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1/ Ok let’s do this thing My topic: jokes and microfictions I’ll do it as a semantic variant of a 1-like-1-tweet ratchet. Reply to this tweet with a single prompt WORD, and I’ll try to QT with EITHER a joke using it, OR a 1-tweet microfiction about it. Limit 99.
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// unnumbered comment tweets like this won’t count towards the 99. // This will be a slow thread since I actually have to think of stuff. // I’ll actually start tomorrow. It’d be nice to have all 99 prompts ready to go before I start... but 20-30 should do.
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2/ The Newbians discovered FTL travel, but didn’t travel to the stars. A Galactic Council Ambassador arrived to ask why “Oh the hyperdrive tech was easy; we just can’t figure out a calendar with all the hyperspace jumps” “Is that all? Just use a calendar that’s 100% leap days”
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leap
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3/ “Why can’t we join the elite postrat number club?” the irrational numbers asked the transcendental numbers. π exchanged a look with e and replied, “Well, most of you are kinda cool, or at least have never been ratioed, but some of you are the roots of rationality”
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transcendental
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// Prompts closed. I got organized on a spreadsheet. Here's a list of all prompts, and a composition sheet I'll work on. This is rather challenging fiction-writing kata for me. The list is also very revealing...about something. I have 104, so may drop up to 5 to hit my 99 goal.
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// Open call -- once I've posted my entry on a prompt, feel free to jump in and try to top mine by responding to that specific one with your own. I'm kinda in learning/practice mode here, so those of you who are better than me at this game can hopefully school me.
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5/ An evangelical Christian missionary was trying to convert an atheist software engineer. "You know why you should really join us? Because the Christian God is the alpha and the omega!" "What difference does that make?" "He's a full-stack god!"
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Omega.
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6/ Tired of hearing "corporations are not people," Galt, Inc developed an AI to design an anthropomorphic representation of itself based on internal data and employee photos. Unfortunately, no matter how they tuned it, the AI only generated lizard faces.
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ok : anthropomorphic (or -ism or -ize or whatever other shoe fits the word best in your joke)
8/ Through the dirty windows of the Covid-shuttered bakery, the empty display cases, once full of scrumptious cookies, were visible. Camped under the awning, a derelict homeless woman watched a rerun of the Hallmark Christmas movie she'd once starred in.
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scrumptious
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9/ The man with a hook for a hand, his face dark under the hood of his anorak, limped slowly down the rainy pier, his wellingtons squelching in the puddles. At the end of the pier, a woman in the wet dress screamed, "Help! I'm being murdered by a cliche!"
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wellingtons
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11/ "Wise master, I aspire to goodness, but evil surrounds me. What should I do?" asked the seeker. "There is no certainty of grace in this life," the master replied sadly, "All we can do is take notes on the evil around us, and review them weekly."
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Goodness
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12/ "Sir, the AI has locked into a self-improvement recursion and has locked the bunker doors. It has enough backup power to launch the missiles!" "Isn't MacGyver in there?" "Yes sir, but it's no use. The AI has collected all the paperclips!"
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Recursion
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13/ “What the hell happened here?” the alien ambassador asked. “A mad emperor, aided by venal aristocrats, pandered to the paranoid insecurities of a crazed, conspiratorial religious mob, and 300,000 people died.” “And what do you call this system of government?” “Democracy!”
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Democracy
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14/ Joe looked up at the canopy, letting the shade-filtered sun wash over him. He closed his eyes, and breathed in a deep lungful of the forest air. “What did you say this forest bathing thing was called Hiroaki?” A bird fluttered overhead. Plop. “That version? Shirin Yucku”
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Canopy
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16/ “The problem, Karen, is that your life is out of alignment with the universe. That’s why you got canceled. Yoga can’t fix that.” “Do you mean my chakras? Should I try meditation? A juice cleanse?” “No, I mean you’re a lawful evil soul trapped in a chaotic neutral world.”
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Alignment
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20/ The physicist made a time machine that could only travel to the future after 1992, but soon got bored. All future times seemed alike. “Why don’t you make a parallel universe portal gun instead?”Fukuyama suggested. “No use. The end-of-history multiverse is ergodic.”
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Ergodicity
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21/ The famine was in its third year. The royal granaries were finally empty. The starving citizens gathered around the palace. “We demand to see the king!” they said. The queen appeared on the balcony, tearfully smacking her lips. “I’m sorry, there’s only one leg left.”
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Granary
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24/ The market had reached saturation. No amount of marketing seemed to drive up sales. After another grim quarter, the Gillette division head made the call. “We have no choice. Prepare the announcement. We are adding another blade.”
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Saturation
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26/ The giant sat outside the Galt Bar, drinking and raging about how parasitism was destroying the world. Finally he downed an entire barrel at once and passed out. “What’s with him?” Hank Rearden asked John Galt. “Atlas chugged,” Galt shrugged.
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parasitism
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27/ Election results on the planet Lolcowia had been delayed yet again, as losers in every race alleged conspiracies. The galactic council ambassador began shopping for souvenirs and packing his bags. “We’re shutting down the embassy. This planet is down for the recount.” t.co/X8WcigIFIN
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// Hmm. This galactic ambassador character has potential for longer stories. He’s already appeared in 3 jokes.
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28/ After a strenuous series of delicate, high-profile missions, the galactic ambassador landed on the pre-contact backwater planet Tradu for a vacation out of the spotlight. “It’s a retconocracy,” he explained to reporters. “Nostalgia fields so strong, they can’t see me.”
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1. Nostalgia
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29/ “Ambassador, you’ve been roving the Galaxy for 150 years, visiting 1000s of planets for Galactic Council missions. How do you stay organized?” “I use an online zettelkasten hyperspatial memory.” “But what if the ansible link is slow to load?” “Oh, then I use Moleskines.”
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Zettelkasten
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30/ The autodidact wrote up his 1000-page theory, and sent the PDF to top academics. All but one ignored it. One replied, requesting a bound paper copy. “I’ll mail it asap! At least 1 person sees past my lack of credentials!” “Actually, never mind. I found my lost doorstop.”
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autodidact
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31/ Life was utterly shitty on the planet Ga, yet everyone claimed to be flourishing. “Ga’s atmosphere has an unknown contaminant we are still analyzing,” the galactic ambassador wrote in his report. “Collective memories of eudaimonia have rotted into endemic pseudaimonia”
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Eudaimonia
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32/ On a conference call, people from Austin were talking about how much they liked it there. A San Franciscan cut in, “You’re all NPCs, SF is still the real.... ewww, OWW...” “Hey, you ok?” “Nbd, just stepped in some poop and got jabbed with a needle. What was I saying?”
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Austin
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33/ The dying writer looked quietly at the last copy of the folder containing his entire oeuvre, meticulously organized by date and theme. 204MB of self-absorption, self-reference, and self-importance. A life wasted. Two shelves worth of dead-tree. He clicked ‘Move to Trash.’
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Self-reference
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