Tag: Dunwich

Dunwich in the Time of Mud

photog 0 Comment Book Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews, Trump , , ,

Spring has arrived with its endless supply of muck and slop and just in time with it the town has gone topsy turvy.  Revolution has broken out.  The Old Guard and the Young Turks are having a set to and I’m caught in the middle.  I’ll be working more and making a little extra money but being of an extremely lazy nature I’d prefer the opposite.  But there are some interesting aspects to this turn of events.  New England town democracy in action is a bizarre force to observe.  The fact that the Old Guard is putting up a fight is almost unheard of in this neck of the woods.  I’ll have a ringside seat for the proceedings so it may make an interesting story when all is said and done but I expect that much angst and hard feelings will spill over into everyday life.

But at the same time, it will also cut into my blogging time, in fact it already has.  And on top of that I’ve mended my ways and now have begun applying myself to my fiction writing.  I cranked out four thousand words over the last three days and that has also cut into my posting.  But that’s all to the good.  The story is expanding and becoming more interesting.  I’ve definitely decided to nuke my hero’s base at some point.  I mean what’s a science fiction story without an atom bomb somewhere?  No one calls them atomic bombs anymore.  It’s nuke this and nuke that.  Thermo-nuclear.  Who came up with that name?  Thermo- implies heat.  Are there any cold nuclear explosions?  I guess if they ever figure out an actual cold fusion process, we could talk about it but anyway I think I’m going to nuke my base.

I’ve had to write some personal scenes into the book.  The hero gets to see his family for the first time in a long while and there are grandkids and his son’s widow and that was tricky.  I think I did alright which surprised me.  I’m not a very touchy feely kinda guy but I could see that leaving out his relationship with his family felt fake.  So, there you go, human interest.  What’s next, an Oprah interview for our hero?  I’ve even added an AI character.  That’s actually kind of fun.  It’s funny once you get going these things kind of write themselves in.  Anyway, the story is percolating along.

But all this stuff really just enhances the blogging.  You can’t just write about national stories all the time.  It’s just too much of the same thing.  We’ve got to be in the story too, or what’s the point?  I could just listen to Tucker Carlson or some other talking head.  That’s why I like when some of the guest contributors have something to add.  I like to get some other angles on things and I’m sure that’s the same with everybody else.

I think the whole Trump indictment story is both a ridiculous joke and at the same time an important object lesson.  It’s important that everyone on our side realize that this is not our country anymore and it doesn’t work by the rules we were told apply.  The people in charge change the rules as needed.  They don’t play fair and they play as rough as needed.  And if the January 6th prisoners aren’t enough to convince you of that just wait till Donald Trump gets his treatment.

So anyway, busy, busy, busy but still keeping my nose to the grindstone.  Wow, that sounds painful!

Thoughts After a Hectic Week

photog 2 Comments Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,

Just a busy, busy week.  Last Thursday we had a town political event that kept me tied down for a couple of days.  Then this week we had three days of a “winter storm” which was half snow and half rain and had to be shoveled by hand which, honestly, is kind of fun but eats up a lot of time.  And today I had to pay the piper or rather let my accountant do my taxes which turned out rather well.  A few thousand dollars will come back to me from state and federal governments and the peasants will rejoice (huzzah!).

But it’s kind of kept me from being on top of events and also significantly interfered with both fiction writing and blogging (booo!).  But I hope we’re now past most of the problems.  The forecasts I’ve seen for the remainder of March and the beginning of April seem more spring-like than wintery and I don’t foresee any major disruptions to my very carefully planned laziness by the forces of entropy.  But who knows.  C’est la guerre.

But enough complaining.  All of this is a long-winded way of saying, “I’m back.”

And I guess a thing that’s worth discussing is the depths to which Blue-State politics infects even Republican party policy with woke madness.  I heard from an official that a plurality of Republican officials voted to empower a committee to select candidates for public office on the basis of race and sexual orientation.  Supposedly the fact that only a small number of voters were present saved the party from having to accept the results of this vote but think of that.  If even the Republicans are now choosing representation by the diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense then what chance is there to have our side of things heard at all?

What the official told me is that the Republicans from the larger towns and cities feel compelled to toe the line coming from people who are obviously not even Republicans.  But with such supermajorities among the voting population, they’ve been emboldened to send ringers in to infiltrate the Republican party and essentially take it over.

So what does that tell you about the trajectory of Blue State politics?  Well, think of it now as an echo chamber inside of an echo chamber.  These northeastern states will soon be vying with California for being beholden to state worker unions but without California’s Silicon Valley tax base.  It’s already the case that the teacher’s union dictates the state budget process and because of this the pension liabilities estimated for the retiring baby boomers will very shortly make a balanced budget impossible.

If there were a responsible administration, they would be looking at this coming tidal wave and calculating how to restructure this debt and also rein in the pay and benefit packages to something that would be sustainable.  But the current administration wouldn’t dare do this.  So, we’ll be going over Niagara Falls without the barrel.

Now the smart thing to do is get out of Dodge.  But unfortunately, I’m tied down by family necessity so I’ll be getting a ring side view of the whole sickening spectacle and probably will be rendered penniless and homeless into the bargain.  But such is life.

And it will probably give me endless stories of death and destruction with which to amuse my readers.  Huzzah again!

But the whole reason for this cautionary tale is that creeping socialism is a disease for which there is no cure.  Amputation of the gangrenous appendage is the only treatment.  With that in mind the healthy Red States should think long and hard how they can inoculate themselves from the kind of citizens who inhabit these Blue States.  Government employee unions must be kept from exerting power over the legislation by whatever means are necessary and things like welfare must be minimized to avoid the situation you see where homelessness and drug addiction begins to dominate in the large cities.  And they should do this as a group , coordinating their efforts and sharing information.

Well, that’s enough for now.  How’s that for some gloom and doom for a Thursday.

Dunwich in Crisis or at a Crossroads or Something or Other that Starts With a C

photog 2 Comments Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,
Cthulhu

The partisan divide that has attended the upcoming Witch Burning Referendum has ripped away the illusion of civility and civic spirit here in Dunwich.  The latest flashpoint has been a state commission’s report that witch burning as currently practiced, falls afoul of Arkham’s stringent state greenhouse gas emissions standards.  The review has declared that from now on witches will have to be burned using solar power.

An opinion solicited by the First Selectman from the leading solar energy researcher at Miskatonic University, Professor Nehemiah Scrimshaw was obtained by this newspaper and a few of his conclusions were:

  • There are only 0.00035 seconds of usable sunlight in Dunwich per month.
  • In order to fully oxidize an average sized witch in that window of time, a magnifying glass with a diameter of 10,000 miles would be needed and this device would weigh in at 6.9 X 1023 tons and would require an enormous nuclear power plant to power the servo motors to maintain the focusing function correctly.
  • The professor also estimated that it would require forty or fifty years to obtain the needed licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and until the licensing was in effect no witch burnings would be permitted at all.

Parenthetically, the professor remarked that since the mass of the magnifying device would be approximately a hundred times the mass of the Earth the actual means by which the device would be manufactured and tethered to Dunwich was unachievable using current human science and engineering.  But he did say it posed an interesting thought experiment for his current graduate students.

We tried to reach First Selectman Cthulhu for comment but the reporter we sent has gone missing.  Our eye in the sky OCF traffic copter was able to spot the First Selectman as he bee-lined for the state capital in Arkham.  Based on the debris field in his wake it is estimated that not much will remain of the state house or most of the downtown area of Arkham.  But it seems this will put to rest the question of state environmental permitting and also state government in general for that matter.

It is worth noting that the anti-witch burning party has within the hour disbanded its headquarters, erased its Facebook and Twitter pages and from what we can tell left town heading south at a good clip.  And in fact, there was a goodly caravan of pro-witch citizens joining them.  The Town Clerk’s office has described the results of the referendum (which was supposed to occur tomorrow) as completed, audited and certified to have been unanimous to extend witch burning to 24/7/365.  And the other selectmen have hurriedly and unanimously passed an appropriation for fifty tons of the first Selectman’s favorite bath salts.

At press time it was noted that on his return from the state capital the First Selectman detoured to pass through the campus of Miskatonic University and it is now believed that Professor Scrimshaw has retired from active teaching and also, sadly, from breathing.  But he’ll always be remembered for his remarkable lack of a sense of self preservation.

08MAR2023 – Dunwich Complainer – Retail Democracy

photog 2 Comments Humor, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner , ,
Cthulhu

This week Dunwich will celebrate old style New England democracy at its most authentic.  We’re going to have a referendum.  Back in 1653 the Town Elders codified a law that banned witch burning on every day but Monday.  The intent was that this would provide the maximum time before Sunday for the smell to dissipate.  The puritans were deeply religious folk and they feared to offend the Lord by allowing burnt witch funk to permeate their worship.

Fast forward three hundred some odd years later and Dunwich is a much less pious place.  And witch burning is big business.  Having an inhabitant declared a witch and burned at the stake is the town’s most lucrative revenue stream.  You see, the statute declares that the possessions, real and personal, of the convicted witch are forfeited to the town and can then be sold at auction.  Of course, the successful accuser of the witch stands to gain a 10% commission from the proceeds of the sale, tax free.  So, the trials are stacked up like planes circling Arkham airport.

And that’s the problem.  Whereas the trials are getting banged out day in and day out, the burnings are way, way behind.  The municipal witch pit can only accommodate fifteen burnings a week.  So, there are currently twelve hundred witches cooling their heels waiting for stake time.  Now the witches aren’t complaining.  They’re willing to wait forever to be honest.  But the town budget is a mess.  First Selectman Cthulhu has already spent all the money that the backlog represents on aromatic bath salts.  He’s a big proponent of the long languid soak in a tub.  Although in his case the tub is reworked municipal reservoir.  But suffice it to say that requires an awful lot of bath salts.  And now the bath salt merchandisers refuse to float him any more credit until he squares his accounts.

Well, he’s finally lost his patience and has threatened to eat everyone in town alphabetically unless a referendum repeals the “Monday only” part of the witch burning law right away.  And so, we’re set to vote this week.  We’ve set up the “no electioneering” line 75 feet from the polling area as state law requires but being hundreds of feet tall Cthulhu has threatened to toe the line but lean his head through the gymnasium skylight to watch over the voting and eat anyone who votes no on the petition.  Last we heard; the poll workers say there’s nothing in the handbook to forbid this activity.  This seems a little suspect to me but I know the First Selectman is a fairly persuasive character when up close and personal.

The Dunwich electorate is a feisty group.  Several of our oldest and most religious citizens have openly declared that they will vote no.  To ensure that nothing tragic befalls us the Town Clerk has decided to call in Dominion to provide the ballot reading machines, and in that way, fortify democracy or at least prevent us all from being eaten alphabetically.

Well, I’m a little sad to see the old ways discarded one by one.  It will certainly change the character of the town to have acrid black witch smoke wafting around town twenty-four seven.  It’s been proposed to replace the witch burning pit with a modern natural gas fired witch kiln with a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot stack to send the smoke down wind to Arkham.  With that kind of automation, the danger will be that we may completely depopulate the town in a couple of months.

And I guess that’s the way of progress.  But I’ll miss the days when a man could bring his family to the witch burning pit and get good seats from which to hiss at the old crones and maybe even chuck a rock or two at them.

Well, we have to be realistic and live in the present.

06MAR2023 – OCF Update – Dunwich’s Annual Zombie Roundup

photog 0 Comment Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF ,

 

Cthulhu

This week will be extremely busy here in Dunwich.  It’s time for the annual zombie roundup.  We herd the zombies into the common and cut them in half at the waist.  This makes them much slower but grosser looking. And it provides a sort of spring barbecue for First Selectman Cthulhu.  He calls it drumstick week.

But it’s a tricky operation and will keep me busy for the whole week.  I’ll do my best to provide content but there are bound to be gaps.  We’ll see if there are any big things going on in the world.  But I’ll be busy enough even if it’s a boring week for the rest of the world.

Well gotta make the drumsticks.

February in Dunwich Came in Like a Lamb and Is Going Out Like a Shoggoth

photog 0 Comment Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,
April Snowstorm

We got about six inches of wet snow last night and we’ll probably get another coupla-three-inches over the course of the day today. So, for the first time this winter I took the snow blower out and ran it around the upper driveway.  It was repaired before the winter and the foot of the housing was adjusted higher.  So now it leaves about a half inch of snow on the ground.  With dry snow this isn’t an issue but the wet stuff we got last night can gum up the works and you end up with snow compacting into slushy ice and the blower riding on top of the ice and before you know it there’s a four-inch frozen layer that you have to remove by shovel.

But honestly, I think it was enjoyable to go out and do some work.  All of this will be gone in less than a week.  All I’ve got to do is make sure I can get the cars in and out of the driveway and the rest of it will melt more or less on its own.  So I spent a couple of hours today with about half the time being shovel work on very heavy wet snow.  And I’m feeling energized because of it.

Winter is rearing its ugly head for sure.  Eight or nine inches of wet show is nothing to scorn but knowing that it won’t be lying around for three months is a big deal.  It’s three weeks to celestial spring.  Sure, we can have three feet of snow on April Fool’s Day.  It’s already been proven.  But winter has run out of time to break our backs or our spirits.

Right now, I’m looking out the balcony door at the snow sifting down through the still winter air.  It’s kind of beautiful.  I can hear the red winged black birds squawking around Camera Girl’s bird feeders.  This week hundreds of them have appeared and swarmed the area.  Maybe it’s their mating season or something.  But all the noise tells me something about the imminence of Spring.  The daffodils that appeared last week are buried in the wet snow.  But they’ve got some kind of anti-freeze in their cells that will keep them from dying.  The mallards have been wading around the pond and their ducklings will be sure to appear soon.

Around Dunwich there’s all kinds of excitement.  The budget is a shambles and we have no money.  The peasants have broken out the torches and pitchforks.  They’ll be marching to First Selectman Cthulhu’s lair soon just in time to be his first Black Sabbath feast.  In my new role as his “Least Lackey” I will be in charge of manning the barbecue sauce pumping station.  It will be my responsibility to hose down the marchers so that His Honor can swallow them quickly and enjoyably.  I hope he notes that I’ve selected the roasted garlic and lemon-flavored sauce this season.  It adds just the right touch of piquance to the flavor of what the First Selectman likes to call “Dunwich sushi.”  Oh, he’s so droll.  Who says Great Old Ones have no sense of humor?  Well, gotta go.  The snow, it calls me.

03FEB2023 – The Dunwich Complainer – Polar Vortex Blues

photog 0 Comment Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , , ,

As predicted the bottom fell out of the thermometer today.  The surrounding areas of southern New England will be experiencing temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit and fifty mph winds that will be blamed on the polar vortex.  Of course, here in Dunwich we have a slightly different climatic event.  The pole that our vortex is generated by is the galactic pole of the Milky Way.  The Supermassive Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* causes a worm hole to open up from time to time in the center of the Dunwich town dump.  Out of that cosmic orifice flows an irresistible plasma of pure neutronium moving at 99.99999% of light speed.  Today the beam punched a perfectly round eight-foot hole through Josiah Whatley’s barn and astronomers believe that it sliced Pluto in half on its exit from the solar system.

But much more importantly, it knocked out the electric power and cable access to First Selectman Cthulhu’s abode.  Now the First Selectman is a big fan of Vanna and Pat.  He watches Wheel of Fortune religiously.  Well, that is if the word religiously can be used at all to describe a blasphemous eldritch creature.  But suffice it to say he was not happy.  I could hear him stomping up the hill toward my house.  You see he doesn’t use a cell phone, he’s got a land line that runs over the same cable so he had to visit me personally instead of calling.

Since he’s a hundred feet tall I could see him coming from several miles away.  Wanting to avoid the possible blowback from Camera Girl sassing this squid-headed town official I went to meet him.  When I got within shouting distance, I greeted him politely and he began to ooze slime from his mouth.  It was quite nauseating and frightening.  “Alright you insignificant morsel of bland monkey meat, I want you to restore the cable before 7:30 pm.  It’s LX week and that means there’s the potential for an extra forty thousand in the bonus round and I hear Vanna’s going to be wearing a sparkly dress tonight and she always looks completely delicious in one of those.  So, make it happen.  Right?”  I said I would get right on it and he let out a deafening bellow that whipped slime into the air.  Then he turned around and plodded back down the hill toward his lair.

I drove down to the dump and sized up the neutronium beam.  I could see that after exiting Whatley’s barn it had taken out a telephone pole that fed the street that ended near the First Selectman’s cave.  It seemed simple enough to have the cable company temporarily bypass around the beam and restore the service.  And the cable company truck was right down the road.  But I could see that the license plate on the truck was from out of state.  Apparently, he wasn’t local so perhaps he had never seen a tear in the fabric of space time up close and personal.  Also he probably had never seen Cthulhu before.

When I reached the truck, I saw a man in his thirties holding the steering wheel in a death grip and staring popeyed at the neutronium beam.  I had seen this kind of reaction by out of towners quite often.  I tried to be casual.  “Howdy friend, how’s it going?  Hey I’m glad you’re here to get the cable working again so soon.  Looks like an easy fix.  What do you think?”

He was hyperventilating and I could tell that he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.  It occurred to me that he probably had seen the First Selectman saunter by.  I reached into the window and pulled his key out of the ignition and opened the passenger side door and got in.  He saw me and his head turned sideways toward me and he made some gurgling kind of sounds.  “Now look here, there’s nothing to get excited about.  You’re a professional and you can’t let a little thing like a hundred-foot squid-headed dragon stop you from providing an essential service to the community.  I’m sure that your company has provided you with the standard sensitivity and diversity trainings.  Well, here’s your chance to put that training into practice.  Cthulhu is a proud American just as are you.  He’s been an inhabitant of this locale for over 450 million years and he is a pillar of the community.  He cheers on our local high school teams and attends the harvest carnival fair without fail.  Sure, he may eat the prize-winning bull from time to time but who doesn’t get a little carried away with all that carnival junk food.  As you very well know diversity is our strength.  Whether it’s transgender women excelling in athletics or undocumented Americans voting in their first election or a Great Old One enjoying a classic American game show while snacking on a really large portion of road salt.   So come on man, buck up and let’s get that cable back up pronto or he’s going to come pounding down that road and eat you and your truck in one mouthful.

The look of horror on his face didn’t disappear.  It sort of twisted sideways a little bit.  It’s hard to describe.  His left eye mostly closed and his upper and lower jaws were a little offset sideways.  But his right eye seemed to focus on me and he made some slightly less incoherent noises and he tried to climb out of his truck.  He fell out and ended up on his back.  But this seemed to have a revitalizing effect on him and he sat up and looked almost sentient.  I said, “That’s the spirit.  Let me help you up fella.  You’ve got this, don’t you?”

Well, by five thirty he had managed to get the cables spliced together and although they were laying on the ground they restored cable service to the draco-cephalopodic occupant of 407 Dagon Avenue.  I told him the polar vortex would shut down in a few hours and a proper repair could be done by the local service crew that was currently repairing other more mundane problems in the area.  At this point most of his hair had turned white and he had a tic in his left eye.  I slipped him a ten spot and told him to have a nice evening.  He drove off very slowly and he may have veered over the divider a few times.  I hope he made it.  Seemed like a nice guy.

I returned home and had dinner and later on while Camera Girl was watching Wheel of Fortune I remarked to her, “You know that sparkly dress really does make Vanna look completely delicious.”  She scowled at me and said, “You need help.”

Women.

Renewable Energy Comes to Dunwich

photog 2 Comments Current Events, Humor, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , , , ,

The Town of Dunwich was recently ordered by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay to show progress in eliminating the production of greenhouse gases by switching over to renewable energy sources.  As the only engineer in town, or for that matter, the only person familiar with the decimal point among the denizens of this benighted hellhole I was ordered by First Selectman Cthulhu to, “make that happen.”  And since, as in all things ordered by Cthulhu, the penalty for failure is being eaten alive by a 100-foot-high squid-headed flying dragon, I got to work right smartly.

What I discovered was that currently 100% of our electrical energy supply is generated by burning sperm whale oil.  It’s a little known fact that Dunwich, along with certain Inuit tribes is  allowed under treaty to hunt sperm whales and since the market for whale products long ago dried up we utilized the carcasses as a source of fuel.  The carcasses are hauled up on the shore and trucked to the power plant where the oil is drained off.  Then the meat is turned into Dunwich’s world-famous blubber chowder.  And the bones are packaged for resale to Dunwich’s werewolf (or for the politically correct term, lycanthrope) population.

I contacted the DEP to see if this treaty allowed for our whale oil to be grandfathered in as a green energy equivalent but, alas, there was a whale-lover on the staff there so, no soap.  I began to get panicky so I called in a consultant to see what other towns were doing.  The consultant described the latest scams that currently passed for “green” energy.  The favorite was “converting” natural gas to hydrogen to use in a fuel cell.  After looking at the material balance I could see that this process produces almost the same amount of carbon dioxide as combustion does.  When I questioned him about this inconsistency, he waved his hands around for a few minutes while claiming that the science was settled.  Anyway, the price tag for the installation was so high I realized there was no way we could switch over to this particular scam.

I asked him if he had a cheaper scam that we could invest in.  He looked disappointed.  I guess most of his clients aren’t as primitive and poor as Dunwich.  Finally after dejectedly checking through his inventory he noted that he had several generators that were reclaimed from some wind turbines that had fallen down and been carted away as scrap.  He could let us have those for a pittance.  Out of desperation and to buy time I ordered the parts and sent him on his way.

Then I had an inspiration.  We had some old caterpillar treads left over from some heavy machinery that had broken down and some other odds and ends.  I had the maintenance crew rig these up into a gigantic treadmill and hook it up to the generators.  I had the highway crew dig a pit out near the bicycle path that runs through the scenic area of the ghoul haunted forest.  And I had them catch and imprison the biggest shoggoth they could find in town.  It was a big, ugly, smelly, hungry one.  I think we might have lost a couple of the crew that caught it.  Oh well.

The next part of the plan was the good part.  Along the side of the bicycle path, I put a sign leading over to the pit that said “Contribute to Green Energy.”  Over the pit I had built a sound-proofed shed with a revolving door that led into a dark room with a pit trap.  When someone falls into the pit it raises a panel that separated the shoggoth from its dinner.  Once the shoggoth starts moving toward the victim it turns the caterpillar track and begins powering the generator.  As long as the green power enthusiast is able to run on this treadmill and stay ahead, the shoggoth continues to pursue.  But when the friend of Gaia tires, the shoggoth will get its lunch and the treadmill will stop and the power will go out in town.

Of course, this is a problem.  I’ve come up with some improvements.  To improve the reliability, we now run a bicycle race daily in town.  And I’ve hooked up a battery system as a form of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for the town between shoggoth meals.  But uninterruptible is probably an overenthusiastic claim.

But the important thing is the First Selectman is pleased.  He’s grown fond of the project and has named the shoggoth Tesla.  He’s tasked me with setting up a similar treadmill for his personal use.  He says he needs the exercise and donating some energy to the town is patriotic.  Also, the town is making a nice profit reselling abandoned bicycles found along the road.

Who knew going green would be this much fun.

Dunwich in the Depths of a Non-Winter

photog 4 Comments Current Events, Humor, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner , , , , ,
Swamp in Fall 2

Here we are at the brink of February and Dunwich looks like early December.  There’s no snow cover and the ground is soggy with all the rainfall.  There are serious consequences from this warm weather.  Mange has broken out among various species.  Werewolves, zombies and the Mi-Go (those winged fungoid crustacean creatures) have all been observed uncontrollably scratching themselves against tree trunks to relieve the itching.  And the smell from these festering wounds has made the forested areas around the swamps almost unendurable for residents there.  First Selectman Cthulhu complains that tourism is way off and he blames it on this blight.  I don’t know.  I think it could be a result of the new advertising slogan they came up with.  I mean, “Dunwich, smell the history” might need some work.

Luckily for me I took the precaution of planting the perimeter of my property with wolfsbane a year or two back and the only local inhabitant that hasn’t fled is a shoggoth that lives under the rock overhang at the edge of the swamp.  He’s a really old and decrepit example of the species and he probably would have already succumbed to the infection if Camera Girl hadn’t started putting out scraps for it to subsist on.

As is her habit, she has sort of adopted it and calls it by a pet name, shoggy, which I find annoying.  I’ve explained many times that it is a loathsome man-eating nightmare, the very sight of which can shatter the sanity of any human being.  She claims it just needs scratching under the chin (wherever that is), some warm blankets and leftover fried chicken to make it a “boopa.”  Women are mostly insane.  I’ve resorted to poisoning the chicken but all that accomplished was to make it thirsty.  It drank down the pond and swelled up to a hundred times its original size.  It’s about the size of a city block and about three hundred feet tall.  It seems to have either the hiccups or some kind of rhythmic flatulence.

Next Friday is supposed to be a quick freeze.  Forecasts call for nighttime temperatures dipping down to minus fifteen Fahrenheit.  I believe that after absorbing that much water the shoggoth will freeze solid overnight.  My plan is to rent one of those construction vehicles with the industrial strength jack hammer attached to a robotic arm and use it to chop up the shoggoth into bite size chunks.  I figure I can probably transport them to a fishing port and sell it as chum to the commercial fishermen.  Anyway, that’s the plan.

With the cold weather coming I expect the more traditional winter activities to resume.  Once Lake Bishop freezes the annual ice fishing derby will be announced and all experienced fishermen will partake in the night before drinking binge to shore up their nerve for the event.  And whoever draws the short straw that morning will need every bit of that alcohol to get the nerve to make the run across the ice.  After all, running across a half mile of open ice dressed as a giant “kivver” with the First Selectman coming after you from under the ice with only a ten second head start is pretty heady stuff.

Last year Tanner Featherstone came within twenty feet of the shore and maybe three seconds of winning the contest and the $100 Amazon gift card.  Not to mention keeping his life.  It’s this kind of town-spirit and bone-headed stupidity that keeps this amazing tradition going despite the unbroken history of failure and the terrifying sight of a man being eaten alive by a one-hundred-foot-tall squid-headed flying dragon.  The screams and the sound of the crunching bones really makes you think.

Well anyway.  I’ve got to do some research on that whole jack hammer rental thing.  Busy, busy, busy.  I hope your winter is going well and I’ll be back soon to describe what looks like an early spring and the return of the “colour out of space” to the local foliage.  Ah those unearthly colors.  They make Dunwich the garden spot it is.