Guest #FridayFlash: Tony Noland Is A Son Of A Bitch

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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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

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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!

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