One Hundred Words (19)

06/18/2008, 11:30 am -- by Chloe | No Comments

They sat on the porch because it was too hot inside.

There were four of them, and they smoked one pipe between them as they sat on rickety chairs made of fallen branches with their feet up on the solid porch railing.

They didn’t talk, but there was only the street and the sky to talk about anyway. The street and the sky and a couple of mangy dogs, scratching at their fleas and chasing a cat all over the road.

So they sat and they smoked, one pipe between them, because it was too hot to light four.

–CLA

One Hundred Words (18)

06/16/2008, 10:00 am -- by Erin | No Comments

Twaddle, twaddle, poke and paddle,
tell me what you see,
stirring, arms taut ”˜round that big pot
you mimic, so, with glee.
Oh, I added cumin — but that\’s just human —
or perhaps I like the kick.
To our sweet and savory meat?
Perhaps I should spices pick.
Don\’t worry now, for you\’ll see how
you won\’t tear up at taste.
Though I can\’t deny I\’ve never tried
this partic\’lar baste.

So sat they down, with smile and frown,
Sans restaurant or waiter.
And Cook agreed with Taster, indeed
She\’d use a recipe later.

–EC

One Hundred Words (17)

06/12/2008, 9:00 am -- by Djere | No Comments

Attention Lowe’s customers: the time is now 9:45 p.m. and our store will be closing for the evening in fifteen minutes. Just a friendly reminder: Lowe’s hours are 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and Sunday 8 to 8. At this time I’d like to ask you to make your final selections and bring them to the lighted registers at the front of the store where our friendly cashiers will gladly ring you through. As always, thank you for shopping and saving with Lowe’s.

Attention customers: the time is now 10 p.m. and our store is closing for the evening. For your shopping convenience, we will reopen tomorrow at 6 a.m.

–JJM

One Hundred Words (16)

06/10/2008, 11:16 am -- by Steve | No Comments

Congressional Democrats are idiots. I can’t think of any other way to explain their newest plan to “save us” from high energy prices.

Step One: eliminate tax breaks for domestic production of oil (thus removing what incentive remains to produce it here)

Step Two: institute a “windfall profits” tax on oil companies (thus penalizing shareholders for market forces outside their control)

Add this brilliance to their unflinching refusal to consider drilling for oil off our shores or in ANWR, and you might begin to understand how Congress consistently boasts an approval rating 10 to 15 points lower than even President Bush.

–sm

One Hundred Words (15)

06/5/2008, 9:00 am -- by Job Tate | 1 Comment

It’d be like Happy Christmas and Merry New Year. Gentlemen and Ladies, Brothers Warner.

Ernie and Bert, corn creamed.

Sirhan Sirhan.

Trojan Appaloosas, seeds of sunflowers — Roll n’ Rock 7/24!

Like the Unbelievable Hulk went to his throat, nose and ear doctor with mouth and hoof disease.

The Pips and Gladys Knight — ya feelin’ me? Catch my drift, Yoda?

It’s why I didn’t, knowdontcha?

I could’ve told her I loved her. It would’ve been accurate.

But it sure wouldn’t have sounded right.

The glass wasn’t half empty or half full — the glass was completely neutral.

That’s right — I have a Swedish glass.

–JBT

One Hundred Words (14)

06/4/2008, 9:00 am -- by Tom | 3 Comments

“Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” –2 Cor 6:14

This verse has often been used to discourage close association with unbelievers, and most classically to discourage “missionary dating.” But its core idea can be extended as a warning to know and beware the ideas of those close to you.

What if Barack Obama had taken Jeremiah Wright’s vitriol a little more seriously? What if Beirut had not chosen to overlook Hezbollah’s history and message of violence while letting it build Lebanon’s infrastructure?

Close relationships are incredibly valuable, but when you link yourself to someone’s good, you’re attached to the bad as well.

–TM

One Hundred Words (13)

06/3/2008, 9:00 am -- by Djere | No Comments

In America, Christians spend too much time dying of thirst in the desert.

Oh, if only the rain would come”¦ if only I could feel the next move of God I would have life.

Have you ever seen pictures of the desert days after the rain? It\’s beautiful: life springs up overnight where there was nothing before.

Have you ever seen that same desert a month after the rain? Desolation.

He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.
(Psalm 1:3)

Don\’t wait for it — dig for it.

–JJM

One Hundred Words (12)

06/2/2008, 9:00 am -- by Kaitlin | No Comments

“Live in the sunshine,
Swim the sea,
Drink the wild air’s salubrity.”

Flipping through, of all things, my sister\’s CosmoGirl, I found a few lines of Emerson, and it made me really happy. Between the senseless fashion (if the captions below the photos of what “works” and what doesn\’t were switched, would anyone know the difference?) and the uncomfortable boy-lust (they fall so easily into swooning over underage celebrities ”” what does it say about the adults who write this stuff?), I discovered a captivating example of the immediacy of words.

See? Poetry is not completely irrelevant.

–KB

One Hundred Words (11)

05/30/2008, 12:00 pm -- by Connie | No Comments

With so much time spent sitting in a hospital lately, I made a new friend with some interesting things to teach.

Life Lessons from Abraham Lincoln:

— 1865 wasn\’t that long ago. I thought of Abe as a founding father, yet had he not been killed, he could have met my grandparents.

— Politics didn\’t just get corrupt. Old Honest Abe knew how to make a deal.

— Appreciate what you have. In describing Niagara Falls, Lincoln wrote: “…when Adam met his Maker…when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea…before Christ suffered…Niagara roared here.”

— He loved his wife.

–CSM

One Hundred Words (10)

05/29/2008, 9:00 am -- by David | No Comments

In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer. Comments under ten words!

My heart was broken on some forgotten yesterday
when there wasn’t time to stop and fix it
So the part of me that sees is here today
but the part that feels is not

If I had faith like Joshua
I could stop the sun,
make the world stop spinning,
freeze time,
let the scattered fragments catch up,

and I’d be whole again.

But I doubt that such a selfish act
could ever pass for faith with God.

–DFS

One Hundred Words (9)

05/28/2008, 9:00 am -- by Chloe | No Comments

In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer. Comments under ten words!

It snowed on Friday. In New Mexico. In May.

When I saw it, I laughed, the kind of laugh that only forms when the irony of life triumphs. And all day I kept thinking of “The Day After Tomorrow.” I don\’t know about global warming and all that, but I do know some pretty old people with some very long memories at the restaurant where I work, and none of them remember snow in May.

I\’m not saying there\’s going to be some catastrophic planet-wide climactic shift or anything. Nothing like that. It just freaked me out. That\’s all.

–CLA

One Hundred Words (8)

05/27/2008, 9:30 am -- by Job Tate | No Comments

In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer. Comments under ten words!

My Orioles have failed me again.

Against seemingly insurmountable odds, the Baltimore Orioles have risen from the smoky ruins of this past winter, where they traded off their stars and paired down their lineup, to present themselves as contenders against some of the league’s best teams and arms. This has included, up till this week’s series, the highest-paid team in baseball history — the New York Yankees.

So yes, they’ve failed me this week, but they’ve done so reeking of determination… and with the stench of class.

So it’s true: I guess the O’s just stink.

–JBT

One Hundred Words (7)

05/23/2008, 9:00 am -- by Steve | 1 Comment

In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer. Comments under ten words!

I walk to work, each day, past a theatre with sharp and jutting eaves, a lovely avian habitat. Spring is the season of life, and every morning the new birds scream and chirp with the bold insolence of youth.

This is much more annoying than you might think.

Wednesday, accosted for a solid block by high-pitched screech, I finally looked up to the overhang and implored the birds for silence. “Would you please shut up!”

Less than one second later, a blow to my head. Struck in the glasses, I staggered back.

They shut me up.

Thursday I carried an umbrella.

–sm

One Hundred Words (6)

05/22/2008, 2:30 pm -- by Kaitlin | 1 Comment

In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer. Comments under ten words!

The days are invariably warm cloudless blue, the doming unmarred sky curving above, when a smudge appears over a mountain ridge. Growing, the plumes engulf the horizon in hazy, faintly menacing, gray. The fear comes, though, only when the tiny line of fire pierces through, eating the hillside.

When I heard “Grapevine Fires,” on Death Cab for Cutie\’s recent Narrow Stairs, I heard the inevitability and helplessness that the California wildfires kindle, the searching circumspection. And the carefully resigned hope. We instinctively know it is “only a matter of time.” But we still believe that “everything would be all right.”

–KB

One Hundred Words (5)

05/21/2008, 9:00 am -- by Chloe | 3 Comments

In the spirit of Proverbs 10:19, our newest regular feature will be a series of posts of 100 words — or fewer. Comments under ten words!

My mother is complaining about the heat. It’s 103, no A.C., and I say, “Remembering this got me through five months of snow.” And she says, “You like this?”

I’m happier when it’s hot. I love emerging from a dark, air-conditioned house into the dry heat. I love the warm wind cooling my sweat and messing up my hair. I love evenings when it’s 75, and my sister and I lie on her back yard’s broad wall, recalling childhood memories because that’s all we have in common since I moved 2000 miles away.

What was I thinking?

–CLA

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