Category: Life in Dunwich

My Adventures in the Mythical New England Town of Dunwich

You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Choice

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So, I learned some stuff today about publishing a book.

  • There’s no such thing as an objective authoritative critic who can tell you whether your book is good, bad or indifferent. In other words, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”  If you believe your book is good then you take your chances.  So that puts the onus back on me.  Do I believe in my book or not?
  • After you write it and put a cover on it and edit it, then you have to get influencers to tout it and reviewers to praise it. But after all that you have to advertise it on Amazon to the tune of thousands of dollars.  Otherwise, no one will know it’s there.

Well, now I’ll have to search my soul and decide just how much I want to get my book out in the world.  Do I put my money where my mouth is?  I guess I’ll find out.  Now, all this is still preliminary.  I have to get a cover and get an editor to tell me about all my typos and inelegant grammatical constructions.  And get a marketer to “alert the media.”  And for the next month I’m going to be buried under a project that will prevent me from concentrating on anything important.  But by the third week in November, I’ll be available (other than a Thursday where I’ll be buried under cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie).

Well, it was definitely a clarifying experience.  There’s no way to pass the buck on a thing like this.  The author has to search his soul and use the wisdom of Solomon to make the correct decision.  Well, so what?  What’s Solomon got that I ain’t got, in spades?  Darned right!

So, if you drive through Dunwich and you see a disheveled geezer picking up bottles and cans on the side of the road, it may be me trying to raise enough capital for the project.  With any luck I’ll strike oil in the north forty and I can start on the gold leaf hardcover edition that all of us “real authors” like so much.

Okay, so enough moaning and groaning.  The journey is the reward they say.  So, I’ll just follow my nose and see where all this ends up.  Of course, if I get too enthusiastic Camera Girl will wonder why the checking account has gotten so anemic.  And that could trigger all kinds of hazardous situations.  After all she has complete control over my food supply and knows my sleeping habits.  But I won’t allow artistic decisions to be influenced by cowardly and pedestrian concerns. “Ars gratia artis,” you know.

Well, back to something comical; the government shutdown!  I hear Trump is going to permanently terminate “hundreds of thousands” of federal employees to get back at the Democrats for shutting down the government.  That’s a pretty bold move.  I’m starting to believe there are no limits to what he plans to do to the federal government.  He seems to be borrowing Obama’s statement that he would “fundamentally transform the United States.”  And at this rate maybe Trump will actually do it!

A Respite.  What’s Not to Love?

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Another day, another mass killing in a church.  Okay we need a break today.  Need something that won’t push me over the edge into catatonia.  Let’s see.

So, Camera Girl and I went to a gathering of my weekly zoom-call buddies.  It was a rescheduled Labor Day party that was cancelled because of weather, I think.  Our host had a pork roast in a smoker and other delicacies.  Camera Girl baked a ricotta cheesecake and some other stuff and we relaxed around a giant fire pit in a cauldron hung from a heavy chain attached to a tripod.  We ate and socialized.  There was a lot of talk about music.  Our host is a musician.  He’s a singer and guitar player and after dinner he set up a band and played country favorites and some eclectic tunes along with songs of his own.  The audience was very appreciative as well they should have been.  It was very enjoyable.

Afterward there was some political discussion amongst a few of us but my heart wasn’t into it.  It was much more enjoyable to discuss the merits of and differences between Hank Williams Senior, Junior and the III.  And talk about who really played the instruments on the Beach Boys, “Pet Sounds” (apparently studio musicians called, “The Wrecking Crew”).  Sure, we did talk a little about Charlie Kirk’s murder, but I much preferred spending time talking about the old days and some of the characters who we worked with but hadn’t thought about in a long time.  Reminiscing actually is a lot of fun.  And there were people there I hadn’t seen in a long time.  And everyone got along great.  And I did hear some very good health news about someone who had had a terrible accident.  So, all in all, it was an excellent night.

But all too soon Camera Girl reminded me I needed to head home and we said our goodbyes.  But when I got home, I was inspired by the musical nature of the night to dig out a bunch of CDs that I had bought but never ripped onto my computer and put on some thumb drives to listen to in my car and around the house.  You see I’ve never gone in for streaming.  I don’t use a cell phone at all (well, I have a flip phone that I charge up if I have to go out of town).  So, my music is based on my CD collection.  Well, I had about ten albums that I hadn’t heard in a few years so I added them to the playlist and damn!  All of a sudden, my music was light years better than it’s been in forever.  So, ignoring the present apocalypse has been very pleasant.  Sure, I’ll have to come up for air soon and the horror is just waiting for me to come back to the surface but for a short exciting moment I was living in a happier world without trans-psycho-killers, Antifa losers and government shutdowns.  What’s not to love?

Now Where’s My Coffee?!!!

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While I sent out copies of my book to somewhat willing beta-readers I remembered I had some projects kicking around the house.  When I mentioned this, Camera Girl informed me that I had failed as a maintenance manager.  She handed me the contact information of the last plumber we had used (quite a while ago) and reminded me that we now had three plumbing issues that needed to be attended to.  These problems had been haunting her sense of propriety for a good long while and now righteous anger had welled up and I was the malefactor who should have taken matters into my own hands long ago, “Call him today!  It’ll take a week to get him here so get this done before we’re too busy in a couple of weeks.”  I nodded my head in bitter remembrance.  She was right.  There was a water line on one of the toilet tanks that leaked when it was flushed.  There was a shower drain on the first floor that had a plate that had no screw holding it down but was welded tight and she was afraid it was clogged based on some comments she had heard from the kids during the summer pool season when they used that shower after swimming.  And finally, there was that sink basin that had a crack in the porcelain that leaked.

Each problem separately was minor and ignorable for at least the medium term.  But taken together they spoke of dereliction of duty, mopery and dopery, flimflammery and bone-laziness.  I was contrite.  I mumbled my assent.  And she left to go about her litany of errands.  She had to buy crickets for the two preying mantises that she had captured this week.  She wanted to save them from the approaching cold weather.  And also, to see if they would produce egg sacs for next year.  And she had various other duties; packages for the post office, books and movies to the library, a jigsaw puzzle for a friend of hers and some miscellaneous goods to buy at Wallymart.  Each one of these multitasked errands added to the indictment of my malfeasance.

So, I sat down and tried to put down on paper the plumbing work I wanted done.  After all you don’t call a tradesman and ask him to spend expensive time without trying to minimize the cost by defining the work.  First off there was the leaking water line on the toilet.  It was one of those somewhat flexible stainless lines.  Where it met the valve near the floor it was rusted from the dripping water it created.  But was it dripping from the toilet connection or the valve fitting.  And I realized I had never even bothered to decide which problem it was.  If it was leaking from downstream of the valve, maybe I could buy a new piece of flexible line and replace it beyond the shutoff valve.

So, I went upstairs and looked at the line.  It was dry.  So, I flushed the toilet and I saw drops of water flowing down from the toilet to the floor.  Now I was interested.  I kneeled down and twisted around and I could see a plastic fitting at the toilet tank.  There was a threaded nut.  So, I tried to hand tighten it.  It gave a little so I tightened as hard as I could by hand.  I dried off the line and flushed the toilet.  No water.  I flushed it again.  No water.  I flushed it a third time.  No water.  Hail the conquering hero!

I went down to the bottom floor and looked at the shower drain.  Sure enough, the drain plate had no screw but was tight to the orifice.  I stared at it for a few seconds and pulled on the plate as hard as I could and it popped off. There was some debris in it so I got my pliers and pulled out some hair and muck.  Then I ran the shower full blast for ten minutes.  No water backing up.  Now I was a veritable demigod of home improvement.

I marched up to the cracked sink with an air of bored confidence and examined the piping connections.  Sure enough, there was a plastic threaded coupling connecting it to the piping and almost nothing else in the way from removing it from the countertop.  With a look of contempt, I walked over to the contact information with half a mind to call up this tradesman and inform him that his services would not be needed.

When Camera Girl returned, I straightened her out on the status of her honey-do list.  “Items one and two solved!  Item three has been surveyed, a path forward has been devised and the schedule is already in place.  Now where’s my coffee?!!!

Bogita!

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A good friend of the site kindly put me in touch with a published author this week and I had a very edifying and encouraging discussion.  He provided me with the kind of practical advice that I’ve been looking for.  And it’s not that his information differed from some of the things I’ve been reading but rather that he provided reinforcement for some of the things I had been leaning toward but agonizing about.  I will take a page from Camera Girl’s book and as she famously said (and as she claims Nike plagiarized her by saying), “Just do it!”

So, I spent a couple of hours doing a clean up of a copy of the manuscript that I want to send out to a medium sized publishing house that I know is friendly to folks of my political and cultural leanings.  Who knew that em-dashes are not welcome everywhere?  Well potato/puhtatah.  When in Rome do as the Romans do.  Tippecanoe and Tyler too, I guess.

Yes, I’m now on the manic climb of the manic/depressive roller coaster and all things are possible and everything is easy.  Soon I’ll be crashing down into the abyss of hopelessness and despair.  Well …, actually not.  There’s a medicine in actually finishing anything.  The whole “beginning, middle and end” thing is not just a concept.  It’s a part of human nature and there is salvation in typing that last word and hitting the period key. Bang!

So, tomorrow is work and maybe more work.  There are new systems at work that have to be learned and used.  And people to train and all kinds of boring and stupid things to do.  But even that doesn’t daunt me right now.  So, I’m looking ahead to sending the manuscript out in the next few days and then I’ll see if there are any agents that I might want to contact.  For that I’ll have to put together a query letter which sounds like a goofy thing.  It’s a kind of sales pitch to inspire the agent to want to handle your book in discussions with publishers.  I imagine Don Draper of Mad Men standing up at a blackboard pointing at a sketch of something inspirational and gesticulating wildly while saying incredibly persuasive things about my creative genius.

But from what I’ve heard it won’t be Don Draper because most agents, editors, publishers and probably everyone else in the publishing business are all women.  And probably not fun women like Camera Girl who has a great sense of humor (most of the time) but serious and really annoying women who say “they and them” instead of “she and her.”  Well, what can you do?  The world is made up of all kinds of folks and as that famous philosopher Rodney King once asked, “Why can’t we all just get along?”  So, I must do my best to struggle and survive regardless of my instincts and early training.  I will put on my best smile and put my best foot forward and step into the future.  But no matter what, there will be no girl-boss in “The Sniper.”  Bogey cannot be Bogita!

Complicated and Annoying

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So, the great retreat has begun.  On Friday the pool guys showed up and closed it down for the season.  Of course there was some drama.  I had asked the guy in charge to tell his crew to patch three liner holes that had developed above the water line.  He warned me that one of them boded ill and meant I might soon need to install a new liner at a cost of gazillions of dollars.  I told him okay, but have them patch the holes anyway.  So of course, he didn’t tell them and so they had to go back to get more glue or something.

And Camera Girl’s house plants needed to come back inside soon.  So, I moved them into one of the decks in advance of dragging them up to the top floor.  This may sound trivial but some of these things are taller than me, awkwardly shaped for the stairs, covered with huge needle-sharp spines and incredibly heavy.  So, it’s always a ticklish chore.  One day I assume it will be the cause of my death.  What I should do is set up a temporary pulley system on the top balcony and let mechanical advantage do the heavy lifting.  But I’m too lazy to design it.  Maybe next year.

I also have a bunch of plants that I need to transplant outside.  Then it will be time to stow away all of the outdoor furniture and begin the winter-proofing of the exposed wood.  To be honest, I’ve never done a decent job of this but I’ve sworn a horrible oath to do it this year.  And then I have to winterize the lawn mowers.

And finally, the biggest chore I have to shore up about eighteen posts on the pool fence.  I’ve got a few kits and I’ll buy the rest but it will be a load off my mind to have that damn thing completely reinforced.  There are also two gates that need some work but those can wait.  A gate’s not much use if the fence around it is on the ground.

So, there’s plenty to do and things will be getting busy at work soon, so I’ll be stressed and agitated while I try to publish and market my brand-new book.  But that’s what life is all about; conflicting priorities and humans choosing priorities.  It’s what separates us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans.  We choose wisely.

I have a feeling I’ll be self-publishing the book.  I watched a video where the guy said that most trad-published books get an advance of only about $5,000 – $10,000 and since the publisher doesn’t market your book for you most of the work (other than putting a cover on it) still has to be done by the author.  Well, if I’ve got to drum up the buyers myself, I might as well keep 70% of the profits instead of 10%.  And that way I have the discretion to use deceptive sales tactics like increasing and decreasing the sale price whenever it suits my devious and even diabolical plans.

Well, I need to start making a Gantt Chart of this publishing and marketing process.  It sounds complicated and annoying.  So right up my alley.  I wonder if Donald Trump has any time available in his schedule to market my book.  After all, I’ve been of invaluable help to him in his campaigns.  But how quickly people forget.

Writing’s Easy.  Selling is Hard.

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As I mentioned a day or two ago, I’ve finally finished my story about the sniper.  Of course, it still needs a spell check and another read through for errors and any “infelicities” of style that I may find.  But for the most part I’ve brought it to a close.

But now comes the really hard part.  Self-publishing versus traditional publishing.  And for me it’s especially difficult because the story is unacceptably “right wing” from the point of view of anyone in the traditional publishing industry except for one or two houses like Baen Books who cater to stories from our side of the great political divide.

I have just begun doing my research on some kind of order of operations to maximize my chances to publish the book so that the largest number of people will hear about it.  And my level of knowledge of the whole publishing process is pretty darn close to absolute zero.  I’ve only reached out to one guy I know of who writes in the same general universe with me but I think I’ll have to feel my way around by reading and watching content that is meant to educate the public about trad publishing vs. self-publishing and then get a better handle on what writers on the right generally do.

So far all I’ve read makes the whole process seem incredibly slow and painful and chock full of interactions with gatekeepers and unsympathetic literary agents who will never return any of my correspondence but will dismiss me as a talentless hack.

But maybe I’m completely mistaken and instead I’ll be embraced by the publishing world as the next Cormac McCarthy and be showered with accolades and surrounded by business agents fighting one another to get me to sign book and movie deals.  Within months I’ll be quoted by millions of readers who will flood my website with messages of delight about my brilliant writing and demands that I “take their crowdfunding money” for my next writing effort.  The millions of dollars will pile up in Camera Girl’s sewing closet (she likes cash) and I will become a recluse and start wearing outlandish clothes to reflect my new status as a global phenomenon.  I can hear it now.  The crowds chanting at DragonCon, “photog, photog, photog!”

Okay good.  Now I’ve got that out of my system.  I’ll go back to finding out whether the “hybrid” publishers I’ve read about that cater to right and libertarian authors are legit or really the infamous “vanity press” scam artists that take all your money and ship a few boxes of print-on-demand paperbacks and tell you to, “Go market the damn things yourself!”

Well, I wanted to try writing a book.  Now I’ve done it and I better find out how to get other people to know it exists without spending a million dollars doing it.  And that’s another thing.  Now that AI can draw covers maybe I can save some money by using it.  Of course, I understand that I’ll anger all of the artistic community that does book covers for a living.  Hmmm.  Maybe I should find out what it costs.  There are already so many people mad at me in the world, adding to that number sounds like a bad idea.  Well, we’ll see.

The Chiropteriad

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So last night around midnight I was trying to fall asleep in bed when I heard some noise coming from a window.  In the summer this window has one of those screens with the bracing handles that snugs into the frame of the window.  I had noticed that it wasn’t completely sealed into the window frame but figured it would keep 95% of the bugs out so I didn’t bother to fiddle with it.  Anyway, it was dark so I couldn’t see anything but there was a scurrying and scratching noise.  So, I turned on the light and almost immediately a small black object fell to the floor under the window and immediately opened its wings and flitted around the room.  It was a bat.  I woke Camera Girl and like the good woman she is she ran screaming from the room.  Being a man of action, I started swatting at it with a sweatshirt I had on hand.  That proved to be less than useless.  So, I procured a kitchen broom and ran around the room swatting at it.  No go.  I opened up the door to the balcony and tried to force him out that way.  When a second bat entered the room by the door, I reconsidered this tactic and closed said door.  Now I was ineffectually swinging a broom at two bats that were swooping around the room.

Having a low tolerance for useless effort I closed the doors to our closets and bathroom and beat a hasty retreat to the hallway outside where Camera Girl confronted me on my failure as a protector of the marital bedroom.  I declared a temporary retreat but swore a terrible oath on the River Styx that in the morning I would reconquer our sacred homeland and evict the flying vermin with all of my strength and cunning.  So, we were marooned in one of the spare bedrooms and greatly was I wroth.  After a surprisingly comfortable sleep I woke up raring to settle the score with these winged interlopers.  I brought a six-foot ladder, a child’s butterfly net and a stiff piece of cardboard to trap the beasts inside the net.

After a somewhat thorough inspection of the ceiling, I couldn’t locate my enemies.  Then I looked behind the blinds of one of the other windows that was opened and found one of the critters wedged in the upper corner between the screen and the frame.  I lowered the open window as far as I could while still allowing my hands to force the screen outward and then pushed.  Now the screen was hanging below the window on the outside of the house.  I assumed the bat would fly off in fear.  I was mistaken.  The stupid creature was clinging to the screen.  I got my head and shoulders out of the window and with the leverage I now had I banged the screen against the wall and finally the bat let go and ended up on a flat roof below the window.  Apparently stunned, he later flew off.

I went back and made a closer inspection of some curtains and found the other varmint tucked between the wall and a curtain rod.  I angled the butterfly net and the cardboard as close to the critter as possible and then scraped him off the wall with the cardboard and trapped him with the net.  With Camera Girl nervously entering the room to open the balcony door (and quickly shutting it behind me!) I was able to shake the flying invader out of the net and whoosh; he winged into the woods.

Dunwich has many hazards.  Vampires, lycanthropes of various descriptions, ghouls and even Democrats haunt the swamps and graveyards of this cursed land.  But I feel that my actions today deserve some very special tribute.  Some kind of testimonial with perhaps a cash award would be reasonable, I think.  In a more creative era, the local poet laureate would dedicate an epic poem, possibly in dactylic hexameter, to immortalize my titanic struggle to make Camera Girl safe in her own boudoir.  Maybe I can get Grok or ChatGPT to put something together.

Let’s see.

Sing Muse of that hero skilled in the netting and ejecting of chiropteran monsters in all their horror

Who climbed to great heights and swung the broom to protect the goddess Camera Girl from any harm

Bring him to my mind’s eye and let me praise him with great praise.  What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man!

 

Or something like that.

Goodbye Summer 2025

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So, Saturday (09AUG2025) is a big family party at the Compound.  Another grandson graduates from high school and begins college.  The next, next generation become adults and have all the same decisions and experiences in front of them.  And Camera Girl and I continue our campaign to get to play with progressively more distant descendants.  The hunt for great grandchildren is now the thing.

But the main thing is that I’m just providing the infrastructure; the indoor and outdoor venue and the grill.  The graduate’s parents will bring and cook the food and organize the kids’ activities and lifeguard the pool.  I’ll just be one of the kids tomorrow.  I intend to spend a portion of the event with my brothers talking about how passing the torch to the next generation feels for them.  There has been a threat of putting on a Shatner-Khan adjacent event.  Maybe put on one of his greatest hits.  If it happens, I hope it’ll be “Terror at 20,000 Feet.”  There can be nothing more definitively Shatner than that.

But I hope to spend most of the day eating burgers and dogs and potato salad and peppers and sausage.  And then playing pool with the grandkids and shooting the breeze with family that I don’t see very often.  This will be the last get together for the summer.  And everyone is getting older and travelling even the modest distances between us becomes more challenging every year.  So, these parties become more important.

I guess most of us are on the Trump train so there will be some Trump gloating going on.  We’ll keep it sotto voce because even among my close relatives there are a few folks of the other persuasion.  And I don’t see any need to start a fight.  Family solidarity is more important than scoring political points at a party.  That’s for sure.

A couple of days ago the goofy looking weather man on the Spectrum channel (my cable provider) told us that it looks like a very nice week with temperatures in the 80’s, low humidity and plenty of sun.  But then, just to prove he’s a jerk he went into a little spiel where he defined just how much daylight we lose over the course of August.  And just to show that he was intentionally spreading misery he finished off by saying, “But most people don’t like to be reminded of this sad fact.”  What a creep.

But he’s right.  The sun is lower in the sky.  It’s cooler than a few weeks ago and the sun is down earlier than it should be.  The leaves are starting to fall from the cherry trees.  The vegetable garden is definitely looking worse for wear and the flowers are starting to exhaust.  Last week the daylilies in the sheltered corner ran out of flowers.  There are still some smaller ones (Stella de Oros and orange ones) but they’re not the same.  The cone flowers will last a good long time but there aren’t anymore new flowers growing.  The only flowers still to come are the Montauk daisies and the wolfbane in October.

So summer is wrapping up.  The kids go back to school in two weeks and pretty soon the end of season Dunwich Fair with its First Selectman dunk tank (win at your own risk) and free werewolf neutering clinic will be upon us.  Well, it’s time for the party and goodbye Summer 2025.

I Have My Priorities

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So today was an early day because I had to head to the office.  I was already running late when Camera Girl walked out of the kitchen and said, “Don’t react or the dogs will start barking but there are a couple of momma turkeys at my bird feeder with about eight young.  Go take a look.”

So, they were under the bird feeders looking for seeds on the ground that the normal birds spilled out of the feeders.  But eventually they weren’t satisfied so they headed out into the fields.  Camera Girl saw them heading for the gardens and said, “They’re headed for the raspberry patch.  Do you think they’ll eat any of the berries.”  I answered knowledgably, “No they only eat bugs and small critters.”  Of course, they immediately attack the patch and clearly start picking ripe berries off the canes.  I didn’t look back at her but I think there was a look.  And I think there might have been a derisive sound.  I came back with her own famous statement, “Well, everybody’s gotta eat, right?”  So, I announced that I had to leave for work and made a show of ignoring the prehistoric creatures that had invaded my domain.

When I got home, I got the update.  They had not only picked all the ripe raspberries but they then cleaned up the ripe blueberries too.  Then they went down by the swamp and annoyed Moe and the rest of Camera Girl’s murder of crows that hang out there during the morning.  Finally, they walked the perimeter of the fields until they ended up near the road and then made a nuisance of themselves for the motorists until they finally crossed the road and headed for the next swamp in their path.

I’ve always been interested in the turkey population because they provide an opportunity for interesting photographs.  But here they were adding insult to injury.  They not only didn’t eat any of the copious beetles that are afflicting my vegetables and flowers but they went out of their way to pillage my favorite summer fruit crops.  This is the thanks I get for never hunting them or setting the dogs on them or even making fun of their homely appearance, clumsy walking style or spastic flying abilities.

Well, truth be told they’re still in my top five species of birds I like to see around the place.  I like seeing the vultures (turkey and black) in the trees.  I like to try and get a shot of a Great Blue Heron fishing in the swamp and I also hope one day to lure some of the local ravens into a closer arrangement.  I’ve always thought they were fascinating creatures.

But there’s something appealing about a flock of turkey hens with their young walking around in Dunwich in the summer acting like they own the place and livening things up.

Yep, that’s true.  However, if they come near the berries again, I may just get some rocks and help them to move along at high speed.  At this time of year, I have my priorities.

Maybe He Wasn’t Ready for His Own Show

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So, the First Selectman heard about Stephan Colbert losing his gig with the Late Show and somehow got the idea that maybe he could end up as a replacement on CBS.  He called me into his cave and said, “Listen Appetizer, I want you to get on the blower with Bill Paley and tell him I have a great idea for a late-night comedy show.  I’ll call it “Late Night Selections.”

I said, “Sir I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but William Paley died in 1990 at age 89.  And currently the parent company of CBS; Paramount Studios, is being acquired by another entertainment company Skydance Media and they have decided that the old-style late-night show is outdated and unprofitable.  They have not only not renewed Stephen Colbert’s contract; they have ended the whole Late Night production company.  They’ve effectively fired two hundred people in order to save $100 million.”

This outraged the First Selectman, “Who ever heard of anyone dying at 89.  Why I’m in excess of a trillion years old and I’ve never felt better in my life.  Sure, I eat healthy and stay away from fatty food like Mexicans and Italians but last time I saw Bill in 1948 he was the picture of health.  He was smoking a cigar, drinking a martini and pinching his secretary.  You don’t get much livelier than that!”

I interjected that notwithstanding his fond memories of Mr. Paley it was unfortunately true that new management was in place at the Tifanny Network and perhaps this was not the time for a new late-night show.  This got me nowhere and so yesterday I was assigned the task of putting together a stage for this dynamic new production.  As luck would have it, I read an ad for Colbert’s extra furniture going up for sale and picked it up for a song.  I think it was being sold hot by the disgruntled stage crew.

Well with a little alteration to allow the five hundred foot tall First Selectman to interact with human sized guests on the stage we had it up and running this morning in time to go through some try-outs.  As luck would have it Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren were all hoping to get some extra face time during Trump’s problems over the Epstein case so the First Selectman was able to book all three of them for his trial run.

Well, there were problems.  During the first segment Schiff began banging the drum about Donald Trump being a fascist.  Now the first Selectman used to be a close personal friend of Mussolini so he innocently said, “What’s wrong with being a fascist.”  Well, Schiff went ballistic and started going through his talking points about Trump assaulting women and being a felon and starting an insurrection and before you know it, he was calling the First Selectman a reactionary.  Well, this didn’t sit well with the First Selectman so he ate Schiff.  And when Pelosi and Warren saw this from the wings, they came running out screeching at a very high pitch.  As it happens the First Selectman is very sensitive to the particular frequency so in self-defense, he quieted them by eating them.

Well, the booking agency was very upset and said they couldn’t provide any more guests, except maybe AOC and Mamdani because nobody likes them anyway but the First Selectman said Puerto Rican and Middle Eastern food gave him the runs.  So, he’s given up on the whole show idea.  It’s all very sad.