It takes a Native

As recounted during America-Online Chat one night last year, one Connecticut website blogger had entered an account of her grandmother in the hospital, whose foot was suddenly amputated; the account was somewhat similar to the experience of a Florida woman in the hospital, who suffered from multiple sudden amputations, as reported in newspaper/TV journalism. Gastro-intestinal Bypass surgery was also "all the rage" and featured in the news at that time.

The incidents were concurrent with advertisements of a much-anticipated new product line, the gasoline-powered trash compactor, advertised within hardware stores newsprint circulars. The compactors have been the focus of much trade-war-type secrecy and argument, with intent to control patent and distribution rights as well as manufacturing contracts. At the present time, the compactors are not quite suitable for household use, and are equipped with traditional ignition systems to 'turn on' the machines.

Where the horror begins is with a new focus upon such compactors and the possibility of a different design that might have foot-pedal ignition systems installed. Add to the equation the networking families and groups who have claimed sales territories in the United States (primarily using campus enrollments) although such products did/do not yet exist, and the result is a bunch of immigrant/multi-national ladies being carved rather than gifted.

Adding to the misery, the compactors' numbers may well represent each person of a large population of deceased 'contacts' who had chosen different occupations/professions than machine-building, and who have been harried into an early grave because non-cooperative.

The compactors are largely appropriate for outdoors duties, such as parklands conventions or family reunions.

C'est la vie.

Crashes Never Seen

Vehicular crashes in the press -- most are routine affairs, where drivers miscalculate or daydream and crash into telephone poles, walls, or each other.

'Special effects' crashes, however, confirm the suspicion that some "strength in numbers" credo is occasionally permitted to dominate the roadways; one lone car or truck quite suddenly 'strays' as if choreographed to do so, in a way that seems right from some social science perspectives yet becomes spectacularly destructive.

San Francisco, CA: A car crashes through the storefront window of a daycare center, and continues on to the inside, plowing through classrooms and furniture. In the same city, a car is wrapped around a fire hydrant, breaking it such that water streams into and fills the convertible seating section.

Oakland, CA: A semi-tractor-trailor truck carrying petroleum product flips and rolls on a freeway overpass moving towards the San Francisco Bay Bridge and peninsula; flames "engulf" the truck and completely burn the overpass until it becomes ash. A local pediatrician disappears but her car is found underwater in the harbor.

Stuart, FL: Not once but as multiple incidents, a car leaves the roadway and crashes into the front of a house. A car wrecks Christmas decorations within the domain of historic downtown Stuart, at a roundabout crossing featuring a sailfish statue. A car is somehow bent into the shape of an arch quite precisely, as if the new shape is a predictable option.

After reading about such crashes and learning the truth from others, we are glad that newspapers and television journalism exist to warn about such incidents.

Martin County ATP

The city of Stuart in Martin County, Florida, is located at the southern shoreline of the Saint Lucie River, with the Atlantic Ocean shoreline at its easternmost 'edge'. The North Fork of the St. Lucie River curves northward before flowing into the Atlantic Ocean; the South Fork flows into Lake Okeechobee past a series of locks that control river flow and the discharge of 'matter' into the Lake.

The river's flow is quite steady and it is a wonder why outdoor spas are not a common feature of the region, since skin and muscle tone rejuevenation by means of sloughing within the watery atmosphere is a natural effect. Instead, all kinds of medical and cosmetic procedures are now advertised, with some suspicion that sign-ups are also enforced. As reported to more southerly West Palm Beach television stations, medical-malls have no sidewalk entrances, as most malls do not, and it is ironic that pedestrians might actually be injured in traffic flow while attempting mall entry.

Sidewalks do extend elsewhere throughout the small city, however, over bridges and into small parks. Large birds inhabit the region, feeding on natural habitat cast-offs or creatures collapsed/dead near the new four-lane roadways. Some orange trees remain viable near the new roads, but the fruit deteriorates quickly and disintegrates into brown dust -- an effect similar to that observed at the quince tree in northern California's Panhandle Park near Golden Gate Park, both parks surrounded by a near-constant stream of four-lane traffic and parking.

Other than withstanding the prevailing winds, walking/hiking across the bridges seems not much of a challenge and some people do so often. The railings are designed to deter falls or displacement from the bridge walkways, and also provide a grip if boaters or car-drivers decide to exert a bio-magnetic influence from a distance. There are three major bridges in northern Stuart -- the Roosevelt Bridge where the North and South Forks divide; the bridge over the North Fork to Sewall's Point; and the bridge from Sewall's Point to Hutchinson Island. Walking along Old Saint Lucie Road from the North Fork there can be seen a small street labeled 'Golden Gate', but the reason is not clear.

New malls in the region make it quite the "zoom, zoom" atmosphere. Vehicular traffic along with the river's flow and the wave action along the Atlantic can make Stuart seem to be a pedestrian's worst nightmare, since large birds will also match stride in some places. Asian restaurants have been installed, without much geographical rationale other than the love of a cheap meal or pre-cut buffet options. Lizards abound, and in their linkages do not distinguish themselves from larger alligators or presumably sea serpents and overseas dragons.

A different kind of splashdown

A number of drownings in the states of Pennsylvania and Florida might be correlated with the distribution and usage of construction-site remodeling compounds contained in buckets that have a line drawing which shows the figure of a small person leaning over such a bucket partially filled with some liquid. There is a printed warning about leaving the open buckets near children; the empty buckets used in other settings or just sitting around apparently influence wildlife in ways that might cause splash-downs into pools or other bodies of water.

A rush to recycle or dispose of the empty buckets has not been forthcoming, however. One taken from placement nearby a local supermarket, used to contain cigarette butts and other oral-type trash, was put in a recycling bin some distance from the store, after many months of public exposure and a number of drownings -- but it was replaced near the employee bench.

One was found along the sandy trail near a number of 55+ condominium complexes here, together with a fishing line with hook attached to a short length of cut board, as if available to scoop up any creature from the nearby water-pocket using bucket or hook with lure. It too was transferred to a recycling bin, with hook and line inside, but will there be protests?

Cuttin' Out Stuart?

This week a visit to Peck Lake Park gave the advantage of a very short hike along a boardwalk to the Indian River Lagoon (which apparently overflowed Peck Lake sometime in the past, such that the lake is not now directly apparent). Alongside the path was an old tree with a very noticeable pot-like opening at ground-level in the tree trunk, perhaps filmed and repeated multiple times as the 'dancing trees' sequence in the decades-old movie titled, 'Babes in Toyland'. Tiny fiddler-type crabs dotted the sandy shoreline, popping in and out of their burrows, especially near sprigs of sun-baked berries tossed their way.

More sinister mind-control efforts can be surmised as demonstrated at nearby Bob Graham Park, which has a boat-launch area with hinged docks that can sever the tail of a running lizard with the tap of a human (or canine?) toe. TV news journalism described the wounds of a small dachshund bitten by a coral snake in a different county; and there in BGP stood a long-haired variety of the same breed, where close by a trash can a group of lizards protected one of their own sitting on a rock minus own tail.

From there, a short drive to the Nature Conservancy's Blowing Rocks Preserve on Jupiter Island, where visitors pay a small fee to watch ocean waves break up a shoreline cliff under the watchful eyes of members. The rocky cliffs are pitted with small basins that hold water splashed into them; believe it or not, these have been the inspiration for the 'fire-pit' cookers sold in some retail stores or from catalogs. The prevailing winds were quite forceful, although there is a path protected with natural vegetative hedges which is only breezy.

Driving around Stuart and other neighboring towns/cities apparently has been some impetus for future artists to dream about novel video-game or race-set scenarios using the natural and man-made features of Martin County as backdrop and gameforms -- hence, perhaps, the number of bizarre traffic 'accidents' recorded in local journalism.

Clantasticism in the Deep South

The Pinto Brothers fell into the South Fork of the Saint Lucie River awhile ago; one was recovered from causeway waters beneath the Palm City bridge but no word about the other has yet been seen in local newspaper(s).

Recent television journalism broadcast from West Palm Beach, Florida, described a vehicular roadway incident together with a photograph of a racer-style late-model car that was in some creative way pressurized into the form of an automotive arch, sitting in the middle of a local county street with nary a crack in the glossy bright paintwork. Presumably, toddlers and other types of creatures might navigate beneath and through the sort of tunnel become evident, perhaps as an example of the much-vaunted "spidey sense" reminescent of Superman comix.

Concurrent with a showing of the TV documentary, 'Hillbilly: the Real Story', a large pile of plant trimmings had been removed from the sandy trail at the end of Kingswood Terrace Road in Martin County, finally freeing-up passageway toward an abandoned device in the trailbed having the appearance of a large dental mirror. It was embedded at a curve beside a water-pocket of the St. Lucie River; although blocked by a small dam near a different riverside street, reptiles of some size and heft could gain access anyway and take toothy breathers inland. The TV film showed an antique car with a front hood attachment that matched the shiny ersatz reflector as an example of Appalachian culture.

The sandy trailway had at one time extended throughout Martin County, and in some places remains intact without disturbance, with major blockage at airport and condominium installations, ergo. The inland waterways cannot be fully controlled as a consequence of the proximity of both river and ocean, but a system of ditches, canals and retaining ponds demonstrates an attempt to do so anyway; creature tunnels to and from the river are ever-possible in the sandy soil.

A use of cement blocks as home building materials mimics that ever-present tunnel network, blocks that can disintegrate into deadly flying chunks during hurricane visitation from the deep blue seas.

Waterspouts have been reported in specific areas of the United States, inland and including Florida coastal waters and canals, which suggests that members of the sunfish family are the propellant force behind the phenomena. In general, scaly creatures may mobilize to cause great change in ways that are not always wrong or harmful; therefore, bows-and-arrows remain prevalent and are not obsolete nor are opportunities to show cultural artistry by-passed.

Better than rubber

Yesterday was made memorable with a short walk around Sandsprit Park in the southerly Stuart, FL, environs. The park at one time was known as a hermit crab habitat, but wooden docks and railings now ring the perimeter, leaving a few sandy shoreline areas free to engage the creatures of the Indian River Lagoon.

Many large boat trailers were parked in a special lot just for them, and boats could be seen cruising the open waters to and from the pictoresque boat ramp. A rather snippy couple with a rolling gait and hair that appeared to be dyed matched (to some extent) the photo likeness of a man and a woman missing from Hilton Head Island in North Carolina, such notice published in the local newspaper. And, a large flock of crows descended into the park, peering out over the water as if a dead human body was surfacing (to be more specific, known behavior near drowned delicatessan workers).

A group of young squirrels mourned an elder which had expired in the hub-bub of summertime vacations and military claim, pelt lying bloody upon a street some distance away days earlier. A diving bird scored a live silver fish as large as himself, expertly filleting the catch and leaving skin/bones for much-larger pelican flock to quarrel over. Another fish, dead in the sand, had been similarly dispatched, leaving mostly head and tail intact.

Flashback to the ubiquitous "rubber ducky" given to many young children: now made from vinyl in modern times, the toy does not deteriorate and instead becomes as hard as a rock over a time period of decades losing its 'squeak' sound but not its distinctive chemical scent. There are a lot of uses for the improved duck-toy composition, including decoy or affinity knick-knack; a child more easily and accurately recalls his/her childhood from memory.