Coming down to the finish line! There’s only a couple more weeks in this year, and we’ve got so much to do. Feeling like the White Rabbit, chanting ‘we’re late, we’re late!’ but it’s not too late. You can do this.
| Chestnuts | Roasting | Open Fire |
| Parrish Baker | All the clocks in the city stopped at precisely 3:47 PM, except for one. | Becky Jones |
| Padre | And Pestilence rides free across the land. | AC Young |
| nother Mike | Dancing candy canes made the stage sticky… | Padre |
| AC Young | He was convinced that his bright-pink genetically modified pines would be a huge success as Christmas Trees. | Fiona Grey |
| Fiona Grey | Of serpentine and labyrinth she descended… | Parrish Baker |
| Becky Jones | Portable time machines ain’t all they’re cracked up to be. | Leigh Kimmel |
| Leigh Kimmel | The robot receptionist that was supposed to help callers proved more of an obstacle to getting help. | nother Mike |
Late sending in your prompt? Never fear, the spares are here!
| Spare | “Come on, no one believes in ‘heir and a spare’ anymore. It’s just archaic.” |
| Spare | The spam wouldn’t stop. Every day, a new missive arrived, promising… |
| Spare | With acclimation comes susceptibility. |
| Spare | When the lab mice started talking, it was … |
| Spare | Jack Frost nipping at your nose… |
Rush on back by next week and show us what you made of a prompt!
More Odds Than Ends 
https://urnasemper.substack.com/p/of-serpentine-and-labyrinth-she-descended
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ooo, more, please.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Its an unusual roasted chestnut: https://acyoungauthor.substack.com/p/plague-vessels
LikeLiked by 2 people
An ominous but intriguing chestnut.
LikeLiked by 1 person
[…] I’m not sure where this is going yet, but had fun with this week’s prompt from AC Young. Mine went to Parrish – check it out over at MOTE! […]
LikeLike
Leigh Kimmel cracked the nuts with…
The robot receptionist that was supposed to help callers proved more of an obstacle to getting help.
[hum, a robot receptionist? What could go wrong? Ho, ho, ho…]
The first generation of the roboreceptionist was well received, especially since it had the physical appearance of a full-sized Barbie doll, and someone had carefully worked out the moves to take advantage of that appearance. So stores, banks, and other companies gleefully bought them, and they become common place.
But April 1 came, and with it, the upgrade. Mod 1.113, as the historians would later point out. It was supposed to be a simple security upgrade, just making sure that robo-Barbie, as she was known, checked that forms were properly filled in.
That morning, people lined up. And robo-Barbie looked at the forms, and said, “This is not correct! You can do much better than this! Sit down and fill it in again, this time with correct spelling and handwriting.” And she locked one hand around the applicant’s wrist, and would not let go.
So at reception desks everywhere, someone sat, and tried to fill in the form again. And again. And again.
Apparently, robo-Barbie considered a full type font as proper handwriting. Also, they wanted every part of every form to be accurately filled in, and they were checking the accuracy of the answers! Which meant no one seemed to be able to get past them…
Oddly, no one seemed to know how to turn off the robo-Barbies. Someone finally did manage to free the prisoners, through the rather simple technique of telling the robots that it was time to close the doors. The Barbies would then release their prisoner, hand them a form, and ask them to come back tomorrow….
[hum, not so good, but… needs to be developed a bit more, but… time to post!]
LikeLike
https://professorornery.substack.com/p/an-ill-wind-blows
LikeLiked by 2 people
And now mine is up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1642566.html. After a difficult week that included a mad race to beat an anthology deadline, it was nice to have something that was actually fun to write.
LikeLike
I got ‘nother Mike’s prompt again this week with “Dancing candy canes made the stage sticky.”
This almost works as a line of alliterative verse, but my first instinct is more prose…
“Mrs. Trotter? I gotta go to the bathroom!”
It never failed. No matter how many times you tell them to go to the bathroom before they get into costume, there is always one.
“Why didn’t you go earlier?”
“I didn’t need to. But now I do.”
“Can you hold it?”
“No. I gotta go now.”
I sighed. I really wish the costumes were designed better, designed with little kids in mind. “Come on, then.” I helped him out of his costume. They needed to be on stage in ten minutes. He should be back in time. And, I reminded myself, he was a pretty good kid. They all were. This wasn’t the worst place for washed up chorus line dancer to end up.
I peeked out from behind the faded red curtain that wrapped the stage and closed the backstage area off from both the worn, varnished wooden floor and the gym beyond it. The parents of every student in the school from the kindergarteners who were out there currently in their red and white striped candy cane costumes up to the junior higher boys and girls who were just lining up in their bathrobes, ready to present the living Christmas pageant were out in the audience, ready to celebrate their kids and their accomplishments. As tough as it was some days, I loved this small town.
Jimmy got back from the bathroom and into his costume in record time. He was ready to go again just seconds before the kindergarteners squelched off the stage.
It happened every year. The glue that held the red stripes on the costume was not the best and tended to melt and leak a little and the dancing candy canes made the stage sticky. We were used to it. It was just one of the little things that you adjusted for.
I motioned my kids to step out onto the stage in their giant bells. “Ready, kids? Go out there and do it just like we practiced. And watch your feet. The stage is a bit sticky.”
I smiled as they tramped out and lined up. “Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells” It was nowhere near perfect and nowhere near the best thing I’d ever seen on stage, but I wouldn’t trade it for all this for all the accolades of Broadway.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That brings back memories of all those elementary and junior high Christmas shows!
LikeLike