellation and I can fit you in now. See you in court. Oh, and by the way, can you keep the volume down when you get smashed and start playing AC/DC at midnight.’

Min Min Weekly Prompt – 25 Feb 2023

/ Doug Jacquier / 12 Comments

Thanks to some excellent feedback from you, my loyal followers, I’ve made some changes.

  1. To clarify, submissions should be anywhere between 100 and 250 words. It seems some people thought they had to write 250 words.
  2. You can either simply post your contribution in the Comments section below or add a link 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.

This week’s prompt is ‘Cancellation’.

So, put on your creative hats and rambling boots and see where it takes you in 100-250 words.

No New Min Min Prompt this week

/ Doug Jacquier / Leave a comment

Dear Followers and well-wishers

This is where there would normally have been a new prompt. However, I’ve decided to press Pause on the Min Min Weekly Challenge for a week or so. Despite my own best efforts and those of a small but loyal band of followers, it hardly seems to be lighting up the writing universe.

There are many possible reasons for this, including:

  • There are just too many prompts out there for people to keep up.
  • (Up to) 250 words is too much for people’s limited attention spans these days and/or it falls into the Valley of Death between microfiction and a proper short story. Perhaps, as Jenne has suggested, it should read ‘between 100 and 250 words’.
  • Some people may find posting to your own blog and then sending the link elsewhere is too complicated and perhaps it should be simplified to just posting direct to a page, similar to Carrot Ranch and other pages.
  • Being an (almost) no holds barred page, some people might be afraid of what they might encounter.
  • People may prefer the ‘soft’ challenges on other pages that allow them to simply relate anecdotes or homilies.

I know I’m an impatient old bugger and maybe I should wait for it to grow organically, even at a snail’s pace.

Perhaps I should consider becoming a publisher myself and then at least perhaps be able to offer a wider audience (because, as you know, what the world desperately needs is a new litmag.).

Let me know what you think, in as few or as many words as you like, in your usual fearless fashion. It would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Doug

Time to press Pause on Min Min

/ Doug Jacquier / 7 Comments

Dear Followers and well-wishers

This is where there would normally have been a new prompt. However, I’ve decided to press Pause on the Min Min Weekly Challenge for a week or so. Despite my own best efforts and those of a small but loyal band of followers, it hardly seems to be lighting up the writing universe.

There are many possible reasons for this, including:

  • There are just too many prompts out there for people to keep up.
  • (Up to) 250 words is too much for people’s limited attention spans these days and/or it falls into the Valley of Death between microfiction and a proper short story. Perhaps, as Jenne has suggested, it should read ‘between 100 and 250 words’.
  • Some people may find posting to your own blog and then sending the link elsewhere is too complicated and perhaps it should be simplified to just posting direct to a page, similar to Carrot Ranch and other pages.
  • Being an (almost) no holds barred page, some people might be afraid of what they might encounter.
  • People may prefer the ‘soft’ challenges on other pages that allow them to simply relate anecdotes or homilies.

I know I’m an impatient old bugger and maybe I should wait for it to grow organically, even at a snail’s pace.

Perhaps I should consider becoming a publisher myself and then at least perhaps be able to offer a wider audience (because, as you know, what the world desperately needs is a new litmag.).

Let me know what you think, in as few or as many words as you like, in your usual fearless fashion. It would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Doug