Sunday Morning Puzzle # 19

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This puzzle is dedicated to The Voice of Reason, who first posted a puzzle of this sort several weeks ago. I enjoyed it then, so here’s another in the same vein.

I’m sorry I missed last week’s puzzle. I was called out of town at the last minute by a very good friend. We toured the city, visited many historic sites, and joined others in a traditional summer outdoor event.

In addition to scribbling puzzles, I’m also a wannabe science fiction writer. I’ve been working on a fantastic tale about a medical company entrepreneur, a sickly space alien, and the rabid dogs from Neptune. I’d got behind on my writing, so this week when I returned from out of town I once again set to penning my story.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get that traditional event out of my mind–it was so much fun. It has influenced my writing.

Each sentence in the story below has something in common. Your challenge is to read the story and discover the common factor in the sentences. Once you do, you’ll probably be able to guess what the traditional summer outdoor event was. Then, if the mood strikes you, please continue with the story making sure that your sentence too, has the common factor. Will the ET make it safely back to its home base? You decide.

I quietly pull back the tattered drapes at the window of my hideout on the ninth floor of this seedy inner-city hotel. Sunlight projects weird shapes and exotic angles of shadow throughout my tilted chamber. Turning away, I suddenly see a gruesome bleeding alien lifeform traipse awkwardly across the uncarpeted floor towards me. The quixotic Gray desperately reaches out, as if to seek any assistance I might be able to proffer.

“It is indeed the good human who, while staying at such a dirty and squalid inn, aids an injured space alien,” croaks the oozing thing.

“I sell hip replacement parts, if that’s any use to the likes of you,” I reply coldly.

“Please sir, get these devilish dogs away from me,” the hapless creature moans, all the while pointing furtively behind into the shadows.

For the first time I notice eight crimson red dogs with razor-sharp blood-dripping fangs crouched in a corner and ready to pounce.

I do have a first-aid kit containing camphor, rose oil, gelatin caps, anti-fungal cream, tweezers, arnica, a needle & thread, and some band aids.

“Perhaps you can somehow stem your profuse bleeding with a simple band aid,” I whisper.

But my offer of a band aid mocks the very horrific situation we find ourselves in, and I feel somewhat ashamed. Yet, why should I, a very important hip replacement CEO, risk my life to save this wretched monstrosity from another world? And now, with those fiendish quarrelsome hell-hounds blocking all the possible exits, how might I escape…?

Please continue the story.

2

Damn … I know the activity, but I can’t figure out the connection between the sentences. I guess I struck out on this one.

3

Come on Euty, I think you can get this–take another swing at it…

How’s this for the next sentence?:

As I ponder how I might deal with this questionable situation, each devil dog, one by one, surprisingly either sits or lays down with a whimper.

What’s next?

4

Still understandably filled with angst, I now feel at least able to reconsider my position. My visitor from another star, so much in need of aid, depends on me entirely for salvation. To leave the suppliant to the mercy of these predators would strip me of my last ethic. Besides, the lad is very polite, and only a cad would spurn such an impassioned petition articulately presented.

The heat is becoming oppressive as can be, as July is in full force. One of the plutonian beasts rises with an acid snarl. “Down!” I command, “or I’ll…”, and I pause, frantically searching for an adequate verb, as the dog drips a silvery drool. With exaggerated confidence, I snarl, “I’m your master now!” I imagine myself as the very image of Mars, rein in hand, controlling the dogs of war.

[I don’t think I can do the other seven unless we modify the rule.]

5

Awesome ** Peregrine **! Your creativity really made me laugh out loud.

I’m interested in seeing if the total can be done though, so I’m going to work on the remainders tonight. Of course I don’t think the puzzle necessarily couldn’t have repeats, providing it wasn’t done in the same way. It might be hard to tie up the story in only seven more sentences. Repeats allow for the story to go into extra…well you know. If I get anywhere with the other 7, though, I’ll post again. In the meantime Congratulations! I’ve shown this puzzle to several people, and you’re the first one to get it!

6

I don’t get it at all. How 'bout letting the rest of us in on it. Please.

Haj

7

Haj, sorry but I have the annoying quirk of never posting the answer to my puzzles myself. I always leave it to others who might wish to do so. However, I do love hints, and these next tortured sentences just might give the game away…

Years later, I met my father Ed Sr (I’m Ed, by the way) at a hole-in-the-wall tavern outside the campus of The University Of California–Santa Barbara, and I told him of my adventure with the loathesome alien and the fiendish Fidos.

“Did returning that vile and irksome alien back to his home base on Planet X pose a problem for me?” I asked rhetorically.

“Yes, but those diabolical dogs made a big mistake, and a single err nags and nips at even the best laid plans of man and beast,” I continued. “They were too gullible, so when I said ‘First one to Venus wins T Bone steaks by the saucerload!’ they vanished in a hasty poof.”

The injured alien could then safely return home," I said, lowering my voice to a whisper so that the group of shapely UCSB coeds drinking nearby would not overhear.

“Those outer space Rexs do seem to have been rather stupid,” mused my father, “but not as stupid as some of the zombie-like kids in my internet class…blah blah blah…”

As my father droned on and on about all the web errs he’d seen, I couldn’t help but let my eyes and thoughts turn to the eight lovely coeds, their tiny crimson red skirts, and the small wagging dog tails that hung slightly in view from under each of their dresses…

8

I really didn’t think it could be done.

Partial spoiler for Eutychus and hajario:

I quietly pull back the tattered drapes at the window of my hideout on the ninth floor of this seedy inner-city hotel. Sunlight projects weird shapes and exotic angles of shadow throughout my tilted chamber. Turning away, I suddenly see a gruesome bleeding alien lifeform traipse awkwardly across the uncarpeted floor towards me. The quixotic Gray desperately reaches out, as if to seek any assistance I might be able to proffer…