BlogFestivus: Future Shock
This story is the fourth installment “Ghost of Christmas Future” in a five-part series of 200-word stories for BlogFestivus, A Christmas Carol. Check out the links (at the bottom of this post) to all the participating “ghost” writers for this year’s challenge. I suspect you’re in for some dark, yet jolly, days. -BD
Future Shock
by Tom B. Taker
They found old man Scrooge by his bed, rocking a chair, wearing his long cotton nightgown. It was the dark of night. He looked up and smiled.
“Welcome,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
The Ghost was aghast. “You, you,” he stuttered. “You can see me?”
He laughed. “Quite so!”
Young Scrooge turned to the Ghost. “Perhaps I can illuminate.”
He gestured around the room. “Actually, I owe it all to you. If you hadn’t warned me about this little jaunt we’d probably be pissing ourselves.”
“Your previous visit made an impression on me, opened a Schrödinger’s box as it were. So I set my people to work on defenses, the means to detect you and more.”
“The purpose of these visits,” the Ghost replied, “was never to bring you harm. In fact, quite the contrary. You…”
“We’ll just see about that,” old Scrooge interrupted.
He took a device from the table and held it in his lap, fiddling with the button. “Not to say that your interference has been all bad. Profits have never been higher.”
“Goodbye,” he said as the button went click.
The Ghost exploded violently into paranormal goo.
“He slimed me,” the Scrooges said in unison.
—
Click on the links below for more takes on A Christmas Carol from our other BlogFestivus bloggers:
Linda penning at linda vernon humor
Steve from Stevil
Maria-Christina blogging at MCWhispers
Dylan of Treatment of Visions
Sarah from Parent Your Business
Dawn blogging at Lingering Visions
K8edid from k8edid
Dave bringing it at 1pointperspective
Eileen from Not The Sword But The Pen
Lindsey at RewindRevise
Kandy of Kandy Talk
Sandra writing at In Love With Words
Natalie from So I Went Undercover
Jen at Blog It or Lose It
Amelie from In the Barberry
Cee Cee blogging at Cee Cee’s Blog
Ashley from LittleWonder2
BD writing Blogdramedy
Help Wanted: Guru Assistant #craigslist
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
Craigslist – Gigs / Help Wanted: Personal Assistant
There’s an opening for a personal assistant on Team Guru.
The candidate must be experienced with “assisting” and being “personal.” The candidate will be enthusiastic, energetic, shameless and pathetic. Females 18+ only.
The successful candidate will be able to hold multiple positions on my staff while demonstrating a firm grasp of outstanding issues and anything that comes up.
A Ph.D. is preferred but candidates with Master’s degrees will be considered if they are proficient with magna cum laude.
Duties include (but are not limited to):
- Manage inventory of Viagra for just-in-time delivery at “distribution center” at my desk
- Make homemade Chicken McNuggets using only white meat
- Coordinate Guru’s busy schedule and travel itinerary
- Clean toilets
- Whorehousing
- Handwash underwear
- Make coffee
- Take dictation
- Pre-chew all gum
- Serve as ergonomic ottoman
- Edit blog posts
- Take messages
- Give massages
- Offer opinion on all tweets
- Spam “like” social media as directed
- Participate in friendly pillow fights
- Screen calls especially those from my wife
- Conduct blind taste tests
- Change tapes on hidden camera monitoring system
- Karaoke all lyrics to Radiohead’s Creep often
Requirements: Must be able to lift 50 pounds. Applicants subject to random pee testing. Must be height/weight proportional. Must be able to work long hours closely supervised all alone in a 10’x10′ home office. Must be comfortable with the human body and nudity. Being ticklish is a plus.
This is a non-salaried internship position. The hours will be as flexible as your body.
If you are a woman and interested, please feel free to send your head shot and stats (resumés are optional) to me immediately. Candidates must work well with others and may be subjected to a Survivor-style round robin elimination tournament.
If all other requirements are met an interest in actual negativity will be waived.
Ad copy provided by Barely Legal Headhunters, Inc.
We live in a society
I am here to restore your faith in humanity. If you believe that humans are a slug upon the universe and that Earth is the slime trail it has left behind.
Now all we need is a dash of salt and a pint of beer. (To be dumped on the slug.)
society: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. “More or less!” Ha ha ha! At least they got that part right.
I read today from the Book of News, Human Behavior, Stockholm Syndrome, Chapter 6:
A “middle-aged” drunk man on his way home from a party fell off a subway platform in Stockholm, Sweden, hit his head on the tracks, and knocked himself unconscious. And, as luck would have it, a train was right on the way! You might think that’s the whole story, but wait! There’s more.
Continue reading →
I Will Always Shove You
You may have noticed I'm mostly green. Well, Fuck You!
Those of us in the airlock/apologizing industry noticed an unusual blip on the radar this week shortly after the death of Whitney Houston. The epicenter was traced and determined to be sourced in Minato (Tokyo), Japan.
Ah, Sony! What have you done this time?
A lot of you may be under the impression that Sony makes overpriced electronics that break shortly after their warranty period. Yes, that’s true, but that’s only a small fraction of what they do.
MINATO, TOKYO, JAPAN — The motto, “Be Prepared,” is one famously associated with the Boy Scouts movement. It also encapsulates the thought that you should be ready to “do the right thing at the right moment.”
It’s a philosphy shared by Sony Music Entertainment (SME) company and their secretive elite unit known as the Death Immediate Response Team (DIRT). When a big name celebrity in the Sony music library dies, that’s when the deceased is designated a “featured artist” and the members of Team DIRT leap into action.
In order to be prepared, SME-DIRT has identified their artists who have achieved sufficient sales volume. They have then compiled detailed “death response plans” on those they artists they have identified as meeting their proprietary criteria selection scheme.
Whitney Houston was one of these artists. Her death on February 11, 2012, came as a surprise to most. But as the news spread like wildfire across the internet, plans were already afoot in Minato. Like most death response plans SME-DIRT has on file, there is a three-pronged approach:
- Have an office party complete with cake (in the likeness of the artist) and ice cream and party hats. During this symbolic process they literally eat their artist.
- Immediately jack wholesale prices on albums in the library.
- Summon high-level Sony executives to a summit in New York City to discuss strategy to capitalize on the artist’s death.
Within hours of Whitney Houston’s death, a faceless operative on a nameless Tokyo street walked away from his noodles, pulling an Xperia ™ Ion LTE (Long Term Evolution) smartphone from his coat pocket, dialed a number from memory, waited three seconds, said, “Operation Bodyguard. Initiate. This is not a drill.” He then faded away as he side-stepped into street level sewer fog and disappeared into the noises of the murky city at night.
Continue reading →
Shouts from the Abyss 
Recent Comments