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a tale in progress, by request
Magic Bus
Every day I get in the queue (Too much, the Magic Bus)To get on the bus that takes me to you (Too much, the Magic Bus)
I'm so nervous, I just sit and smile (Too much, the Magic Bus)
Your house is only another mile (Too much, the Magic Bus)
Thank you, driver, for getting me here (Too much, the Magic Bus)
You'll be an inspector, have no fear (Too much, the Magic Bus)
I don't want to cause no fuss (Too much, the Magic Bus)
But can I buy your Magic Bus? (Too much, the Magic Bus)
Nooooooooo!
Pete Townshend
and, of course
at the bottom of the rainbow was a pot of gold, and a bunch of very startled Oz Leprechauns, who were holding their ears in dismay at the vuvuzela fanfare.**********************************
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
the flying
monkeys did not like the look of the leprechauns and eyed them suspiciously,the fanfare subsided and ripple asked one of the leprechauns to point him in the direction of the great wizard,the leprachauns took off swiftly they did not like the look of the ripple and his hippy.Off flew the monkeys in search of the great wizard,ripple just sat,too much the magic bus.......
Suddenly, all over the darn place..
the monkeys and leprechauns stopped what they were doing. They all had a shocked and dismayed look on their little faces as if a great disturbance had occurred.......somewhere....far away in the lad of ill ah noyeee a strong, wise, and kind heart stopped beating, and they somehow knew things had changed forever though they knew not why.......
(for your daddy, Tigerlilly....we love you!!)
we run outta steam
on this story??**********************************
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
hey
haven't really been following this topic just thought every would like to know that the flyin monkey is a theater in plymouth , nh ....maybe they all decided to go into acting after all they did star in the wizard of oz
www.flyingmonkeynh.com
So it came to pass that
The mission was on.
The road that runs through Oz (known as "the Yellow Brick Road," and by some, "The Golden Road") is nigh on impossible to navigate for the novice. The are no maps, few signs or dividing lines, and very few rules to guide. The roads themselves have a habit of dead-ending without warning; circling back on themselves; and scarier still, a path that leads to Point A one day may lead to Point B, or Z for that matter, days, weeks, or years later.
This basic unreliability meant that in order to have a prayer of getting to where you want to go, you need to bring a boatload, a damn supertanker load, of experience and intuition to the process.
Bertha (the woman) possessed both in spades. Not only had she made hundreds of trips over Oz hill and dale, but she could always tell the deuces from the aces in a deck of cards, easily avoided the Suicide Jack, and under her gaze, the Queen of Diamonds would shine like the sun.
Bertha (the woman) therefore found herself at the wheel of Bertha (the van), Hippy riding shotgun, various and sundry of the crew piled into the back, and a group of flying monkeys settled atop the roof. Though Hippy had driven the van millions of miles, Bertha (the woman) had logged more than a few hundred thousand behind the wheel herself, spelling Hippy during their trips through the desert, taking the wheel when he was seeing double during many a San Fransiscan night. Though a few decades had passed since she'd planted her butt in that driver's seat, Bertha felt right at home.
Bertha depressed the clutch, turned the key, gave the old van some gas, let out the clutch. Bertha (the van) lurched forward about 3 feet and stalled out. Bertha's clutch, you see, had a miniscule (some would say microscopic) sweet spot: if you didn't hit it and finesse it just right, your trip in Bertha was bound to be confined to a series of very annoying three-foot forward lurches...assuming that you were on level ground.
Bertha (the woman) turned to Hippy and said, "You've been keeping this bucket of bolts running for close to half a century and you NEVER FIXED THE FRIGGIN' CLUTCH??"
Hippy chuckled for a few seconds, then responded, "C'mon Bertha, of COURSE I fixed it. Problem is, when I got it just exactly perfect, I hated it. You have no idea how long it took me to fine tune it back to the way it was before I started 'fixing' the sucker."
Bertha (the woman) touched Hippy's hand and gave him a great big smile, and Hippy's heart melted a little bit more than just a little. She cranked up the van's engine again, popped the clutch, and smoothly shifted through the gears up to cruising speed. "Just like riding a bicycle," she said, right pleased and amazed at the wonders of muscle memory. "We're off to see the Wizard!" she exclaimed, more out of tradition than intent.
Thus the crew began its journey down the Golden Road: Bertha's eyes fixed on the road, confidently making decisions at each fork and crossroads, Hippy's eyes fixed on Bertha, the monkeys playing five-card stud on the roof, and everyone else in the back cranking Dead tunes and playing video games.
Bertha (the woman)'s good mood slowly dissipated. It started when she began to notice that the surrounding fields and forests were encroaching on the road: in some places, the yellow bricks were visible only as narrow tracks. Infrastructure problems in Oz were unheard of, and Bertha had no idea why the road wasn't being maintained. And then,
They faced a vast cornfield, and the road forked wide, right and left. An empty scarecrow stand was directly ahead of them, and though there was a sign at the juncture, it characteristically and unhelpfully pointed nowhere in particular. Bertha stopped the van. She felt nothing, no inkling of the direction to take.
She stuck her head out the window and said something to the flying monkeys. Immediately two monkeys folded their hands and flapped up from the van. One headed left, one headed right down the road.
Bertha (the woman) looked at Hippy and said, "Hippy, something is very wrong here. I've sent those two to do some recon for us, but I have a bad feeling that we may never see them again. We need to be thinking about what to do if they don't come back, because this very well could be...the end."
We seem to have run out words
For this story, so I thought I'd bring it to an end...but made sure it wasn't really an end to the story, just in case someone might like to pick it up again at a later date.
The flying monkeys...
....were actually reeper and predator drones designed to fool he Taliban. by locating the yellow brick road and it's adjacent crops. This they did very well and returned with a light "thud" to the bus where they were fed terminator remnants.
Now, there were good and bad flying monkeys and the micro-bus had unfortunately discovered the wrong kind. What was called for now were empathetic healing flying monkey drones to replenish the crops.and bring peace to the kingdom, hippy & bertha.
One door closes
Another opens, Ripple. Is it the end or the beginning? I dunno...I felt as if the thing had kind of petered out, and I'm not sure that I want to follow the Taliban into the plot, but hey, who knows?
for sure dean
the taliban have no place in here brother, thinking about a new story just now!!!!1
And I'd follow you
For a cookie and a beer, though the way today is going, beer should come first, and often.
first a beer
then a cookie, washed down with a beer. Repeat as necessary.
Oh, that must be it, TL
You can gussy up a flying monkey in a wedding dress, but I'm thinking that the phrase "beautiful bride" will not get much use during or after the ceremony.
Spam
Is, as you may not know, considered a delicacy among flying monkeys. But there's nothing delicate about the winged apes' reaction to this traditional "mystery meat" product. Just a hint, a glimpse of an iconic blue can of spam will set them to tying napkins (or any substitute scrap of fabric, including wedding dresses) around their necks in eager anticipation of feasting on this salty treasure. Once the can is open, the monkeys will engage in a feeding frenzy the likes of which should not be witnessed in a family-friendly story such as this.
Yes, flying monkeys do love their spam.
And for those who would like to see spam erased from this world, virtual and real, I say again, release the flying monkeys!!
I'm missing Johnman
And figured I'd percolate this now very-much-out-of-sequence funtime project back up to the top of the Forum list to say it.
Anyone heard from him since he lost his internet connection? I hope things are going better...
For that matter, ripple70 disappeared pretty suddenly, without warning, as well, and I can't say that I've seen Mr Pid in these parts of late either.
Get back to where you once belonged....
So do you think
That there's some number of Dead.net users who reinvent themselves with a new "nomme de mort," new avatar, new profile? I'm in kind of a "shedding my skin" mood myself...
Unwanted haitus
Got connection back via smartphone about 2.5 years ago, though getting into dead.net was close to impossible. I now have a laptop, but using hotspot on my phone still allows me only limited access due to time constraints. Had to move in with my father when he could no longer care for himself. The 55 and up community he lives in had free cable and internet, but dropped those amenities not long after I acquired the laptop, hence the use of Hotspot/wi-fi...time will tell if our finances improve...nice being back, though this device works different than my home PC. Still learning....
your sense of humor...
is nice to have around, johnman. I hope you get lots of beer and cookies from Santa this year. Do you leave out beer and cookies for Santa? That would kinda make it Even-Steven, I would think.