Greg's Blurty

The Next One I'm Not Going To Write
This one is about a pond monster, and a pond monster is just like a sea or lake monster except it's smaller because ponds tend to not be as big as seas or lakes. No, that's not quite right, except for the part about lakes and seas being bigger than ponds because that is true but calling the pond monster the main focus of this novel I'm not writing is a stretch.

The monster is really just a catalyst. Oh, it could have been the star of the book but it didn't work out that way. And it's the monster's fault. For getting caught. After 78 millions of successful hiding...not the monster that was caught, because it didn't hide for that long but it as a species did. Then it just sort of gave up.

Following the usual pattern of several sitings and a few thousand frames of grainy out of focus video, the monster broke the pattern by allowing itself to be trapped. And it was a disappointment. It turned out to be a large fish that scientists had thought had been extinct for 78 million years.

And the most disappointed person of all is the owner of the farm pond, Leonard "Buster" Crabbe. He wants to give up farming, not because raising oats and wheat isn't fun but because he has better things to do. And when the monster started appearing, it looked like his dream would come true.

It was almost like winning the lottery when his farm became a mini tourist destination and he had dreams of building a hotel and saying goodbye to wheat and oats forever. But then, the creature was caught and it turned out to be a fish and the tourists stopped coming.

Buster doesn't admit defeat, though. He transforms himself into a latter day P. T. Barnum and soon his farm is a sort of paranormal Disneyland, with everything from frequent UFO and Bigfoot sightings to ghostly Woodstock reunions. And that is the plot in a nutshell.

Going outside the nut for a moment, this one is dedicated to Doug Adams and it's my humble attempt at recreating a little of the magic of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. Not that that magic needs or even wants to be recreated but I can't resist telling all the funny things that happen when a "monster" is actually found.

And the lengths that people will go to bring back the magic (and profitability) of the unknown.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Music: Dick Whittington, KGIL San Fernando CA., November 23, 1973