You Don't Mess Around With Stan

Stan was an English major. He'd studied four years and was proud of his personal prowess when it came to his phraseology. That's vocabulary to you and me. He wasn't bad with the Sunday Times crossword puzzle either.

He was making his way through the latest word challenge as he sat in Starbuck's sipping an espresso. The shimmering sunshine slipped through the open window casting the shadow from his pencil placidly upon his newspaper. And if it weren't for the occasional bawl of the baristas seeking to match a coffee cup with a customer, the subtle drone of patrons made him almost doze off. Stan thought the interior of the coffee shop was idyllic. Idyllic was a favourite word of Stan's and he often felt his surroundings to be idyllic, an outlook in keeping with his ultra-positive look at life. He also had great ardor for alliteration, in case you hadn't noticed.

And then there was Oliver. Oliver was a good friend of Stan's - the best perhaps. But Oliver was very different from his friend. Oliver never finished university. Instead he'd spent most of his time in the student lounge drinking beer and playing pool or checkers with his unacademically-minded buddies. As a result Oliver worked at a blue-collar job while his pal Stan was easily climbing the ladder of success.

Oliver, earbuds of his iPhone plugged solidly into his ears, yelled a greeting to Stan and as he sat down and spoke loudly he turned the formerly idyllic coffee shop into an impious, cacophonous cavern. Loudly to you and me. But to Stan Oliver was rowdy, strident, raucous, vociferous and particularly stentorian. You might say he spoke in a manner so loudly he could have wakened the daed. But then I think you got that already.

Alarmed and annoyed at having his quiet and discreet refuge interfered with Stan looked Oliver in the face and yelled at his friend. But Oliver, deep into his music, did not hear. After the third attempt Stan yammered at the top of his voice "This is another fine imbroglio you've gotten us into".

"Hey" replied Oliver. "How did you know I was listening to Natalie Imbroglio?"

You might say Stan was torn as he thought about hauling off and launching a bell-ringer at Oliver's clearly cavernous cranium.

This week's Two Word Tuesday prompt from Tara is imbroglio/mess. My apologies to Stan and Ollie for paraphrasing their well-known catch phrase.

Comments

The Polka Dot Door

A long time ago, when I was 22, my first child was born. That kid grew up on a little Canadian kid's show called Polka Dot Door, produced by the TV Ontario network. And Dad, more often than not, sat through those shows with his little one. Nine or so years later when a brother, and a year after that when a sister came along number one son was moving on to Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard. But there was a nice overlap where his siblings picked up where he had left off with Polka Dot Door. And Dad was right there to welcome them. So you're looking at a Polka Dot Door veteran. The show began in 1971 and ran to 1993. I didn't watch the full run but I did get in my fair share. The formula was pretty simple. A young male and female host, which seemed to change every week, sang songs, told stories, made crafts and generally did their best stimulate little brains. The show opened as follows... Imagination Day! Oh boy! ...

Hello Goodbye

Today a bit of a reflective piece. Rather than being funny, this is about the funny. It's a day of mixed emotion at nonamedufus . You see, after several months of inactivity I've dropped a couple of former blogger buddies off my blog roll. I kept hanging on and hanging on hoping they'd return to active blogging but, alas, after waiting in one case five months I've decided to let them go. I'm going to miss - going to? I have been missing - Margo at the Screaming Me-Me . She was one funny lady. From time to time she and I would engage in a feud or two for several days at a time but it was all in fun both for us and, I think, for our readers. And we'd leave each other funny comments, poking fun at each other. I miss her friendship and our humorous exchanges. The other blogger I'm letting go is Chelle, The Offended Blogger . Chelle was a special lady. In addition to her own blog she created and managed Humor Bloggers Dot Com where humour bloggers like m...

The Dangling Conversation

There's a debate underway in my household between my wife and I. I say "underway" because it hasn't quite reached the "raging" stage. If you want raging, my wife (a Francophone) and I (an Anglophone) from time to time (usually in a weak moment of my own making) slip into our number one discussion around why we don't speak more French at home - ergo - when am I, a former public servant who learned French at the expense of our gracious taxpayers and was technically rated bilingual (even though I hardly used it), going to improve my use of Canada's other language? This one never gets resolved, hence it's ongoing nature. But the current debate is over a remark I casually made the other day. I'm no geek, but with a lot of time on my hands I surf the web, converse on Facebook and such and - I have to admit - "I'm nonamedufus and I'm a Twitterholic". In an epiphany-like moment I was struck by the apparent impact of social networkin...

nonamedufus

Search This Blog