Are you watching?

The legend goes that you can see an earthquake coming a mile away.  Right before it comes there will be the biggest flock of birds that you have ever seen.  This will give you plenty of time to escape.  When you see a flock of frightened birds gathering  together in one spot this is a good indication that the earthquake is coming.  It also means a storm is coming.  A good rule of thumb is, the more freaked out chattery birds in one spot, the worse the storm will be.  As for the big earthquake, the so called big one that has supposedly occurred every three hundred years like clockwork, the birds start rolling in over the horizon.  They roll in and cover the island like the world is about to end.  It’s loud and noisy for three straight days.  Then all of a sudden they all fly off together.  Then the gulf becomes really still and quiet.  It’s too quiet and it makes you think something is up.  Then orange clouds roll in and the whole island is covered in a fog so thick you can’t see.  It’s like this for three days, then it goes away.  Then, three days later, when it seems like nothing is going to happen the earthquake hits.  Sometimes it makes the island sink, sometimes it makes the island come up out of the ground.  But everyone knows that if there’s an earthquake on an island the entire ocean floor around the island also gets rumbled.  And rumbling ocean floors always cause tsunamis.  A tsunami is a huge ocean wave that are so big and strong they can wash out huge cities.  Nobody can survive a Tsunami.  Even if you can swim, you’ll be knocked out and drowned for sure if you get hit by billions of megatons of ocean water.

No, you can’t survive the disaster.  The only way to survive is to get out and get away before it all happens.  So sure, everyone had the equipment to watch out for the storm that was about to come, but there was just no way to escape the island.  And since they weren’t allowed to leave, people just didn’t care about bird watching and storm chasing.  Everyone on the island had telescopes so they could look out for danger.  They had such powerful telescopes that they could see frightened birds coming a mile away. Unfortunately they all had their periscopes pointed in the wrong direction until it was too late to do something sensible.

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Everyone on Chesky Island has a telescope.  Some lucky people even have a periscope.  A long time ago they were used to watch the sunrise and the tides.  The world is so predictable.  The earth and everything on it has a cycle.  The people on Chesky Island seemed to know all about cycles.  Every 365 days there was a huge party with firecrackers in the sky.  This marked the beginning of the new year.  There were parties every Friday night which happened exactly every seven days.  They knew all about cycles.  They also all knew that there was an earthquake and tsunami every few hundred years that always seemed to kill off every single person that lived on the island.

Of course, nobody really believed that it would happen ever again.  It had been so long since the last natural disaster that everyone just decided that the Island had just grown tired and wasn’t going to have one anymore.  A few people really believed the time was near.  They knew the signs.  They knew it was about to happen and they knew that they would be spared because they didn’t say any bad words.  Others had bought caves that were guaranteed to survive both earthquakes and tsunamis.

Yes, natural disasters were indeed the best topic of conversation guaranteed to spark up interest in every Friday night party and Wednesday night gatherings.  They called this watching out and being attentive.  But they weren’t watching.  They were watching something but they didn’t have their telescopes pointing at what they were supposed to be looking at.  They were supposed to be watching the sunrise every morning.  But alas they were not.  It was too boring for them.  And what difference did it make anyway?  If the everyone on the island was bound to die, the only real way to escape was to sneak into the stone castle on the North Side of the island.

On the North Side of the Island was a huge castle carved out of a single rock.  It had been standing there since the beginning of time and people were living in it.  These people wore the most beautiful clothes they had ever seen.  Everything in their house was beautiful and they didn’t seem to have piles of garbage everywhere.  It was for this reason, that they decided a king must live there.  It was exciting to watch these people.  They gave them all names and watched them night and day through their telescopes.  They called this the castle Nonesuch, because in all the world, there was none such a castle as marvelous as this one.  It was surrounded with date palm trees.  Chickens and cows wandered around it, and the bay was filled with shrimps and Lobsters.  The gulf was so much bluer by the castle and nobody could figure out why on earth it wasn’t brown and filled with mounds of floating muck.

So, you see.  Everyone wasn’t just drinking hot and steamy Zorba and playing with their cats.  They had their eye on the castle Nonsesuch.

They all dreamed that they would one day get to live there.  They all decided that if they watched the people in the castle long enough that one day they would magically wind up living in the castle  themselves.  They all had this dream, but nobody talked about it.  According to popular rumors, the people in the castle worshipped Snatcher and said bad words.  They would all burn up in Hades one day.  For all riches and anything of real beauty comes from Snatcher.  Some people believed that the castle was just one of Snatcher’s tricks.

Do you believe in the Lurch?

The Lurch is someone you know.  He is someone you’ve seen every day.  If he gets you alone his eyes will turn black.  The room will grow grow so warm that you feel like you are sitting inside a clam shell. That’s when the lurch sticks out his tongue and slurps the marrow from your bones.

The evil eye

If you happen to live in a secluded place that’s perfect and really awesome, the thing to do is keep your mouth shut and not tell anyone about it.  Otherwise everyone and their dog will find out about it and pretty soon all the good food has been eaten, and there’s nothing around but garbage and filth as far as the eye can see.  Overpopulation can be a pretty disgusting and scary thing.

The natives of Chesky Island knew this.  They knew they had a really cool thing so they kept it secret. Nobody ever left the island and nobody ever came to visit because of the terrible storms and the low mist that hung over the island that hid it.

Nothing lasts forever and the natives of Chesky island were soon discovered.  During the crusades, a nobleman named Jean Pierre Le Blanc Champagne was sailing his boat to go fight off the evil heritics who worshipped Snatcher, when lo and behold a terrible storm blew the ship high into the air and it crashed on the banks of Chesky Island.  As they all swam close to the island they were all eaten alive by invisible jellyfish.  Jean Pierre saw the whole thing and swam all the way back to the mainland, He told the whole story to a fair maiden who pulled him to the shore, and then he died, painfully, from intense exhaustion.

This fair maiden told everyone in France about the island.  Boats sailed out every single day trying to find it.  They all sailed out looking for the land of paradise, and nobody ever returned.  The natives killed everyone who landed on the shore.  It was horrible.  That’s when the King of France got a brilliant idea.  He decided to just send all the prisoners there.

In a way, Chesky Island is like a combination between Alcatraz and Australia.  Except once you get onto Chesky Island you can never leave.  You’re trapped. Your there forever.  Oh sure, loads of people have escaped.  But if you get found, they send you right back.  It’s like a giant prison and most people don’t even know they’re a prisoner.  They’re perfectly fine with the whole situation and they don’t even know what’s going on.  Some people find out and they don’t even care at all.  Violet and her mother tried to leave, but it didn’t work out for them.  They’re escape route just led them back where they started.

This is Violet.

People think that she is very strange.  That’s because she is very strange.  Her mother makes all of her clothes with a kick pump sewing machine.

She makes the cloth herself from cotton that she grows out of her backyard.  It takes forever to do.  Violet is madly in love with Lewis, of course, but she isn’t allowed to have anything to do with him because he and his mother stole their house.  Violet talks to him anyway.

This is Violet.  Violet Everglades.

Lewis thinks she’s very strange.  And that’s because she is.  He likes her though.  He thinks she is very pretty, even though she is out of her mind and likes to carry an eyeball around in her shoulder bag.

When Violet was four years old she drowned.  Her soul left her body and she saw into the 8th dimension.  But before she could focus her eyes and see what was out there on the other side…she was back.

A boy had saved her.  He was not the handsome prince that she had hoped would save her from peril one day.  He was just an ordinary boy with freckles who most likely had no idea what on earth a knight in shining armor was.  There was no mouth to mouth resuscitation, no brave kiss or chariot with five white horses to take her away to the castle nonesuch high on the hill.  She was so disappointed and wasn’t quite sure what to think.There was no fancy stuff at all with this kid.

The boy who saved her life had only given her a slap on the back to knock the water out of her lungs.  Then he smacked her on the butt and told her to say out of the ocean.  Then he ran off.  She never saw him again until the summer they came back from Vacation, twelve years later.  She wasn’t exactly sure it was him first.  However, the more she thought about it, the more she knew that it had to be him.  She just couldn’t go out an say anything about it though.  She wasn’t supposed to be friends with him at all.  There was a bit of a bad situation going on.  It’s a long story and it all started with an advertisement. Actually it could have really all started because Violet’s dad died, but then again that could have been caused by that fortune telling vending machine in the town square.  One thing always leads to another, so it goes.

One Evening, Violet’s mother, Melba Everglades received a fortune cookie that said “Today your husband will die and you will become a poor widow.”  It was horrible.  She knew it would come true because all of the predictions had come true.  The day before she got a fortune cookie that said that she would trip and fall and get a nasty cut on the leg, and it happened.

Horrified, Mrs. Everglades ran all the way home and when she got to the front door, her two little girls were sitting on the doorstep crying.  That really freaked her out and she did a double take.  She should only have one daughter now.  The other one died tragically a few months earlier.  Why were they both sitting there together on the steps?  She looked again and she only saw Violet there.  Lily, the dead child was gone.  It had only been her mind playing tricks on her.  Her mind was playing tricks because she was guilty.  She had caused her daughter and her husband to die.  There was no doubt about that.  She had the evil eye and if she didn’t get rid of it fast, someone would find out and send her to prison.  Using the evil eye was forbidden  on Chesky Island.  But possession of the evil eye, well that was just way too much.  She had to get rid of it fast.  But where could she put it where nobody would find it?  She had to think fast.  So she put it in the only place that she could think of where nobody would dream of looking for it.

The Lurch cometh at midnight

The Lurch cometh at midnight.  Blessed is the man whom he shall find watching.  For it is he who will escape.

 

The Lurch is something bad.  The Lurch is your greatest fear made real.  The Lurch cometh at midnight.  He will take your soul away in the night and you will never see then sun shine again.

Unless you escape.

Stay out of the sun, it will kill you.

So let me get this straight.  The sun’s rays will cause me to die, but I need to get plenty of x-rays to make sure that I am alive and well.

However, x-rays will cause my unborn child to develop a disease and die by the age of 13.  Tell me.  Is there a cream that I can use to prevent it?  Why yes…there is…

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It makes me wonder.

Foods that I am forbidden to speak of

These are the foods that I am not allowed to talk about:  Ho Ho’s and Ding Dongs.

People are selling these foods and getting away with it.  I don’t know why.  How is this happening?  I don’t understand.  I know someone is out there buying these foods too and I know what they’re thinking as they go to the checkout stand.  Hee hee.  I’m gonna go home and eat me some ding dongs.  How could that not go through your mind as you buy these things.  Are there people who don’t know the second meaning of the word ding dong?  I mean seriously.  Can you really eat them in front of your mother and not crack a smile? 

Here’s one you’ll never see.  Twinkies with kumquat filling.