Category Archives: Sandfly

October 9, 2023 · 3:17 pm

great and powerful

When she got back from her trip to the Pleiades which wasn’t the Pleiades, Mrs. Ordinary found everything around her to be mundane, just *blah*. Sand sand sand from north to south in this here Big Sandy she called home, yellow, long and boring. She needed to spice up her life with a bit of extra, like she had while aboard the USS Galaxy, certainly not boring atall, although they had to get through that one giant meteor in the way by boring through it via a lasered out hole. Definitely excitement there!

She put down her boring book about Atlantis, Easter Island and such and rang up neighbor Marsha “Pink” Krakow, seeing if she wanted to get together for some tea, something different for her day. She’d heard of a tiny cafe opening up in Pugwash just across the Big Channel. She checked before she called — open at 7, the website stated. 7:05am now. Just in time for an early breakfast too since she saw they had flapjacks available, her favorite.

Marsha beside her Eddie in bed yawned before answering her cell phone. First thought: Mom has the shingles again and I have to come down and take care of her. But she checked the number before swiping. Unknown, the indicator indicated. Relief. She swiped.

“Hello, Marsha? It’s Bethany, er, Ginger. Listen, just wondering if you wanted to catch an early breakfast at that new place just across the Big Channel. I checked: open at 7. Seats are limited so figured I’d call now to see if you’re up for it.”

Marsha yawned again, glanced over at her Sleeping Beauty comfortably snoozing away, and said, “Sure. Just give me 15 minutes to change and I’ll meet you there.” She needed a friend to talk to as well. Life, Second or not, was getting more and more complicated, what with Ketchup Tom and now Serenity Lane entering the picture in this here section.

—–

“Oh the light’s just beautiful here. Isn’t it beautiful?” Different* from where I live, she ponders, looking up into the sky to see if she can spot the Pleiades before the harsh sun washes all the night time away. No luck.

“Sure thing, er, Ginger.” Was it Ginger? Marsha “Pink” Krakow still wasn’t sure. They had finished their flapjacks, 1 apiece since both were on some kind of diets. Look at her, Marsha was thinking prior to ordering; so trim! But Mrs. Ordinary was thinking the same thing about Marsha. And so the one flapjack apiece, easy on the syrup. Then afterwards, not tea but rum, Mrs. Ordinary decided, which Marsha went along with. Why not? She could sober up on whatever little drunkenness occurred before Eddie even stirs out of his slumber, 12 o’clock being the earliest he rises since his early retirement in March of last year. Lots of money in records management outside the public sector. And he worked for the rock industry, Ozmo Daredevils, Ozzie Osbourne and the like. For the former, he chronicled how “Jackie Pink” turned into “Jackie Blue” in the company blog, which brought him to the attention of curious Marsha wondering about her own “Pink” name and how it came to be. Through it she learned that boys and girls use to be dressed in pink and blue respectively back in the 50s 30s instead of visa versa. And so it began.

(to be continued)

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October 9, 2023 · 5:52 am

from star to shining star

“How far to the Pleiades star constellation formation, Helmsman Pickard?”

“Um, just checking,” replied the red uniformed man to the right, hands all over the controls with much accompanying typing noises. Finally he answered: “About 150 parsecs still, mum.”

Cpt. Extra Ordinary knew that *Earth*, their origin point, was less than 150 parsecs from the Pleiades. She makes a note to replace Pickard with promising jr. officer Lulu U. Hooroo, a black woman from Silver City, New Mexico in the 1950s. She’s certainly capable for the position, plus it will add much needed diversity to the bridge. Not a black, yellow, red, or brown person in sight here, although Helmsman Speck opposite Pickard is half Vulcan. Or so everyone is telling her — she has her doubts still; looks like another white thoroughbred male actor to her from Cookie Cutter California.

Afterwards:

“That was soo much fun! I can’t wait to get to the Pleiades to see what they’ve set up there.”

“Soo… you really think you’re going to the Pleiades, to that distant star constellation formation?” said the woman opposite her, readying to reprise her role as Helmsman Hooroo from the original Star Team series.

“Well, sure. Don’t you?”

“Oh sure, sure. It’s all real. If Dolores Cannon says it’s real then it must be real.”

“Dolores who?”

“The Big Sandy woman. She’s not a channeler after all. She’s a reporter, an investigator. The spirits do not speak through her just *to* her. From various sources, filtered through various human vessels.”

“*We’re* on a vessel,” spoke Mrs. Ordinary, the Extra removed from her name immediately upon exiting the holographic bridge. Yet the unreality lingers. “The USS Galaxy,” she recites. “Class 4a starship, which replaced the class 3b Ararat which replaced the class 2f Cuthand. I know my Star Team stuff. And I knew the distance to the Pleiades. Inept Helmsman Pickard will be replaced the next time we step up on the bridge. *You’ll* be there with me instead. And maybe I’ll keep Speck there, maybe not. Depends on what the blood tests I ordered show up with. If thoroughbred white like I suspect — outta there too. We’ll replace him, yes, with someone Asian, maybe an Indian.”

“Back to the Pleiades,” steered “Hooroo” toward the main problem again, the main sticking point. There was no stage set up for them in the 7 star star constellation formation. Despite what Cannon relayed in Book 1.

I can feel her laughing behind the scenes. I think she may be part of my “council”, perhaps as a counsel.

(to be continued)

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October 7, 2023 · 3:09 pm

X factor

“I’ve decided not to write trash, Eddie, my Edward.”

“Call me Eddie,” he repeated. She never listened. Much like “cousin” Tessa to Edward, the *real* Edward.

So many faux cousin/lover pairings in this novel already, and we’re not even halfway through quite yet. First there was Eddie and Edward, the faux being affixed to the lover part in that case. Then Tessa and Edward, cousin linked with faux in that example. And now supposed cousins Serenity Lane and Shelley Lane (Struthers). Let’s just have Marsha “Pink” Krakow bring up the last pairing to Edward as they’re laying in bed in their 2n1 trailer, wishing to have their cake and eat it too again.

“Edward?” she said after thinking some of these things herself, mirroring the actual author (me) once more.

“Yes?” he relented, not bothering to correct her now.

“As I was saying…”

“Oz. I know. Rock told me all about it. And Gill. What do you call him? Vain and Artery Boyy, right. And the child as well.”

“Toddles,” she said to this. To please a child, she thought.

“All 3 approached me, Rock and Toddles and then Vain and Artery Boyy separate from them. Told me how much they enjoyed the new novel and the switch of genres and how they hoped you keep it up.”

“Oh. Wonderful! I wonder why they didn’t tell me themselves?”

“Probably…” he shifts his weight in the bed, assuming a more upright position, “because you were visiting that large prison complex over in Rockaway Beach. I myself didn’t have time to tell you until now. Had to keep reinforcing to you that it’s all right, and the, ahem, tour will be over soon.”

“Took some time to get from top to bottom, yeah,” she admitted. She got pretty scared about halfway down, even though the internal bowling alley reassured her that TILE was there, even amongst all this negativity. The light shines through.

Eddie, her Edward, was with her after that — called him over. “So. Are you going to go in that direction, go back to Meat City? Or stay here in Big Sandy?”

Was that the ultimate question? Past Broadwater, the grid took over, Utah to Omega link locked in again until it bent away on the other side of town. She saw this now. She *had* to see.

“Let’s give it a couple more posts,” which is probably what I would have said in her shoes. She decided not to bring up that Serenity Lane wasn’t Shelley’s cousin but her ex-lover, her ex-wife in fact. And now since Shelley was out of the picture she apparently has designs on the “replacement”. Drugged back to Meat City against her will!  Prison of all places. She could have spent one day there, she could have spent a lifetime there. Big. Practically Big Sandy big sitting up there wide and long and thick in the sky.

Back to the sand the way she knew how. With Edward.

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October 5, 2023 · 2:49 pm

00400309

“‘And as the Tinsman kept standing at attention while Ozma was still in sight down the grown up road, a small shower appeared seemingly out of nowhere, just enough to freeze him up at that spot for a very long time indeed. You see, he’d misplaced his can before painfully refinding the object by sitting on it, and so hadn’t oil himself in a while since he didn’t have time to use it before Ozma arrived. The Queen of Oz rarely passed through these here parts, and I believe she may have even forgotten about the shortcut afterwards, perhaps all part of that spell which made Tinsman what he was in the first place: completely tin, with not a bit of flesh and blood human left in his body. And so it becomes the Forgotten Road of Oz, famous for where the Woodsman stood until Dorothy stumbled upon him and oiled him back to life, like pumping blood into his dried up veins and arteries if he had any.'” She looked up from the book she was reading aloud atop the Big Sandy knob known as Rocky Comfort and into her listening audience which was also her test audience for the work-in-progress fantasy novel. “Questions?”

“I like the vein and artery part,” offered listening Vain and Artery Boyy below, which Marsha “Pink” Krakow had anticipated and why she fit the passage into the book in the first place.

“Thank you.”

Rock raised his hand. “I have a question.”

“Yes, Rock Ramby. Go ahead.”

“What is a concrete manhole? I know what a regular manhole is. You seem to be interested in concrete in the book.”

“I wish,” answered Marsha “Pink” Krakow in several ways, “to make the book sturdy and stand the test of time. And so the concrete manholes — which are a real thing — get to that later — and the concrete bugs and trees and waterfalls and so on.”

“Lots!” reinforced Rock.

“Lots,” acknowledged Marsha.

“Me now,” said wee Toddles still between them, still acting the role of their child. “What about the ball? If Tinsman didn’t show up at the ball, wouldn’t Ozma become concerned and send a search party to look for him? Is this all a part of the spell too? Maybe the ball didn’t even exist?”

Marsha made mental notes to include what the precious precocious child said in her book. Of course she’d have to give Toddles credit somewhere and somehow.

“Good points!” she said to end.

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October 4, 2023 · 7:44 am

Man Square revisited

“Superman!” she remembered to correct about the vision from photo-novels past inspired by her writing. “Apeman and Superman on either side. And then Tinsman, like in ‘The Wizard of Oz’.”

“Interesting,” Serenity said to this, having been an L. Frank Baum and Judy Garland fan for years. She liked the ruby slippers.

“And then… can’t quite make out the last. Anyway, the *4th* we’ll call this man. *Imaginary*”, she recalled. “An imaginary man. Not real.”

“Virtual?” Serenity tried to guess.

“No, nothing like that. Something incomplete.” She put her finger to lip and started to think even deeper. I believe she may have even fallen asleep on the spot, perhaps from lack of nutrition. Yes, let’s go with that.

She had a dream where she was the sponge, the little square being from that television show. Bahahaha! she heard coming out of his mouth. He didn’t understand the square before him at all the Tinsman beside it was explaining, even if he was the same. Other shapes would have to be pulled in.

She woke up beside Serenity in the bed. Had she been drugged instead?

“I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. Shelley who?” she attempted to joke once more, and rolled a bit of Marsha’s pumpkin blonde hair around her little finger in a loving gesture that perhaps Brown within would appreciate most of all.

(to be continued)

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October 4, 2023 · 4:36 am

00400306

“The guy in the pineapple?” she said. “Yeah, I know him. Of him.”

We were back in the trailer of Serenity Lane, a neighbor not far off to the south. Marsha “Pink” Krakow ran out of cereal and was going door to door to see if anyone had a box of something — anything — to lend her this morning, being the addict she was. Serenity was first on the list, since she was the only green dot around. So maybe last on the list too. Marsha found it to be a very successful visit in more ways than one. Before she left with the box Serenity said she could even keep and that she was an addict herself in that department and that she already had one box of that particular brand so have at it, Marsha decided to stay put for a while and talk to the affable avatar of 16 years, old even for this area.

“How’s the 3-n-1 going?” Serenity started the post-cereal procurement conversation after laying down on the bed in what Marsha thought was a bit of a provocative pose. Is Serenity gay? she couldn’t help thinking. *No*, Marsha. Get your head out of the gutter for a change! She’s just a potential *friend*, which you need desperately (she kept thinking).

“Oh, it’s fine. I’ve found a boyfriend or decided on a boyfriend I guess is a better way to put it. Eddie D’Aigle, from even down south of you here. In Soggy Bottom, near the bottom of Big Sandy. I suppose at one time it was even soggy,” she tried to joke.

“Hmm,” she said. “Do you know Fred down there, then? Fred Mercury. Came to the sand and the sea to help his complexion.”

“I… don’t think so.”

“Anyway, you were telling me about the 3-n-1; how it’s going.”

“Great. Like I said, I have Edward–”

“So you’re dealing with the other two within. Who was it — Shelley of course, my cousin, or who *use* to be my cousin.”

“Still is,” Marsha “Pink” Krakow reinforced. “She’s still in there.” Marsha didn’t add that she just “escaped” last night and went on a bit of a wild spree, Brown in tow. “And Brown,” Marsha remembered to add.

“The… gasper, you described her. The 3rd. Gesturer. But not Jester,” Serenity attempted her own weak joke. They were getting along swell, Marsha thought here. A potential friend indeed.

“Right. The 3rd.”

I’m trying to remember when and how Marsha brought up Spongebub and the crop circles. Probably when she revealed what she was writing about to Serenity as they got even closer, but *not* one on top of the other. Yes, let’s go with that.

“So I sat back and looked at what I just wrote — trying to do it in the style of Shelley, you understand.”

“I understand.” Serenity had had her own big bowl of Kellogg’s Woot Loops about a 1/2 hour back, just before Marsha showed up. So she was happy to keep talking. Marsha, however, found her stomach starting to rumble. She didn’t have much longer before she needed to leave. Better be quick about it. Thus the talk about the writing, the core of the mystery, she felt. If Serenity understood this, then she checked off the biggest box in the friend application process.

“Bone to spaceship, obvious reference to 2001. Which made me start thinking about men.”

“Sure it did,” Serenity attempted to quip about the bone part.

“No, 2 men.”

“Even better!”

“*No* (huff!). It was an Apeman and then a Spaceman. I knew this to be true. Past and future combined into something not quite as good as either separately. But that wasn’t all. There were 2 other men on either side. I suppose I would be in the center, watching it all, as on a television show. Do… do you know of Spongebub, the square little fellow who lives under the water with mates Starr and Squid?”

And this is where we came in.

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October 3, 2023 · 1:35 pm

00400305

We he awoke, Marsha “Pink” Krakow was no longer floating with him, having been replaced by Dogg. The dissonant chords of a distant electric guitar roused him. Then shortly joining in with the deranged strumming: drums. Marsha had found a new partner of sorts.

He checked his phone messages. “Be back when we’re finished practicing.” Then skip several lines: “I have a new band!” Well great, he thinks. A rival for her attention for certain now.

“Realous?” said the great dane behind him, reading over his shoulder.

“You bet!”

“Ret’s take a ralk and talk.”

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October 2, 2023 · 1:39 pm

00400304

This square-ish field in Morgan’s Hill, Wiltshire County, England was the site of a complex *square shaped* crop circle in July 2009.

25505704

25505450

A deceptively simple star circle formed 2 years prior to this in a neighboring field.

10903829

I couldn’t help but associate these 2 Morgan’s Hill circles with the cuddly characters pictured below we’ve already seen once in this here photo-novel, another square and star partnering.

Spongebob-And-Patrick-patrick-star-and-spongebob-32323000-470-477

Also, take a look at this article about a 2011 crop circle appearing at the foot of the same hill, 2 years after the square one and 4 years after the star formation.

http://www.cropcirclesandmore.com/thoughts/201103ecc.html

bertjanssen-morganshill2011

Patrick Star’s home anyone?

https://bakerbloch.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/fh/

spongebobs-house

tumblr_mdp52px0HZ1ra59of

—–

“Our next door neighbor Sandy’s gone, Eddie,” spoke Pink to her new beau floating in the pool with her, “although her car is mysteriously still there on the lot. Perhaps she’s planning to pick it up later after she settles elsewhere. I wish her well.”

“Oh well,” says Eddie to this, indifferent to the change.

“Aidema Hill guy is still on the other side, though. Brabin. Or Bravin.”

“Hmm.” And he falls asleep in the midday sun.

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October 2, 2023 · 5:22 am

“Hey Mickey”!

Channeling the music as inspiration instead of irritation, she starts…

Ketchup Tom thinks he has an easy trade with me. Not so much. I’m only here because of the typewriter. And the drums — I wish to play with him later on at least in *that* way. Tee hee. I laugh like a slut but I’m not. I talk and walk trash but I’m not. Sometimes I write science fiction when I’m in a future mode or mood. Silverberg went over Pork Chop Hill; didn’t make it back. The war took a lot of us. I don’t have to remind the reader about that. Threatened to turn civilization back to the Monkeys, pheh. Civilization Phaze III we could call it in Zappa-speak, if it even gets that far. Monkeys use bones for drumming after all. And how often do bones turn into starships? I should know all about it. Because I was in that one. Because… I am Frank’s long lost sister’s father’s granddaughter. Not Moon: Starr. Because I will be one. I am destined to be one, born to be one. A Starr is Born.

Mickey, put down your sticks and sit back and listen to what I’m saying while I dance on your Head. I’m speaking to you directly.

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October 2, 2023 · 4:50 am

00400302

He was sturming and dranging in the background, leaving the door to his 2nd or 3rd or 4th trailer wide open so that the whole of Big Sandy could hear, she supposed. The big egomaniac. Lured her over here thinking that she was easy pickings, and that Eddie, her Edward, wouldn’t mind a tradeoff, he with Dogg now. She’s not that type of gal, despite the writings. Which she must start soon, taking off from where Shelley Struthers left it. Shady Lane as a publisher’s name, true, but a more classy type of writing for that genre. This wasn’t no Robert Silverberg cheapie side project done just for the dough, despite more trailers being involved. Shelley had loftier ambitions than trash and even science fiction, another gutter style. And Marsha “Pink” Krakow must follow up on this because of the whole absorption thing that happened back there toward the end of photo-novel 39, as I’m sure you, the reader, will recall. How couldn’t you?? It brought our new heroine back from the land of the dead which was also Storybrook. As in: she died there; was murdered there, along with what turned out to be, in the end, her best friend Tammy “Beige” Brown, also known as Frankie “Brown” Beige. Or something.

It was like the music was being directly funneled into her brain from her good ear it was so loud. Ketchup Tom thought when he finished she would be wowed off her feet and onto that pull out couch over there. But she was only here because of the typewriter. And, yep, the possibility of her playing with him later on, as in, wishing to take up the old hobby of drumming as well, exclusive to the Marsha aspect this time. Strum and Drum, hmm. Nice ring for a new band name. At least she can put it in her novel if nothing else. How about 3 sentences back to begin.

(to be continued)

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