Hello everyone.
As you probably noticed, it has been a while since I posted a new challenge. I hope to get the challenge back up and running eventually. For now, feel free to browse the old challenges and try ones you didn’t do when they first appeared. I’m sure the participants wouldn’t mind if you looked at their contributions as well.
Cheers!
This would be a dream come true… but I’m not holding my breath. (Photo credit: Mary Harrsch)
Travel is usually a pleasure. The change in scenery soothes weary eyes while the sights often lift the spirits. Of course, the fortunate traveler also discovers excellent restaurants that deliver local recipes.
And then we have the eating establishments that are located inside the tourist attractions. They’re kind of like school cafeterias except the cooks know you’re not coming back… so there’s little reason for them to make the food edible. Some of these so-called restaurants are merely “not good” in the sense of airplane food but some look like they’d redefine the entire concept of food poisoning.
With that in mind, this week’s challenge offers several possibilities:
1- Recount an experience of eating at a tourist attraction. What made you decide to eat there and how did the food compare to the surroundings?
2- Think of a tourist destination that you would not expect to have good food. What is it about the location that would lead you away from culinary delights on the premises?
3- If you’ve had good food at a tourist destination, tell us about the meal. Also provide the location so that readers can benefit.
4- Propose the establishment of a restaurant at a tourist attraction of your choice. Include a basic business strategy and discuss why such a restaurant would be appropriate or profitable at the location you choose.
Compose and publish your response to this prompt on your own blog. Be sure to include a link to this post so that a pingback will appear here, thereby allowing other participants to discover your work. Please be patient if your pingback does not appear immediately; I am not at my computer 24/7 and I have to approve all pingbacks. For this reason, using the bcandelabra tag may be advisable.
I was shopping in a department store and had the pleasure of overhearing a mother and her (approximately) sixth grade son having a conversation. They were in the men’s underwear section and the son was not particularly happy with the experience.
The boy says to his mother, “Why do all these packages have men on the packages? Why can’t they show women wearing the underwear?”
We all know the obvious and most clearly correct answer. Don’t write about that. Instead, your challenge this week is to devise a sociological, psychological, or other other intellectually infused explanation for why underwear manufacturers don’t sell their product using irrelevant images like other businesses do.
You are not obligated to write a post about underwear packaging. Instead, consider focusing your post on the sociological or psychological (or other) phenomenon that your explanation is grounded in.
Sex sold valve caps. Sex sells cars. Sex sells alcohol. Sex doesn’t sell underwear? (Image is in the public domain.)
Compose and publish your response to this prompt on your own blog. Be sure to include a link to this post so that a pingback will appear here, thereby allowing other participants to discover your work. Please be patient if your pingback does not appear immediately; I am not at my computer 24/7 and I have to approve all pingbacks. For this reason, using the bcandelabra tag may be advisable.
He could kill and tax people, I’m sure. (Image is in the public domain.)
Nothing is certain but death and taxes, or so the old saying goes. Another popular quote: “Always look on the bright side of life.” Perhaps someone might also say, “Always look on the bright side of death and taxes.”
This week, you will not be writing an ode to how much you adore death or taxes, or even on how death and taxes might serve a useful purpose. Those topics are already overdone. Instead, pick another famous quotation and transform it into a line about death, taxes, or death and taxes.
Compose and publish your response to this prompt on your own blog. Be sure to include a link to this post so that a pingback will appear here, thereby allowing other participants to discover your work. Please be patient if your pingback does not appear immediately; I am not at my computer 24/7 and I have to approve all pingbacks. For this reason, using the bcandelabra tag may be advisable.
Happiness is a beautiful thing. (Photo came from this site by way of a Google Images search.)
Are you laughing? If so, existing research can offer a reason for that. Humor is often structured as the juxtaposition or integration of two things that don’t go together. It might be that “Dick Cheney” and “sex appeal” are incongruent, that “sex appeal” and that scowl in the picture don’t go together, or that a post containing the words “sex appeal” doesn’t seem to fit on this blog. Whatever the reason, this post’s title surely got your attention.
By the same token, you might be surprised to see that this post is written in a serious tone without the undercurrents of humor or innuendo you found in the title. If anything, the outrageous title proved to be sober explanation of what you found when you read further.
For this week’s challenge, your title should create humor by bringing together two things that one does not normally see together. The two things might both appear in your title or you might create a clash between your title and the picture everyone will see immediately. Alternately, you could choose a title that will grab your regular readers’ attention for being far outside the scope of your normal tone and focus. Whatever you choose, make sure that your post is serious yet still relevant to the title you used for your starting point.
Compose and publish your response to this prompt on your own blog. Be sure to include a link to this post so that a pingback will appear here, thereby allowing other participants to discover your work. Please be patient if your pingback does not appear immediately; I am not at my computer 24/7 and I have to approve all pingbacks. For this reason, using the bcandelabra tag may be advisable.
The many lives of a soul. (Image credit: Himalayan Academy Publications)
This week, you can write about yourself, someone else, or a fictional character. Whomever you choose, that person is going to die twice in your post for this week’s challenge.
Imagine that someone is going through successive lives and that those lives (or individual events from those successive lives) come together to develop a person’s spirit. With this in mind, write three stories; each story should come from a different reincarnation of that person but that person must be a different entity in each story. The result should (at least somewhat) resemble the character development you normally find in a novel but without keeping that character in the same body. You could also use this challenge to show how your selected person or character became the way they are or to speculate about what they’ll be like in their future lives.
Compose and publish your response to this prompt on your own blog. Be sure to include a link to this post so that a pingback will appear here, thereby allowing other participants to discover your work. Please be patient if your pingback does not appear immediately; I am not at my computer 24/7 and I have to approve all pingbacks. For this reason, using the bcandelabra tag may be advisable.
Deep Throat comes in various forms. (Photo credit: Tanakawho)
Major events have a way of incorporating references from unusual places and, in return, the linguistic remnants of these historical moments find their way to even stranger contexts.
For example, think of Deep Throat. Perhaps most commonly known as the pseudonym for the man whose revelations would lead to Richard Nixon’s downfall, the name “Deep Throat” originated as the title of a pornographic movie. Of course, its politically tinged use has kept that phrase recognizable in English vocabulary even when the two words are used together unintentionally.
This week, you’re going to allow a phrase to travel from obscurity to fame, or vice versa. (Fame is a relative term.) Choose one of the following options:
1- Choose an obscure name and apply it to something more prominent in today’s political culture. That “something” should be significant enough to end up in a history book one day. There should be no obvious connection between the origin and the new context you choose.
2- Choose a phrase that is already prominent in today’s political culture and apply it to something unexpected and less historically significant.
Compose and publish your response to this prompt on your own blog. Be sure to include a link to this post so that a pingback will appear here, thereby allowing other participants to discover your work. Please be patient if your pingback does not appear immediately; I am not at my computer 24/7 and I have to approve all pingbacks. For this reason, using the bcandelabra tag may be advisable.
This week’s challenge has two parts. You will start by creating the constraints you’ll have to work with later. To achieve this, you will forge a chain.
Chains may not be liberating but they can make things more interesting. (Image is in the public domain.)
Your chain will consist of ten questions and ten answers. Start the chain with a question of your choice and the second link will answer it. (Tip: complete sentences will be easier to handle.) The third link will be a new question that would generate the answer that appeared above it and the fourth link will be a new answer for the question immediately above it. Keep going until you have ten questions and ten answers.
For example:
Why do birds fly south for the winter?
It’s warmer in the south.
Why is it better to live in Florida than Michigan?
The senior dating scene is much more lively.
What is something that Justin Bieber has never said in his life?
I just finished reading a book.
Why do you look so happy?
My sister is getting married.
Why are your parents angry?
I got an F on my chemistry test last week.
Did that night of drinking have any consequences?
My liver will never be the same.
Do you like the new cookbook I bought you?
It looks beautiful on my bookshelf.
Where did you put your soccer trophy?
It’s in the garage with the rest of the fake plastic stuff.
Where did you park your Kia?
I found a very expensive parking lot.
Did you see anything memorable while you were downtown?
The homeless people are really depressing.
Once you’ve finished that, you’ll write the main portion of your post. The first question in your chain will be the post title. The fifth answer will be the first sentence you write. The tenth answer will be the last sentence in your post. You may write as much or as little as you like but the post must be coherent.
Compose and publish your response to this prompt on your own blog. Be sure to include a link to this post so that a pingback will appear here, thereby allowing other participants to discover your work. Please be patient if your pingback does not appear immediately; I am not at my computer 24/7 and I have to approve all pingbacks. For this reason, using the bcandelabra tag may be advisable.
The eternal spirit of negation. (The image, drawn by Julius Nisle, is in the public domain.)
“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
—Mephistopheles (In Faust I by Joann Wolfgang von Goethe)
We all know the cliche that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. For some reason, no one ever seems to consider the inverse proposition. Perhaps people prefer to focus on positive results when such are presented instead of fishing for less-than-admirable motives.
Then again, no one ever exclaims “but I meant badly!” when praised.
Today, you are being challenged to consider a situation in which detestable motives lead to ethically admirable results. However, your post should transcend mere description; you should also cast some sort of judgment on the person or actions. Your exposition may also need to consider the nature of “good” and “bad” within the context of your example; conversely, you may choose to defend the concept of objectively correct ethical stances against relativist positions.
No matter how deeply philosophical you choose to become, be sure to select an example for which there is no obvious answer. Also, don’t lapse into an emotionally charged sympathy for the devil.
Who doesn’t love an old library? (Photo is in the public domain.)
This week’s challenge starts with a game.
First, select four numbers between zero and nine. If you like, you may choose two of a single number within this group of four.
Next, create three 3-digit numbers using your selections from the first step.
Next, visit this Dewey Decimal System website and find the subjects that match your three digit numbers. If one of your results turns up “not assigned or no longer used,” you may create a new 3-digit number to replace it from the original four you selected.
Some results will be broad categories (diseases) and some will be more specific (Bible). For any broad category you turn up, choose something specific within that category. Specific topics can be kept as-is.
This will leave you with three things that must be incorporated into your post this week. However, this should not be an exercise in one-mention-and-done. Elevate your three results to the level of setting, character, theme, or other major component in your post.
The Blacklight Candelabra 