Monthly Archives: November 2023

00410114

You of course can’t have a perfect 1:1 match between virtual and real here but this difference right at the very end of our journey into the heart of Amiable via Google Street View stuck out to me — last snapshot from their vehicle in fact before it turned around and went out the way it came. In reality reality, as defined by Google Maps in the year 2010 mind you, we have this mound of white rocks piled up next to the start of that weedy lane we saw, in its virtual version, Marsha “Pink” Krakow sitting at a table at the end of earlier in this here photo-novel, the one where she found an accordion just laying there on top of, unattended.

Then switching to the closest angle I can get in virtual we have this. Notice there’s no pile of white rocks now but a series of white rock walls in the same location with concrete mixing equipment in their midst…

… and then just beyond, a whole white rock house with an extensive patio area made up of the same material, none of which appears at all in 2010 Google Street View. In the white mound from the latter, we thus seem to have the seed of an extensive white rock construction complex revealed in present day virtual. Since everything else has been re-create in such loving detail, I think we can pretty safely assume that this white house, and maybe the accompanying walls and patio space, actually exists in Amiable now when it didn’t in 2010 — or the whole project was just getting started back then.

Here’s a curious and perhaps related anomaly from the Oracle. Searching for population places with the exact name of Black Rock across the U.S. reveals a single deviation among 13 examples: a hamlet instead called Whitehouse located in Maryland with a *variant* name of Black Rock — why it shows up in this particular list in the first place. It got me thinking: if we *de*construct the rocks making up the house, say, in a reversal of time itself, would we return to the white rock mound or something different… say, a *black* rock mound? Dark Matter again in other words; no emission of light.

And why is Pamela here staring at all this in the first place? is another question to be asking. Does she understand the concept of the Taoist yin-yang symbol (taijitu) and that white inevitably cycles back around into black via a planted seed? There’s something odd about the girl. She’s only real in…

—–

Marsha wakes up in the hidden bedroom again but with head pointed the right way this time. Thing is, she tried backwards when she laid down to sleep, with head instead at the bed’s foot; it switched once more despite her efforts to rectify the situation. She knows now up is truly down, white is black. In the dream.

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00410113

He was typing rapidly while he chatted. He was panicking. “Martha over there! Hey Martha! Have you seen my Batcorn!?”

“Your *what*?”

“Batcorn! The Musicians! 4 of ’em!” He was out of breath, running around the village trying to track down members of the band. He was the musical director of the festivities to come. Just two days away now. Those kids must be prepared!

“Batcorn, hmm,” mulled Martha from the porch of her house. The freshly picked flowers were from an admirer named Claude who lived in Braggtown. Just over the hills. He was a big wig in his place and liked people to know about it. Said it came with the town. Big bouquet for a big admirer. “You mean the *twins*?”

“Well, that’s *2* of ’em,” spoke Sitton back, trying to simmer down. He approached her so he wouldn’t have to talk so loud. “The other 2 are the girls, Jane and Rachel. The one who plays keyboards and the one who plays the accordion.” He was right beneath the porch. He could smell the flowers now. He would ask about them but he didn’t have time. Must – find — Batcorn.

“I think I saw both girls around here earlier,” she said. “One went, let’s see, north and the other west, toward the beach.”

“Okay, that helps that helps.” He took a deep breath before proceeding further. “Thanks Martha!” And it was on to the, let’s see, beach.

As soon as he left the scene the flowers began to dematerialize, the flesh turn cold and blue. Dark matter.

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00410112

She was outside using the little girl’s room that had recently become the little girl’s *and* boy’s room, courtesy of her kidnapping of Biff. He acquired inner workings again so he needed to do such things. And he acquired back the bits that gave him other urges June formerly Jane could manipulate. And he wasn’t tone deaf any longer. In short, he was real when before he was mesh. He found he could even draw his Private Dick pistol when needed, if June hadn’t taken it from him. Where was it where was it? he said to himself while June was indisposed, looking under the bed, the chair, the table, the… wine. Ahh *wine*. Another thing he could enjoy now. He uncorks the recently opened bottle. He takes a sip. He takes another sip. He takes a swig. He takes 2, 3, 4. He turns the bottle over into his mouth like it is a funnel, leaves it there. Glug glug glug glug glug glug — GONE.

Smoothing out the ruffles in her olive green gown, June walks back into the cottage. Biff’s turn now.

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AC/DC

“Do you realize if we get married, Biff, that I’d be June Carter? We’d have to do it in Franklin KY again, then. Just like before. Do you feel like a Man in Black, Biff? You’re almost dressed as one.” She kept strumming her punk song while talking and he kept picking his roots based music one while silent. But somehow, despite the 2 wildly disparate genres involved, the tunes blended perfectly with each other. June Bug Johnston made sure of that with the spell that keeps on giving.

“Awesome,” he finally said, paying attention more to the frets than the fretting. He’d have time for that later. Much time. Much later. After all this wore off, the potion.

We’re at what they call Isolation Cabin, but not far away enough from Amiable Proper that you couldn’t sense the corn. Thanksgiving wasn’t that far away either: shucking time. But who would be participating from the small group of villagers and visitors we’ve already met? Certainly not Eddie, Pink’s Edward, who quickly teleported away upon learning that actual work was involved here. The members of the band Batcorn — Jane, Rachel, Reuben, Steuben — would be providing the music so that lets them out I suppose. Christina’s mind was too far gone to chip in much. And Wally would be seething somewhere out of sight, pissed off that the town didn’t want *him* to perform instead of Batcorn. So that leaves, well, Pink herself. And then maybe these 2. And maybe that Pamela, if she’s not merely a dream figure of Pink’s — probably not. But we’ll meet more soon. Better end this post so we can get at that.

“Songs are over, Andrew ‘Biff’ Carter,” she said, putting away the guitars back inside the bench. “Time for bed again.”

“Where’s — my tractor?” he asked, partially out of the trance since the music was over but quickly put back under inside.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re free of that old clunker now, along with your clunker of a family, Biff. You have me now. *Now*. Inside with you you old shucker,” and she slapped his buttocks to get his big feet started in the right direction.

We’ve answered the part about Biff at least and, by default, June. Formerly Jane as in Plain before she turned herself into a witch.

(to be continued)

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00410110

“Well he obviously crashed it into that lamp post and then stumbled off somewhere, probably drunk on his expensive wine he claims he can’t taste/doesn’t touch. Probably off in the middle of the woods where no one can find him, no one goes for fear of being lost.”

“Or,” offered Marsha “Pink” Krakow as a alternative, “he was *taken*.”

“Taken??” responded Pamela, then was gone. Marsha woke up on the wrong side of the bed in what was initially a strange, unknown place. Then she recalled what happened. The finding of the formerly hidden bedroom.

She knew what she had to do. She walked outside. “Alright I’m ready to talk to you, you stinky old man. About the *truth*.”

Did — he just shoot me a bird?? Marsha then noticed his legs weren’t buried in the soil any longer. Would actual fit her new theory well. Things were being changed, things were being altered. Right under her cute-as-a-button nose.

“You’re from North Carolina I see,” he started after a pause, looking over at the VW Bug still parked on the road near his sitting bench. He also knew the town, the street, the house. Just by looking at the plate.

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00410109

“Sure is pretty here, um, June.”

June? Jane thought. But she wasn’t the first to call her that. “Jane,” she corrected mildly.

“Oh right. Sorry. Anyway, I guess the tractor didn’t make it down to this beach. I looked in the surrounding woods and even under the water. Remotely of course.”

“I’ve been standing here for quite a while and I haven’t see anything,” trying-to-be-helpful Jane said to her fellow villager, also a big fan of the band she and her sister Rachel were in. Now where is her accordion playing sibling anyway? Rehearsal is in 2 hours. She better text Reuben and Steuben to remind them as well.

So that’s 2 sisters in the band Batcorn, and also 2 brothers, but the sisters and brothers are unrelated to each other. So this is sorta like 70s pop supergroup ABBA and sorta not. But they wanted to be big still, ABBA big. They had their sights set on so much more than Amiable, despite their wild popularity in the village among young and old alike. Heck, even tone deaf Andrew “Biff” Carter attended their last gig, dragging along Wally with him, saying it would be good for the boy to get away from the farmhouse and listen to what *other* people liked. Poor, punk obsessed Wally, Jane often thought. He’ll never understand the beauty of actual, roots based songs.

She was the one who came up with the name Batcorn, a combo of the village’s obsession with corn and her favorite superhero Batman from Gotham City. Actually, she preferred villains like Joker and Penguin in the mythology but didn’t relay this to anyone except those closest to her. Rachel knew of course. And Reuben and Steuben. And one other yet to be determined. A boyfriend perhaps.

(to be continued)

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00410108

“What are we looking at, Christina? Are you looking for your father?” Pamela huffs. “Never mind, you *always* look in this direction, long long before your father went missing on his tractor just day before yesterday.”

“I am a visitor to this place. Over there… those hills. That’s where I’m from,” Christina said dreamily, like she was a ghost instead of a flesh and blood person. Which she wasn’t anyway — mesh, as I indicated before. In contrast, Pamela is “real” in that she has an actual body, actual skin, actual clothes that she can change out of if desired. Actual hair. And those feet! Get back to that soon.

“Christina,” she chastised, but only mildly, knowing the young girl was “troubled” to say the least, “you’ve lived in Amiable all your life. We went to school together starting when you were a wee lassie, pardon my Scotch. You’ve lived here with your father, your brother, all your life. Well,” she amended, “your younger brother *most* of your life, since you were, I believe, 3 when he was born.” She turned and stared at the girl instead of the landscape, very pretty indeed but not worth contemplating for more than 5-10 minutes at a time from this particular angle, she gauged. Yet Christina was up here all day, minus food breaks and various small chores her father dared burden her with. Which reminds Pamela: “Grass is going to need cutting soon,” she said to the younger girl by 2 years while walking away, determined to talk to the almost as robotic acting brother, up at what they call the farmhouse as usual playing or at least attempting to play — *strumming* — his punk songs. Whole albums he is into, not just songs, he proclaimed to her one day in April’s May.

She knew Wally kind of fancied her, as all young boys do, even those as lost in their own world as him. Said so another time. “You’re pretty,” he opined then. “Looong legs. I’d give them a 10, just like the Ramone’s 3rd album. Have you heard ‘Rockaway Beach’?” and he then proceeded to play the whole album the single was from as a kind of serenade, she supposed. Another time he said he liked the way she tended to walk on her toes, and played an entire Sex Pistols album called “Never Mind the Buttocks” as she recalled, perhaps as a tribute to the feet as opposed to parts higher up that she also reckoned he liked although couldn’t say out loud to her.

I’m going to snap him out of this rock trance he’s in, she decided on the spot. By snapping off my feet. “Wally? Wally. Waallly. Wally!” He didn’t stop playing some punk song she didn’t recognize — not her style of music. But at least he was glancing at her now, knowing she was up to something. Those legs, he thought. Those feet!

But then he did a double take when the snapping off was over and the alpha was removed. The music halted mid-strum. “Those *feet*!” he exclaimed. What happened to the beautiful toes??

“This is who I really am, Wally,” she said back. “*Now*… since I’ve awakened you from your music trance, let’s talk about your father. Where he possibly is? How far could he get with that old tractor that breaks down all the time? Let’s *find* your *father*.”

This kind of strategy wouldn’t work with Christina, since she, in her limited mesh way of course, wasn’t looking for shells on the opposite side of the beach. Wally could be persuaded in that fashion. And could be woke up in that fashion.

“My *father,*” he exclaimed, putting the guitar down for the first time in Pamela’s memory of him, “is *missing*.”

So is introduced the story that Bigfoot took his father away into the woods and made a pet out of him, which wasn’t totally false by the way.

(to be continued)

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Amiable…

… and Amiable.

One I can enter and walk around. One I can’t. You tell me which is more real and immediate.

Maybe accordion girl Rachel Nickles knows but we’re too far away to speak with her right now. Another “later”.

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00410106

The identification is obvious here at the start and all up and down the line of Google Street View shots of the village. Good work re-creators of Amiable in Our Second Lyfe (I’ve got a name!)!

Panning just right in the virtual world version where Google Street View can’t, we spot Marsha “Pink” Krakow at her table, still studying the accordion.

Eddie, her Edward, has split the scene, saying he prefers the hustle and bustle of Meat City as opposed to the boring, backwards life here. He’s read the attached note procured from the woman standing near the start of the weedy lane leading to their table. He has no desire at all to help the few villagers, mostly older like her, with upcoming Thanksgiving festivities, primarily focusing on corn shucking it appears. Marsha is left alone in the village. Lacking any other meaningful contacts, she decides to go back and visit Andrew “Biff” Carter.

But the tractor was gone at the farmhouse…

… in both real and virtual worlds.

Andrew’s split the scene as well. More on that story coming up.

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She has to find the owner of this accordion.

“I can’t hold out much longer here. My world is breaking down Eddie, my Edward.”

“How are you sitting? My chair won’t work. Can we trade?” he asked selfishly. Like the man he was. Was he even listening to what she said?

“It’s *not* about the chairs.” She huffs a bit and looks around, down the road. Just over there. Where the camera is. “I have a new game in the meantime, Eddie. I call it Pan All Around.”

“Peter? Here?”

“*No*.” Another huff. “Pan like in zoom. Pan like in circle around something. Pan like in…”

“Peter,” he repeated, staring out.

Marsha realized he was correct after all.

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