100 Word Stories - Bus Wash (Repost from Facebook, 14 November 2009)

While driving my bus through the scrubbers after my route, I kept seeing a fuzzy brown face press against the windows: brush – brush – brush – FACE. Another driver must have found a teddy bear fallen off a lorry’s grill, and tied him there. We see ‘em all the time. I was overcome by sentiment; to their amusement, I slogged through the brushes to free the little guy. I scrubbed him up and poked his stuffing back in. He watched us wash our busses. Then he watched me drive ‘til I retired. Now, Bus Wash sits and watches me watch telly.

This was in response to the prompt of "Stuffing" for Weekly Challenge #186 (week ending 11/14/2009) for the 100 Word Stories weekly podcast. This was the second story I wrote. It was based on and inspired by an e-mail received on a radio "programme" called "Geoff Lloyd's Hometime Show" on Absolute Radio out of London. They had asked for listeners' storied about irrational feelings toward inanimate objects. They had people saying they feel sorry for the last bean in a tin of baked beans or the last piece of bread, getting lonely and missing their friends, and so getting eaten so as not to feel left out. Another listener said that if she drops a single pea on the floor, she drops another one so the first won't get lonely. This story was based on an e-mail from a bus driver who rescued a bear from the bus wash and gave it to his sons. My version was a creative dramatization of the event, and then a fictional variation with the ending.

A Brit's Take on NBC, Conan, Leno, and American Late Night TV

It's been awhile since I've last posted, but who reads a non-blog anyway? This is ego stroking or self-indulgence, anyway, so I would only be apologizing to myself. Well, go sit and spin, Potzi! I'm not apologizing.

I regularly listen to a podcast of the hosts' banter from a radio show from Absolute Radio in London, UK. I have never listened to it over broadcast signal, so I have no frakking clue what they're frequency is, so the FCC and Ofcom (pronounced "off comm" for anyone who's never heard the name said. I had only heard it, and had to look up the spelling.) can bite my bum. It's called Geoff Lloyd's Hometime Show (The time slot we call "Drive Time" on American radio, some Brits call "Home Time", because it's time to go home, see?). Last Thursday, 1/21/10, he did what most radio shows over here were doing, and weighed in on the NBC snafu with Jay and CoCo (I won't get into how bizarre it is that the names that have come out of this are my wife's nickname for me, and our late pet bunny's name. It's like a strange Buddy Cop movie title/plot: "One's an overweight man in his mid-thirties. The other one's a stuffed rabbit. Together, they're Jay and Coco!").

Anyway, while I found it quite amusing listening to a Limey radio DJ try and explain both American Late Night TV and this specific situation to both his co-hosts and his audience, it actually made me realize something: "Anyone could manage NBC better than the people doing it right now."

For your listening pleasure, I have edited the podcast audio, and included the clip here. For more information, you can go to www.absoluteradio.co.uk. All material is the copyright of the originator, and not mine. All rights are reserved by the same.