Satire is Fun
Lord, It Is Hard to Be Humble — For Other People; I Hear
Answering a writing challenge from the top of the heap; come knock me off, I dare ya!
It is not often that I find that both Charles Roast and Rasheed Hooda have gotten something wrong, but the day has finally come.
Strangely they both claim to be the greatest writer on Illumination, when in fact, everyone knows that it is me — by a landslide.
Chuck claims that women want to shake his hand, babies want to grow up to be like him and men want… something.
It doesn’t matter, because none of that compares to the fact that unicorns line up in my yard to neigh their approval whenever I write.
Chris Hedges is our resident unicorn expert, so I am pretty sure she will confirm that if you ask her.
Not only that, but narwhals swim in from Greenland to line up side-by-side so that I can walk on their backs across Puget Sound anytime I want to get an ice cream cone over in Kingston Washington (there are some really good ice cream shops right by the ferry landing).
Sherry McGuinn knows that I would never embellish, so I am sure she will corroborate this fact for me.
But come on, babies, ha! Chuck, I feel sorry for you if that is the best you’ve got. Enjoy that while you are taking a ferry over to Kingston to get your ice cream like a commoner.
And for Rasheed, even though he successfully argued for top writer supremacy,
just having two and three-quarters more interview mentions than Chuck is child’s play compared to my three and five-ninths more mentions.
But, in spite of Chuck being only the number three writer on Illumination, he does make a good point if you can see through all his bragging. (Seriously, who does that? So conceited.)
With Illumination being on the plus side of 15,000 followers these days (and growing by the second), it is pretty likely that some of those folks might want to demonstrate their writing chops, or at least join in on poking some fun at Chuck, Rasheed and me (because we can take it).
To me, Illumination has rapidly become a place where I can converse and crack jokes with my new friends, and suddenly writing no longer feels like a form of work, but rather a way to play and maybe relieve some stress; and believe me, there is plenty of stress and angst to go around.
That is why I think Chuck’s suggestion to pull some more people into the fray and make sure they know they are welcome to engage is such an awesome idea!
As Chuck says, [When writers engage] “with Illumination, we know they will get published, read, clapped and commented on.” Hard to ask for more than that.
Chuck suggests randomly selecting some of our own followers, or people from the Illumination follower list and asking them to write an article. So, I am doing my part and joining in. Here are my awesome people (which are, of course, more amazing than Chuck’s or even Rasheed’s selections): Rachel Burcin, Trent Swanson, Tanya Holn, Philip Sundt, T. Mark Mangum and Rob Stux.
The ultimate goal here for all of us is to expand our circle of writers we follow and engage with, so the above tags are in that spirit. I want to hear what you have to say.
Chuck’s prompt was this, “If you were Chuck Roast and received this prompt, what would you write about?”
I take that to be pretty open, so I chose to make fun of Chuck, but you can write anything you want. It’s kind of a blank slate but angled towards satirical and humorous.
The ask is this:
- Give Chuck and Rasheed’s stories a read via the links above
- Write a story based on the above prompt (or another one if you want)
- Tag five or so people in that you don’t know in your story, and ask them to do the same
- Tag Timothy Key, Charles Roast and Rasheed Hooda and ask your tagees to do the same
- Read all the stories you are tagged in from this series and clap and highlight
Simple
If you don’t care to play along, no worries. If you do, hopefully you will see some increased attention, and if nothing else, have some great new stories to read!
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this article, you may also like:
Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.