Chamblee54

A twittersearch for #WritingPrompts led to @The_Scribblings. “Drew, his own self · Any comments should not be taken as either statements of fact and/or legally binding. The author may have had too many Smarties. · Albuquerque, NM the scribblings · DHOS has a series of prompts, which are mostly a hashtag followed by a single word. There was a graphic, with the quirky title icon guide. This might make a haiku reduction, which can then be the prompt for today.
“original use · please Begin romp mean issue · question Diary try” This is a horrible reduction. The image was a waddled bit of amateur photoshop. Who gave the monkey a gun has morphed into who gave the pothead photoshop. You should always try to do your best. Unfortunately, sometimes the best you can do is make lemonade out of lemons.
original use of this graphic tragedy was a list of rules for a writing prompt community. A writing prompt is a call to chaos, an excuse to let your fingers lose control on the keyboard, and see what dribbles out. It seemed like a good idea.
mean is one of those many words in english with multiple meanings. mean can mean that a concept represents something. In this case it would mean that romp means issue. issue is another word with many definitions, applications, and abuses.
issue has become a synonym for problem. I mentioned this to someone. “John, you should not say problems anymore, today people say issues.” “Cam, I have an old fashioned job. I have problems.” OTOH, “Gotta issue” just doesn’t have the same intimidation mojo as “Gotta Problem.”
question Diary try Henry Charles Bukowski Jr. asked a lot of questions. He might have kept a diary, but then got drunk and forget where it was. One thing is certain. The headstone says DON’T TRY. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress · selah

Part Two of the 2020 chamblee54 report on The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is here. Part one is there. Pictures for this affair are from The Library of Congress.
With one bound she was at the bookcase reaching for the heaviest book she could find to halt her attacker, a thesaurus of indeterminate, inconclusive, or unstipulated weight, ponderosity, or heftiness, with which she intended to pummel, lapidate or belabor her assailant’s skull, cranium or brainpan. Stu Duval, Auckland, New Zealand
As the two beheld each other, Lady Asthenia’s bosom swelled with love like two perfectly popped pans of Jiffy Pop while Lord Mycort’s heart melted like butter, making their union complete.
Roni Markowitz, Brooklyn, NY
Brigid O’Hanion was the fairest flower of Southern womanhood, and Lt. Lance Beauregard was almost blind with lust for her, but after he slipped off her hoop skirt, unbuttoned her lacy blouse, untied her incredibly tight corset, dove beneath the rustling crinoline petticoats, and laboriously inched off her pantalets, he realized his mood had shifted and he now wondered if there was still some cold ham on the sideboard downstairs. Randall Card, Bellingham, WA
He had never seen such a beautiful woman, he thought to himself as his blind date was being escorted to their table at the restaurant, although unfortunately he hadn’t seen her yet and was just staring at a framed photograph taken three years earlier of a famous actress standing awkwardly with the restaurant manager. Izzy Maurer, Lincoln, England
The door to happiness, which was now closed so cruelly for Clare, had been slammed shut the day Jimmy died, yet she lived in hope that someday somewhere someone would come, not perhaps with that superior key of Jimmy’s, the one that fitted the compatible lock of her affections so perfectly, but one like the card-key that finally manages to open the door of your dreary motel room after a whole heap of jiggling and fiddling. David Hynes, Bromma, Sweden
Believe it or not Ripley refrained from firing her laser at the alien creature lurking in the starship’s ceiling above the crew’s happy hour gathering, its dripping secretions burning through the titanium floor like it was made of cheap wet toilet paper, when she discovered by sheer accident that just one drop of the oozing substance reacted with the contents of her cocktail glass to produce a martini so perfect that 007 himself would have betrayed Queen and country for just one sip, as long as it was shaken and not stirred. Reinhold Friebertshauser, Chagrin Falls, OH
Astronomer Herschel Williams deeply regretted notifying the Interstellar Patrol that he had discovered a microwave-emitting star, as his new duties consisted solely of piloting the cargo ship *Redenbacher* around the star three times a week, its holds filled with popcorn and that rancid-smelling butter substitute. Randall Card, Bellingham, WA
Post-game cake, long a clubhouse tradition for the Mudville Nine, was taken off the menu when new manager Sperb Farquhar made it clear that everybody, including the team’s sluggers, would be called on to sacrifice bundt. David Laatsch, Baton Rouge, LA
Virginia knew Gerald would make love like a recently released convict, probably because he was a recently released convict, and Virginia always fell for his type, not the least because the diner where she worked was between the gates of the penitentiary and the bus stop.
Peter Skrzypczak, Burlington, Ontario, Canada
Rocking contentedly on the front porch while watching Marvel’s pretty little baby girl pluck dandelions in the yard and poke them up her nose, Granny Witherspoon fondly recalled her wild weekend at Woodstock. Anna Franklin, Lubbock, TX
I’m a very smart and loyal dog, but when I found out that the average lifespan of a dog is about thirteen years and a human’s is nearly eighty years, I didn’t see the fairness in that at all, so on the day after his fourteenth birthday I lured Timmy to the old abandoned well and when he looked in I jumped on his back and knocked him in, his final words echoing from below: “Why, Lassie, why?” Randy Blanton, Murfreesboro, TN
Sonny hated life on the farm — the cloying reek of overripe figs, the acrid stench of chickens, the tangy funk of oxen, and the malodorous attitude of his older brother; nonetheless, he was grateful to be home after some riotous living abroad which had left him denarii-strapped, and his stomach growled at the sight of the fetid calf. Patrick James Plunkett, North Vancouver, Canada
“You’re a lazy, indolent, slothful, idle, good-for-nothing, work-shy, sluggish, inactive, bone-idle, inert, skiving, lackadaisical, listless, apathetic, lumpish layabout!” exclaimed Mrs. Roget when she saw the state of her son’s bedroom. Nick Stevenson, Sevenoaks, Kent, England

The good always wins out when you observe matters from a distance, gasped Detective Inspector Fred Pickle, dangling from a meathook in a disused Balham slaughterhouse, but it didn’t, really, not for him, nor yet for the guy on clean-up. John Holmes, St. Petersburg, FL
It was a dark and stormy night: the wind whistled like an old man with drugstore teeth trying to teach his grandkids to say, “She sells sea shells by the sea shore,” causing the little shavers to wonder why Peepaw was suddenly talking like Daffy Duck, whether he’d just had a stroke, and if any of them was in the will. Mark Schweizer, Tryon NC
Under a lurid dawn sun, the Usher Property was less baleful than it had been during the past evening’s abode-splitting weather event, and my practiced realtor’s eye – have I not mentioned my profession already? – recognized development potential once the tarn was drained and fissure remediated, perhaps to build an outlet of shopping at which consumers would dawdle, aghast at the scale of discount savings. Brian Brus, Oklahoma City, OK
Although widely despised by his own kind, Kazimir Kilcescu was a hero to a few uninhibited vampires who adopted his “baby talk and Ugg boots” method of victim selection which, when applied correctly, largely eliminated the blood-curdling screams that otherwise left them the choice between letting their swooning prey go scot-free or choking down two liters of curdled O-pos.
Drew Herman, Port Angeles, WA
The summer afternoon was so fierce, Italy pulled off its boot, to wiggle toes in the cool blue sea, as hot Contessa Ravioli slid off her pantyhose. Don Hansbrough, Seattle, WA
He was a bold man, thought Arial Calibri, the typesetter’s daughter, but he wouldn’t recognize a superscript if it was underlined, believed that “strikethrough” was a baseball term, thought italics were people from Italy, and that sans serif was a Caribbean island. Sara Hough, Blacksburg, VA
Even in the noisy gloom of the Oyster’s Pearl, the most frequented bar in town, Sergeant Pete Harrison spotted her the moment she walked in–the young, tall blonde in a tight red dress that clung to her the way those stringy bits stick to a banana after you peel it.
Sylvi Warshaver-Stein, New York, NY
Unlike the effete bun-coiffed duennas back at the English Department, she was just the kind of unassuming dame you liked to find holding down a stool and nursing a smoke at the end of the bar — no more likely to decline a drink than a noun, casual when it came to conjugation, and disposed to end a sentence with a proposition. G. Andrew Lundberg, Los Angeles, CA
Priscilla was a persnickety, perspicacious, and petulant old prude, with a parsimonious purse brought on by pernicious poverty, prone to pettiness, and with an air of pusillanimous if not precarious ways, all proving that the worst things in life are pure pride of place and a pretense of presumptuousness brought on by pouting at the people who preferred prune juice over pilsner.
Linda J. Ashmore, Lynnwood, WA
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Part one was published Friday.