Keg Stands

Jay put the keg under the ceiling fan, and warned us not to do keg stands. He couldn’t find another convenient place to put it, and as such had to count on us not to do the simple, stupid thing that drunks are so prone to doing at parties…

We did keg stands, obviously. We started doing them immediately, and continued until such time as we knocked down the ceiling fan, showering his kitchen with plaster from the now ruined ceiling and smashing his kitchen window as down it came.

And Jay was not impressed. Nor, I suppose, should he have been...

At his next party the keg was left outside, by the fire, and he warned us for our own safety to avoid keg-standing, as due to the roaring flames so nearby he could not guarantee that even were an ambulance called immediately it would make any difference to the life of the standee, and anyway that he had no faith that we’d think, in an emergency, to call one…

I think I could have resisted the allure. Fire is, after all, a fear more primal than a spinning ceiling fan. But I was not the only person at the party, and Gerald was pretty sure he could pull it off…

He didn’t, obviously. I don’t want to disparage his attempt, there’s no point in speaking ill of the dead, but he didn’t pull it off, and Jay was right, a yard full of drunks do NOT think to call an ambulance in any reasonable time-frame.

Anyway, for the funeral, if you could put the keg at the lip of the open grave. We hope that this, if nothing else, will prevent keg stands…

Weekly Prompt Story: Spike

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=27661

On the Topic of Spike

By Christopher Munroe

I hate to choose, but if forced to make a decision, my favorite Spike of all the spikes is Spike from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

You heard me, Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but you’re just going to have to live with it.

You’re just going to have to be undead with it.

You’re just going to have to continue having no idea who I am, and not caring what my opinion on the matter is.

Yeah, now that I consider it, probably that last one. Never mind…

Bomb

Baby, you’re the bomb.

Uncontrollable, easy to set off and wildly destructive, caring little for the people caught up in your wake as you tear through everything around you.

I hope whoever was responsible for creating you spent the rest of their life repenting, like Nobel or Oppenheimer, because unleashing you on an unsuspecting world made life worse for everyone you come in contact with, so great is your capacity for careless, wanton destruction…

Because, Baby, you are the bomb.

And, I realize too late, what I’d really needed in my life was somebody who was more of a balm…

Weekly Prompt Story: Guest

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=27650

Hospitality

By Christopher Munroe

I try to be a good host.

Whether I’m having people over for a night of b-movies and beer or an alien parasite has burrowed its way into my brain in order to control me like a puppet, I do whatever I can to make my guests comfortable. That’s just hospitality.

Some find this old-fashioned, but that’s how I was raised, it comes as naturally to me as breathing used to previous to finding that crashed alien ship out in the woods.

So, fellow normal human, may I offer you liquid? A beer-drink? Something to get you off your guard?

Previous to Dinner

Fifty thousand volts coursed through me and I fell from my chair, not even feeling myself hit the floor as every muscle in my body simultaneously seized and I completely lost control of myself.

People at nearby tables gasped, shocked, and stared at the crumpled heap of what once had been a man, and I couldn’t even explain to them what had happened, let alone why.

I couldn’t do anything. I’d been, for that moment at least, switched completely off, and my body had no plans to obey my mind’s orders any time soon.

I lay there a moment, gathering myself until such time as I could focus my eyes again and then, drooling a little, I dragged myself back to my seat, realizing as I did that both my bowel and bladder had, in the intervening time, released without my realizing.

The stench was awful.

It was humiliating, as well as more physically painful than anything I’d ever experienced, and I’d heard tales that less healthy men going through the same ordeal had actually had their hearts give out, their lives ending before their entrees even arrived at their table.

All and all, it was an utterly horrible experience.

Though I admit, my appetite WAS piqued, and I WAS ready for dinner.

So overall, I suppose, ordering the appe-taser was a mixed bag….

Weekly Prompt Story: Hopeless

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=27640

Hopelessness

By Christopher Munroe

When you’re feeling down and out, as though the world were hopeless, remember:

The world was here before you were born, and will remain long after your death. It survived ice ages, comets, mass-extinction-events, global warming and cooling, and through each crisis Earth abides, through each new crisis presented Earth will abide.

Earth will survive any trouble we will throw at it, of this I have no doubt, and it will barely notice your own private problems.

We simply won’t necessarily necessarily survive with it.

The world, my friend, is full of hope.

It is merely WE who are hopeless…

On investment for the future...

It seemed, at the time, like the perfect retirement plan. Art, after all, only increases in value, and we had the opportunity to buy a piece by a hot, young, subversive street artist who’s reputation would only grow as years went by. How could we not jump at the chance?

And, once we owned the piece, selling prints seemed like a natural next step, a source of income now in addition to retirement income later, it simply made good business sense. Before long we were selling posters to anyone who wanted one, giving no thought at all to what flooding the market thusly might do to the value of the original work.

Of course, the bottom fell out of the market before long. And, by the time we realized what was happening and tried to sell the original piece, it was too late. Interest in the artist remained, but that particular work had lost what value it had due to overexposure. Our own fault, really…

…in hindsight, we should never have allowed our investment Banksey to become a commercial Banksey.

And then it was Canada Day...

…and across the country we celebrated. From sea to shining sea, we stood on guard for thee, and for one day out of the year we were at our most Canadian.

I was no different, I can happily admit I was as caught up in the magic of what formerly was Dominion Day as anyone. The sound of the crowd has an effect on me that is both well documented and undenied. Over the course of Canada day I did all of the following:

I apologized. Constantly.

I promised I would do things to help the environment.

I did not do things to help the environment.

I was a smug dick to Americans, particularly on the subjects of health care and the democratic process...

…and, through it all, the hits of Kim Mitchell played in my headphones. On repeat, again and again, to set the mood.

Because we, as a nation, are never more Canadian than when we are listening to Kim Mitchell.

No other country would ever in a million years put up with that….