Random Challenge

Writing challenge!

Give me 500 coherent words that mention the following words or phrases:

Michael Jackson, a hippo on rollerblades, cream cheese frosting, a 1972 Chevy Impala, emotional duress, a case of mistaken identity, an enigmatic old hag.

I’m taking it up this week. Anyone else have a random post for the C.P. White Media Blog? Give me 500 words or less on any seven (or more) phrases. Send it in to cpwreviews (at) gmail (dot) com and stick Random Challenge in the subject line. Here we go with the main event.

Beware the cheese.

Once upon a time there was this idiot writer who did something stupid: he put his underwear on backward without noticing. And while this might not seem like that big of a wrinkle, so to speak, it’s still kinda funny to think about how small a thing it takes to upset the balance of the entire known universe.

Anyway, like I said, this idiot writer didn’t notice that he put his underwear on backward. It wasn’t exactly emotional duress, but it caused him enough mild discomfort to make him irritable. So as the day wore on, he went from mildly unjolly right on past abnormally irritable and straight to flaming cantankerousness. And it was going to be ugly, by God.

And it’s funny what set him off. He was innocently walking the aisles of his friendly neighborhood grocery megastore when the muzak system started playing that old wretched Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney duet about some really creepy love triangle. And while that might not, again, seem like that big of a wrinkle, you’ve gotta admit that it’s one of those songs that gets in between your ears and stays there festering for weeks, like a rotten cabbage. Long story short, it put him in a right rotten mood.

And who should pick that exact moment to call but his incompetent and lazy literary agent? Of course, it figures, and who doesn’t like a bit of deus ex machina before dinner? It’s entirely apropos. Plus he answered the call by the bakery, concentrating quite hard on the wrinkle in his shorts, the hateful song blaring from the store’s speakers (the saxophone version, naturally), and pressing the little green button. He missed the fact that the baker was rolling a huge cake out from the double doors behind him.

How crazy, then, that as soon as he hears his agent’s strident voice on the other end of the line, that he should do a violent about-face in cantankerous annoyance, knocking the cake off the cart in a beautifully executed half-gainer? It’s not a stretch at all. Our intrepid scribe fell over cart onto the cake just enough to besmear himself from head to toe in cream cheese frosting. It was unfortunate, too that the baker, wildly off balance and suffering from shock, fell on top of him whilst he was crouched and waving his arms madly. Our author ended up catching his balance basically in a puddle of cake and giving the baker a complimentary piggyback ride. The result looked like a hippo on rollerblades.

And who should appear from the cheese case then but an enigmatic old hag, calling out, “Bernice! Bernice!” It turned out she had a friend by that name. She was a rather large woman. It was only natural that she was confused, Bernice weighed fully five hundred pounds. It was an open and shut case of mistaken identity. But then, she thought the cake was a 1972 Chevy Impala. I guess that’s what made her enigmatic.