Avoidance! Diversions! Escapism!
As a service to our occasional customers, we’ve brought back this possibly unpopular feature. If we cared more about you, you’d have real content once in a while, sure. So go pay somebody already – even lousy CNN now has a paywall for some of its content. But not us, not here, not ever. Still free because … y’know, who’d pay?
Anyway, we’re old and tired, and there’s no goddamn cake in the house. Again.
But we/I digress.
More Wordle solutions turned into pointless narratives, just ahead! Some are just plain stupid. Some are stupider even than those. Some, well.
Good luck, pilgrim.
Just know it ain’t over yet. There are two more of these monsters waiting under the proverbial bed, in line for their own opportunities to slink out and surely be exposed by first light as the puffed-up frauds they are.
NERVY – QUEST – GLADE – ADAGE
As the old saying goes, do not go running wildly out into the open on an adventure without your pants.
Because? you inquire.
Why? you ask.
Alas, the rest of this old saw is never explained.
I’m thinking bears. Or nature photographers. Or a wedding party. Perhaps even all three.
BLISS – SWELL – STEAL – STEEL
Myrtle married handsome young Finster the day he left the Ontario Correctional System following the province’s official negative position regarding Finster’s loose interpretation of the laws on personal property.
The couple wed using rings that Finster’s buddy Cord had made from melting down Finster’s mom’s missing silverware, with Finster’s promise that his five-fingered exploits were then a thing of the past.
Oh, they were so happy at first!
Then Finster took a job managing a Tim Hortons, and the money was pretty OK, but his overt fondness for the fresh donuts led to him blowing up like the Staypuff Marshmallow Man, his wedding ring soon vanishing in the increasing folds of his bloated sausage fingers.
Myrtle took it as a sign, and ran off with Finster’s assistant manager, who had a severe gluten allergy.
CLEFT – PURSE – PRUDE – PRUNE
Later, when uptight Argus, he of the prodigious and formidably parted posterior, attempted to address his days-long impaction problem by eating perhaps one too many of God’s little dried-fruit wonders while on his way to do a little last-minute Christmas shopping, he would be seen shuffling quickly, like some bipedal crab, across the ground floor of the Mall of the Americas, past the real-bearded mall Santa and a small host of angry minimum-wage elves in green-felt costumes, with more than just his lips clamped tight, you can believe that, in a desperate search for an oasis to alleviate his dire situation, a bathroom, and he ran smack out of time and … lo, that poor, unsuspecting, potted rubber-tree plant with its array of tiny white twinkling lights.
Marge, quickly, avert the eyes of the children, as that big-booty-ed fella just yonder has dropped his trousers and is about to blow!
BASTE – GOURD – PROOF – PRIOR
Little-known fact: In tiny Loving County, Texas, population less than 50, it is illegal to cook down leftover Halloween pumpkins for the explicit purpose of distilling homemade intoxicants if you have a previous conviction for javelina tipping while drunk.
CURSE – PARSE – HORSE – VERSE – TERSE
There need be no mincing of words about it: short-form equine poetry is a plague upon the English language.
Nay, I say. Nay!
HASTE – FLECK – CRIED – DECOY
Finster was sure this was his show to win! In the last months, his duck-carving skills had progressed at an incredible rate, so much so that he bravely undertook the challenging ruddy duck, and the results were truly impressive.
The morning of the show got off to a tricky start, however, with Finster, having fought to get to sleep the night before due to his percolating excitement, sleeping right through his duck-call alarm.
In a daze, he rushed in groggy unease at last out the door, quickly loading his more commonplace mallards into the trunk of his car, but taking particular care with the ruddy, placing it gently on the seat beside him. He grabbed a quick bite to go at the nearby Taco Bell, now serving breakfast, wolfing down his messy repast as he drove, and making the show just in time to get set up.
The judges were very taken with their first sight of Finster’s prize carving, but then head judge and well-known hardass Terry “Buckshot” Flingle recoiled in dramatic disgust, noting that the head of the otherwise impressive bird appeared … bloody, a definite no-no
“Is this some kind of joke?” Buckshot crowed, as the other judges huddled nearby, clucking their own disapproval.
It seems Finster had, in his rush to cram down his last-minute meal, unwittingly slung a bit of ketchup out of the far end of his breakfast burrito.
And, alas.
In the parking lot following the show, utterly awardless, and having been shunned by all his fellow carvers, Finster clutched the unlucky ruddy and wept, and wept but good, his burning tears washing clean the befouling condiment like a warm and cleansing rain.
CHASM – GUILE – ROWDY – NERDY
When the high school class field trip made its planned stop at the steep overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway, young Milthorp Lumpin, forever the butt of cruel pranks highlighting the nebbishy geekdom that had promoted him to the senior class three years early, waited until his idiot nemesis, barely upright troglodyte Parker Stillglot, had ventured off briefly from his loudmouth buddies to a secluded spot past some trees to sneak a quick hit on his pocket flask, as Milthrop anticipated he would do.
Wily Milthrop had been steadily observing Parker for some time now, in between the wedgies and swirlies and mildly savage beatings that were the two’s usual forms of interaction.
Milthrop eased up behind the big goon, and pulled from his cargo pants a high-voltage taser he’d bought just recently on the Dark Web, jolting his bulky adversary on full in the back of the neck. As suddenly unconscious Parker began to slump, Milthorp pushed the big lump hard in the small of the back, straight over the edge and into the deep gorge below, where uncharacteristically quiet Parker met his abrupt earthly demise atop a rocky outcropping almost out of eyeshot below, before tumbling lifeless into the dense tree fill where his few remaining remains would remain unfound for years.
Pocketing the taser which he would later sell in the same clandestine circles in which he’d bought it, Milthorp headed back to the bus early, to finish his application to the MIT programming program and eat his bologna and cheese sandwich, for once in peace.
PASTE – FRESH – SEWER – SOBER – SKIER
Following Brogle’s epic fail in the 2024 time trials to be considered for the USA Winter Olympics team, arrogantly undertaking the downhill obstacle run on two hits of blotter acid, and then navigating to avoid the shining pink unicorns prancing in the middle of the slalom path such that he veered wildly off course and impaled a line judge through the heart with his left ski, Brogle’s upcoming days in the very bowels of impoverished drunken despair were perhaps inevitable.
Through the patient efforts of a goodly benefactor, and a rigorous regimen of PTSD therapy, Brogle began the arduous journey back to his former snowy fields of athletic glory. He was able, too, to at last forgive himself, arriving at a hard-fought sense of personal peace.
Unfortunately, karma was not nearly as forgiving as Brogle himself had become.
At the next round of time trials for the 2026 games, Brogle confidently began his downhill run atop a perfect bed of fresh white frozen powder, though just as several heated Porta-Pottys were knocked over by a delivery truck whose intoxicated driver had backed up too quickly in an icy parking lot, sending gallons of awfullest warm offal streaming onto the trickiest portion of the slalom course, and creating a thick sludge that caused Brogle’s skis to become instantly mired, snapping him off at the ankles and sending his bleeding body airborne into the sharp branch of a nearby tree. He was impaled, perhaps fittingly, through his own newly mended heart.
The moral of this story? Don’t ski.
SWEAT – ELOPE – EQUIP
First rule of thumb when sneaking off to west Texas in late July to get hitched by an itinerant preacher name of Craythur in a doublewide trailer with a temperamental window AC: take a fan.
SWILL – FIRST – HISSY – PIOUS – MINUS
Crafty, penny-pinching Stigwit figured he finally had it knocked. His preferred Sunday pursuit, getting utterly hammered, could actually be easily achieved on the cheap, if planned out perfectly. A badly Lapsed Catholic, stocky, hirsute Stiggie really didn’t give a shit about sermons or saints or salvation, though he had nonetheless decided the Church owed him a favor, for his ever having bothered to show up in one of the damn places at all.
So Stig went and renewed his religious association with the St. Lidwina Church of the Immaculate Frozen Puddle, only a couple short blocks away in midtown Queens, right near the tunnel. He had once periodically attended that church for no more reason than that his mother, rest her malevolent soul, had used to insist he would go to Hell if he continued staying at home to sleep-in instead of standing and sitting, and then standing and sitting some more, in the hallowed house of our Lord.
St. Lidwina’s was struggling with attendance of late, and the tithing had grown a little slim, too boot, a far cry from the flush days of too-friendly Father Dan, a former Jesuit with a profound love of the very stinkiest Stilton cheese. But now it was Father Mike, the tall and passionate former ex-hoops star from Emanuel College in Boston, who’d been shuffled in quickly following Father Dan’s unfortunate pants-off episode at the summer church social, only to discover that his predecessor had cooked the books in a scheme to fund the opening of his own private deli.
The church was damn near broke.
St. Lidwina’s, to the further detriment of its own precarious financial health, was known in local communion circles for doing a nice pour. Myrtle McFallow, the ancient former church secretary, had, as her last official action before retiring and then dying on the cab ride home, scored what she thought was an outstanding deal for her beloved church home, a truly miraculous supply of miniature plastic cups from an online bulk-goods business trying to ditch its unmoving overstock. The church soon found itself not only with a seemingly endless supply of cups that it ended up stashing in every available empty space, but cups that were clearly the wrong size as well, more than twice as large as needed.
When the traditional pour was first attempted in the church’s more expansive, less expensive receptacles, Father Mike heard grumblings from devout parishioners at the kneel bar, how suddenly St. Lidwina’s had gone all stingy on the God juice.
Eyeing the youthful priest with clear derision, nearly deaf old Marple Feeny pitched a little fit, her high voice carrying all the way to the rear of the church.
“Ya don’t think you could top this off a touch, ya cheap new such-and-such?”
“Well fudge,” the father told himself, maybe the low cup price will offset the cost of the wine. I mean, what’s a little more blood of our Lord between friends, if it keeps the numbers from falling any more on Sundays?
Enter now the wily Stigwit, his new mission firmly in mind. He was soon taking Sunday mass again, and quite religiously, after a fashion. Before walking the few blocks to St. Lidwina’s, he would also take a few solid hits on the generic Robutussin he kept on hand, stolen from his deceased hypochondriac mother’s considerable private cache. Stigwit took it under pretense of allergies he did not have, to nail down a quick baseline buzz.
One Sunday, after services, as the one remaining member of the cleaning staff was busy with a river of toddler piddle in the foyer, enterprising Stig snuck in a variety of disguises, newly procured at the seasonal Halloween Store’s mid-November closeout sale, in a large gray plastic bin he’d cleverly marked “Extra Toilet Cleaner,” and which he then stashed toward the back of a largely unused storage closet in a dark hallway just behind the sanctuary. The closet was mostly full of dusty boxes of excess plastic cups.
Stig began his new communion process appearing first as himself, but upon downing the more-than-several sacred sips, would nonchalantly amble back to his costume stash to return to the wine-and-wafer line again and again, as a cast of different characters – a vaguely bearded woman in cowboy boots; a cowboy, also in cowboy boots; an Indian; an astronaut; a broadly mustached Italian modeled on Mario from the classic video game; the elusive, stripe-shirted Waldo, respectfully holding his beanie; and a hockey-masked Jason from the popular Friday the 13th movies.
All was fine for a while, with Father Mike delighting in the growth and expanding diversity of his communion crowd. But then one Sunday, Stigwit awoke to an actual cold, flooded with sinus congestion, and rasping with an ugly cough. He went perhaps a bit heavy on the cough syrup, downing more than a full bottle, and, a bit too newly emboldened, opted not for the wise return to bed and drunken slumber; instead, he stumbled out in quest of his usual intoxicating religiosity.
It didn’t take Father Mike long to suspect something was awry, especially when the Indian showed up for communion in the hockey mask and the guy who looked like Jason Voorhees was instead sporting a fake eagle feather. Not to mention that by service’s end, that newly regular Stigwit fella was falling-down drunk …
At the close of the service, Father Mike quickly took teetering Stigwit aside, sternly noting that this errant mass behavior had to cease, that perhaps Stig was confusing the sauce with the sacrament, and vice versa. At which point pickled Stiggie threw up all over Father Mike’s prized pair of Nike LeBron 21s, a projectile mix of bright red coating the slushy remnants of a bowl of milky Lucky Charms. The shocked priest recoiled in horror, grabbing the vestment stole from around his own neck to attempt to wipe the ugly bright-pink upchuck from his profoundly soiled shoes.
“This is the wrong path to salvation, my son!” the priest snapped at sloshed Stigwit.
Upon later reflection, as Father Mike chastised himself for his moment of harsh behavior, he realized he might also have been on somewhat precarious doctrinal footing. Because in stripping away all the emotion from the dramatic events that followed, it did honestly seem reasonable, if anything about faith could be deemed such, that one could indeed become drunk on the blood of our Lord – particularly if repeated hits of the sangue di Cristo were, in fact, actually from a gallon of discount red Father Mike had tapped on before pouring, and then declaring, “Holy, holy, holy!”
Salvation? Hmmm. Why not?
But ah, back in the moment:
“Blasphemy!” Stigwit was heard to mumble, even as he attempted to drunkenly swat away the priest’s descending hand, instead losing his balance completely, and falling face-first into his own puddle of miniature-marshmallowed ejecta.
It was unclear, of course, what Stigwit might actually have meant.
Perhaps he had been protesting, as Father Mike had himself suggested, that Stigwit’s vivid chunder was indeed the very blood of our Lord, and how dare one wipe it so cavalierly asunder? More probably, though, Stig was unhappily remarking upon the partial dissipation of his own planned profound afternoon intoxication.
Regardless of which interpretation might be chosen, Stigwit then promptly passed out, wholly, wholly, wholly.
Alas, but not before ingesting, deep into his lungs, a fair bit of the thick ichor newly enshrouding Father Mike’s ruined shoes.
Cough, cough, went soused Stiggie. Sputter, sputter. Death, oh, death.
Though let it be noted that Stigwit ascended quickly into Heaven.
Once inside the Pearly Gates, he was immediately met by the Son of God, His sandals in hand, and quite a touch tipsy Himself.
“Wehcome, my child!” the Christ slightly slurred, handing ol’ Stigs – Stiggie Wiggie! The Stigmeister! – a newly uncorked bottle with a hand-printed label, “Rapturous Red.”
“‘S my very own vintage,” Jesus explained, flashing a warm smile. “Goes great wid fish!”
SPRIG – SWEAR – STORY – SNORT
Bulbous old Aulander, terrifyingly naked outside the church in protest of the morning’s sermon on original sin, stepped on a sharp twig and rightly declared, “Fuck!,” then took a sharp swig from the near-empty bottle in one hand, and with the other, punched Father Mike in the face.
“That’s mah version of it,” he later declared to a clearly bemused Sheriff Cooley, the reputed atheist, “an’ Ahm stickin’ to it.”
STRAW – RAPID – LAYER – MAYOR
In some recent quick, informal polling on the pending city elections, the incumbent in the top job was assessed as being “less onion and more bowling ball,” so shallow and un-complex as to still be the most qualified person for the job.
FREAK – INTER – RESOD – MERRY – MERGE
When they buried Weird Eddie after his fatal speed-eating mishap, a party was later held atop the replaced grass on the filled grave. Weird Ethel, the former Mrs. Weird Eddie, promptly married Al, the groundskeeper and occasional preacher, who, it turns out, officiated at both services.
Ah, how the circle of life keeps, y’know, circling.
Comments
This is all well and good, but when will you be partaking of the current Wordle once more? Soon-ish??
Hmmmm …. one wonders if these Finsters are singular, or actually separate individuals … Then of course, depending upon that response, if he/they are the same Finster responsible for the Father Mike debacle a few decades past … ?
Clearly my previous query concerning meds was taken as a challenge, and I am left wondering if you are simply channeling Tolkien himself, as he asserts to write Silmarillion II from the Great Beyond…
I await further installments …