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Swiping our money

/ Doug Jacquier / 20 Comments

This week’s photo prompt (below) from Friday Fictioneers

 

‘Blatant revenue raising!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who mostly uses this park?’

‘Well, mostly us older folk, I guess.’

‘Exactly!’

‘And who else?’

‘Well, there’s mothers with young children …’

‘… who never want to go before they go but need to go the minute they get there.’

‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’

‘Have you ever walked past that thing without getting a call of nature?’

‘Well, now that you mention it ..’

‘And what’s behind those trees?’

‘A public convenience.’

‘… which costs a dollar, using your swipe card.’

‘So you’ve got to swipe to wipe?’

‘Always with the jokes.’

 

Photo Credit: ceayr

Fountain

From bottom-burps to bogeys

/ Doug Jacquier / 4 Comments

This was written for the weekly Terrible Poetry challenge. The divine Ms. Chelsea says ‘the topic is the cute (or ‘cute’) things that kids say. I’ll admit I’m more inspired by the parenthetical version after our dinner conversations lately. What is it with young children (perhaps just with boys) and potty humor? Do they really think meals are the best place to discuss vomit?’

From bottom-burps to bogeys

 

The dinner table farce started

when the oldest one farted,

and the middle-un began piddlin’

and then the underling was chundering.

To No. 1, Mum said ‘Stop that at once!, young Beau’

And he said ‘Sure, Ma, which way did it go?’

To No. 2, ‘The table’s not the place for peeing you know’

He replied ‘But you always tell us to go with the flow’.

No. 3 didn’t speak but passed his plate full of sick

To the dog under the table, from whence came the sound of ‘lick, lick’.

Dad smiled at his wife and ‘Don’t be such an old fogey’,

as he extracted and ate a big bogey.

 

Translations for non-Australians:

Chundering = vomiting

Bogey = booger

Right-wing extremist

/ Doug Jacquier / 19 Comments

This 100 word piece was written for the Friday Fictioneers  photo prompt below.

 

‘What’s with your new display. It’s a little one-sided, isn’t it?’

‘It’s symbolic of my political views.’

‘How so?’

‘Do you see any red there left of centre?’

‘Now that you mention it ….’

‘No tomatoes, no pinko apples, no anti-capitalist red capsicums, no radical radishes. And don’t get me started on those sob-story red onions. I’m not going to provide any oxygen to any fruit or vegetable that’s left of centre.’

‘But aren’t you cutting of half your income to make your point? And surely you can’t assign a political leaning to a vegetable?’

‘Have you voted lately?’

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

Ern Malley Incarnate (Vegan Options Available)

/ Doug Jacquier / 13 Comments

This piece was written for the Terrible Poetry challenge centred on the Bard of Australia, Ern Malley . Can’t think who could have alerted the charming Ms Chelsea Owens to Ern’s stellar career.

 

‘Now is the winter of our wet cement’

quoth Lucy in her sty with diamonds in her silk-purse ears.

Meanwhile, in a battlefield far, far, away, Dicky Three hunched his back,

despairing at the sward strewn with sordid, sworded bodies in his path

and cried ‘A hearse, a hearse, my kingdom for a hearse’.

Hearing nothing but the sounds of silence he bellowed

‘Unleash the dogs of war. Out, damn-ed Spot and yes, you, Fido,

and you, frumious Bandersnatch.

And let no-one ask who let the dogs out.’

But alas, alack, the dud plan of attack now needed a patsy stone.

He roared so all could hear,

“Cry ‘Harry (and Meghan), England and Boy George’ ”

and hied himself to the tintantabulation of the belfry of Notre Dame.

Thus it was left to the immoral bard, TS (George) Eliot to record,

on a cold, bright day whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

and the clock was striking thirteen,

“This is the way the world ends,

not with a banger but a Wimpy burger.”

Candles snuffed out

/ Doug Jacquier / 18 Comments

This 100 word piece was written for Friday Fictioneers with this photo as the prompt.

 

The opening of ‘Mme. Tussaud’s – The Musical’ was billed as a turning point in the history of the musical theatre but the cognoscenti, noticeable by their absence from the private boxes, begged to differ and the critics were merciless.

“Stiff and failing to wax lyrical.’ London Times

“Impressive costuming but lacked vivacity.” Washington Post

Producer M. Night Shyamalan vigorously defended his work, explaining it was an experimental work that attempted to explore the seventh sense but agreed the sagging expressions caused by the heat of the lights did not assist in conveying the complex emotions he envisaged for his characters.

Perce P Cassidy and the Sunblock Kid

/ Doug Jacquier / 5 Comments

This was written for the Terrible Poetry prompt of the topic of anniversaries, especially diamond ones.

60 years they been ridin’ together

only these days they ride by rail,

Perce’s face like Nebuchadnezzar,

The Kid a whiter shade of pale.

 

Despite all that Hollywood drivel

These two are indefatigable

Although The Kid has developed a dribble

And Perce has a ring that’s inflatable.

 

Just when The Kid thought he’d forgotten

Perce flourished a diamond ring

It’s origins of course misbegotten

But The Kid always loved the bling.

 

Now don’t go round town flashin’

that ring, old Perce he roughly croaks

Folks might get the wrong idea, Kid,

That we’re not pure manly blokes.

 

The Kid smiled and said he’d ne’er tell

And closer to Perce he did scootch

And whispered into his ear-like shell

‘Oh, Perce, you were always so Butch.’

A fishy lens

/ Doug Jacquier / 22 Comments

Barn

Photo: Dawn Miller

This is my 100 word response to this week’s Friday Fictioneers picture prompt.

 

Why aren’t you just happy to swim in the pond like all of us other fish?

What’s the point of having an inbuilt fish-eye lens if you’re not going to take pictures?

Inbuilt fish, gefilte fish. A load of codswallop.

Do I criticise your fish-net stocking sewing circle?

Anyway, why always that damn barn?

That’s where they keep their fishing rods and I don’t want them sneaking up on us.

Idiot, the new owners are vegans.

How do you know?

See any cows or sheep in that field?

I guess not.

Stick to selfies and posting on Fishbook.

 

Little Willie poems

/ Doug Jacquier / 9 Comments

These arise from the very excellent Terrible Poetry site’s challenge for this week to write a Little Willie poem. The name comes from a way of writing poetry that was popular in the early 1900s, where each exponent tried to invent a catastrophe more gory in event and more nonchalant in effect than its predecessor. The favorite ‘hero’ was Willie, and although other characters sometimes crept into the quatrains, the terse lines became known as ‘Little Willies.’” The usual length is a quatrain although some were written as limericks or a double quatrain; but most were short, clever, and darkly humorous. Rhyming is imperative and these poems usually follow an A/A/B/B pattern. As the excellent Ms Owens has demanded, “this week’s poems are to be terrible because of their message. I expect darker tones, questionable humor, and stretches into creative venues writers never knew they had. If you’re sensitive, stay away. If you’re twisted, come on in.”

A Hair-raising Story

Cried an actor ‘My hair is demented”

So off to the barber he went-ed

The poor little sod

chose evil Mr. Todd

Thus were Lovett’s ham burgers invented.

An Axe To Grind

Lizzie lived with her step-mum and dad

An arrangement she could not accustom

So one day, when feeling so very sad,

She took an axe and she de-gutsed ‘em.

Mrs. Bobbit’s Revenge

Their wedded bliss was well-famed

But Little Willie’s oats were untamed

So like any good wife

She took out a knife

And now Little Willie is very well-named.

Blown sideways

/ Doug Jacquier / 15 Comments

Written for Friday Fictioneers 100 word photo prompt.

We didn’t care that the rain came in sideways, driven by the same scouring winds that had delivered the dust from farms hundreds of miles away for so many summers now and sent our own on a similar journey. As long as there was enough to drown our despair at fly-blown carcasses in the paddocks, 100 year old trees falling like majestic matchsticks and harvesters rusting in sagging sheds because now real seeds only produced phantom crops. We hoped it triggered flash flooding and washed out the roads and cut off the power; that was pain we could gladly endure.

Dear Miss Flanagan

/ Doug Jacquier / 6 Comments

This was written for this week’s Terrible Poetry Contest prompt. “I’d like every one of you to remember your First Love. What did he or she look like, smell like, eat his/her boogers like? MOST IMPORTANTLY: if you were to write that person a poem, in exactly the advanced writing abilities you had at the time, what would that poem look like? I want the younger version of you to read over your composition, sigh in romantic ecstasy, and imagine the love of your life rewarding your efforts with that elusive First Kiss.”

 

I love your sunburnt brown pretty freckles

And your shiny beautiful cute red hair

And your green eyes (sorry if their there not green)

You look just like that film star (can’t remember her name but she’s really pretty, like Doris Day but not her)

I know you catch me staring

And I can’t help going red

Please don’t marry drippy Mr. Smith

Wait for me to catch up.

 

Sined

You Know Who

 

PS – There really was a Miss Flanagan upon whom I had the biggest crush imaginable and, yes, she was always catching me staring and she really did marry drippy Mr. Smith and broke my heart. Of course I would never have delivered this fawning missive but I would have re-read and ‘edited’ it a lot and hoped she wouldn’t find it in the back of my exercise book.