Realm of the InterNutter

Challenge #01032-B300: Cursed Blessing

"Maybe we all have little magics, the kind that you don’t realize you have. Just tiny things that make your life slightly better but are completely unnoticed on the outside."

http://akai-kaede.tumblr.com/post/132171243204 -- Anon Guest

They call it the Quirk. It's nothing big. Sometimes, people notice. Sometimes, it remains ignored by all but that special someone who loves everything about you.

And it's only recently that it's become common knowledge. My co-worker at the Bargain Barn? Freaking hated having to make coffee. They despised coffee to the point of wanting it out of reality altogether, but they made the best brew ever.

Everyone agreed. Nobody could make the break room coffee machine sit up and beg like Donovan. And yet, all they ever did was the same shit in the instructions. Insert puck, activate the jug, set it and forget it.

Best goddamn coffee I ever tasted.

Friend of mine on the interwebs does perfect first drafts. I shit you not. It's like the Muses all whisper in their ear and they just type whatever they hear. It's magic. But it's low-class magic.

Some people have taken to using it for profit. My bad. I was in on it.

Me? I find things.

It's a knack, okay? A Quirk. I set my mind to find something, and I do. It's not always quick. Shit, one time I chased down a song for ten freaking years. Then some asshole invents Shazam one fucking day too late.

Thanks, guy. You could have made my life easier back when. Oh well.

Anyway, I can only find small things. My upmost weight limit is one kilo. So, no. I can not find Jimmy Hoffa. Not all at once, anyway.

I teamed up with a few people, thanks to my blog, Weird Like Me. Don't google it. Someone else has taken over the URL. There's a synesthete who can instantly smell a lie. A person who always gets the green lights when they need them. A dude who can sound like anyone on the planet so much they can fool computers. And so on.

We were poor. We were pissed off. We had crippling student loans.

And we robbed a bank. Sort of.

Well. I found a way to take the money without involving any loss of life or an alarm or anything for at least two days. Public holidays. Gotta love them.

And now the government is testing everyone for the Quirk. It's amazing how fast they figured it out. Especially figuring out how we all work.

And they're really good at working out how to use the Quirks to an advantage. Me and my team? Um. Well. We don't go to prison if we co-operate and help them. I'm one of the keystones, because of my Finding. I Find so often than I'm lost. They literally have a keeper on my ass to make sure I don't go foggy and wander off.

It's kind of hellish. I wish I'd never tried to Find a way to help me and my friends. Ex-friends.

If they take you and test you for the Quirk? Try and be unreliable as fuck. Trust me. You'll thank me later.

(Muse food remaining: 16. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)

Two more days!

Two more days until payday. Two more days until the cat goes back to the vet for a (hopefully) more optimistic diagnosis. I think her eyelid is healing at a glacial pace and she might not need further surgery.

And the Cone of Shame is really a pain in the butt for her, and us. And the medicine for her eye always runs our too firkin early.

I have, however, realised that I don't need to take the cat to the vet

Challenge #01031-B299: I Love in Spite of You

Someone who is a good person, who does nothing but good deeds out of spite. They hate someone, something so much that they go down in history as a saint. -- SeaDragon1012

Peleramus inherited a little less than an acre from his father, and despised him for it. A little less than an acre meant that he had to pay taxes on it, but could not live on it. His father had hated him, too, because there was nowhere 'worth' living in

Balance and writing

I do a lot of stories off the cuff. One thousand and thirty, before I get started on today's. Some, like We're Mostly Harmless, I Swear, wind up becoming the cornerstones for novels.

But I'm never lazy about it.

I could have easily copy/pasted my Instants about Amity into the novel-that-is and few would have been the wiser.

I'm not like that. I can't let myself do that. It's a form of cheating and - at least in my humble opinion

Challenge #01030-B298: Non Sequiturs of Doom

I have no idea what that means, but it cannot /possibly/ mean anything good. -- RecklessPrudence

Rael almost congratulated himself. The first Ambassadorial Meet for Shayde was going well. Like the man falling from a building in that ancient joke, it was rather a case of so far, so good.

She had made it as far as lunch on the first day without causing a fracas.

"I tole ye. I'm no' fer sale and I'm past my amuse-by date," carried over the

::white noise::

Didn't get a lot of sleep, because last night was a rare night out. Kind friends had given Beloved a movie voucher.

FYI, The Mockingjay Part 2 is firkin awesome. Well done, movie peeps, for sticking to the book.

BUT going to see it also meant that I didn't get to bed much before 11PM.

My thoughts are full of static. I want to go back to sleep for a majority of the day. BUT, I also have 1K of words to

Challenge #01029-B297: One Post-Adventure Evening in a Village Tavern

Creating a volcano is the most important part of a stealth mission, I guess. -- RecklessPrudence

All eyes slowly turned towards the Rogue at the table.

"What volcano?" said the Knight.

The Rogue grinned. "Damn, I'm good..."

The Mage sighed into their tankard. "They're calling it Mount Wat," they said. "It's where the evil dungeon used to be. Some people take the words, 'purge it with fire' entirely too literally."

The Rogue cackled. "You did say it was to save the world.

Pbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbh...

Pretty much how I'm feeling this morning. The sound of a sigh coming out between lax and flappy lips.

We probably have just enough to make it to the next payday. IF the kids' Friday treat comes out of the Penny Pincher Menu so I can afford the tank of petrol for the running around we're doing on the weekend.

Beloved is Forty, as of yesterday. Merry birth, Beloved. I wish I could do more for you.

Still need to get eggs

Challenge #01028-B296: Explaining History

Advantage number one of having crammed our development of spacecraft into only ten years: "Holy shit we know how to mass produce so many liquid explosives that we can get to be stable for just long enough, you have no idea." -- RecklessPrudence

It's said that anything interesting enough to propel a spacecraft for long distances in a relatively short time is also interesting enough to be a weapon. And it's usually said by humans, who tended to develop the weapons first

It's been so long since I went to Hell...

My frelling sleep issues have been acting up. Hello, anxiety. It's been a while since you fucked up my life. Come on in, we're having coffee.

...you little shit...

In brief: woke up at 2AM-ish because I went to bed at 8:30 because I was dog tired because worry.

2AM-ish meant that I would be dog tired AGAIN in the afternoon and I don't need that because I have a firkin physical for insurance's sake, so I did my best to

Challenge #01027-B295: One Terrifying Adventure in a Hidden Bunker

Person #1: Was this place built on an old well, or a burial ground or something?

Person #2: No [Person #1], weren't you paying attention? This whole mess is the result of somebody bringing Nazi Magitech back from WW2 Germany instead of burninating it like any sane person would. -- RecklessPrudence

"Ooooh," cooed Kevin. "So that's why everything is all over swastikas and lightning bolts, right?"

"Eeeh," Allie shrugged. "Sort of. My research indicates that the artefact kind'a possessed the interior decorator

101 reasons to love Steam Powered Giraffe

Before you roll your eyes at me, this is not going to be an enumerated list. You can breathe, now. It's okay.

One Hundred and One is the number of times that I have listened through the Giraffe's most recent album, The Vice Quadrant: A Space Opera. Or just Vice Quadrant for short.

That's two hundred and two hours of music that I have yet to become sick of. Not one song, not one spoken interlude, not one fragment of this double

Challenge #01026-B294: Before She Met Hwell

Person #1: They just have to deal with it. Life isn't fair.

Person #2 (softly, sadly): No, it isn't. But that doesn't mean we should be making it less so. -- RecklessPrudence

[AN: Wholeheartedly agreed]

Two guards watched the product file from the conditioning yards and into the truck. Ready for processing. The newbie stared with an open mouth.

"Hey, if you want one, you could snag it after the buyers have picked the best ones. Bawdy factory don't mind."

"Just... take

Herbing 'till I plotz...

I promised a photojournal entry, and you're about to get a photojournal entry.

We start with a simple, neglected herb garden:

Pictured, smol child, large rosemary Chaos is looking nervous because there was a wasp on the other side.

Chaos showing off a washing basket full of cut herbs We got a basket full of cuttings. most of them were actually useful.

This is just the LEFTOVER rosemary The leftovers. Some sprigs are bundled with the hope of making decent potential tea.

Finished Rosemary oil. It will be going out in much smaller bottles Heat-infused rosemary oil looks gross when its done, and in bulk.

Mint still being processed I had a freaking LOT of mint. So much that

Challenge #01025-B293: One Near-Apocalyptic Afternoon in Bloomington, Illinois

The speech known as Abraham Lincoln's "Lost Speech" was given at the Bloomington Convention on May 29, 1856, in Bloomington, Illinois.

The traditional reason given for the lack of any written recollection of the Lost Speech is that Lincoln's skilled and powerful oration had mesmerized every person in attendance. Reporters were said to have laid down their pencils and neglected note taking, as if hypnotized by Lincoln's words. When the speech ended no notes existed, so media reports of the day simply