Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

My last few posts have been about a celebration of excess or debauchery and although I thought it was some of my best stuff, it was not received very well by most.  In my eyes, Rock & Roll taught me to ‘Not to give a fuck’ and to be myself and that means being original, but it seems that rock and roll has hit a dead end and although it might never actually die out totally, it will probably never blossom again.  Nothing brings out my indignation more than hearing someone remark that Rock is getting by on a wing and a prayer now, since the only people who enjoy it are those who are old enough to have seen the Beatles or gone to Woodstock.  I will always retain my fond memories of the 1973 concert that I went to at Watkins Glen, featuring the Band, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers.  This concert was a real treat for me and I saw plenty of love, peace, nudity, and drugs there.

I was one of the 600,000 people who made the trip there for the festival that was known as the Summer Jam.  I drove there with 8 other dead heads in my station wagon and we drove in with an once of weed sitting on the dashboard, which did annoy me at first, but the concert was sold out, the gates were left open and we rolled by the parking lot attendants who just waved us through.  We got there the day before, which was called the sound test and all three groups performed.  I got the best recording ever of Tennessee Jed, as it seemed like Garcia was singing directly into my tape deck.  We camped out and went back the next day.

The stage was elevated so people in the back could see the groups, but this made it difficult for the people who were right in front of it.  Some of them tried to make human pyramid chains so they could climb up higher to see what was going on.  The stage crew responded by hosing everyone down that was in front of the stage.  It was a real mess up front and the people who were covered in mud began to strip their clothes off.

We (Danny, Patty, Irene and myself) were far enough back, to be out of the mud and have a good look at the stage.  The Grateful Dead kicked off with a jumping tune called ‘Bertha’.  They played two sets and some of the songs that I still remember after 45 years are ‘Truckin’, ‘Sugar Magnolia’, ‘China Cat Sunflower’, ‘Eyes of the World’, and they closed with Merle Haggard’s ‘Sing Me Back Home’.  One of the naked mud people wondered by us and Danny nudged me as said that we had to protect our girls from this a-hole.  This guy was a real piece of work, not only was he naked and covered in mud, but he had a snake wrapped around his neck which was definitely creeping Danny out.  This may have not even been the worst part as you could tell that this dude was tripping on something as his face was all contorted and he kept on drooling.  I considered the mud dude to be totally fungible, so I grabbed him by his arm and slung him back to the front of the stage where he belonged.  Danny and the girls all smiled at me and everything was blue skies and blossoms for us, now that this laboratory experiment of a person gone wrong disappeared into the crowd.  The Band followed the Dead, but a huge thunderstorm forced them off stage and that is when we went back to our campsite.

Written Daily Addictions prompt Week #32 – Remark, for FOWC with Fandango – Treat, for August Writing Prompts – Blue skies and blossoms, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt – Laboratory, for Ragtag Community – Fungible, for Scotts Daily Prompt – Prayer, for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – Eyes and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – blossom.

Kiss and Tell

I learned to never reveal intimate secrets about any sexual relationships only after I lost someone by doing just that.  They say that a gentleman never tells, that he should be classy displaying integrity even when he is ‘getting some strange’, but guys do talk, although maybe not as much as women do.  Many guys like to show off after they just nailed some chick and this probably stems from the fact that most single guys have a hard time getting laid, so this makes them announce that they sealed the deal and got to home base.  Sharing your romantic exploits, revealing intimate, personal, private or confidential details, after recounting in your head and then giving your friends a firsthand description about a sexual encounter often crosses the line, as certain things are best kept between you and the person that you slept with.

I split up with my wife and got divorced and had my own apartment where I lived with my dog.  Anyway I went online to try and meet some women and I often chatted on Yahoo Messenger which was sort of working, but the problem was that the ones that I met were distant, usually living in Nigeria or Ghana.  I was single, but I was not savvy, but after a while I developed an aptitude for meeting girls and I became good at chatting.  One day I met this lady whose screen name was Peachy kisses Delicate and she said that she lived in my town and we hit it off right away.  She told me that her name was Eleanor and the communication that we shared was always on the intimate side.  She said that she had a cat and things would never work out for us because I was a dog person and then she mentioned that was married and that she just caught her husband cheating on her and she wanted to have an affair to get even, so this was never going to be about love and I was OK with that.

We made arrangements to meet at Walmart and see how it goes and take it from there, but the day before we were supposed to meet, she contacted me and told me that she had second thoughts and that she was trying to make things up with her husband.  I told her that I understood and I wished her the best of luck resolving things.  She said that she felt bad for me and she mentioned that she had this girlfriend named Susan, who was divorced and who said that she had not been with a man in the two years since and she said that she would talk to her about me.  I told her that was fine, and I actually felt that I would have a better time being with a divorced woman instead of a married one that was seeking revenge.

I heard back from Eleanor and she said that she told Susan about me and that she was interested in meeting me.  She sent me a picture of Susan and she was a real babe and I began to think that there was harmony in the universe.  Eleanor said, “I bet that you will have a great time, because I heard that she swallows.”  This seemed a bit strange, but I had no idea what girls talked about with each other and how graphic they got with certain details.  I told Eleanor that would be great as my ex wife never did that.  She gave me Susan’s email address and her phone number and I called her and asked her if she would like to go out to dinner with me.

I picked her up on Saturday night and we had a nice dinner and then we went back to my place to watch some TV.  Things got romantic and when we were both heated up we went into my bedroom where I gave her a back rub.  Things progressed and I had a fantastic evening and then I took Susan back to her place and I told her that I would call her so we could do it again, as she seemed to have as good a time as I had.  The next day after our date I saw Eleanor online and she asked me how things went with Susan.  I told her it was great and I thanked her for setting us up on the date and then I opened my big mouth and told her that she was right that Susan does swallow, I guess because I felt like I owed her something.

I called Susan the next day and she never answered her phone as I guess Eleanor must have told her what I said about her.  I realized that it was wrong and I accepted that I had ruined a good thing and that we would never be together again.  The lesson to be learned here is that if you had a good time with a girl, then keep your mouth shut and there is a good possibility that there will be more good times ahead.  You can get a dinner date even if you are not a gentleman, but if after it is over, you kiss and tell, that could ruin your chances at getting another date and you will end up having to eat your lunch all by yourself.

Written for FOWC with Fandango – Aptitude, for August Writing Prompts – Peachy kisses Delicate, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt – Communication, for Ragtag Community – Cat, for Scotts Daily Prompt – Distant, for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – Love and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Harmony.

A Purple Shrub Set in a Marble Vase

Doctor Rappaccini has a daughter named Beatrice, whose beauty has caused all the young men of Padua to fall in love with her.  Beatrice rarely leaves home, she likes to pass much of her time doing work in her father’s garden tending a beautiful plant.  Rappaccini has a great devotion to science, a greater devotion to science than to people, and he is willing to sacrifice people, including himself, for what he considers the greater good of the advance of knowledge.  All of his plants are a kind of experiment, as he looks for cures for diseases and adds to the body of scientific information.  Beatrice becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others.  Giovanni a handsome student at the University of Padua, watches Beatrice from his window and soon falls in love with her.

She wore a red dress and embraced the flowers, picking one up and attempts to pin it on her dress, and accidentally lets some of the liquid drip on to a lizard, which immediately contorts and dies.  Giovanni shudders watching this and then he witnesses an insect dying from Beatrice’s breath.  Beatrice spots Giovanni who throws her a bouquet of healthy flowers.  As Beatrice rushes inside, Giovanni thinks he sees the bouquet wither in her hands.  One day, Giovanni finds a secret entrance to Rappaccini’s garden.  He went in and watched Beatrice in the garden moving quickly among the flowers until she reached him.  Giovanni apologized for coming into the garden without an invitation, but Beatrice smiled at him and made him feel welcome.  “I see you love flowers,” she said.  “And so you have come to take a closer look at my father’s rare collection.”  Giovanni becomes aware of an ominous mixture of beauty emanating from purple shrub set in a marble vase.  He is literally burned when Beatrice touches his arm, leaving “a burning and tingling agony in his hand and a purple print line that of her four small fingers”, but he soon forgets the pain while thinking about Beatrice.  “Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright!  It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.”  Hawthorne was arguing that women should not be defined according to a binary of good and evil, or purity and impurity.  People, regardless of their gender, have something of the “infernal” in them, because we naturally experience a mixture of both dark and bright emotions.

Giovanni smells a fragrance like that which moments before had come from Beatrice and he makes a move toward the cynosure shrub as if to pluck a flower.  She grasps his hand and forces it back, saying, “Touch it not!  Not for thy life!  It is fatal!”  Giovanni has Beatrice in his heart and he meets her in the garden every day, skipping out on his classes.  One day he runs into his professor who is worried about him and he warns Giovanni to stay away from Rappaccini and his daughter, because she has poison in her blood and on her breath.  The professor gives Giovanni a little silver bottle which he says can destroy even the most powerful poison.  Giovanni realizes that he has become poisoned and he calls Beatrice a monster.
Beatrice confronts her father saying, “Why did you do this terrible thing to your own child?”  Rappaccini looked surprised and asked, “What do you mean, my daughter?  You have power no other woman has.  You can defeat your strongest enemy with only your breath.  Would you rather be a weak woman?”  Beatrice replied, “I want to be loved, not feared.  But now, it does not matter.  I am leaving you, father.  I am going where the poison you have given me will do no harm.  Good bye to you, Giovanni.”  Beatrice dropped to the ground and died at the feet of her father and Giovanni.  The poison had been too much a part of the young woman.  The medicine that destroyed the poison, destroyed her, as well.
Giovanni should have realized that the time he spent with Beatrice was not meant to be infinite, it was a gift and he would no longer be able to whisper nothings into her ear or sing a lullaby to her.  He could travel back to his place and climb the staircase to the window where he first saw her.  Maybe he could take a trip up to the lake that was surrounded with pines to try and find a sign that would help him forget her, or he could make a quilt from the picture that he had of her in his mind, before she disappeared and became unknown.

Actually the dress was purple, but that did not fit the prompt.

Written for Daily Addictions prompt Week #30 – Infinite, for FOWC with Fandango –Unknown, for July Writing Prompts – She wore a red dress, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt – Cynosure, for Ragtag Community – Whisper, for Scotts Daily Prompt – Work, for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 358 prompts – Heart Pass Time Lake Sign Pines Quilt Travel Picture Staircase Trip Gift, for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt “Nathaniel Hawthorne Quote”, for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – Day and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Lullaby.

Standing Up To Putin

I don’t have high hopes that Trump will say anything derogatory to scorn his Russian friend at the upcoming summit meeting.  That little old ant thought that he could move that rubber tree plant, while that silly old ram kept butting that dam, but Trump is just a toy balloon and I am hoping that he will burst soon, as he is being complicit in the exploitation of the Russian people by indulging Putin and chances are they’re bound to go pop.  Many people feel that Trump should abandon the talks altogether after the 12 indictments that special counsel Robert S. Mueller has handed down to members of the Russian military intelligence branch on charges of hacking American computers.  Woebegone as Trump is not focused on protecting elections and he will try to avoid a kerfuffle at any cost.  Normally I would cheer for any chance that leaders could get together and sit down to hash out their problems, but I don’t see any reform coming out of these meetings, if Trump is not willing to call out Putin for interfering with the American government.

According to legend, King Solomon had this ring which was given to him by God, and it allowed him control demons, but I don’t think that Trump has a ring like this to control the demon Vladimir Putin.  Ownership of all major Russian enterprises is now tight in the grip of Putin and his cronies, who rather than investing in their nation’s development, stash their money outside the country (some of it in Trump-branded luxury condominiums).  This is a new form of low, as all the wealth of all the Russians apart from the Putin mafia barely equals the amount that Russia’s leaders have spirited out of the country.  The Russian people have a long climb ahead of them as long as Putin is their ruler.  Trump said that does not expect to have a Perry Mason moment when he meets with Putin, but if Trump would only call out Putin for all of the lies that he has spread, the Russians citizens might begin to wake up, look around and notice the pattern that is leading them down a path to destruction.

It seems so simple to me, but it is not because the Russian government has spent years getting control of the media and now reporters are picked by the Kremlin, as Putin has forced all the major TV channels to submit to his will.  This is the real fake news and any story that is thought to be unreasonable would not be published, or it might have to go through some type of trim to take the edge off of it.  It does not take a firefighter to know that Moscow is tired of being manipulated by the Kremlin’s non news items that does nothing to uncover the unethical behavior and social injustice that is taking place in Russia today.  My great aunt told me that when she ran out of toilet paper while living in Russia, that she would wipe her ass with pictures of Putin from the newspapers, because she thought he deserved that.

The Kremlin keeps trying to promote the pop-culture fame that their leader has achieved, and this is done by publishing a shirtless image of Putin strolling along the gravel banks of a Siberian river in army boots and camouflage pants, wearing a cross around his neck.  In March of this year, a group of Russian activists spent the night in jail after they spray painted a giant slogan against President Vladimir Putin on the frozen surface of a major river in the center of his hometown.  During the World Cup this year, Russians on social media were tying themselves up in knots trying to guess why Vladimir Putin was a no show at the event.

Written for Daily Addictions prompt – Abandon, for FOWC with Fandango – Legend, for July Writing Prompts – Chances are, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt – Scorn, for Ragtag Community – Kerfuffle, for Scotts Daily Prompt – Firefighter, for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt “Reform”, for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 358 prompts – climb simple low tight trim gravel pattern path spread spray knots edge, for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – demon, for Teresa’s Haunted Wordsmith Three Things Challenge prompts – great aunt, ant, plant and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Woebegone.

The Offer

Gerard was never satisfied with his lot in life.  Others always had more money, better clothes, better looking women, okay they at least had a woman.  One day Gerard is made an offer he can’t refuse, he is to do as he is told, or else he will be killed.  The Godfather was not known for making threats, he only made promises that he followed through with.  The Godfather told Gerard that even though they have known each other many years, that this is the first time that he ever came to him for help and that he had never extended an invitation for him to visit his house, not even for a cup of coffee, even though his wife is godmother to Gerard’s only child.  The Godfather said, “Let’s be frank here, you never wanted my friendship, because you are afraid to be in my debt.”

Gerard wanted permission to date a girl who was connected to the rival Tattaglia family, who were dealing drugs which the Godfather was against.  Don Corleone agreed, but only after he dispatched his main man Luca Brasi to infiltrate the organization, however during the meeting Brasi is stabbed and killed.  Gerard is told that he is to become the new informer, as he is already trusted by the Tattaglia family and there is nothing that he can do except comply to the wishes of the Godfather.

Gerard knew all about what happened with Johnny who signed this contract when he first started out with a big-band leader.  Johnny being a godson to Don Corleone wanted to get out of this contract as his career got better.  The Godfather went to see the bandleader, and offered him $10,000 to let Johnny go, but the bandleader said no.  So the next day, Don Corleone went to see the bandleader again, only this time with Luca Brasi.  Within an hour, the bandleader signed the release, with a certified check of $1,000, as Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, while the Godfather assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.

Later the famous singer Johnny Fontane came to visit Don Vito Corleone and asks for his help to secure a film role that will boost his fading career.  The head of the film studio, flat out refused to give Fontane the part, but Don Corleone tells Johnny, that he would make him an offer that he can’t refuse.  The next day the studio head wakes up to find the severed head of his expensive racehorse in his bed.  Unsurprisingly, Fontane is subsequently given the part.  Gerard knew that he had to do whatever he was told.

Written for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – God and for Haunted Wordsmith Nothing But Ideas Today Story Starter.

Haven’t Got a Clue

Every post needs a title and since I am making this up as I go along, or you might say winging it, this is as good as any.  I looked over all of the prompts for today and I will decide on a course of action as i go along, using my own initiative and perceptions, so please bear with me while I am flying by the seat of my pants.  I will be using my instincts and going without a flight plan, hoping that I can come up with a scintillating post filled with lust, or at least one that is not too long, that you won’t read and just pass by it, or as Dango says TLDR, ‘too long didn’t read’.

I don’t have all day to write this post and that is a good thing, as I feel that deadlines actually drive creativity and they can help you to do your best work.  I don’t perform my best under stressful conditions, but the big idea behind being driven by a deadline is that it makes you prioritize your ideas and not sweat the small stuff and this allows your writing to be powerful and not persnickety. I  have enough ambition to finish what I start and getting to the finish line always makes me happy.  Sometimes I am not comfortable with the prompts, but I accept them for what they are, as without them, I would not have much of a story.  If I was comfortable with all of the prompts, my posts would probably end up being boring and that would make me unhappy.  We are all seeking comfort and happiness, but sometimes they tend to work against one another, much in the same way that writer’s block works against creativity.

That awful fear of not knowing where to start or where you are headed, or that what you will write is not going to be good enough is something that most writers face.  Writer’s block will hinder your creative spark, take away your prolific ideas, remove that drive that allows you to be innovative, so you won’t be able to explore, express, and make your own unique contribution to the world, even when you are given ingenious prompts.  To get your creativity back, you must build up resistance by fighting back.  Try to defeat your writer’s block, and push it out of your way, while you still have enough energy leftover for creative writing.

To get rid of writer’s block, you could go for a walk in a canyon, or take your boat out of the shed and head toward the river, especially if it is a hot day.  Hopefully the river won’t be too turbulent, or else you might want to bring along a pillow for your bottom.  I find it peaceful just being out on my lawn, as long as my neighbors are not cutting their grass with their electric lawn mower.  It is good when you don’t have to watch the clock or keep track of time observing the minute hand as it passes by.

If there were words, then I would be glad to tell you what to do, however I am no Dickens, Shelley or Keats.  I will try to make the best out of the bad, because tomorrow nobody will remember what I wrote about.  Alas, I did not create a tale that was full of scintillating lust that could never be satisfied, as this only exists when two people meet for the first time, as they want to see the other person in all their sensual splendor and experience the all of the tastes, scents, sounds, and textures, all while being accepted for who they are, however this does happen in the story of Theseus and Ariadne.

Theseus was a prince of Athens who decided to put a stop to the barbarous practice of sacrificial tribute that was due to an old dispute, where his city was required to send a tribute of young men and women every nine years to Minos, the king of Crete, so he volunteered as one of the selected youths.  The youths were given as an offering to the Minotaur and sent into the labyrinth, a convoluted space designed by the consummate craftsman Daedalus to contain the beast.  Daedalus also had a hand in the creation of the Minotaur because Minos’ wife Pasiphae had become enamored of a particularly handsome bull, and Daedalus constructed a hollow cow that would allow her to mate with the animal.  The result of this union was the Minotaur, a ferocious creature with the body of a man but the head of a bull.   When Ariadne laid her eyes on the prince, she fell madly in love with Theseus and she handed him a clew (ball of thread) to help him find his way out of the Labyrinth.  Her lissome body made Theseus feel welcome while her mellifluous voice flowed like honey and she became music to his ears.  Once Theseus entered the labyrinth, he could not go to a store to get any supplies that he might need, like a copper pipe to bash the Minotaur over the head with and there was no cabinet for him to hide in.  Theseus entered the labyrinth, killed the beast, and emerged victorious, saving the lives of the young Athenians and freeing Athens from further obligation to Crete.

Written for Daily Addictions prompt – Ambition, for FOWC with Fandango – Scintillating, for July Writing Prompts – Powerful and persnickety, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt – Mellifluous, for Ragtag Community – Clew, for Scotts Daily Prompt – Copper, for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 359 prompts – turbulent cabinet store lawn shed boat minute clock electric lust hand pillow, for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt “Quote Me” topics are – happiness and comfort, or writer’s block and creativity, for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – Big, for Teresa’s Haunted Wordsmith Three Things Challenge, where the three prompt words are “canyon, river and hot” and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Lissome.

Clear As A Bell

Any person’s death is a loss to all of us, because we are all part of mankind and as John Donne so aptly put, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”  The Funeral tolling of a bell is the technique of sounding a single bell very slowly, with a significant gap between strikes.  The term tolling may also be used to signify a single bell being rung slowly, and possibly half-muffled at a commemoration event many years later.  In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there and he later completed a quintessential novel titled, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.  Bells often toll to let a gregarious congregation know that they can come to church for a mass, but toll can also stand for a value, price or cost that one is required to pay in order to gain entry.

Quasimodo who worked in the bell tower at the cathedral of Notre Dame is famous for the way he jiggled and joggled the bells.  The answer is Victor Hugo, just in case you ask, “Who invited him?”, as not too many people want a hunchback at a party.  Claude Frollo found an abandoned baby and he adopted Quasimodo and gave him his name which he might have chose to commemorate the day when he found him, or possibly he meant this name to imply that the poor little creature was incomplete and imperfectly molded.  There is a Quasimodo Sunday which is the Sunday after Easter, and it is also called Low Sunday, the first words of the introit (psalm or antiphon sung or said while the priest approaches the altar for the Eucharist) for this day in Latin are, quasi modo geniti infantes and this translates into ‘as if new-born babes’.  Quasimodo is also used in surfing for an act of riding on a wave in a crouched position with one arm forward and one arm back.  I actually posted a story about Quasimodo titled ‘Rings a Bell’.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem titled ‘The Bells’ where he used rhythm and rhyme to evoke sound and mood and this allows the reader to almost hear the tinkling of the bells.  “To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.”  The term tintinnabulation is onomatopoeic, because it describes a sound and it means the ringing of bells.  Like ting or tinkle, it means to ring or jingle.

A bell is used in boxing to signify the start of the fight and it also signifies the end of a round and many boxers embrace the sound when they are saved by the bell.  The bell gives the fighter a rest in between rounds of a fight, but if you feel like you can no longer continue, like if someone has rang your bell, than you can always throw in the white towel, which is a way to signify that you have given up and you should never have to plead for the referee to end the fight.

To ‘bell the cat’ is a phrase that is used when someone takes the danger of a shared enterprise upon them self.  This alludes to the fable in which mice or rats come up with the idea of hanging a bell around the cat’s neck, I guess that they would use the cat’s collar as a hanger for the bell, so they will have a warning before it approaches, however it is a difficult task and it is hard to find someone who is willing to undertake the challenge, and it certainly is not for someone who lacks courage.  If you are enthusiastic about attending a party, then you would show up ‘with bells on’ and you would not be lax in your appearance.  I always thought that an airplane hangar would make a great place for a party.  A desert being a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs is completely different from a dessert which is a confectionery course that concludes a main meal.  There is a good chance that you will not hear a bell ringing when you are in the desert but I am always up for the dessert bell to ring signifying that savory items are being served.

I would not even think about writing a post about bells without mentioning The Rolling Stones who are considered to be the world’s greatest rock and roll band, and talking about their hit song Honky Tonk Women and although it is a raunchy song, you got to love that prevalent cowbell that rings throughout the song.  The song Bell Bottom Blues was written by Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock and it was recorded by Derek And The Dominos who formed a group after Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon worked on George Harrison’s solo album, All Things Must Pass.  Clapton was completely obsessed with Pattie Boyd, who asked him to get her these blue jeans that were called Landlubbers, which were hipsters with two little slip pockets at the front and she requested the flared rather than straight bottoms.  Clapton’s anguish is painfully clear in every note of this song and as he sang, “Bell bottom blues, you made me cry. I don’t want to lose this feeling.  And if I could choose a place to die.”  Bell-bottoms became popular in this country after Sonny and Cher started wearing them on their popular television show.

I wore bell-bottoms back in my hippie days and I also had a pony tail and love beads.  One thing that just makes my blood boil is when I see people continue to wear outdated fashions.  I wish that rap music would disappear for good along with Justin Bieber.  Other things about society that annoy me are the way President Trump kisses up to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.  Sometimes the prompt words are difficult to string together into a coherent post and when this happens it does upset me, but I always seem to get over it.

Written for Daily Addictions prompt – Plead, for FOWC with Fandango – Quintessential, for July Writing Prompts – Jiggled and joggled, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt – Tintinnabulation, for Ragtag Community – Embrace, for RayNotBradbury Cool Writing Prompt – ‘Game On’ 5 things about society that annoy you, for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Saturday Mix – Double Take – lacks/lax hangar/hanger for Scotts Daily Prompt – Desert, for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – Fight, for Teresa’s Haunted Wordsmith Three Things Challenge, where the three prompt words are “blues, rock and roll and country”, for Rachel Poli I Read I Write I Create – Time To Write Sentence Starter 36: “Who invited him?” and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Gregarious.