April 3, 2026 – Facts, Fictions & Fantasies

Friday Fictioneers — The Old Tin Hat Box

April 3, 2026Fandango13 Comments

For sixty years, the old hat tin sat atop the wardrobe, patient as stone. Inside, Margaret’s mother had kept memories, but not love letters, as one might imagine. Instead there were receipts, train tickets, and a single pressed violet.

When Margaret finally climbed the stepladder, she expected dust. Instead, the brass handle turned cool and familiar in her palm, like a handshake from someone long gone.

Margaret lifted the lid.

The violet had turned to powder. The tickets listed cities she’d never visited. And tucked beneath everything was a photograph of a woman laughing — someone nobody living could name.

(100 words)

Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers prompt. Photo credit: Roger Bultot.

My mother used to keep tin and cardboard hat boxes on the top shelves of a closet in the basement of our house. I am not sure if the item in Roger’s photo is a tin hat box or some other item, but the story that came to my mind was built around what my mother might have kept in a tin hat box in a closet in the basement that my father would never think to look inside of. Hmm.

One-To-Three Photo Processing Challenge — April 2026

April 3, 2026April 3, 2026Fandango16 Comments

For this monthly prompt from Kate at XingfuMama, the idea is to pick a photo we want to play with and process it using three different methods.

Just FYI, all processed photos in this post were made using apps available for the iPhone at Apple’s App Store or AI art programs. Also, all images, including the original, were resized (shrunk) to make them quicker to load (and to take up less space in my WordPress media folder).

The photo I’m featuring this month was originally taken on March 1st. It’s actually a screen shot of the image seen from my Ring doorbell camera taken at 7 am. My house faces East and there is a wood fence and gate surrounding my front porch and the angle of the early morning sun created an interesting geometric pattern of shadows on the concrete front porch floor.

*Original screenshot through Ring doorbell camera.*

*Processed using the Prisma app Oil filter.*

*Processed using the Waterbrush app Detail filter*

*Conjured by Copilot when I asked for a Cubist/Picasso-like image.*

Which image do you like best?

C is for Caricature

April 3, 2026April 4, 2026Fandango43 Comments

Have you ever had anyone draw a caricature of you? You know what I’m talking about, right? A caricature.

It’s a drawing that exaggerates a person’s distinctive features or traits, often for humor, satire, or criticism. It usually means a recognizable portrait with intentionally exaggerated features such as a big nose, chin, or smile.

*A street artist creating a caricature of a random person*

I asked Copilot to put together a collage of caricatures of famous entertainers and here is what it came up with. Can you name them all? I can, except for the guy in the lower left corner. Who the hell is that?

At street festivals and county fairs over the years I have had many caricatures drawn of me, but I apparently never kept any of them to share with you.

So, as a special treat, I asked Gemini to create a caricature of me, and here is what Gemini conjured up:

Okay, wait. That’s kind of scary and I don’t want you, my readers, to have nightmares when you think about my blog.

So then I gave ChatGPT a photo of the real world me and I instructed ChatGPT to create a caricature of me as a blogger who is sitting in an easy chair tapping away on his iPhone producing a blog post.

Here is what ChatGPT came up with:

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Fandango’s Flashback Friday — April 3rd

April 3, 2026April 2, 2026Fandango15 Comments

This was originally posted on April 3, 2018

Exploring Original Thought

It recently occurred to me that I have never had an original thought in my entire life. Neither have you, most likely.

There is an actual theory about this. It’s referred to as the Original Thought Theory. I don’t know who originally thought of the Original Thought Theory, but based upon the theory itself, it wasn’t an original thought.

The Original Thought Theory suggests that anything anyone can ever think of has already been thought of by someone else. Do you believe that?

Even the Bible doesn’t buy the notion of original thought. In Ecclesiastes 1:9, it reads:

That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there’s nothing new under the sun.

So what do we mean by “original thought?” First, let’s explore the word “original.” Various online dictionaries define the word as new, fresh, inventive, novel. It’s something created, undertaken, or presented for the first time.

It’s much easier to use the concept of “original” in terms of physical things, especially inventions. The iPhone was the original smartphone (or, arguably, the BlackBerry was). How about the IBM PC? Was that the original, mass-market personal computer? Johannes Gutenberg invented the original mechanical printing press. The Ford Model T was the original mass-produced automobile.

But the concept of “original” when it comes to thought is a different proposition. The word “thought” is defined as “the product of mental activity.” So an original thought is something new, fresh, and inventive that is the product of mental activity.

How can you know if a thought you or someone else had was uniquely new, fresh, or novel, as well as one that was thought for the first time…ever?

Was Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote the Law of Universal Gravitation, the first to observe and describe the concept of gravity? Newton may have proved the existence of gravity using mathematics, but did it occur to no other human being before Newton that what goes up must come down? I can’t prove that it did, but I think it’s unlikely that it did not.

Think about the history of humanity on this planet. Think about the billions and billions of thoughts that human beings have had throughout history. What is the likelihood that you or I will actually have a truly original thought, a thought no other human being in the history of recorded time has ever thought?

Thoughts may be unique to a person, but they are formulated by a wealth of other thoughts, data, emotions, and perspectives. If someone presents a different perspective and your response is, “I never thought of it that way,” is your revelation an original thought or just a new take on an existing idea? Is formulating a new opinion about something the same as having an original thought?

Even if I discovered a new and different way of thinking about something, it may be new and different for me, but can I know for sure that no one else has also thought about that same thing the same way I have? Of course I can’t.

So, do I feel bad that I have never had an original thought and never will? No, not at all. I am happy that I possess the wherewithal to think rational thoughts, weigh the evidence, internalize other perspectives, and draw my own conclusions.

And then, in my blog, I post about such conclusions, observations, and perspectives in what I hope is a reasonably original manner. Original to me, anyway.

Written for today’s WordPress one-word prompt, “explore.”

FOWC With Fandango — Anomalous

April 3, 2026March 31, 2026Fandango9 Comments

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “anomalous.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.