On Friday I left early, letting her know that I would be back home before four, I headed to the university’s history department to keep my appointment with time.

The department had been bequeathed a new Apple Industries “Chrono-Porter”, and after the first ten years of use in pure historical research the department had started to become a profit center as the device allowed placement of recording devices in crime locations, solving many dead file crimes from the last decade.

I approached the department dean with my request to record my proposal to my than future wife. As another potential income stream the idea was wholeheartedly supported, my payment accepted and I was introduced to the grad student / technician on duty.

With Goggle Map World View up on the main screen we zoomed on the GPS coordinates I provided and using pre-recorded “street views” we programmed the entry and aiming points for the recording aperture. I had set the time that I had proposed into my personal calendar that day and had later downloaded it into face book, and its descendents. To this we added a leading five minutes to allow that my recorded time may have been in error. For some reason recordings cannot be live screened, for the ten minuet recording, an hour of real time would need to be processed and collated to reproduce the original view.

While waiting I inquired why I heard of so few dead file cases solved in the decades prior to the present?

Time is among the electro, magnetic, gravimetric phenomenon that are subject to the theory of general relativity, to transport the sensor aperture and maintain it requires energy in proportion to the squared amount of mass displaced and multiplied by the total time differential between the two points. In other words the greater the time displacement, the greater the amount of energy displacement and when the field opens and collapses the energy discharges are spectacular. A displacement of a decade would create a discharge large enough to distract those present at the potential crime scene, reducing accuracy and potentially changing history. Your recording is the greatest differential in time we have recorded to date.

I went home a shattered man, I am a lifelong bachelor now, after viewing the recording we made I called up the news for the day on the internet archives, the story in the Asheville Citizen-Times said it all…

“A young Tennessee woman was struck and killed by lightning on one of her favorite North Carolina mountain trails only moments before her boyfriend was about to propose to her…

Richard Butler, 30, said he and Bethany Lott, 25, both from Knoxville, had ignored the rain and kept heading up Max Patch Bald, a spot that Bethany had longed to show him.
In his pocket, he had his own surprise -- an engagement ring.
About 30 seconds before the lightning struck, Butler tells the newspaper, Lott turned around to say: "'God, baby, look how beautiful it is.'"
Butler, who suffered second-degree burns in the ordeal, says he remembers seeing three lightning flashes.
"I was spun 180 degrees and thrown several feet back," he says. "My legs turned to Jell-O, my shoes were smoking and the bottom of my feet felt like they were on fire."
He then crawled to Bethany, who was lying motionless only a few feet away.
"I did CPR for probably 15 minutes and the whole time was trying her cellphone, but I couldn't get anything out," Butler says.
He then drove for help, but it was too late.
"I put the ring on her finger while the EMTs were working on her," he tells the Citizen-Times. "They are listing me as her fiancé in the obituaries."
(Posted by Doug Stanglin of the Asheville Citizen-Times)”

Bed Time Story

Daddy! There’s a monster under my bed!!

Well I should have expected it. For Christmas I had given her the book that I am now asked to read each night.
It had three stories in it, “There is a Monster in the Attic”, “There is a Nightmare in my Closet”, and
“There is an Alligator under my Bed”.

So I got up and went to her room and was prepared to calm her, but as she looked shyly up to me she giggled, she could not keep that smile form her lips as she repeated Daddy, there IS a monster under my bed. Will you get it out, please?

Ok, as I got on my hands and knees, in the light of the Dora night light I ran my arm and hand under her infant’s bed, what’s this? A bone chilling cold, small but unexpected, I grasp it and pulled it out.

She could no longer control her giggling, my three year old got me with her first joke, in my hand was a can of Monster’s Mean Bean, energy drink.

Ok boys, what’s with the masks?

It’s for today’s class subject

Ok I don’t get it. Who are you suppose to be?

Dahmer!

Not a good choice. And you?

Ed Gein!

Why?

Well you said today’s class would be about sitting ghouls

No, that's setting goals!!

Mam, I told your boys that I wanted them to come up with a plot device for literature.

I expected something that they would build a story around. A real shovel and fake tombstone on my desk do not make it. By the way the assignment is to write a story about magic, work with them on that.

Just because mother's day is in May does not make it a May day story still... enjoy

We had planed this for weeks. The local salon and spa had a thirty two hour special for the mother’s day weekend. I thought it was a bit hooky, why not eight, twelve, twenty four, or forty eight, no one does thirty two hour specials. This visit is special, for couples only, it promises to leave us feeling un-stressed and years younger. I have never been in either a salon nor a spa so for me this would be a first.

The village Rec-Plex was running a special in conjunction with the spa, a two day camp with an overnight on Saturday night for any children between the ages of two and ten. They had made arrangements to keep the children entertained and out of trouble for two days, well not quite two days, just from ten on Saturday morning to six the following Sunday night.

We packed up our daughter and dropped her off for her first camping adventure, and continued on to the salon and spa. No suitcase for us we had been told that every thing was provided. If there was any problem with Connie, well the Spa was next to the Rec-Plex as was the child care center. We could be over there in a heart beat. As we dropped her off we saw that there were about thirty children and almost as many counselors.

This place is fantastic, water art everywhere along with relaxing dare I say it new age music, the lighting seems to move around and different textures in the surfaces react with flowing motions. We are lead to a cabana and asked to strip to our birthday suits, once bare we are to lay down and cover ourselves with the provided sheet. High on the wall the lights change and it looks like we are in a large pendulum clock. The pendulum swings cams throw back and forth gears spin and retreat and the music really matches it, my eyes close.

Hard to believe but it's time to pick up Connie, neither Anna-Lynn, nor I remember any details, but we both are well tanned and look like we have lost a few years. I do know for a fact that I was swimming, but I know that I did a lot of day dreaming, there is no way that I rode a horse in the last two days. As it is mother’s day, the Rec-Plex has given us a DVD of our daughter's stay, suitably condensed.

Mickey “D’s” first than home. We all have happy meals, chicken nuggets of course.

Connie is sitting in my lap, and Anna-Lynn is snuggled up besides me, we start the DVD.
We must have been early when we dropped Connie off, there looked to be about seventy or so children, I had not known that our little township had that many in this age group and look, besides our daughter, their are two other Asian girls. This holds promise for when she starts school next fall, she will not be the only one.

The children were mostly girls, only about fifteen boys in the whole group, we watched as they were taught to swim, work with crafts, ride ponies and play music with instruments they made. Still most of the time was spent on the playground equipment, with kids just being kids, oh how that looks to be fun. One of the girls with Connie had fallen off the balance beam bridge, It looked like that could have hurt, but she just ended up with a bandage on her arm and after a few minuets it was forgotten. Connie just gushed on and on about her new friends, hopefully they will see each other again this year.

As the DVD ended, I reached up a scratched the itch on my arm, why the heck I had a Dora band-aid on my arm I do not know, we just have the plain generic ones in the medicine cabinet.

It was a dark and stormy night
...no, no, no that’s no
way to start a story.

OK, what do you suggest?

Well what type of story do you wish to write?

Don’t know horror or perhaps a murder mystery.

Do you really have any idea on how it will develop?

No, not really.

Tell you what, I saw a shop in the mall that might be able
to help you, it kind just appeared, don’t remember seeing it before.

So how would that help me?

Well this old guy that is the proprietor said he had just
the thing to help your writing, heck he even knew your name.

do-Do-do-dodo-Do-due
.... time passing...

Heck what happened to you, you’re not looking too good.

That, store… There’s real magic there...I asked the
proprietor...he said he had been waiting for me...yeah I told him about wanting
to write a horror story, he said he had just the thing to help.

What?

Oh he helped me hire a pair of ghost writers,
Real mean looking characters, but they sure know
the steamy side of life. Anyhow he said that they were working off a debt to
him and that I would, in effect, be sub leasing their employment.
Said that I’d be the leaser of two evils..

Cubs memorabilia, I think my granddad has just about one of everything that carried the Cubs name since the Cubs, entered professional play in 1871.

The Chicago Cubs are the oldest team still in its original home town, a fact that my mom’s dad reminds me of each time we head south, down the Red Arrow Highway, crossing the state line fifty minutes later. Past the navy base and the idled army base, as Sheridan Road takes us all the way to Addison Street, under the ivy walls of Wrigley Field. As we search for parking Gramps bemoans the passing of the Chicago, Milwaukee and Lake Shore or better yet bi-level service north of Kenosha on Chicago North Western (now Union Pacific) North Line, on which he and his family would board at Milwaukee Ave between 11th and 12th. Sometimes we would board the train in Lake Bluff, where service was frequent and parking safe.

At first Gramps just collected every promotional item offered up by the Cubs since he started going to the home games in 1955. As his collection grew he haunted estate sales, garage sales, auctions and fan fairs looking for more and more Cubs items. With the advent of e-bay and Craig’s List he came into his element. Still, the family is not made on money, if he could score something for free then that would be the way it would be obtained.

Over the years some of the promotions were directed at children only, often times the cutoff would be the age of fourteen, so after 1964 he needed a coconspirator to come along to collect the coveted promotional item, no matter what it was. Gramps was the eldest child in a large family so for a while his brothers and sisters helped him. By the time his siblings were too old, gramp’s descendents, my mother and uncles and later on his many grandchildren would go to the games with him and help collect the treasures which he so coveted.

With my generation came a problem, the family was a bit heavy in the XY co-ordinates with no girls born amongst the seven families. You wouldn’t think this would be a problem after all its baseball, right?

Wrong, for in 2002, the Pleasant Company, began producing special American Girl doll-sized versions of Cub’s uniform jerseys, jackets and ball caps to be given free to girl attendees of special games played at Chicago's Wrigley Field. Grandpa could see no reason that he should pay for what could be gotten for free at a game that he and any family members who wish to come with him would be attending anyway. At the time I had no idea I would be helping my granddad, at the age of two, who knew.

As the years went by, I saw a lot of games, Grandma make me a fan coat, my own coat of many colors, most in various shades of team colors, blue, red, and white. Of course I would have a team hat on with my long hair routed out above the sizing strap so that it would not get in the way of tracking incoming balls. Funny thing about incoming balls, they rarely reached the deck and if they did, as small as I was I did not want to be in the scrum. When I was younger I had wondered about the number of total strangers who greeted us and called to me "miss", now I know better. For Gramps, I would do it. Indeed, just two weeks ago on Friday the second, the Cubs played the Pirates and Pepsi gave away American Girl Doll- sized apparel, and of course I was one of the first 5,000 children, age 14 and under.

Grandpa added our spoils to his collection, a picture of me scoring the valued prize with the ticket stub en-framed alongside the photo, just the latest photo op in nine years of photos, Grandpa, me, and our treasure.

Gramp’s collection has become well known, and as he is a skilled story teller, he welcomes opportunities to show it off, it was only a matter of time before my class at Parkway Elementary and also the other two six grade classes would be coming over to see his Chicago Cubs collection, like today. My granddad is so proud, me, I am terrified.

Five deer leap to their death off parking garage
The morning edition of the Chicago Sun Times, December 8th, 2005.

I had bought the newspaper on my way through O’Hare Airport as I waited for the next leg of my flight back to Des Moines. As I read the article, I feared that I knew what had happened.

Six of us went hunting on Sunday. No it was not in season but in the hills of West Virginia not much is noticed. We had just been released from the Army and were spending a week at Mark’s home in Ranson.

As we worked to flush more game, Mark told me of the sacred white deer that the few local Indians worshiped. I was surprised to hear that he and the other four had seen one of deer and had shot at it.

No, he did not know what had happened or if they had even hit it, but they found no carcass and no blood trail.

Monday morning, we broke fast at the local waffle house. Mark and my other four companions looked hung-over. Mark denied that he had been drinking as the others replied the same.

Strangely enough, they all had the same nightmare. Mark explained that it had started as an otherworldly chanting noise. Dreams of a white doe and buck had flashed again and again amongst a surreal history of the area. Words could not be understood but visions of Indians hunting, ships sailing on the waters of the Cohongorooton (“a river of geese” also known as the Pethomak, now the Potomac, “meeting place”). Peaceful meetings with white men were followed by images of Indians and white deer, hunted and driven into the Western mountains.

I left them to make my arrangements for the rest of my trip home. First, by bus to Leesburg, then to D.C. and a day of flying with a long lay over in Chicago.

We met again for supper, looking no better, Mark related to me that they still could hear chanting. No one else but the five of them could hear it and to hear him tell it was driving him batty. After supper I packed and we all climbed into the van. After a short drive down to the bus station, we parked in the nearby parking structure, even at this hour there were no spots open below the fifth floor. We hauled my cases down to the station and said our goodbyes. Mark said to me that we would not see each other again and wished me a good life.

And so as I read,

"For reasons that mystify authorities, five deer that made their way onto the top of a five-story parking garage suddenly leaped to their deaths. Police Cpl. Steve Cox found the does' bodies..."They took the plunge," he said. "It was just absolutely weird." A woman called police Sunday when she saw the deer falling, and Cox said he found scratches and animal hair on the fifth floor, indicating that's where they had been. It's unclear how the deer got into the garage, but Cox said they may have become frightened after getting trapped. Cars moving through the garage may have spooked them, he said. ...The carcasses were given to passersby for butchering."

I wonder if the van is still on the fifth floor…

Due to recent hacker attacks on metabolic stabilization nano-bots
in multidimensional organisms the following information is published.

This non organic virus, which may be related to worms and or bugs,
is generated by the mutual action of a pair of remote random websites,
supporting the selection of Darwin award candidates.

Therefore to cure for the virus is
the destruction of the correct pair a sites.

GOULASH
Someone once told me that Goulash is another name for anything soup.
This is a recipe that my family likes.

GOULASH
4 tablespoons bacon drippings
1 to 2 pounds course ground beef
1 medium to large onion chopped
2 stalks celery chopped
1 large carrot chopped
 ½ large bell pepper chopped
1 thirty oz can stewed tomatoes
1 fifteen oz can tomato sauce
2 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon pepper
 ¼ teaspoon minced garlic
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 cups noodles cooked
1 cup grated mixed cheese

Heat bacon drippings in Dutch oven, add chopped onion cook until translucent, add meat, cook until browned, DRAIN and return to pan.
Add carrots, celery, stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce, spices, Worcestershire sauce and garlic, cook covered, fifteen minutes over medium heat.
Add green peppers and noodles cook covered, fifteen minutes further, top with cheese cover, turn off heat and let set ten minutes before serving.

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This just in from Cincinnati Ohio, where a Crossmart employee was arrested on suspicion of… oops the censers must have been at this one already … Well as the story goes on, the arresting officers showed up at the home residence of the now ex-Crossmart employee and after introducing themselves, they escorted the employee into their black Chevy Suburban and departed. After two days and no word, the spouse of the missing employee, contacted the "Helping People" reporter at the local television station.

In the spouse’s hands was a copy of an ad for a demonstration in preparation of … HAMAS

Standards being what they are today at the dead tree news, no one bothered to check that they had the print copy right. The “recipe” for revolution used by the demonstrator?

Hummus bi tahini
2 cups (16 ounced) canned Garbanzo Beans, or Chick Peas, drained
1 small bunch parsley
3 green onions
3/4 tsp minced garlic (or three cloves)
2 tbsp tahini
Juice of 2 lemons (or 2 tbsp lemon juice)
1 tsp sea salt
Dash of cayenne
Olive oil

Combine all the ingredients except the olive oil in a food processor or blender. Add 1/2 cup water. Process into a thick puree. Transfer to a bowl and cover with a thin film of olive oil to keep the hummus from crusting. Refrigerate until ready to use. Serve with fresh vegetables or flat bread. I like mine on Lefse with lettuce and rolled up for a quick snack.

The origin of hummus can be told in three words: lost to antiquity. It’s been around for thousands of years, in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and parts of India. While the word “hummus” is Arabic for chick pea, the primary ingredient, most of us use the word for the popular dip and spread, which is properly called hummus bi tahini – tahini being another ingredient.

Well the ex-employee has returned and has nothing to say. However I do. WHY IS HE THE EX-EMPLOYEE?

Eclipsed 
By DreamMaker

I’ve spent the weekend in town, hopefully the end of a forty-seven-year journey, reservations made years ago in some instances, though the bed and breakfast is new. Last night the two-hour Solar Eclipse Blues & BBQ Harbor Cruise my fair well to 2017.
Now I wait for the charter boat to board, across the water sits the USS Yorktown where she has sat for the last forty-two years. There are about four hundred of us for this special cruise but only thirty-five of us are special, we have been “here” before.

I’m not sure at what point my life started to skew out of hand. According to some, our lives are predetermined, in which case nothing I did would change what happened. Others theorize that every action we take creates new alternative universes and that not only do our choices make a difference but events both natural and supernatural can affect our placement between these alternatives. As nature tries to adapt to these changes and damp out the resonances caused by them, unknown laws of nature act in ways that might be considered magical.
Today I am, again, in two places at the same time, literally. Down the pier, he who was I waits also to board. He has been looking forward to this cruise for five years. He was a student at Christopher Newport in Virginia’s Tidewater, There I had found him where I expected and asked if I could join him for a coffee. Even at the age of thirty-nine I looked young and strangely we shared our birth dates. I remember our conversation from both viewpoints, although his is harder to pull up, as it is buried under a second childhood and decades of overlapping memories. What would happen to me if I had not set up that first meeting? Would I just disappear? For that matter what will happen today, will I again be displaced in time and body?

As the sky starts to brighten I feel a jolt, the tour boat has changed, it now appears as a sloop of a style found in drawings I’ve seen at the maritime museum. A quill pen in my hand and an open manuscript in front of me …
“…one of those startling phenomena which in the earlier ages were wont to be hailed as especial manifestations of the Creator s anger, whose influence has been known to stay the onset of engaging hosts, making men deaf to the sound of the trumpet, and dead to the yet more stirring influence of their own furious passions, when standing armed before the array of their enemies, which have been known to scare the robber from his spoil, and join in renewed amity the hands of long hating brothers. And even at this day, when natural causes have been assigned for the appearance of this wonder, and science has learned to anticipate the minute and the effect of its coming, still, what power does it exercise over the imagination of the mass! Few minds can watch the progress of such an event, natural though it be, untouched by awe, unelevated to that Being who is the cause of all; the hearts of the simple and the pro found, of the sinner and of the saint, alike own the influence of the hour, and render up nature s involuntary homage to nature s God.
It had been already calculated that at Charleston and in its immediate vicinity this eclipse would be total; and, consequently, here were drawn together, from different points, several scientific men, astronomers and others, for the purpose of observing its progress.
Nothing could have chanced more happily for their object than the present state of the atmosphere. At meridian the sky was cloudless; the page of heaven lay open, fair, to all who could read therein : at the same time the thermometer stood at 75 degrees in the shade ; but from this hour until two P.M., when the obscuration was complete, continued gradually to fall, remaining stationary at 50 degrees.
As the great luminary became slowly covered, the shadows kept deepening, until, at last, day was exchanged for the sober effect of moonlight : thin filmy clouds then became observable, slowly sailing beneath the diminished orb ; one by one the stars came twinkling forth ; the house hold poultry gathered uneasily together in the yard, and retired to their roosting-places ; the hurrying tread of frequent passers gradually ceased; the buzz of the thousands of eager watchers died away ; the voice of man was silent, or heard but in whispers, and the profoundest silence reigned throughout the city; till, at the moment when the interposition was complete, the bells of the different churches tolled out, adding a thrilling solemnity to the scene.
At this point of the eclipse the effect was grand beyond description: a well-defined, narrow circle, of the most brilliant crimson colour, surrounded for a few moments the darkened orb, which then seemed to diverge into a glorious halo composed of equal rays: but only for a minute was this clearly definable;” the remainder of the page awaits entry…

A phone call, an inquiry by the receptionist, how may I direct your call? A tip, story suggestion, turns out that I am the next on the phone “please do not call me” list, my headset buzzes and the receptionist introduces me to our caller than leaves the conversation after letting me know that Mr. ??? has some insight of interest about the total eclipse of 1970, the eclipse coming next week and at least one in the future. I groan to myself, not another werewolf story
With a touch of Déjà vu, he introduces himself with the statement “No this is not about werewolves and I enjoyed your article that you will write about this in December, and no I’m not a prophet, seer, of a fortune teller either. Let me take you out to lunch and tell you a tale.”
As we talked, I came to believe that he was indeed a time traveler, stuck be unintended circumstances. Displaced in time from the mid twenty-second century back one hundred and eighty-three years, now in his mid-seventies he knows that his expected life will not bring him back to his time.
He has a theory involving gravitational and magnetic interference over time and the same location. In Nineteen Seventy he found himself on an ocean-going minesweeper undergoing deperming at a facility in the Copper River. It was not the year and place he had started the day. I knew nothing of deperming and so he explained that such were magnetic silencing facilities. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries these facilities heavy gauge copper cables are wrapped around the hull and superstructure of the vessel with very high electrical currents (as high as 4000 amps) are pulsed through the cables. This has the effect of "resetting" the ship's magnetic signature. It is also possible to assign a specific signature that is best suited to the particular area of the world the ship will operate in. Common to the date he left 2153 and arrived in 1970 was the totality of a full solar eclipse. Next week he intends to go to sea on a tour boat for the eclipse. He wonders if any others were displaced in time, will it happen again…

The above total eclipses occurred at Charleston SC on the year/date/time indicated and identified using the Java Script Solar Eclipse Calculator (http://www.chris.obyrne.com/Eclipses/calculator.html ) developed by Chris O’Byrne and Stephen McCann along with the Eclipse Explorer developed by Chris O’Byrne and Fred Espenak, accessed via (http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html ). Permission to reproduce this data is freely granted when it is accompanied by the acknowledgment: "Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC"
The diary text in relation to the 30 Nov 1834 is excerpted form a travel journal titled IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. DURING THE YEARS 1833, 1834, AND 1835. BY TYRONE POWER, ESQ. Vol II. The whole of this book may be found at URL: http://www.archive.org/stream/impressamer02powerich/impressa...

What’s that Joe?

I said I hate this city.

San Fran’s not that bad. By the way, why are we up here?

Some of the victims identified the plastic surgeon.

Here’s Dr. Piper’s clinic.
Looks abandoned. We best look around.

This is the place. See the two one gallon bell jars Bill?

Yeah, if I remember right that's about a peck in volume. What’s in them Joe?

Souvenirs I guess, She would pick up drunks and give them a quick sex reassignment, then dump the victims down in L A.

Oh hell, that’s it than.

What?

Dr. Petra Piper picked a peck of pickled peckers.

As is my late afternoon habit I tuned into the local, talk radio station, yes that one that in the low 600 kilohertz region of the dial.
 

File this one under
“Give Me That Old Time Religion”
By DreamMaker

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Phil tells the story

Now on this station one segment host is more colorful than others and is by far and wide, my favorite. Jon has several specialty sections within the broadcast, on Friday it is "Stories of the Strange" which are short news stories from around the US and the world that have made in to the media one way or another. The point here, is that this story did not make it into the news, anywhere.

This in from Athens, Police are looking for the plastic surgeon who had performed modifications requested by a pair of actors who had in mind to create a stage play based on early Mediterranean Civilizations. The couple who had intended to only have temporary modifications done along the line of prosthesis and were shocked to find that the doctor had exceeded their instructions.

as Jonathan plays the straight man

Georgios’ head and shoulders now sported a bovine appearance, including horns, and his wife Sophia gained a functional fourteen inch extension of muscle culture and attendant organs in addition to her own natural gifts.

It was at this time the long time curse of all broadcasters hit, the open mike, as was heard from one host to the other “That’s all I need, another old cock and bull story”.

After a pregnant pause Phil commented that he hoped that the FCC didn’t have their ears on today. Jon followed with, it depends, do they use the same doctor? And now it's time for the weather.

As is my late afternoon habit I tuned into the local, talk radio station, yes that one that in the low 600 kilohertz region of the dial.
 

File this one under
“But He Said!”
By Day Dreamer

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Phil would tell the story

Sadly, no longer are Jon and Phil hosts at this station. Their program "The Green Show" was more colorful than all others and was by far and wide, my favorite. Jon had several specialty sections within the broadcast, and on Friday it would be "Stories of the Strange" which were short news stories from around the US and the world that made in to the media one way or another. The point here, is that this story that did not make it into the news, anywhere.

This in from Boston where a an ex-high school athlete and sometimes model has put his health and reputation on the line time and again to the entertainment of his fellow citizens, no I am not talking about the pretty boy of whom you think, no this behind the scenes support person, had been asked to handle the balls but when called on to deliver, turned out to be all hands and then some. Overhearing a miss-directed comment, our helpful assistant took the advice to heart.

as Jonathan played the straight man

As a result we will for ever remember the hullabaloo over the supposed misdeeds a pair of "fine" leaders of questionable character, who had been harassing the help. One had, in reference, said "that's not what I meant when I said he should get a pair", and the other had replied "they need to be deflated". In testimony given weeks later was heard " but he said ... !"

After a prominent pair, of seconds, Phil commented that he hoped that the FCC didn’t have their ears on today. Jon followed with, yeah that one was kind of flat. And now it's time for the weather.

More stories of the strange. John our first story comes out of Alberta, Canada...

File this one under, oh heck just toss it...
By Dreammaker

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Native American actress Sexy Two-Fire, star of many alternative themed porno movies, is suing her medical insurance carrier over their refusal to cover costs related to her pregnancy and delivery of a healthy six pound male child whom she immediately named Conan-Rum. The insurance company contends that Two-Fire has not undergone SRS and as such does not qualify for the coverage, however the company is not contesting post natal care for the child.

As Two-Fire is non fertile, she had gratefully accepted donations of both egg and sperm from long time co-performers Gregory Fry and Mercedes Pan. After appropriate hormone treatment, the fertilized egg was implanted in Two-Fire's abdomen where it successfully attached and nine months later, her son was delivered by cesarean section.

When asked for comment, her agent replied that he had thought this was a bad idea from the get go. Not only the insurance problem but now the child has been named after all of his parents, the poor kid is Conan-Rum Fry Pan Two-Fire.

Our second story, is out of Florida where ex-governor Bush has finally commented on his historic refusal to grant the last wishes of infamous Shad brothers, who were executed for the murder of their father. The brothers had petitioned than Governor Bush to change their method of execution, stating that as students of history, they wished to enact some history of their own in passing and therefore requested death by hanging. Governor Bush declined their request with the added notation to his attorney general that he wished to have nothing more to do with hanging shads.

And now the weather...

Fishing

The chance of a life time, something I’d dreamed of since watching the movie “Splash”. I am attracted to the idea of mermaids and mermen, with so much of the earth covered in water, and yet so little that we can visit, a whole new world to be explored is just waiting.

Vacation in March, this year I’d decided to visit New Orleans. Having never been there before Katrina, I had a morbid fascination with what I would see, in addition to the usual reasons to see the city of jazz.

On the fourth day of my weeklong visit, I went out to tour the damaged areas. I found demolition, some rebuilding, and a few people still sorting out their belongings and lives, even a few yard sales. I stopped at many, talked with the host or hostess, and moved on. At dusk, as I made ready to go back to my motel, I stopped at one last one. Unknowingly attracted to some cheep Middle Eastern trinkets, I paused and decided to buy several as gifts for my family. I needed some thing to bring back for the kids.

Two days later, now at home, I’ve unpacked. What ever possessed me to select such gifts for the kids? Perhaps a bit of Brasso will make these look better, and indeed using the polish, I had shined up the pile of coins, knives, and knickknacks. With just the oil lamp left to go I paused, what if? No, I was not surprised when the trail of green vapors started to coalesce and take on the form of a short balding man in a green turban and robes.

After listening to his presentation, I asked him to wait, I needed to think this over, and bid him to return to his repository.

With three wishes, I could use two to try out mythical or otherworldly life forms and use the last to return to my own life.

I had taken my vacation alone due to differences between the children’s school year and the only availability left by my employer, but my wife and kids would be leaving to visit with her family on Easter break. Perhaps...

I started moving work schedules around to create a five day break, than I prepared.

At last the Easter week is here, unknownly the family has gone. I had set up and filled a swimming pool in the recreation room, brought in a supply of lobster and escargot, and called the Genie forth. I explained my first wish to become a mermaid and bid him to stay available for a follow on wish for my second choice.

As my body turned to vapor and reformed, I felt the emergence of breasts, fins, and tail, with a short travel through the air I splashed into water.

The view was all wrong, I was submerged, the waterlogged world around me seemed immense, with bridges, treasure chests, water plants and rocks, I knew this was not the pool. There were large fish here with me, as large as I am, Oh... The children’s gold fish.

Water logged and small, my calls to the genie, go unheard, he is free until all wishes are granted, and I am here.

P.S. the picture shown is from issue #41 of tsat, as found at http://tsat.transform.to/i.41/index.41.html

At first you hear the engine noise with the distinctive modulation created by a revolving prop, the longer you hear it, the more you realize that it is not an ordinary small plane. The sounds on your audio horizon are just wrong and they do not change at a rate you would expect for the Doppler Effect for approaching or retreating sources.

Your eyes rise to the sky to find the audible intruder, searching back and forth while your ears serve as a pair of direction finders, balancing the volume between them.

Then you see it, a contraption of wheels, sticks, part of a parachute, with a seat followed by an engine block. The operator sits in the middle of the contraption. You realize someone had a sense of humor.

The parachute cloth of the wing bore the name and picture from a popular Arabian themed brand of cigarettes.

No, not the full flavor version, this is an ultra-light.

The following came to me as I pondered the life of a person who had been modified to control aircraft or spacecraft as in the “Skin Horse” series seen at the end of the blog section.

The sub story was titled "I Can Fly" which you can read "HERE". The note below is a cast note about "Nick".

For Your Consideration, in a time and place ...

DOD Program managers announced today a halt to the use of Biological Flight Control Computers (BFCC)s in aircraft configured for in flight refueling. The announcement came after several baffling crashes occurring either during, or immediately after an in-flight refueling attempt by aircraft with installed BFCCs.

An unnamed DOD spokesperson suggested that donors for the program had not been screened for gender preference and upon first accepting a refueling probe in flight, the computer system went into shock. The situation was not helped by unauthorized communications from the BFCCs located on the tankers. Their message , “it's so good baby”.

At home test to reveal baby's sex leaves some parents surprised at hospital.
Chicago Tribune 3-02-2008
 
 
Guessing Game
by
Dreammaker

Micki! I’m so glad you called.

No, the reason I never called is your mother's restraining order.

No, it’s been in place since the divorce in 2012.

Well, yes you were part of the reason for the divorce, but not the cause, No the cause was your mother’s unreasoning stubbornness.

You really want to hear this? You understand that I am very critical of your mother?

Well, it started in 2007 when we first celebrated your conception. Janice wanted to know if you were a boy or girl and did not want to wait for development to show in the sonogram.

Yes, at that time a company known as Acu-Gen Bio Lab of Lowell, Mass had been advertising that their DNA testing was 99.9% accurate. Their web site listed dozens of clinical studies that they said corroborated their approach.

No, they claimed that the sequence that they used in their “Baby Gender Mentor” was not quite the same.

Yes, the Federal Trade Commission did have an opinion. They warned buyers to be skeptical of the tests.

The test said that you were a girl. Your mother wanted a girl and in her way that was that, case settled. She started buying your bedroom set, clothing and toys. She had your life planned out before you were a bulge in tummy.

Yes, that was a surprise. Janice started screaming again, I had just gone through six hours of being lambasted for all that I had done to her and Janice telling the doctor to make it stop when finally you appeared. The doctor asked me your name and I said Mickey.

No, Janice had agreed to that name if it was a boy, before the test.

I know the birth certificate says female, I think your mother talked the nurse into it.

Well things went downhill fast. I tried to get your mother to talk to counselors but she would not go. That kind of thing does not work if only one person goes.

Yes, I asked for the divorce and asked for custody. Your mother had a very good lawyer from the women’s rights group. Not only did they promise not to charge her if they lost, they won an assignment of their lawyer’s fees from my accounts and your mom was awarded total custody.

No, I don’t believe that I could have won. The judge found me in contempt of court when I asked that she examine your privates herself, to not just read the birth certificate.

Yes, that is when the restraining order was slapped on me.

No your mother never sent me photos or any thing, all I have seen of you was your graduation pictures on the school’s web-blog.

You look quite developed in that picture.

It is all natural!

Oh, you found out that she has had you on hormones for the last six years?

She wouldn’t let you be a tomboy?

Yes, you could try to take this to court, but Micki, consider this. Perhaps God did have a plan for you, where this was what was needed. Your mother does love you and the world knows you as you are. Know what happened and move on.

Yes I want to meet you. NOW? You’re at my door!!

His daddy had power, and position.

He and his brother seemed to have mixed their positions.

While all seemed to be able to govern, and all three did,
when time to renew the union’s bid there would be no second term as daddy’s polls slid.

Now as the years roll by, we sit and wonder why,
If we were doomed to be bushed, why couldn’t John Ellis have tried?

I do not know if this makes an octet, but now that eight years have passed
We know that when it comes to our U.S. history George W does not pass.

Working as a security guard has its moments, not all are on the job.

Recently I tried to explain to my spouse of thirty years what I do at night. It was not easy. Yes I do go up to cars and offer assistance, I walk quite a bit on the street sides of buildings, and have befriended many officers of the law. Well you could say that I put my body out for hire. Ok I will admit that I have come more than just a little black and blue on occasion, yes I could say that I was slapped around some. You wanted to know about that silver tool you saw me with? Well it is called a security wand.It is used to verify that I have been to the targeted location. How do I know it works? Well it kind of vibrates as you put it to its target, yes before this I had called the target a button. Well yes the wand is silver gray, yeah about seven inches long, and an inch in diamater well yes it does have ribs on the side but that's just to make it easier to hold. Um yes it is rounded on the one end.

No NO NO I do not use a vibrator, and no I am not a prostitute, what do you mean you have some clothing for me?

we celebrated it here yesterday as she visits with us on Tuesdays. She likes frogs, frog-purse, frog-doll, frog-song (I want to be a frog today performed by Johnette Downing from "Fins and Grins", if you can find it, go ahead and play it).

Well to make a story longer, her birthday card had a sound chip in it of a frog croaking out the happy birthday song, and she was playing it non stop as my wife prepared supper. I just could not resist, I asked my granddaughter if she knew how bridges were built? She replied with a question in her voice "with frogs?" to which I answered no, with rib-bits. I saw my intended target try to hide a smile, yep, got my wife again.

I don’t believe I heard this!

As usual I have my radio on as I drive to work, Wisconsin’s “Flagship” station is on and this afternoon, Jonathan and Phil are talking with the station’s political talk hosts, Charlie and Jeff, when the subject of political correctness comes up.

Now all four, before the mic are known to speak their minds, calling it as they see it, and forcing school age children to undergo remedial training for potential future behavior due to their gender just seems wrong.

Under discussion in the enrollment of a local, “national” leader’s son at the Miss Jane Thompson school for Boys.

The majority of the hosts of the View, and Morning Blend were giddy with the appropriateness of the action, each show having but one lonely voice of decent while the hue and cry of disagreement was heard twenty four hours long from all hosts on the Fox’s national horn. Of course they were fair, because they presented the opposing viewpoints before shouting them down.

Charlie calls it to a point, “when are we going to say what we mean? Just because her child is male, she is sending him to a special school, to learn not to be male? Is child abuse OK because of gender?”

Jon’s reply, “well it does seem that she is skirting the issue”.

At this point Phil breaks in, “good thing we’re on radio, Steve, our producer, has his head in his arm, and is pounding his panel, I can’t tell if he is laughing or crying.”

With that I tune to the FM dial.

Keeping Quiet, as reported by Dreammaker

Temporal Address withheld under restrictions of the temporal security code of 2025.

"PARIS – ...
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau, notably through his famed character Bip, played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years,...

Marceau was born Marcel Mangel on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, France. His father, Charles, a butcher who sang baritone, introduced his son to the world of music and theater at an early age. The boy adored the silent film stars of the era: Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx brothers. ..."

As the two men reviewed the archived file they congratulated their newest agent, H.
Well the files again match, This man’s art again stands revered in the eyes of mankind, it’s a good thing that you were able to recover his history from the attempted temporal assassination.

Thank you, by the way, this proves an old axiom also.
    Oh, and what is that?
Why,     a stitch in time saves mime

Famed French Mime Marcel Marceau Dies at 84

Killer Heels as related by Dreammaker Angelique   (Pettyjohn)   in Get Smart Placed on youtube by slaphead6000

A stunt man subbing for Ms Pettyjohn in the part of Charlie Watkins, who in turn, had disguised himself as a gorgeous Pussycat working at the Pussycat Club, was found dead in his dressing room.

April 1, 1967, 8:30 PM, as the show is broadcast we interview director Sydney Miller, actor Ted Knight, and actress Angelique Pettyjohn, also the medical examiner on scene for the Hollywood Police Department.

This puzzles me Joe.

Why?

The examiner states that the actor was killed by a single blow to the head by a five inch heeled sandal.

Yes?

Well, the door to the dressing room was locked from the inside, and can’t be unlocked from outside,
further more there were no other entrances, windows or vents to provide access to the room.

The fire marshal and building inspector would love that.

That’s besides the point.

So is his head. Let’s see, the point of impact of the five inch spiked heel of the left sandal was centered on the right ear, and the right sandal was found on the actor’s foot. The medical examiner determined that the actor had been leaning against the dressing table when struck.

Where are you going with this?

Considering the show, I think this was accidental. It’s obvious that the shoe fits, and he wore it but when he heard a ring from a telephone he quickly picked up his left shoe and slammed it to his ear.

Yes the actor was well heeled, maybe this is the reason we’ve only seen Don Adams using a shoe phone on Get Smart.

In times past, when the sun seemed to grow cold and civilizations abated,
it fell to just a few to keep the flickering ember that was knowledge from fading.

Thou no longer did legions enforce rule from lands afar, the calendars,
religion and language of both church and scribes remained on par.

Outside the church and scribes only a few knew the magic of written words,
unlike today, it came to be the task of minstrels to spread the tales which held sway as news of the day.
So it came to be that the story of Knights and the Dryads became a minstrel’s stay.

Therefore it is with no rhyme nor reason, do I shout out, the story you're about ... to hear about.

Knight and Dryad, recounted by Dreammaker

A score and four days into the month named after the scion of the Roman gods did come the Wedding festival and the strange happenings of which did a single minstrel recount. Not just any minstrel, but one who had once been a wood worker’s apprentice who formed the mighty long bows of the huntsman and archers of the keep. Indeed he is still known by the name Fred the bender. An apprentice no more due to injury, his legs almost useless, he turned to skills he had learned as a child growing up. His fine voice, memory and skill with stringed instruments endeared him to a passing musical troupe and now Fred’d Bender the minstrel is he.

Of the evening in question, none now is written. The festival, a celebration of marital union between two keeps, the groom and the bride, perhaps cousins it was said. To the betrothed the date had little meaning, except that the sun would shine long, the better the party it would make.

The church when quarried had no problems with the date, but of clerics of a more pagan religion would have known, the night was special and all involved should have been warned.

The great day came and went, brethren far and near with their loyal nobility did attend. Of the lesser nobility, the knights and the guards did fall the responsibility of keepers of the peace, the bouncers you might say. As the sun set on the day’s festivities, dancing lights and shadows were cast upon the marry throng by torches lining the surrounding meadows so vast. It is not known now when not to where, the wedding party and the merrymakers retired, but as the midsummer’s night moon did raise the air cooled and treadles of fog did arise and from the surrounding forests did lasses appear, attracting the attentions of knights and soldiers near. Among the lasses and armed men did pass the liquid of the moon's bright repast.

The shining orb moved westward, first high then low, meanwhile each man and lass did also lay low. When the glowing orb now of pealed orange sank below the treetops the forms of the loving couples faded, knights and lithe spirits did disappear.

On the ground so fertile and sweet, sprites and spirits with the men did mix, their bodies of dust and bone they did shed, their own spirits were now to be spread, of wood nymphs and forests they become.
Now around the castle keep, where once meadows did surround, saplings with new born guardians enfolded, abound.
Now this tale from times lost to the past, is now but song for a singer to spread delight. As the last of the evening’s light fades, the ex-woodworkers apprentice, Fred d’ bender sings out in nasal twangs, a minstrel’s warning,

Of wasted dryads and wasted knights,
a tree from you is left behind…
for you are no longer of man,
your heart belongs to something else…

Freddy Fender's Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

In a comment titled "Dear John" on Hope Eternal Reigns' "Angharad has finally attained the coveted MD", Abigail Drew wrote about what a "Dear John" meant to a young Mormon on missionary. Besides pointing out that "Dear John" is a well known introduction on letters to serviceman, I had to go on with ....

BTW, has anyone noticed the problem at the Vatican...

Back in the middle of the last century, a window cleaner fell to his death while securing a damaged scaffold back to the side of the Vatican office building and holding an escape ladder while while his coworkers escaped back to ground, in doing so saving the lives of many. In the years passing window washers everywhere have whispered prayers to him in times of danger and some have claimed to have been saved by his spirit. The Vatican is hesitant to investigate for if proved true, this would be the Vatican's first Ladder Day Saint.

Lipizzan Girls

Fire That Balkan publicity agent with the bad accent!

Why?
look at today’s paper, the front page!

Local "Off Broadway" group will perform movie remake. It will not star Kevin Costner, still ....

What’s wrong, it looks like he’s doing a great job, for a group small as yours, this is good publicity.

This show, it's about boys, turned into pony girls, performing a tribute show about those famous Andalusian Stallions, you know the ones in Lake County Illinois, from the Disney story, the ones that General Patton saved. I named it "Dancing with Hooves".

Aye!

Lost Parents, Will the lost parents of a six year old child named
Renée VanPuten please come to the security office at the main gate.

The message was repeated every ten minuets for the next hour, if it
had been in Dutch or German, or if they had only pronounced the name
correctly (the vowels sound different), perhaps there would have been a
chance. But no, after that hour it was off to The Virginia Department
of Social Services.

I can look back on it now, I grew up quite a bit in the last four
years. Before I forget much more, I will write here my life, before,
then, now, and to come.

I am Randi Kwiakowski, the adopted daughter of Sandi Patterson
Kwiakowski and Lawrence Mark Kwiakowski. Yes adopted. We are a family
now, and most of the times, when I think of mom and dad I no longer
think of my birth family, they would not recognize me now.

I was born in the Netherlands, the only son but youngest child of a navy petty officer.
I remember how excited I was, we were going to America to meet up with
my father, and than I would ride back to the Netherlands on his ship
with the other fathers and their sons.
(Here in the US they call it a tiger cruise, but as a girl I can’t go.)

We flew in on a huge jet on Air France, I know not what kind, it was
my first plane flight and at six of age, it seemed as if everyone from
my gymnasium would fit aboard and still leave room for more.

In Norfolk we stayed in the Navy Lodge on the US Navy base at Little
Creek Virginia, Oh the ships you could see. Dad had promised me that we
would tour some of them and also a US Navy aircraft carrier and
submarine. It never happened.

Our first week in America, of course we went sight seeing. First
Bush Gardens, I still remember riding the log ride with my dad, I sat
on his lap and he hugged me tight as we plunged into the pools of
water, the bow wave shooting over and on us. I screamed with glee .. do
it again, I want to do it again .. , there was a wild mouse ride, that
I thought I would like but I left my lunch in the air on one turn, more
on the next turn, than the worst pain was when I tried to leave more on
the last turn but no more came up.

We went to the capital and saw the Lincoln Memorial, Washington
Monument, the Capital itself and the Pentagon. We also went to Mount
Vernon. I thought it was built of stone, but I remember that the ranger
told our tour group that the outside was wood, carved and painted to
look like stone, neat.

The next day we rented a car and dad drove us up to the mountains,
there was a highway along the ridge tops, the view was beautiful, It
took us two days to drive back and dad looked at every town and tourist
attraction he could. Mom was yelling at him that none of us wanted to
see this stuff, but I did, I just couldn’t tell her. If she knew
English maybe she would have enjoyed the trip, as it was only we could
speak with her, Dad knew English, some.

My mom yelled a lot. She would talk and talk. If some one started to
say something, she would yell, I’m talking, wait your turn, but she
never stopped. My dad told me that was why he went to sea, so he could
hear himself.

Friday we attended the start of the Azalea Festival, It started in a
huge flower garden, so large that it even had a zoo in it. My mother
had taken my sisters and I to see the crowning of the festival queen,
this year the queen was from Finland and the princesses were from the
other NATO nations, I tried to see what countries they came from but
found none from home. Puzzled I dodged around looking for a princess
from the Netherlands, I asked many important looking people where was
the princess

I became lost. I couldn’t see my mother nor sisters, I started
screaming for them and bawling. A grandmotherly looking women came to
me. She started asking me what was wrong, I had a hard time
understanding her and her me, but she had the gift of languages and
finally found that I understood some German. As we talked I tried to
explain how I lost my mother, how I was looking for the Dutch princess.
She explained to me that the princess from the Netherlands had become
ill just the hour before, and there was no princess from the
Netherlands, I was shocked, in my pride I could not imagine such a
thing, we were a great sea going nation, we should have princess in
this mostly naval festival!

She asked if I could, would I want to be a princess, and represent my home. Of Course I would, at six little did I know.

She smiled at me and said so mote it be, the air went still, and my
eyesight went crazy, it seemed as the wind had colors and nature sang.
I passed out.

When I came to my senses, I was sitting on a chair on the stage,
around me and with me were the princess of the festival, and the queen
and her court were being presented, as the girls arose, I was prodded
till I jumped up. To my surprise I was now in a white dress, with a bow
in my hair, long hair, really long hair, I don’t have hair to my waist
but I did now. Not knowing what to do I just did what everyone around
me did,

After, some speeches, We watched a military drill team than broke for snacks.

Again I went to look for my mother and sisters. Not finding them and
not knowing where else to go I started to look at the zoo. Much like
those at home, I soon was looking for animals I had not seen before. As
the sky got dark, people started to leave, I was hungry.

Finding help was not hard, a guard spoke German, and between his German and my English I explained that my mommy was lost.

It was then that my new life started.

If only I considered what I was saying.

We know that you have to be careful what you say for when you present your wish, so I took my time to think this out.

1) I wished to be a well educated, beautiful, rich Asian female just entering puberty.
2) I wished for a perfect genetic history with no mental or health problems to trouble my future and a lifespan of centuries.
3) I wished to be my best friend’s future mate.

I forgot that man’s best friend is his dog, and now I’m a Pekingese.

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

My first day at Park Side Elementary School, my teacher, Ms Midler has given us our homework assignment for the weekend, an essay or short story, truth or fiction, on what we did this summer.

I don’t think she will believe this one but she did say it could be truth or fiction.

Elizabeth Consuelo Delgado Gutierrez
Fifth Grade English 8 September 2008
How I Spent my Summer

My summer really started in January of this year with the announcement of the limited extension of the Hannah Montana / Miley Cyrus tour. In honor of the troops and their families, Miley and her father Billy Ray would be appearing at military installations world wide, well not in the war zones. Yet before this there is some background needed.

My son joined the U.S. Navy in 1989 and after two years of schooling at the nuclear power school in South Carolina and at the training facility at West Milton New York he received orders to the USS Texas (CGN39). On his first tour at sea, WESTPAC-91, he met his future wife, Miranda Hernandez Delgado. She was sixteen and staying with her auntie in Olongapo City. She had completed school and now she could attend a vocational school, perhaps getting a job on the base. They met on a USO sponsored beach party on Grande Island in Subic Bay, and by sunset they pledged their love to each other.

June 15, 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted. In the days that followed Wayne helped evacuate thousands of residents of Olongapo and Subic City. The Base at Subic Bay closed, never to open again as a US facility, so started a courtship by correspondence that lead to his sponsoring Miranda on a fiancée visa. Five years later Wayne and Miranda married in the chapel in her home barrio in the mountains of Southern Leyte, a province of the Philippines located in the Eastern Visayas.

May 15th, 1997 my granddaughter Consuelo Elizabeth Delgado Gutierrez was born.

January 7th, 2008 - Washington, DC — The Verizon Center, Miley Cyrus announces the limited extension of her tour honoring the troops and their families. Naval Station Guam was low on the list, the tour would be there for four hours on Saturday July 12th.

March 17th, 2008 KUAM News 8 announced their contest sponsoring three families and their twin daughters with front row seats at the Cyrus tour on Guam. There were several stipulations, the family must be active, reserve or retired military. The twins must be female and between the ages of six and twelve. The family must sign releases allowing KUAM all rights and control of publicity. KUAM decided to hold a beauty/talent contest held in conjunction with the Miss Guam Tourism Pageant on Saturday, April 25, 2008 and hosted by the outgoing Miss Guam Tourism 2007, Tiffany DeGracia and Miss Guam Tourism 2006, Risha Aguon.

March 18th, 2008, a suit is filed, by the LT Governor, in Guam Superior Court challenging the right of KUAM's limiting of the contestants to military and retired military dependents. He also challenged the stipulation that the contestants must be twins. In a quick hearing on March 20th, KUAM won.

March 21st, 2008, Good Friday, my son, his family and I arrive on Guam for the start of of his first overseas shore duty. Wayne had me declared as a dependent after my wife passed so that I could stay in their home and receive medical care that I needed as I was now in my 68th year.

The day we arrived Wayne, Miranda, and I crashed in the hotel. It had been a thirteen hour flight, and with the time zone changes, the 85 degree temp and the high humidity we were out of it for much of the next day. Connie, however, was up and heard about the tour promotion and the contest. She was pissed! Tickets were sold out and the contest was the only way anyone, well six any ones and their parents, would be getting seats. Twelve hours latter I’m still asleep but Connie has wakened Miranda and she is telling her how unfair all of this is. I wish I had been awake, I would not be writing this now.

My daughter in law, is Visayan and a strong believer in witchcraft. Myself, I don’t, well didn’t believe in it. As for the relationship between me and my daughter in law, well, it was a bit strained. Since moving in with her and Wayne, I no longer had my workshop nor my old friends and I kind of laid around a lot just watching the History Channel and football when I could. We all loved each other but the light of our hearts was Connie. What Connie wants, Connie gets. She wants to go to the concert.

Still none the wiser, I awake the next day. Good news, we will be moving into a house on Dyer Drive on NAVCAMS in ten days. Wayne is ecstatic but Connie is quite. She explains to me that to get quarters so fast they had been a little misleading on the sponsorship information, neglecting to reveal the ages of their dependents. When we are questioned about my presence she has been saying that I traveled along with them to help them move in and that I’m on my way to Pattaya City in Thailand to attend the Miss Tiffany's Universe 2008, followed by a tour of Vietnam to see sights from the war from both sides and points of view. As for our other dependent, she and Wayne have started saying that their other daughter will be joining us soon, what...?

April 1st, 2008, We move in to the house, it is a side by side duplex built of concrete and designed to withstand winds up to 250 miles per hour. Four bedrooms and two baths, it has central air-conditioning and a carport. As we meet our neighbor, I again hear the explanation about my presence but now I will be leaving soon?? What is this about a twin daughter arriving this week??

As the mail arrives there are several packages from LA LUNA ISIS in Quezon City, Philippines, I’m ready to take a nap so I put on some music from Anak, yes it is in the Visayan language and I don’t understand the words but it’s very relaxing.
My body still has not adjusted to the time changes and I wake up before midnight. It is still April first and back on the mainland it is not even the first yet. The music on the CD has changed and has a chanting lit to it, almost Celtic but for the language. I’m not feeling well and fade into a restless sleep.

April 2nd, 2008 I awake to the morning sun. Wayne is holding my hand and Miranda is asleep next to me but the view does not look right, first off, I don’t have my glasses on but I’m seeing things clearly, yet the perspective seems off. As I start to move Miranda wakes up and Wayne tells me not get up, that we need to talk first. As Wayne and Miranda start to talk I grow confused then alarmed I start to get up. It’s all wrong, I pass out from shock.

April 4th, 2008 it seems that I’m my own second granddaughter now. The good points? I gained years in my life. Yet all that I’ve accomplished is now just pictures in some photo albums. I still have my knowledge but I’ll have to go back to school and that has
much changed also. As for family relationships, well my opinion is respected, about the same that Connie’s is. But in my case I’m reminded that much of this is going to be new to me. And as for freedom, well there is no way I can just get on a plane and go somewhere now, after all who would sell me a ticket?? By the way no one pays attention to little Asian girls that are only 4'5", and how do you manage hair down to the middle of your back?

April 18th, 2008 the last two weeks could be called my second childhood/girl 101. Connie helps me. We go everywhere together. I’ve relearned how to swim and hopscotch is now a game I can play. We toured the island on a USO tour for new arrivals, seen the blow hole and played by the SECGROUP Antennas, Connie calls it the dinosaur cage, I agree, it looks like one. Dad is teaching us golf and mom is teaching us Sayaw Pilipinas (Philippine folk dances) starting with Tinnikling, the national folkdance which is performed with a pair of dancers (Connie and I) hopping between two bamboo poles held by Mom and Dad just above the ground and struck together in time to music. This dance originates from Leyte Province, mom’s home land and she tells me that the dance mimics the movement of “tikling birds” hopping over trees, grass stems or over bamboo traps set by farmers. As we dance we have to move with grace and speed jumping between bamboo poles.

Another Visayan dance is the Kuratsa. Mom told us that it is commonly performed during festivals in Bohol and other Visayan towns, and is meant to portray a young playful couple’s attempt to get each other’s attention. The stories mom tells us about life and pre-courting in the barrio kind of explain this dance to us.

The third and last dance mom teaches us is the Malakas at maganda. Again from Leyte, it is a tribal dance which depicts the birth of the first man and woman who came out of a bamboo tree. It has been said that the woman named “maganda” (beautiful) and the first man “malakas” (strong) are the parents of the whole community in the island. The dance demonstrates how a bird discovered the noise coming from the inside of the bamboo and perched until it opened. A man and a woman came out of the big bamboo tree and, the birth of this legendary couple is amusingly interpreted in this dance. In these last two dances one of us portrays the boy or man, I’d expected it to be me because of my experience but mommy tells me that I need all the practice I can get being a girl, so Connie plays the part. We will be performing the dances for the talent portion of the contest.

April 25th, 2008 Contest time. We are just a small part to the Miss Guam Tourism event and that is a good thing, it turns out that only three pairs of twins counting ourselves fit within the rules of age and military affiliation set down by KUAM. Still the show went on and our dances were well received. There is a tight relationship between Guam and the Philippines with their shared Spanish and American backgrounds.

July 12th, 2008
With both Miley and her dad Billy Ray we got the best of both worlds, at today's concert. There were more than 1,500 attending the 4 p.m. concert at the theater at Big Navy on Guam. Mom, Dad, Connie and I had tickets in section three row one, we were in front but a bit off to the side. We sure did not need to bring binoculars, Connie couldn’t be more excited as she screamed "I’m absolutely happy. I don’t know what better to say than I’m happy."
Mom started crying when country singer Billy Ray Cyrus appeared on stage and sang "Ready, Set, Don’t Go" with Miley. She told us that the song reminds her that Connie, and I are growing up. Could have fooled me.
Both Dad and I are happy for Connie but we don’t share her enthusiasm. Dad came prepared with aspirin and earplugs because there were a lot of screaming girls, As for me for some reason I screamed along with the rest of us. I heard mom tell dad that she was glad her daughters were looking up to a star who still seems fairly wholesome. I think she has forgotten me as I was and now just thinks of me as another side of Connie.

August 1st, 2008 well the shit hit the fan. Some PN1 raised hell about the DEERS listing after I tried to go to the clinic for my school physical. She started digging and after finding no history of me in the last eleven years of records she called dad's commander.
No one believes in witchcraft but I exist and I am the same down to the DNA as Connie so rather than raise a stink that would show up in the tabloids the navy gave dad and early out and a partial retirement. We moved to Illinois where dad hopes to get a job on the base. As for me, it was an interesting summer.

One more mile,

just one more mile. I had been riding my bike along Silverdale Way, turning off as I pass the bottom of Oyster Bay, the sun has set and I have left the highway for the water front. As the air cools below the temperature of the moist ground and the surrounding waters of the bay, the fog arose, first as a mist on the water, then creeping out from under the conifers towering over the roadway, finally it covers the road and works its way toward the sky, the newly risen full moon shades toward orange and disappears.

For some reason a scrap of a short story comes to mind, of the London Fog, where dimensional boarders blur and in the dissolution of parallel worlds, the random pedestrian may find themselves or their world changed.

The mist eddies and swirls, shadows form and drift apart, insects and frogs croak and sing and strum, other noises, some recognizable and others so foreign the mind filters them out of cognitive acceptance. Forming out of the miasmas is a horse and wagon, there are no Amish here and on the rear of the wagon there is no slow moving vehicle triangle. The hooded driver ignores me and soon they fade from sight.

I push even harder for home. I want nothing to do with what is going on here. Soon I turn up hill, this is military housing and the word ticky-tacky applies, one unit looks like the next with four to six units sharing walls and fifteen to fifty feet away another row of the same. The dark and fog hides the street lights, house lights, and any sense of warmth from windows and doors. I check the street sign, I’m on Wencker Way, now to find number 33-c.

I lock my bike to the side of the carport and enter the living room, I just want to shower and cuddle with my wife of nine years, perhaps to throw a tape in the beta max. I head for the master bath and strip as I enter, wondering if she had redecorated today while I had been at work. She must have been shopping at the Asian Mart again, the bottles of body wash and shampoo are labeled in that language of hers, I only knew a few words, mostly ones with English origins. That‘s quite a special body wash, my skin darkens and my body hair has taken a trip south with what is left at the drain a gummy/slimy mess. I am glad that I did not pick it as the shampoo however the shampoo as left my hair shiny, fragrant, longer? I couldn’t find the underclothing that I had prepositioned in the bathroom closet, I wrap myself in a towel and head toward the bedroom.

I pull out the drawers, it looks like her clothing, the only clothing for men was too large for me? Out of desperation I slide on the plain white jockey for her, they fit, puzzling as my wife is over a foot shorter than I. Okay perhaps the pajamas are ok, they are satin and flowing, more room in the legs and sleeves than I’m used to. At first the top had been loose but now it felt like it was caressing me, my chest felt the teasing slide of the fabric on my nipples. I grabbed the first pair of footwear my hand came upon and found myself with wedge heeled slippers on my feet, I headed down to find my wife and a nightcap.

As I passed the corner, an Asian man I did not recognize, swung me around and kissed me deeply, I broke free and ran for the door. As I started out I felt the stab of the cold, my mind and heart would not let go of the warmth in his arms, and the heart wrenching depth of his kiss. I closed the door, and turned around. Realizing that I was seeing my wife’s eyes and smile, I jumped into his arms.

Not always the Write way by Dreammaker

He sat down to the computer, his goal to write another story for the BC website.

His plots were simple; he would take a common phrase and either change one word or just twist the meaning. But his muse was not working today. Failed ideas included snuff movies about smokeless tobacco, eating out (where “out” was the name of the thanksgiving turkey that had been raised from the egg).

He had even considered advertising and product ideas. Consider, if you would, if the Red Bull Company had a new energy drink called the LATTA, you know the type, it has a high milk content. It could be than be called the LATTA BULL. I think that the Durham pipe tobacco company is missing a natural in not producing cigarettes that have a picture of an elephant on the wrapper. What would be better than asking for a pack o, Durham?

He did send a suggestion to the good folks at Frito Lay. Those potato chips of theirs are great, they should let everyone sharing the road with their trucks know that they believe in the goodness of their chips. Just adding one word at the top of the sign would do it ... GOOD... , why yes it would say good lay’s, why not, it would be the truth.

No, he would have to give up the temptation today to write something. He was not even upset; after all he was a man. He could be “fit to be tied” (perhaps working out in a dungeon?) but a person has to be female to be a real misfit.

Well, did he go before the judge?

Yes, she did.

Don’t leave me hanging here, even if it was art, the clean-up was expensive.

Yes, even though it looked great, the public works department considered it vandalism.

Well, what did the judge tell him?

The judge is giving her two choices.

What already..

Jail or join the Marines.

Ouch

Yes, she is stuck between Iraq and a hard place.

Indeed he is.

The six of us were playing around when Ruth brought out what she said was a book on magic,

of course I didn’t believe her. That just made her mad, bad mistake, Ruth told us that we didn’t have to believe but that she would blindfold one of us and let them select a spell. Well by drawing straws John was picked for this dubious honor.

Ruth took the selected page and studied it, looks like it says something about seeking the mascots for those who wish to be powerful? No I don’t know what it’s talking about, let me see if I can sound it out.

A flash of light, cymbals clash, the after affect of this left me silly,
I’m shaking my head, nothing looks right, A donkey, an elephant, a moose, a dove, an eagle, and ... a hair piece? How did they get into the room?

Jim spoke, I get it, political parties. Don’t you see it, the donkey and elephant, the Democrats and the Republicans.

And the moose I ask.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party.

The eagle and dove?

The dove is easy, the Peace Party, the eagle would be either Federalist or constitutionalists Party.

OK what about the hair piece?

Didn’t Lincoln’s Republicans beat the Whigs?

On June 21st Angela Rasch posted a follow on comment titled " Rocco Mediate... ", this again was a list of line items, ...

Don Rumsfeld
That feeling you get when someone sucks a lemon in front of you.
The smell of a freshly turned compost pile.
Mike Myers promoting a hopeless movie.
Fox news covering the marriages taking place in California.
Tom Brokaw explaining why Scott McClellan had it wrong when McClellan said the press hadn't done its job.
Five extra pounds in an already too small swimsuit
The really graphic stuff CSI does with the victim's anatomy.
The really ironic things the Creator did with my anatomy.
Men of the cloth pulling it over our eyes for fun and profit.
What happens to babies when fathers and people who are elected to help them turn their backs on them.)

the challenge intensified, on the 22nd the following resulted:

Pulling a tale, some what like teeth

The four of us talked as we stood behind the Elkie Brother’s barn. The Elkies have draft animals and the smell of a freshly turned compost pile permeated the air. We all had some home brew in hand and more than a little inside of us so we naturally got into a bitching session. My bitch was the fouled up results of the two wars I had the misfortune to serve in. Both had one common factor, Don Rumsfeld. Just the action of saying the name gives you the grimace, you know the one, the one of sympathy you feel when someone sucks a lemon in front of you. It’s not in your mouth but you can just taste the sour reaction the sight engenders. If I could make a wish to effect the past I would curse him and his fellow advisers to suffer the horrors of an operation without anesthesia, I picture this well, after all I just needed to remember all the really graphic stuff CSI does with the victim's anatomy, or for that matter my short term in the VA hospital back in ‘71.

Now Don has let loose. I shouldn’t have got him started, the entertainment industry and the media in general were his targets of opportunity. According to Don both are to blame for all that ails American society. His rant going strong, he first laid into the news networks who were all trying to put their own spin on every thing political and social. Why not stick with the facts? Only last night he had watched the Fox News Network as they covered the story of Ellen DeGeneres’s wedding. Now Don is as conservative as they come but even he can see the spin that Fox news puts on, covering the marriages taking place in California, does no good when reporting the news Indeed it seems that It works to make a small side issue, into the rallying cry for all that is wrong in the world. No he didn’t stop there, he lashed into television and its reporters for all that has changed since the fifty’s.

Eddy popped his two cents here and started rumbling about a May 29th interview of Tom Brokaw by NBC anchorman Brian Williams. It took five tries before he got out that Tom Brokaw was saying that Scott McClellan had it all wrong. Where McClellan said the press hadn't done its job, Brokaw said that the “president was determined to go to war. It was more theology than it was anything else. That's pretty hard to deal with”. Now I know Eddy has about as much success defending any point of view, as Mike Myers promoting his new but hopeless movie. So I was looking forward to see how he would flail around on this one.

However, about this time we lost track of the subject, Janice came out to call dinner, and warn us that it was almost time for the game. Now normally I wouldn’t pay attention to Janice but she too, had a few to many and demanded that all of us give opinions in regards to her outfit, well to tell the truth I would say that she had five extra pounds in an already too small swimsuit, that bowling balls don’t belong in that position.

Don had no such caution, First he laid into her about the multicolor map he figured that she was wearing as hose than he let loose about the lime green hair. She replied that she wern’t wearing no hose and this was just one of the really ironic things the creator did with my anatomy. About that time Don started wearing both his and her drinks. By now I don’t think Don knew what anatomy was.

As for mentioning the creator, I wish she hadn’t. Dave started to get on his pet peeve about the good reverend of the Church of Enlightened Light. We have all heard his views regarding man of the cloth pulling it over our eyes for his fun and profit. We told him “can it!", the flies are already bad enough”.

I don’t know how we got inside with out anyone coming to blows, but we watched the game, Well the North town team won, as White Sox fans, we still smelled sh...

Just a little exercise, to see who all is in the neighborhood.

He had commuted, South, some fifty miles to where he worked, for an employer on razor’s edge. As manufactures with Asian names took over their lead, for he and his compatriots were no longer a need. No longer making the daily drive, his car and insurance took a dive. His ride disappeared one night, bumping on the back of a larger stead of might.

Now conveyed by mass transportation, he roamed the City and it neighboring environs, for a new vocation. From the East near where a museum spread it’s wings, to the West the Fox played far from life giving springs. He spent his days looking for a craft that he too could play.

On this morning he rode on a route numbered 28 or was it 85, never mind, he went West was along planks on Water towns road. Next he visited a Hawk’s Nursery, but as the season was gone, not needed would be he. Walking to the East he counted down, to one eighteen, now what had he found? To his right a place of mysticism appeared. It is unknown if this place has power, but as his eyes arose, so did a mist, and within the mist he disappeared. Down on the Boarder she gets ready, guarantied nights of employment have now appeared.

Report Patrol 64

0800 Central/ 64 10-41
0800 Central 10-4
0830 64/Central 10-16 1400 MLK screams reported
0830 64 10-76 10-77 5 minuets
0836 Central/ 64 10-23 10-10 10-78
0836 Central/21 10-39 1400 MLK
0837 64/Central 10-60 squad 21 10-76 your 10-20
0840 Central/21 10-23 10-80 wht female, blond, South on MLK, LBD, no shoes
0840 Central/21 10-52 1200 MLK
0842 Central/21 10-50 10-79 10-66 on 10-52 at 1200 MLK
0845 Central/64 10-95

0850 Central/64 10-7 10-19 central
0854 Central/21 10-7 10-19 central

Notes Patrol 64
Atch: signal report

0836 Arrived 1400 MLK
Yelling, and screams, request assistance, white female in black dress
cuffed to chair, standing and swinging chair at white female, 5-11, black
jeans, black top, roll of tape in hand.
Female in black dress smashed chair on door frame, running southbound on MLK
Female in jeans runs further into house
Request back up
0845 Locate white female, in upstairs bath room, in tub, attempting to remove blade from razor
0845 Now calm white female has agreed to be escorted to central for questioning

Notes Patrol 21
0840 Acquire visual on white female, blond, south bound on MLK, give chase.
White female crossing 12th Ave runs in front of #5 city bus
0842 White male, blond wig, no hair, gagged, cuffs on hands, no shoes, dead on impact with #5 bus
0854 Coroner and MEs office on site, scene turned over to MEs staff

Codes used
10-4 Acknowledgment (OK)
10-7 Out of service
10-10 Fight in progress
10-16 Domestic disturbance
10-20 Location
10-23 Arrived at scene
10-39 Urgent -- use light, siren
10-41 Beginning tour of duty
10-50 Accident (fatal, personal injury, property damage)
10-52 Ambulance needed
10-60 Squad in vicinity
10-66 Message cancellation
10-76 En route ...
10-77 ETA (estimated time of arrival)
10-78 Need assistance
10-79 Notify coroner
10-80 Chase in progress
10-95 Prisoner/subject in custody

Codes from http://spiffy.ci.uiuc.edu/~kline/Stuff/ten-codes.html

It has been a long day of meetings,

now it is time to return home. At the airport I reach the C concourse on the way to the boarding gate I see groupings of massage chairs scattered around. I have time so I go to sit down, hmmm the company listed on the bill acceptor is SITTING PRETTY, the sign above the group of chairs states "Come Sit for a Spell". Can I hope?

As states review their safe haven laws, a doctor ponders the child he has just received.

The box was the size of a footlocker, indeed it was a foot locker,
the name on the side said Tech Sergeant Emanuel Perez.
An envelope was caught in the seam, I pulled it out and read.

I'm sorry, I did not know where to go, but the safe haven law said that I
could drop her off at a hospital, police station or fire house. Nothing
was said about animal shelters.

I thought to my self, animal shelter? We’re a children's hospital for gods sake, did this women think the kids need pets to play with? I read on...

She can’t live with me now, I can’t talk to her, I can’t stand to look at
her, it was all my mistake, I meant for him to be a five year old for
Halloween only, the potion should have not done this ... Please take
care of my husband...if only our cat, Tesha, had not jumped into his
arms.

As I opened the trunk a child, no a "neko - girl" peered out at me, and hissed...

How is it that I get the electric bill for the prior tenant of this temporal space?

After all, only those who need my services should be able to find the store, here Danni take care of this.

Ah, Wiz, I have Sarah of customer no service on the line, she wants to talk to you.

Yes?

Are you the owner of the store located at 36-B Regency Market Square?

Yes I am.

Do you have an agreement in writing that the prior tenant will pay for utilities up to a specified date?

No, however

Sorry sir but I can’t do any thing for you over the phone, you will just have to mail me.

Done, now will you help me? Stop that screaming, I only did what you asked me to.

on June 21st,2008, Danielle J posted a Blog entry titled " Things I don't like reading about in a story ". This included a list of eleven line items, of course I couldn't let the challenge go unanswered so...

Danielle J's List

          Gilbert Gotfried
          Roseanne Barr
          NBC Golf Announcer Johnny Miller
          Bozo the Clown
          Cockroaches that like to eat human flesh(I might make an exception if it involved the four people I just listed above)
          Anything to do with basketball
          wound vacs being turned on
          Doctors who keep patients waiting for two hours
          Root canal
          weather forecasts

Resulted in the following from me...

I take it that you did not read the story in National Exposé
It turns out that guest host Roseanne Barr Had the misfortune of having both Gilbert Gotfried and the infamous NBC Golf Announcer Johnny Miller, on the same talk show date. It was mid March and Gilbert started to talk about the time his college Alma-matter, played in the NCAA final four. The team’s leading forward fouled out and the coach decided to call his equipment man, our Gilbert in to play small.

As Gilbert recounted this Johnny started to steam and accused Gilbert of being no better than Bozo the Clown. In fact he suggested that if the story had even a shred of truth that the gods above and below would be sure to send cockroaches to devour the flesh of whom ever could have made such a decision. As things became heated in the studio a fight erupted with the equipment from several adjacent sets including the weather forecast screen being knocked over. Due to extensive collateral injuries to stage hands, several people were sent to the nearest emergency room, where the doctors keep the patients waiting for two hours. One stage director needed oral surgery and received a root canal, while three other station personal suffered the gentle ministrations of several medical vacuums which were turned on to remove debris and drainage from their wounds.

oxybenzone
octocrylene
4-methylbenzylidene

What’s up son?
Our teacher is going through a consumer awareness chapter and asked us to look up some ingredients off a product we use all the time. I started to put these into the search engine.

This link came up....http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article340237.ece

By the way mom, why is there a dress in my closet?

They’re So Vein

After reading all the hype about Body Worlds,

we decided to go see it, still the idea of someone donating their body to internal display, veins & arteries, muscles, and organs all exposed, seemed more than a bit macabre.

We piled into the car and headed to the local museum, there to see as our first example, one which was posed at the gift shop’s register. It was a dead ringer for the real thing.

http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/current_exhibitions...

Dream Maker

I did not know how to break the news to my daughter, her first pet, a kitten, would have to be put down.

Tikki had a faulty heart and our vet has told us that she had but a month at most to live. We left Tikki at the vet’s, never to see her again.

A week later, my darling has not been the same, she blames me for her missing Tikki, at five she does not have a handle on death, perhaps a new kitten?

Daddy, would you hold these for me?

A pendent and one of Tikki’s collars, I was shocked as I picked them up from the bed. As I drop them I feel my skin crawling and itching, I see my arm hairs growing.

******

Mommy, daddy gave me a new Tikki.

Where’s your daddy at? Never mind, we should take your new Tikki to the vet to be checked over and get her shots.

I’m sorry miss, this kitten is suffering from the same problem as the last, and I’d advise that she be put down also. I do this at no cost, I’m sorry for your child though.

******

A month latter.
As we pack to move out I wonder why he left us. My daughter is asking me to put a pendant and one of Tikki’s collars in her suitcase before I close it.

Traveling North

Thirty years have passed yet in my mind it is always you, with Jimmy still a tiny baby in your arms that I still see. I remember your hair, playing with the breeze, well below your shoulders, in the wind it does tease. At times your back, and then in front, now the baby, and places I could not see. Silver like your voice, are the sling backs on your feet, we were visiting Fort Monroe, overlooking the sea. The breeze still playing with you, swings a beige skirt up past your knees. A ruffled white blouse of lace and silk draws my eyes down your chest and past secrets I still could see. Now to lunch, near the office we did stroll, my work mates ran to the window to see the beauty whose virtues I had extolled. They looked on in wondering how it was that I'm the one who is with you. Your soft voice sings in speaking, its slight accent I remember well. Do your eyes still sparkle with a hidden smile I knew so well?

For many weeks, I was blessed to know you, the total, two score they were, but then from overseas your husband did return, now there was time for me no more, Still for you my heart did yearn. I could not forget you, and as years did pass, society and technology changed. I always hooped that I might find you at last.

I bounced from one love to another, never happy and never feeling at home, my taste in women, my love, would have looks much like your own. Like you The woman I sought was oriental, just under five foot two. So many like you had long shiny black hair, holding rainbows in the light. I still remembered how waves of hair, much like black silk would frame your brown eyes, and reflect the sky’s blue lights.

Now in my fifth relationship, and once also married, on the Internet my eye's did terry. I looked for you, both under your name, and that of your husband. In the Cascades where you said was his home, I had several hits. I paid for information from one site and by this point I could not retreat so I made good use of it's clues.

I’ve found a likely address, with property taxes paid. But for the fear in my mind, I was ready to go, there was no reason for me to stay, no job, no life. I need to at least see you, if I can overcome my fears. I know not what I may find, I had heard that your husband had been gone now for several years. So North to the Emerald city I now travel, the Coast Starlight is my train. As i watched landscape pass, from tunes on my laptop I played this long remembered song.

Train Song (Vashti Bunyan/Alastair Clayre ©MCPS) released in 1966 by Columbia (EMI)

Traveling north, traveling north to find you Train wheels beating, the wind in my eyes Don't even know what I'll say when I find you Call out your name love, don’t be surprised It's so many miles and so long since I've met you Don't even know what I'll find when I get to you But suddenly now I know where I belong It's many hundred miles and it won't be long It won't be long It won't be long It won't ... be long Nothing at all in my head to say to you Only the beat of the train I'm on Nothing I've learn't all my life on the way to you Only our love that's over and gone It's so many miles and so long since I've met you Don't even know what I'll find when I get to you But suddenly now I know where I belong It's many hundred miles and it won't be long It won't be long It won't be long It won't ... be long

My arrival was unanticipated, my appearance over the years has changed, when you came to the door you did not recognize me, so you asked me my name. I gave my new one, the name I had always known, and than told you that you had known me and said the name that you would know.

At first I saw the light in your eyes flash brightly, a happy smile turned your lips, but than as you viewed me, chilly became your style.

Expressively you motioned, telling me what I could do. You had loved the man that was no longer I, and for you no longer could that love be true. With some disdain you told me to go. As I rode back south, in sorrow did I play the flip side of the song with which I had came.

Love Song (Vashti Bunyan/Alastair Clayre ©MCPS) released in 1966 by Columbia (EMI)

I love your eyes when you look away Thinking somewhere else of what ought to be When they're suddenly blue for a moment of time Then the color goes when you look at me I love your hands as a part of you As they write a word just by staying still When you talk they move, painting what you say So I understand more than words can tell I love your hair in the dark it's soft In the light it moves, red and green are brown All the time it takes for a night to pass And a lifetime grows as the day comes down I love you now as you don't love me I can't let you know you're too far away But I wonder now just what did you see When you looked at me in that loveless way

Wisconsin has done it. In the past they needed Urban Asalt Vehicles in Georgia, Alabama, and Texas. Now, in the historic but contentious times of this week, the major urban areas in Wisconsin had to employ fleets of Urban Asalt Vehicles. We can all wish that these will not be needed again. 

Witness for the defense

I came across this while doing research on a story, and first posted it here in June of 2015. I thought you might be interested. If this does not display right off, please click on the ATTACHMENT.

Dear educators and fellow students, a reminder, our assignment states that our stories may be fiction or real, it is up to you to judge.

The summer of 2009, I spent my vacation working, not to say that my vacation was not enjoyable, it was but you might have a hard time believing what I had to go through to get a job for the summer this year. When school ended on Memorial Day weekend, my family lived in Southern Wisconsin in the town of Lake Geneva, just above the Illinois/Wisconsin border. My dad was out of work and my mother was working at the local big box as an assistant manager, still we had little money for me to buy new clothing, school supplies, music, and games. I told my mom that I would try to do some work this summer to help out. I thought that I would mow lawns, help in people’s gardens, work at the local truck farm, things like that. If I could, I would work at the beach or one of the pools as life guard, yes I am young but I have all the qualifications to be certified except for my age. Just one problem, and a big one at that, there were no jobs.

With the economy in a downturn all the jobs were taken by people who had college degrees with bills to pay and no more unemployment insurance, they would work for any wage and "they" would have no conflict with child labor laws. I could find no work. My dad was doing no better. He was an electrician, but with no building going on there was no need for construction electricians.

Well before this sad state of affairs got me down, and I went to enjoy a summer of play, my mother’s sister in-law Miranda Gutierrez came up with a way for my father and me to be employed at the Mr. Hefner’s resort. She and mom took off for a day and went to Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center where on the third floor east wing there was a product training class being presented on the new Huggle Bugs technology. Mom later told me that most of the attendees were costume providers for cosplay conventions.

That night she and auntie Miranda, sat dad and myself down and told us to listen and not ask questions until they were done speaking. Before we started auntie Miranda made us some mock grasshopper drinks, well mine was mock, and dad’s drink might have been real. I just loved that minty ice cream smoothie. Strangely both dad and I seemed more relaxed. Mom stated that she would tell us when we could ask questions. Auntie Miranda than proceeded to spray mother with a tall can that looked kind of like an air freshener with a picture of a stylized bug on the label. Dad and I watched as mom shrank and her skin darkened to a mocha colored tan. Her hair darkened and grew to her waist and her face took on an Asian appearance. Soon she almost looked like a younger auntie Miranda perhaps a daughter. She was still in the clothing that mother had been wearing and which was now too loose. A picture is worth a thousand words and she just saved us a lot of questions. She simply stated that this is temporary and I will now look like this for three days, as you see, it works.

Auntie Miranda, than handed each of us a brochure and a printed page. The printed page listed current job openings, the brochure contained an introduction to the opportunities and advantages of working for Mr. Hefner’s establishment in Lake Geneva and other locals in both the US and indeed around the world. Auntie Miranda explained to us that her best friend from her childhood, back before she married and moved to the US, had come to be employed by Mr. Hefner and now was a hutch mother at the local resort. She had these positions open and planed to place advertisements in the next week. However as Miranda was her dearest friend she and her friends would get an advance crack at these jobs.

Dad and I looked at the list, they needed a life guard! Dad noted aloud that they needed bartenders and that he had been a bartender many a time over the years. It’s hard to call the girl that is waiting for us to finish, mother, however she took over from Auntie Miranda.

Look guys, they are not hiring men, nor children, the age is eighteen to twenty five, and they are looking for good looking girls. We just need some help to stay solvent and if both of you work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the income will tide us over. At the same time you dear can keep looking for employment more suited to your education and experience and you Mark can have time to have fun with your friends and work on that summer reading list. For three days a week you two can look and indeed be the persons that can fulfill those requirements, Miranda’s friend is willing to help us for the summer. First off, I want you to read “The Huggle Bugs Company” website.

Dad booted up the computer and brought up the URL listed on the can mom was holding, http://www.hugglebugs.net and shortly we were looking at both the testimonials and the Terms and conditions of service. Some of the testimonials brought up potential long lasting problems, real concerns yet if we followed the terms and conditions there should be no problem. Huggle Bugs is a body altering agent using nanites, which are microscopic machines that are networked, self-reproducing body modification tools which can either temporary or permanently change a person’s DNA. In the process of changing the DNA they change a person’s appearance, down to and including their bones.

Mom told us that she had already placed an order for temporary change kits for both me and dad and Auntie Miranda had finalized arrangements with her friend at the resort for our employment three nights a week, Friday thru Sunday, starting this Friday and continuing thru Labor Day weekend if we needed. To save on production expenses, we would look like the young girl that mom had just changed into, we would be twin eighteen year old Filipino-Americans. Auntie Miranda said that we would be the same as her twin daughters, except we would be eighteen, not eleven.

Dad was upset, but before he could get a word in edgewise, mom pointed out that she wanted someone to watch out for me at work, after all I was still ten no mater what I looked like and since dad still hadn’t found a job, he could darn well do this while he was still looking for other employment. After all no one is interviewing on the weekends. If you don’t think you can do this for three months, weekends only, than you can go look for work elsewhere, the SEABEES are looking for construction electricians.

Did we have questions, yes but no, not yet, what does the work entail? Life guards are qualified in first aid, CPR, and rescue swimming. We would also be expected to participate in team water sports and sand court volleyball. Bartenders are masters of mixology and dad boosted that he could out showman the best of the best. If pressed, he could also waitress both drinks and meals, that was a sobering thought but mom pointed out that tips are good and the rules detailing interactions between guests, fellow employee’s and “bunnies” would make this the safest environment to be, in effect cross-dressed as it were, therefore case closed.

We all had a look at the recruitment brochure,

The brochure came with a form letter inviting us to apply,

Dear Bunny Applicant:
We are delighted to hear of your interest in becoming one of the internationally famous PLAYBOY Club Bunnies. PLAYBOY Clubs are expanding quite rapidly, and we are always interested in adding attractive young ladies to staff the new Clubs and fill openings that occur in Clubs that are presently in operation. I am enclosing our brochure, “BE A PLAYBOY CLUB BUNNY, which will answer many of your questions. Please contact the Bunny Mother in the PLAYBOY Club nearest you for more detailed information and arrange for a personal interview. She will require the enclosed application form, along with two pictures of yourself: one full- length in either a swimsuit or leotard and one close-up of your face. Studio photographs are not necessary: snapshots or Polaroid pictures will be sufficient.
I will notify the Bunny Mother of your interest, and she will anticipate the pleasure of receiving your completed application form and pictures. Arrangements may than be made to present yourself for a personal interview with our Bunny Mother. She will be happy to see you and any of your friends that would also like to apply.
In the meantime, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact her by phone or letter.

Success and happiness, Your International Bunny Director

Auntie Miranda told us that the Huggle Bugs formula we would be using would change us for three days only and we would need four days to safely recover before we could again change, thus the three day weekend work week. There are different formulas that would allow us to stay female up to ten days but we would still need the four day recovery period which would be hard to schedule for work, still the bunny mother and auntie Miranda are good friends. Those formulas are a higher quality product and of course a greater expense. By both of us using the same body type we were keeping costs down, and twins were always in demand for club work. We would also be keeping costs down by using an existing DNA template, in this case her daughters.

Auntie Miranda told us to strip and we did, all the way, and then we just stood there. Mom had one can, and auntie Miranda had another can. Mom started to spray dad, and auntie Miranda sprayed her can over me, even inside my mouth.
I could see dad shrinking and a great deal of moisture misting from his open mouth, me I seemed to stay the same height but my body felt like it was in one of those massage chairs at McCarrin International Airport. As we waited for the changes to stop I listened to what mom was telling dad, dad is not a really good name for the girl I see now. She was telling her that get serious about finding a job or may be necessary for him to became this girl full time as she could buy a version that would work for ever.

Dad and I were than given each a stack of clothing and told to dress, mom went with dad to help her and auntie Miranda helped me. We were told that we would be doing all the work including make up, as we had to learn it. Dad was starting to get the shakes and mom offered him some more of Auntie Miranda’s grasshopper drinks.

After our makeup lesson and getting dressed in swimsuits we went over to the neighboring hotel and posed by the swimming pool. For a half an hour mom played fashion photographer. For several shots she obtained volunteers from both boys and men to pose with us as if we were involved in ways that some of the magazines behind the grocery store counter had models posed. That is the first time anyone other my mom or dad had kissed me, and what a strange way of kissing. I don’t know what else was happening at the time but while the boys and men were kissing me I keep getting poked by someone’s stick or something. I couldn’t tell who was doing it as no one had anything in their hands when I looked.

It was starting to get dark and our photo session came to an end. Mom asked me if I had a girl’s name that I liked, I thought about it, I then told her that I liked the name Melinda and so I became Melinda Lynn when I am a girl and dad is now Cynthia Lynn. Auntie Miranda e-mailed the name and birth date information to the Huggle Bugs office, attn: Pickles, who is their corporate legal officer.

Mom taught how to don and adjust our bras, we slipped into matching lace front panties, after which we applied dark toned panty hose, we were given black sling backs with two inch heels. Next all four of us dressed in matching short black dresses. Mom told Cindy this type of dress was called an LBD. Finally, with a barrette over each ear, a small white gold watch, and a cross on a white gold chain, we had completed dressing. We rode with Auntie Miranda to Fort Atkinson to the Fireside Theater where High School Musical on Stage was preformed as we had our supper. The waitress that served us just kept on saying how Auntie Miranda had such a beautiful family and would you believe, triplets?

The next two days were spent shopping, and with "girl" lessons. Auntie Miranda had made a whole lot of those grasshopper drinks and we sure enjoyed them that weekend. Because mom was the same as the two of us, she would get right in with us and after trying on an item she would just put it in our cart if she thought it was a keeper. With all three of us trying the clothing out for correct sizing shopping went thrice as fast.

Sunday night we went to bed as Sandra Lynn (mom), Linda Lynn and Cindy Lynn. Monday we awoke as ourselves. For about a half a day it just felt wrong not being Linda. My friends asked me where I had been on the weekend and I told them that my mom was helping me job hunt.

Friday morning, at oh what an ungodly hour, mom and auntie Miranda woke us up and this time instead of spraying us they wore latex gloves and wiped us down with something that looks like wet-wipes super sized. Mom said that this was safer, as with a spray all four of us might become quintuples. After dressing, and makeup, the four of us went to a morning buffet for breakfast. After breakfast, to the club we went. Mom had resumes ready for both of us and gave us our legal documents. It was time to meet the hutch mother and be interviewed for the positions we hoped to fill.

For dad she had a side room with a bar reserved and about twenty volunteers. It was time to show off his mixologist abilities. As for me I needed to demonstrate that those qualifications of mine were real, I had more than enough willing volunteers pool side, specially for CPR.

Work for the next three months was much the same day to day, my skin got darker and I learned how to reject verbal advances, anything more than verbal I could trust security to keep the key holders and their guests in line. I spent Monday thru Thursday enjoying my summer, we had no vacation trip this year, but dad and I spent more time together than we had at any time before. As for the evenings, it was time to study, dad would check out self help books in many of my grade school topics, both past and expected and we worked to find out where I had problems and then he taught me the best way he knew to understand it. Friday thru Sunday, we donned our uniforms and went to work. Dad really did try to find work, and finally admitted to mom that the idea of the SEABEES did not seem such a bad idea after all, so we made arrangements to move to the Great Lakes / Lake Bluff area of Illinois in the fall. Dad started making arrangements with the recruiter, with an anticipated goal of becoming an OSVET in September.

Our family plans went bottom up the weekend of August 14th thru the 17th. In these, my last two weekends of employment, we planed our move to Illinois for the four day labor day weekend, I had a problem at the club pool. One of the pool cleaning crew had been bothering me over the last few weeks. A man named Elijah, he looked like he had dropped out, not just school but of life also. Prior to this he had seemed satisfied to tell me to meet him at some bar or another and hear me reply of “in our dreams looser”. Last week he grabbed my arm and told me that I would not talk to him like that soon.

This weekend, Cindy and I felt different, kind of yearning, frisky, kind of sexy? Mom said “be careful it will soon be your time of the month”. She warned us to bring extra clothing in our work bags and showed us how to use items she called tampons and pads. Dad seemed to know what she was talking about. Mom told me to see Cindy if I started bleeding from an unusual place, she did not wish to go over why unless it happened and that was that.
Saturday I had a word with the hutch mother, the pool boy has been fooling around with my drinks now, I don’t want to upend a can and find out that someone is using it as a spittoon, and I don’t wish to find myself listing to the colors of the wind if I need to help some one either. She called security to bring Elijah to the head of personnel and she and I headed over to see her also. At personnel, I retold of my encounters both this weekend and last and then she asked me to step outside. As I exited a security officer entered with Elijah. He looked startled to see me, than he grinned and asked if I wanted it again chica?

On Sunday, August sixteenth, well really Monday, we got home from work about two am. Overnight, the hugglebugs nanites died off. In the morning I went to take my bath now that my body had changed back to Mark. As I finished up and started to dry myself off I heard mom and Cindy crying, I ran to their room and they were sitting on their bed holding each other, crying on each others shoulders. The phone sat on mom’s lap and a can of emergency restorative lay on the floor beneath the now broken full length mirror on the back of the closet door.

Auntie Miranda arrived shortly after with a blue and white box with the letters EPT on it. The three of them disappeared into mom and dad’s bathroom. I soon heard auntie Miranda say “she’s pregnant all right”. I also heard what sounded like a hard slap, followed by dad crying harder.

Dad could not give mother an explanation, she keep telling mother that she only liked girls. Mom said enough of this, let's go down and calm down, once we were seated in the living room, auntie Miranda passed out those relaxing grasshopper drinks.

Security called that morning, Cindy had to talk to them for me, I was asked if I could come down to the office to talk about Elijah. Cindy said she would be right down but she would have her mother and aunt with her. She then proceeded to dress as if she had been I. As a ten year old I would not be allowed in the club after it was open, so I had to stay home. I went over with Cindy all that I had noticed about Elijah, and went in depth what else I had done the last two weekends.

Cindy later passed on to me some of what security had to say. Elijah had indeed put something in my drink, first when I was in my swimsuit and later when He saw me by the pool side bar, in my dress. But, I said to Cindy, I didn’t dress nor go near the bar! Cindy told me that on Saturday she had worked the pool side bar. Elijah boasted to the security head that “I” had been nice to him, and he would be happy to do it again, maybe he would let me be myself next time. The security head was appalled at what was implied, yet that as far as Elijah was concerned, he thought that what he did was acceptable, and common in his homeland, after all that is what women are for.

Club management came to an arrangement with mom and Cindy. They told me that they could not talk about it. As for dad, according to mom’s doctor, she is expecting on May ninth, mother’s day, 2010.

P.S.
Ms Midler gave my paper an "A", but withheld it from the in-class reading, she told me this was both for my own protection and that some parents might protest about their children being exposed to the content.

Bibliography/Webography:

I was encouraged to write a story involving gender change by the story written last year by Elizabeth Consuelo Delgado Gutierrez at: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/5859/my-report-how-i-s...

This story is written to conform with the rules the Hugglebugs Fiction Universe: http://web.archive.org/web/20020414144932/www.hugglebugs.net...

Information about the Playboy club employment has came from the following:
http://www.explayboybunnies.com/history/bunnymanual/bunnyman...

List of Characters:
Student: Mark Edward Kwiakowski AKA: Melinda Lynn (Linda or Lyn-Lyn)
Father: Edward Mark Kwiakowski AKA: Cynthia Lynn (Cindy)
Mother: Sandra May Brott Kwiakowski (Sandy) AKA: Sandra Lynn
Aunt: Miranda Gutierrez (Auntie)