Posts tagged ‘quick read’

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November 24, 2012

Playing “Angry Birds” in the Days Before Smartphones

by Fred Fingery

Life Before Smartphones 1 of 5: Playing “Angry Birds” in the days before Smartphones

In order to play Angry Birds before the dawn of smartphones you literally had go out in the wilderness, capture a nest’s-worth of baby birds,  safely transport them to the nearest abandoned construction site, and hope like hell there just so happened to be approximately ten pigs scattered all over the rusty beams of the building’s frame. Once you completed all that, you had to wind up like Nolan Ryan and fling the still-living baby birds, one by one, at the skeletal frame, with hope that the structure had been so poorly slapped together in the first place the soft blubbery impact of bird upon metal makes the beams sway just enough so that loose parts of it collapse onto and crush some of the pigs.

It was a simpler time back then, and people made do with what they had. They had lower standards and were therefore more easily entertained. Yet, before you start developing the erroneous idea that pre-Smartphone “Angry Birds” fans had it easy, just stop and think for a moment. Consider, if you will, how long it would take the average pre-Smartphone “Angry Birds” player to land upon this exact described scenario! Lot of random stuff has to work out just right! It could take all day to get through a single level. And when you run out of birds you must quickly set out and harvest more. There’s no easy “start new game” option; many animals must die so that your game might live. Not very convenient for anybody, I’d think.

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Check back often for the next episode of our hit new series “Life Before Smartphones.”

More exciting episodes:

Life Before Smartphones

Playing “Angry Birds” in the Days Before Smartphones

Making a Late Night “Booty Call” in the Days Before Smartphones

Taking Down a Girl’s Number (When You’re Hammered) in the Days Before Smartphones

Taking Snapshots (Without Having to Lug Around a Digital Camera) in the Days Before Smartphones

Navigating Your Way Out of a Big City in the Days Before Smartphones

Posted in Editorial, Lists, Practically Humorous | 2 Comments »

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November 22, 2012

Life Before Smartphones

by Fred Fingery

Life Before Smartphones (Prelude)

Nowadays we take them for granted, sure. It’s very very hard to imagine how we ever got along without smartphones. They’ve become an extension of us, yet another body part that throbs in our pants and requires attention. When for some reason we forget them back on our kitchen tables or bed stands, we feel naked and afraid and useless until we’re together once again. We feel like we left our child at the train station with a strange man, only twice as bad. We wonder—what was it like in the days before smartphones? How did the poor bastards ever endure? Seems crazy but yes, folks did manage to get by without these sexy, sleek, tumor-encouraging staples of convenience. Just wasn’t pretty is the thing…

Over the coming days and weeks practicallyserious.com will explore this topic in gory details, like it or not. We will dig deep to derive a greater understanding of how life was in the barbaric days of pre-smartphone America, exploring specific everyday scenarios to help us better comprehend the sometimes subtle differences between now and then. By the time we’re done you will be qualified for blog-certification attesting to your mastery of this important subject matter. Play your cards right, could be a great interview killer!

Hope to see you here for our groundbreaking new series “Life Before Smartphones,” starting soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Check out the entire series before I even finish writing it:

Life Before Smartphones

Playing “Angry Birds” in the Days Before Smartphones

Making a Late Night “Booty Call” in the Days Before Smartphones

Taking Down a Girl’s Number (When You’re Hammered) in the Days Before Smartphones

Taking Snapshots (Without Having to Lug Around a Digital Camera) in the Days Before Smartphones

Navigating Your Way Out of a Big City in the Days Before Smartphones

Posted in Editorial, Lists | 3 Comments »

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November 13, 2012

Flash Fiction: “The Barbarian Crazylegs”

by Fred Fingery

The Barbarian Crazylegs

The barbarian Xatmec Crazylegs whirled his broadsword down on the man with a skull for a face, who parried weakly and made his own attempt on Xatmec’s exposed shin. In a wild blur of metal Xatmec lifted the imperiled leg and stomped the attacking blade down into the stone floor, holding it there with all his weight; the grounded sword wobbled and bowed under his boot.

With nothing much else to do, the unsightly cretin simply gaped at the horribly bulbous barbarian who’d bested him. Xatmec was a giant, with an enormous sweep of breast and the shoulders of an ox. He wore a tattered robe of deerskin that fell lightly over a beaten leather girdle. Gripping a chinked sword as heavy as a man, his forearms were massive with corded muscle. His great legs were at the same time fat and lean, like those of the man-eating megahorses.

“Are you ready to boil in hell?” spat Xatmec. He waited somewhat patiently for the other to respond, and then it occurred to him that perhaps the man couldn’t talk. Perhaps, during his Bone Ceremony—when, with obsidian blade, he’d flayed skin and muscle neatly off his face, leaving unmolested only his red watery eyes—he severed his tongue as well. But Xatmec grew bored with such insipid musings, and, in blatant defiance of physics, lashed his hefty leg upwards in a violent crescent kick. The speeding bulk of his leg summoned a strong gust of wind that rattled the enemy’s silver earrings, and then the barbarian’s leather boot connected with the other man’s throat. In a wet pop the man’s windpipe imploded. Unable to breathe, his’ white jaw hung limp. The pupils of his eyeballs vanished up into the shadows of his sockets.

Xatmec took note of the panicked tongue inside the jaw, then, with his massive hand he gripped the entirety of his enemy’s face, and then crushed it like it were an ugly porcelain vase. The bone crunched and popped into a dozen terrible flakes. Freed from their cradle of bone, the bone-face’s eyeballs dangled and rolled over a tongue buried in brittle white shards and speckled with unsightly skull liquids. As a desperate gurgling sound rose up from a now-faceless throat, the eyeballs wobbled on their bed of bone gravel and tongue and blood and brain wrinkles. As Xatmec left the dark chamber he noted with amusement that his enemy was still alive, stumbling around the room sprinkling bone bits on the floor. Choking on his own eyes.

copyright 2012 Derek Osedach

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October 27, 2012

My 100th Post (a scary accomplishment)

by Fred Fingery

My 100th Post (a scary accomplishment)

This post marks the 100th post of practicallyserious.com. Actually, it’s more like 104 or 105, but there were some posts I disowned directly after publishing them, consigning them forever to the shadows of the publicly unseen “draft” queue (where they have grown pale and hunched and veiny). So, for the sake of this minor celebration, we’ll consider only officially recognized posts, not “castle freak” posts.

100 posts. Am I proud of this? Well hell, I’m not saying any of these posts are good. I’m just saying they exist, for better or worse. Not like I ever doubted I’d “make it to 100.” I am Rain Man when it comes to writing. Tom Cruise can sit me down in a swivel chair, turn me towards a computer, tap me on the shoulder, and I’ll just start typing typing typing with my head slightly tilted and a dopey look on my face. If I fail to one day reach 1000 posts, it’s because some better, more lucrative avenue of writing has opened up to me.

100 posts. It feels just like yesterday when I published my first post about the connection between the ancient Mayan civilization and Chia Pets. It was a tad lame. Back then I thought this blog was going to be all about sarcastic fake news pulled tactlessly from current headlines. I thought this blog was going to be a worse version of the Onion (which, interestingly enough, I never liked in the first place). Fortunately for me, this blog eventually started to develop a personality of its own. Practicallyserious.com went from being the sarcastic nasally bookworm kid to doesn’t have anything nice to say about anyone, to the kid who sits in the back of the class and draws, in the margins of his math worksheet, robots ripping soldiers’ heads off and flinging these heads at other soldiers, like wet cannon balls.

Three identically creepy pale little girls standing abreast.

Only history will judge the metaphorical similarities between my blog and the sinking of the Titanic. We’ll just have to wait and…huh? Wha? Did you guys read that? What the hell was that about creepy little girls? I swear I saw that. Did YOU see that? Yes? It was right in the hallway between this paragraph and the last paragraph. I swear I saw something about three creepy pale little girls. They were just standing there all quiet for no reason. Damn. Sorry, 82 readers, but I have to go back and take another look. I’ll meet you back here at the end of the replay of this paragraph…

100 posts. It feels just like yesterday when I published my first post about the connection between the ancient Mayan civilization and Chia Pets. It was a tad lame. Back then I thought this blog was going to be all about sarcastic fake news pulled tactlessly from current headlines. I thought this blog was going to be a worse version of the Onion (which, ironically, I never liked in the first place). Fortunately for me, this blog eventually started to develop a personality of its own. Practicallyserious.com went from being the sarcastic nasally bookworm kid to doesn’t have anything nice to say about anyone, to the kid who sits in the back of the class and draws, in the margins of his math worksheet, robots ripping soldiers’ heads off and flinging these heads at other soldiers, like wet cannon balls.

Only history will judge the metaphorical similarities between my blog and the sinking of the Titanic. We’ll just have to wait and…huh? Wha? Did you guys read that? What the hell was that about creepy little girls? I swear I saw that. Did YOU see that? Yes? It was right in the hallway between this paragraph and the last paragraph. I swear I saw something about three creepy pale little girls. They were just standing there all quiet for no reason. Damn. Sorry, 82 readers, but I have to go back and take another look. I’ll meet you back here at the end of the replay of this paragraph…

(Okay. We’re back in real blog-time.) Dude, what the hell! On second glance, there was nothing there! Just an empty space between paragraphs! The first paragraph happened and then there was a space and then there was the second paragraph. No creepy little girls. The hallway was empty! But no no no, I swear they were there. Three of them. Not even just two! Standing side by side by side. And then when I looked back they were…gone!

Yeah. That settles it. This blog has been haunted for quite a while now and I’ve had about enough of this! I called the Paranormal Blogging-Investigators more than a month ago, as part of the Blog-Post Assassin’s payment for making one of my weaker flash fiction stories sleep with the fishes. For the past couple of weeks every time I published a post I’d have to look nervously over my shoulder, not only in fear of the ghosts that haunt these poorly executed paragraphs, but in fear of the Blog-Post Assassin showing up and breaking my knees for failure to deliver the Paranormal Blogging-Investigators I promised him. He won’t care that I already made an appointment with them and they just never showed up. Ghosts. Assassins. I’m getting it from all sides here!

Well I’m fed up. And to think, on my blog’s 100th post-iversary I get a spook attack. How frightfully embarrassing! Well, I ain’t taking this sitting down, hope to tell you. Last time I talked to the Paranormal Blogging-Investigators they told me to expect them anytime   from between 5 to 54 blog posts. What-the-hell kind of service window is that, anyway?!? Do they think (know) I have no life? Well, hell, I’m getting on the phone with those two bumbling idiots and I’m getting them over here pronto.

I’m giving them a piece of my mind. This is unacceptable.

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This has been episode 3 of Scary Blog-Posts to Tell in the Dark.

For more bone-chilling entertainment, check out this flash fiction story about plants.

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October 22, 2012

Flash Fiction: “The Scary Robbers”

by Fred Fingery

The Scary Robbers

The scary robbers didn’t have guns but the people in the bank were frightened half to death. There were three of them, the robbers, and they wore white sheets to hide their faces. Nobody’d seen them come in. But suddenly there they were, making demands.

“The vault,” said the head robber. And when he spoke his deep deep voice echoed through the bank, bounced on all the smooth marble columns. A coffee mug rattled. A lady fainted. A man named Thom Bradley soaked up the front of his starched Greenfield slacks. He wasn’t even embarrassed about this—just terrified.

It was only Sally Hotburger’s first week on the job—she’d been nervous all day even before the robbers. One look at the robbers and she knew the protective glass wouldn’t protect her. Didn’t even bother with the alarm either. “Okay, okay, please give me a moment,” she stammered.

“Try anything and we take you with us,” said the robber. Somewhere somebody screamed.

Her hands shaking, knees weak, Sally made her way into the lobby and the robbers followed her to the massive vault door.

“Open it,” said the head robber.

Sally fumbled at the code, kept messing it up. Finally one of the robbers got frustrated and reached through her chest and clasped her heart and she died. Then, moments later, she became a fourth robber. “Welcome to the team,” said the heart-clasper to the new robber, who was already draped in white sheets. Then heart-clasper turned to a bald banker and said, “How about you?”

The bad man had a stronger constitution than Hotburger had had, and he managed to open the bank vault for the robbers. They went inside, each grabbed a burlap sack of newly-minted cash, and then they floated back out and headed for the front doors, which had been propped open. The fourth robber was new so she didn’t realize that physical objects from the world of the living couldn’t transport through surfaces like her body could, and when she floated quietly through the wall the bag of money stayed behind and fell to the floor. The other three robbers laughed hysterically at this, and, inside the bank, three more patrons’ fainted.

Copyright 2012, Derek Osedach

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This story marks the second episode of “Scary Blog-Posts to Tell in the Dark.”

Check out episode 1!

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October 19, 2012

Flash Fiction: “Green Thumb”

by Fred Fingery

Green Thumb

Illustration by Mongol

In the cot next to me the man’s strapped down for keeps. He’s fidgeting nonstop, his voice is muffled and tired; I assume he’s gagged, a tennis ball and duct tape. Something like that, though I can’t see for sure. There’s a kind of neck brace that keeps him turned away, facing the basement wall where the weed whacker leans against the dirty stack of empty ceramic pots. That’s how he’s been since I came to. Maybe a few days. And who knows how long he’s been here before that.

The place smells like blue plant food and wet aluminum shovels with rust. It must be something in the water, his moaning. Because I swallow the water too, and lately I don’t feel so hot. Something when we’re watered for sure. In my stomach and throat a pressure builds like fingers. I jerk at my straps but they’re tight as hell.

Green Thumb comes into the room and he walks past me to the wood shelves. He turns on the boom box, cranks the music loud enough so he doesn’t have to hear me. Doesn’t have to listen to the sounds I make. Monkey sounds. It’s all I can do; I can’t close my teeth because of the wires and whatever else he wedged in—I’m open all day, scraping and grinding. All I make are monkey sounds. I make them often. Under the harsh pink light of the UV lamps his wild white hair looks like the fur of a very old dog.

“Drink or drown, honestly I don’t care,” he says, then he takes the yellow watering jug with the long spout and he points it down my open mouth and glug glug glug glug. The water flows and I have to stop making monkey sounds and just swallow or I’ll choke. The bastard won’t feed me, he just loads me with water once a day. Me and the man next to me.

“Feel a pressure? In your belly?” He says it in a doctorly tone while he waters my head. I nod. He seems pleased. He says, “That’s good. That’s healthy. I’m happy about that.” Then he waters the man next to me, who stops moaning just long enough to swallow. Then, as Green Thumb leaves the room he says over his shoulder, “I’ll leave the music on. It helps.” And he’s gone.

Next to me the man goes back to his routine. Whimpering, moaning. And because he’s retching on the water and starting to choke, somehow he manages to jerk his head loose from the brace, turns to me and I get my first look at his face.

I might let myself drown next time I’m watered.

His eyes are wide, empty glass things—his mind is gone and probably been that way a long long time. And he’s not gagged at all. Maybe wired up like me, but no gag. His mouth’s been open this whole time, yet still he sounds muffled because there’s a bright green bundle of stems and stalks sprouting healthy leaves—dark, dark green—up from deep in his mouth. Deep. Healthy, the stems. The plants stand high enough to cast round shadows on his chin. He jerks side to side and I hear them rustle.

Copyright 2012, Derek Osedach

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This story is the first episode of my brand new series:  “Scary Blog-Posts to Tell in the Dark.” Stay tuned for more “diabolical” flash fiction!

If you just can’t wait and need more creepy flash fiction right now, follow this link (if you dare)!!

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October 16, 2012

Scary Blog-Posts to Tell in the Dark

by Fred Fingery

So Halloween’s coming up and I figured this might be a good opportunity to indulge, unapologetically, in some old fashioned scary/creepy stories. Once in a while I write a quick flash-fiction piece for this blog and it comes out so heinously creepy/weird I just end up brushing the thing under the carpet and leaving it there. And stomping on the carpet. At one point I was considering starting a whole new blog entitled “Village of the Crazies,” where my mutant monster stories can band together and thrive, enjoying the camaraderie of a community of like-minded peers. In the same altruistic spirit as my forthcoming Paragraph Orphanage. But in truth, I don’t feel I have enough time even for one blog, let alone two. So my creepy tales must compete for only a few available slots on practicallyserious.com. In general, I must repress them, lest their growing numbers turn the tide and permanently “creep out” this blog. Especially with the Creativity Rover so close to proving that practicallyserious.com is capable of supporting humorous blog-posts, why risk spoiling such an incredible moment in this blog’s short history?

But if I have a legit excuse, that’s a little different. October is a time when ghost and goblins and urinating gigantors can walk the blog-streets in peace, without fear of ridicule from practicallyserious.com’s 77 followers. I can spew out quick a couple of “strange tales” before the month’s over, and just call it Halloween decorations!

Therefore it is my distinguished pleasure to announce a new series on practicallyserious.com: “Scary Blog-Posts to Tell in the Dark.” Things are going to get unspeakably wicked around here for a couple weeks. The next few posts are not for the faint of heart. Look for some spine-chilling flash fiction, berserk creativity, and a visit from some old friends. As well, stay tuned for some more award-winning illustrations by the artist known as “Mongol.”

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October 12, 2012

Top 5 Healthiest Herbs

by Fred Fingery

Top 5 Healthiest Herbs

1. Herb Fitzpatrick, Illinois. This 56-year-old Herb has been maintaining a 12-mile jogging streak for twelve years, and during his daily jog he also happens to be a vegetarian. Well actually, to be fair, he doesn’t eat anything at all while he jogs, but certainly not a big juicy steak!

2. Herbert Turner, New Jersey. This 25-year-old Herb is a doubledown-vegetarian. Meaning: he only eats plants that have been exclusively fed other  plants. Mainly we’re talking about prey-trapping pitcher plants that have been stuffed chock full with smaller pitcher plants and forced to digest them or else choke. Doubledown-vegetarians are also known to feed on Venus Flytraps fed, exclusively, on baby Venus Flytraps.

3. Herbie Starchmouth III, New Jersey. Another New Jersey Herb. Though currently unemployed, he has an account on Monster.com and tries to sign in at least once a week before he goes to bed. As for health: he does three sets of 100 push-ups in his bedroom each day. Although, when it comes to overall presentation, his body is pale and doughy and skinny and he can’t get laid no matter what job he pretends he has. And each of his bulging, hairy “push up” boobs look eight months pregnant with human babies.

4.  Herb Bonaparte, California. This 62-year-old writer does 165 jumping jacks every morning and then, with a seamless transition, does a single cartwheel sideways and lands butt-down in his chair, ready for his morning writing session. Also, he is a Tooth-Bypass-vegetarian. Meaning: he only eats waterplants grown directly inside his stomach, which are, humanely, digested as they grow, so they never fully mature into self-aware plant life. Tooth-Bypass-vegetarians believe it is wrong to inflict pain on plants by chewing them into mush.

5. Herbert Salmon, Rhode Island. He drinks protein shakes comprised of three other, more potent, protein shakes. Also he is a Zeppelin-vegetarian. Meaning: if he could, he’d eat Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, for whom he is a cannibalistic stalker. Other than that, he eats Lean Cuisine chicken alfredo.

Posted in Lists, Practically Humorous | 2 Comments »

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September 25, 2012

Construction Begins on Paragraph Orphanage

by Fred Fingery

Practicallyserious.com has broken ground on a state-of-the-art Paragraph Orphanage meant to cater specifically to “orphan paragraphs.” Construction should be complete within three or four blog-posts, and the first orphan-paragraph has already been enrolled.

What is an orphan-paragraph? “It’s a whole big paragraph/wordblock you cast out of one of your non-blog short stories,” said Derek, chief financier of the project. “But you feel bad for them because now they have no home whatsoever, no hope, even though maybe they were interesting in their own right. They just didn’t quite fit in, is all.”

Usually such paragraphs are exiled to the birth-computer’s recycle bin, never to be seen again by human eyes. This archaic practice has lately been criticized by the UEW (Union of Edited Words) for failing to acknowledge the sweat equity often put into these paragraphs.

Derek said that wayward story-edits, tweaked in such a way as to provide at least some hint of closure, deserve a place where they can get soup and biscuits and a nice warm bed. “The Paragraph Orphanage will give these poor, doomed words a small taste of what it’s like to be ‘published.’” said Derek. “A little community where they can be with other freaks just like them. It’s like the colony the pig-face doctors send the regular-faced people to at the end of the classic Twilight Zone episode.”

Said Derek, “A random, mutant blog like my own is maybe the perfect environment for these exiles to have their one little moment.”

According to Craig Sturgeon, the foreman hired make Derek’s dream a reality, the practicallyserious Paragraph Orphanage will be more than just another “recurring sketch” on the blog. It will, in fact, be featured as its own “page,” so that orphan paragraphs will always have a “safe place to get their words nice and toasty.”

Posted in Practically Humorous, Practically Serious News, Unorthodoxy | 2 Comments »

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September 24, 2012

Flash Fiction: “The Bad-Ass Bet”

by Fred Fingery

The Bad-Ass Bet

It was sheer luck I ran into that slippery bastard Gamblin’ Pete at Hannigan’s Pub. I had to take advantage. Been trailing him for years but he was always always always a step or two ahead. Never seen him up close until that night and it was my one shot. I had just what I’d do.  Everybody knows Gamblin’ Pete don’t turn down a nasty bet if you’re talking real big-boy stakes. It’s how he gets his blood pumping. Only I prayed he’d hear me out to start with, because those goons were packing 38’s in their jackets. And Barry “Swiss Cheese” Fitz, he was there too. He sprays you full of holes then runs you over with his truck till you’re just about flat. I been looking for him too.

“If it ain’t Pete O’brien,” I said. I took off my straw fedora and placed it on the poker table sticky with beer.

Pete did a double take. Reaching into his shirt for his knife, alarmed, he said, “Who the hell let this bald sonofabitch in here?”

I drummed my fingers over the fedora I’d bought only an hour earlier at the boardwalk. “Wearin’ a hat today, on a whim. Never knew that’s all I had to do to get this close,” I tried to sound confident but I was shaking in my shoes. Already had two barrels pressing cold into my neck and back.

“You got big balls, Cop,” said Pete. He gave a look to Cheese. Cheese smiled, took a step closer.

Quickly, still cool, I said, “I hear you don’t turn down a bad-ass bet.”

Pete straightened a little. His face changed like when you switch a television channel and there’s another face. He smiled, delighted. “Maybe, maybe not. What’s the stakes?”

Only one thing about wagering with Pete—you don’t renege. He’ll get you, give you a hurtin’ you won’t believe. Anyone you care about too.

“You and me,” I said. “I win, you come to the station with me. No problems.” This didn’t faze him in the slightest. Rather the opposite—I swear the sick s.o.b. started to salivate. His eyes were bubbles about to pop. I remember how my heart raced. I thought, It’s do or die! I said, “You win: I retire, I leave law enforcement forever. And with me gone, you breathe easy.” Gamblin’ Pete had become my life and career, and if I wanted him I knew it’d take some real balls. And no guarantees either way.

The smile was frozen on Pete’s face like he couldn’t believe what he heard. “Back off, Cheese. I like these stakes.” And so I cut the deck and we played a hand.

And that is part of the reason why I manage Denny’s store #2234 on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles.

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For some more practicallyserious “noir” action, check out this flash-fiction story!

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