Discount Storytime
Weekly stand-alone humorous short stories for grown-ups, with engaging plots, rich character development, and intelligent dialogue carefully edited out. Enjoy!
Discount Storytime
Discount Musings, Volume 1
This episode is a collection of thoughts and musings I've had while writing stories. To my listeners, you're welcome and I'm sorry.
Our Small Business Shout Out this week is Beaverdale Books. Hear Jan tell us about not just this awesome little bookstore, but all the exciting events coming up.
instagram: @beaverdalebooks
X: @beaverdalebooks
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Music:
"Skinny Food Fighters Blues 85" by Won Jong Hwa from Pixabay
"Corporate Optimism" by Dvir Silver from Pixabay
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Thanks!
Coffee
Hi, this is Coffee McCann, and welcome to episode 35 of Discount Storytime literature's finest dumpster fire. In addition to storytelling, discount Storytime promotes local businesses in the Des Moines, iowa area. After the story, stick around for our small business, shout out and hear from Beaverdale Books. This week's story is a little bit different. Instead of the typical 15 to 20 minute story, this is going to be a little bit shorter and it is a collection of thoughts and musings that I've had when trying to come up with story ideas. Little things that weren't enough to build into a full story, but I thought you might enjoy hearing. So we'll call this one Discount Musings, and this may be first of a series, so I hope you enjoy it. And here we go.
Speaker 1:When writing a story, punctuation is key. I like to start with all the punctuation first. About every two lines I'll place a period, occasionally a question mark and sometimes an exclamation mark. Then I fill in random commas and quotation marks. Once all the punctuation is in, I start filling in with words, but those are less important.
Speaker 1:I remember taking my kids fishing and they caught a boot. They were so excited to catch a fish that I couldn't tell them the truth, so we took the boot home and bought a large aquarium for it. Then one day the boot was floating at the top and I had to race to the boot store and find an exact match to replace it with. Man fishing is a pain in the ass. If some people think clowns are scary, wait until they hear about murderers.
Speaker 1:Spell casting can be unreliable. One time I cast a spell on my neighbor Maya to make her leave her apartment, but the spell only worked on Mondays through Fridays from 8 am to 5.30 pm. One day the spell glitched and she came home early and caught me raiding her refrigerator. They say too many cooks in the kitchen is bad, but are they giant cooks? What if you have tiny cooks, like little monkey cooks? I bet you can fit a lot of them in. If I could do one thing for mental health, just one thing I would put more seatbelts on turnip trucks. I guess I have a good sense of humor. Since I was a small child I've made others break out in nervous laughter. I'll never forget the sage advice I got from Old man Mumbleface. It was mostly gibberish, but he said something about tomatoes. Or maybe it was turtles. No, no, it was about tomatoes. I think If I'm ever in front of a firing squad. My last words will be to correctly pronounce Worcestershire, not in a bragging sort of way, but in a sincere, humble sort of way.
Speaker 1:I remember great-aunt Tilde and her bedtime stories. She would make sure nobody else was around and then bring out a large leathery book and start reading in a strange language while I wore a glowing skull amulet. She asked me to be a whaling vessel for her dark master. But Great Aunt Tilde had a thick accent, so instead of whaling vessel, I thought she was saying whaling vessel and said no, because I like whales. She then said no, not whaling vessel, whaling vessel, but I said no whaling vessels. This went back and forth for a long time and she finally got mad and left. I kept the skull amulet and it still glows if I walk past graveyards. If we're on a plane together, don't talk to me and stop yelling open the emergency exit.
Speaker 1:My friend Stan came over for coffee. I gave him a cup of coffee grounds and he looked to me and asked hey, where's the water? Can you believe that? Why would you water down perfectly good coffee? Believe that? Why would you water down perfectly good coffee? I am getting my face on the dollar bill, but it's taking a while. I started with a pretty detailed drawing of my face covering George Washington, but that took a long time and I thought I have a lot more of these to do, so I lowered my artistic standards to more of a bald, smiley face. However, the jerks at the government print over six million $1 bills every day. Seriously, how do they expect me to keep up with that?
Speaker 1:The other day, a small child asked me if being an adult is happy. I said yes and no. As you get older, you're less happy. Every single year of your life from now on, you will be a little bit less happy and less happy, and less happy. There's nothing you can do about it until you grow old and die. She got real quiet and started crying. Then her mom told her to get away from the weird man. I looked around and I didn't see any weird men. That mom is such a liar. Some people just don't understand children. My wife got mad at me for yawning at a wedding last week, but she's the one that wrote long marriage vows. Remember. A spellchecker will not know the difference between starting and starving. This is important.
Speaker 1:If you write the sentence, I dream of starting a large family. Remember the Guess I'll Go Eat Worms song from our youth? You know who really doesn't like that person. That's right, worms. They say the rich should pay more in taxes. I say we should let the rich have a choice Either pay more in taxes or buy our groceries. I hope they choose groceries and I hope they decide soon, because I'm almost out of orange juice.
Speaker 1:If space aliens arrive on Earth and ask me to take them to our leader, this is what I would do. I would show them my cat and then get on my hands and knees and pretend like I'm worshiping my cat like a god. Then maybe, as if not to seem rude, they would also get on their hands and knees and worship my cat. That would be pretty funny. I'm tired of people telling me to choose joy. Those people are stupid. Choose palmolive. It's all mental Thinking. You're bathing is the same as bathing. If I'm ever held captive in a supervillain's lair and the supervillain is telling me her evil plans, I'm taking notes, or at least pretending to take notes I'll probably just doodle. I think the world would be a better place if we were all more like dogs and feared vacuum cleaners, if ghost witches from another realm suddenly appeared and demanded that I give them one dollar. I would do it. Hey man, it's only one dollar.
Speaker 1:The doctor didn't slap me on the butt to make me cry when I was born. That's because I was holding nunchucks and the doctor was like whoa, a baby with nunchucks. Better not slap that one. What you say, that's impossible. Oh yeah, I don't remember seeing you there.
Speaker 1:If I someday have one legacy to my name, I hope it's Nursing Home. Goth Cars should have automated road rage capabilities so they honk and flip off other drivers on their own. That way the drivers can concentrate on road safety. If I become a necromancer, I will change my name to Doug but leave out the O, so it's Doug D-U-G Doug. Most people won't get it if I say it, so I will have to wear a name badge all the time.
Speaker 1:My family was the best at playing hide-and-seek. One time, while I was counting to ten, they moved to Europe. Even if I was a ruthless mob boss, I would still take Thursdays off, because you can run a lot of errands on Thursdays. I don't know what my last words in this life will be, but I'm betting on flammable-schlammable. They say the best laughter is laughing through the tears, but they're wrong, it's laughing through the mouth. Well, I hope you enjoyed those. And next we are going to visit with Beaverdale Books Enjoy. Next we are going to visit with Beaverdale Books Enjoy Discount story times. Small business, shout out. This is Coffee McCann and I am here with Jan at Beaverdale Books and she's going to tell us a little bit about the bookstore and what they have going on.
Speaker 2:Well, as usual, we have lots going on, a lot of things coming up for the new year too, but first it's the holiday, and right now we've got our holiday catalog filled with great gift suggestions, and if you stop in, there's a 10% off discount on any of the books that are in here, and there's all kinds of books, including children's books, and and just about something for everyone. Our store is packed full of great gift suggestions, and I would be willing to guarantee that we would have something for every single person on your list, even the hard to shop for ones. And then January comes, and we don't do a lot of programming in December, but in January we hit it hard, on January 6th, starting right off, and we've got three authors right in a row. You can find all that information on our website at beaverdellbookscom. We also have all of our events on our Facebook page and on Instagram, so we would encourage people to follow us. We also have a monthly newsletter that we love to send out to people and that kind of summarizes all of the upcoming events and any other news from the store, some of the things that we do, some of the charitable donations we make, some of the scholarships we give just all kinds of things that we do on a regular basis here at Beaverdell Books. Then, of course, in February we have our local author fair and that will be on February 1st. We'll be hosting about four or five local authors, from one to three, so people can come in and mingle and buy their books, and if you've never met an author, it's a great chance to support local authors. And, by the way, beaverdale Books is known for its support of local authors. In fact, our east wall has about 600 Iowa authors books on that wall. So if you want to really support local authors and find some good books to read, I would encourage you to look at that wall.
Speaker 2:Then in March we have the Des Moines Book Festival coming up. That's coming on Saturday, march 22nd. We are hard at work planning that. We're going to have keynote authors, great programs, some panel discussions, some workshops, kids activities. So mark your calendar. You'll be hearing more information about that. And then, just a little secret we have a couple of best-selling authors that were doing ticketed events. We're bringing Curtis Sittenfeld on March 11th and Jennifer Weiner on April 11th. Both of those are ticketed events. You can find them on our website. Both of those are ticketed events. You can find them on our website. Just go to events and scroll down till. You find their information and you can purchase tickets for those.
Speaker 1:That sounds wonderful, and that's one thing I'm really impressed with is Beaverdale Books is not just a small local bookstore, but the way you give back to the community and you support local authors, which is so important. So thank you very much and again, that is Beaverdale Books. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this kind of different episode and until next time, enjoyed this kind of different episode and until next time, play nice with others, take super duper good care of yourself and, as always, remember to laugh Bye.
