This past Monday, Peggy McFarland let me know that if you search Google for "son of a bitch", this blog comes up as entries #8 and #11. It came up in my Google searches just as it did in hers. This was fascinating enough that I asked Peggy to write up a guest blog for me as to how this came about. She went above and beyond the call of guest bloggerdom, however, and offered to write a FridayFlash about it.
Enjoy!
- Tony Noland
p.s. My story for this week is over at Peggy's blog.
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Enjoy!
- Tony Noland
p.s. My story for this week is over at Peggy's blog.
/////
Over the weekend, I was writing and didn't know if "son
of a bitch" needed hyphens. Lazy as I am, I Googled, and recognized Tony's
avatar! His blog came up as the 8th and 11th link. I laughed. I tweeted it and
Tony got a kick out of it too.
Ends up my search engine has a strange algorithm and Tony
only shows up for "son of a bitch" on my searches. Which in itself
has me worried....
Anyhow, Tony invited me to write a story, and inspiration
struck.
Disclaimer: No #fridayflashers were harmed in the execution
of this tale.
- Peggy
TONY NOLAND IS A SON
OF A BITCH
by Peggy McFarland
Jen-Jen photoshopped a picture of a panting yellow lab
inside an "I Love Mom" frame. She took another sip of her martini,
giggled. It made her feel better. A better idea popped into her head.
"OMG," she said aloud, then uploaded the picture. Giggling, she
typed, "he really is a sob," then deleted it—not clever enough. She
typed, erased, typed, sipped, erased, fished an olive from her glass, typed
another line, erased it, then just screamed, "Son of a Bitch!" and
hit post. The dog photo appeared on Tony's wall, sans caption.
That'll get him, she thought. Within moments, the little red
box with the white numeral one showed up on her globe. FARfetched liked the
post. She had to pee.
When she returned, eighteen more likes. Four comments. Tony
must have annoyed many people.
son
of a bitch, good one!
lol,
tony you sob
i
see the resemblance—same ears
you're
the sweetest sob I know
Or maybe he just had more friends. Damn Tony Noland. Knowing
him—well, she didn't know him, not at all. Just Facebook friends and both
fridayflashers. But knowing him, he'd probably use it to promote himself in
some bizarre but clever, maddening way. Pretentious son of a bitch.
Screw it. Jen-Jen had to hit the midnight deadline. She
hadn't missed posting her fridayflash in thirty-nine weeks. Thirty-four
thousand, eight-hundred and sixty-seven words so far. And not once—not
once!—had Tony commented on her story. She went to his site though. It seemed
like protocol. Leave compliments on Tony's blog and maybe people would find
her.
such vivid imagery!
creative
twist
that
was a surprise.
She'd written all those. She'd helped make him popular,
dammit.
Commenter number forty-two last week, and there were nine more
after she'd posted. Who else got over fifty comments on a micro story? Tony didn't
reciprocate and visit fifty-one blogs; oh no, she'd checked. Would it kill him
to just once, stop by Jen-Jen's World and
type cool story? Would it?
She returned to Facebook. Her post about Tony had
one-hundred and thirty-two likes, sixty-eight comments and thirteen new
friends. She drained her glass, chewed the last olive, cracked her knuckles and
typed, copy and pasted, then posted. Only thirty-seven words. Well, thirty-six
words and one avatar. She giggled, then laughed, then ran for the bathroom.
Laughing so hard always made her pee.
# # #
Jen-Jen awoke, wiped the drool from her chin and rubbed the
keyboard imprints off her cheeks. Damn, she'd fallen asleep while waiting for
comments again. She stumbled to get ibuprofen, guzzled two water bottles, then
returned to the screen. Four lousy comments.
One was from Tony Noland.
clever! may I have
permission to share and use this?
OMG, what the hell had she written? She went to her home
page.
defintion
Shit! She had a typo in her title. Fewer olives next week.
son of a bitch
— n
1. a worthless or contemptible
person: used as an insult
2. a humorous or affectionate term
for a person, esp. a man: a lucky son of
a bitch
3. 
He liked it! Tony wanted to share it! of course, tony, use it any way you want she typed quickly. Sure,
it was cheesy bumping up her comment numbers by commenting on the comments—ew,
that hurt her head—but Tony did it, and look where it got him: Amazon, author
pages, interviews, guest blogs, spotlights, groupies....
Would he return to see her response to his comment? She hurried
to his blog.
She scanned his story, couldn't figure out the plot, or all
the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo. She was the eighteenth commenter. you weave so many complicated elements with style she typed. Not
bad for someone suffering from a hangover. She added, and of course you may use my flash this week, glad you liked it!
# # #
Week number fifty one. Almost a year's worth of fridayflash
stories, and she still had trouble coming up with a subject. She checked Eric
Krause's site for a prompt. The scent of a certain rose does strange
things to people's minds.
Hmm.
Hmm.
She got nothing.
Jen-Jen got up, turned on the television. She stopped on the
History Channel, hoping for a new episode of Swamp People. Maybe they'd trigger a story.
United Stats of
America was on. Eh. She was about to change the channel, when she
saw...Tony Noland?
The hosts were featuring apps. Tony held up his IPad for the
cameras. He had created the "definition app." Everyone was using it.
Take any word, insert a picture or avatar, and you sent a cool message to
anyone in the world. Jen-Jen raised the volume.
"Actually, a writer buddy gave me the idea."
Writer buddy? Who?
"A couple months ago, she wrote a cute story that
featured me as a definition."
"What word?" one host said. "I can imagine a
few choice ones." His twin brother co-host and Tony laughed.
"Actually," Tony said, "Can I say son of a
bitch on TV?"
All three of them laughed. Jen-Jen found herself grinning.
"Good, then you don't mind if I show this." Tony
held up his iPad.
The camera zoomed in on Jen-Jen's photo.
"Thanks for the inspiration," Tony said,
"though Jen-Jen, I'm not your son." Jen-Jen heard more laughter as
the camera panned up.
bitch
— n
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When she's not researching mildly profane phrases (with a Google algorithm suspiciously close to mine) or otherwise stalking me on the Internet, Peggy McFarland (@Peggywriter) writes FridayFlash stories and other material at her blog, Eldritch Way. Her story, "The Red Door" appeared in the recent anthology Dead Calm; you can read an interview with her about it right here.
Thanks for the great FridayFlash and for the search term fun, Peggy!
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
