title: one last gift from a ghost store
location: Blue Mtn. Mall (10/30/25) superimposed with Wubble Moll (c.2017)
model: Peppre A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFejbwR2XfE
Category Archives: Haze County
00470411
—–
He went straight to orange like his mama told him to.
“How much, Dimmy?” asked Marilyn M. the shop attendant eyeing him from the front desk while cutting cloth for an order.
Dimmy fished around in his pockets and pulled out the two bills he’d brought with him and held them up for Marilyn to see.
“No, Dimmy,” Marilyn replied patiently, use to such dimness from the now not-so-young boy. Boy in mind, man in body. The former will probably never grow up. “I mean, how much thread do you want — string, as you put it? 5 meters? 10?” She had 10 meters of cloth in her own hands now. Time to cut again, SNIP.
2 football fields, he remembered. Mama told him 2 football field’s worth. So he asked Marilyn how much that was.
“Well, that’ll be 200 yards worth of thread. That’s a lot. Are you sure you want that much? That’ll take more than 20 bucks but, tell you what, I’ll give you 200 feet for exactly that price.” Wanda needed to get home to feed the young’n’s. She wanted to wrap this up with the dimwitted man-boy, as in wrap the needed thread up and send him back home himself. She figured his mama told him feet instead of yards for that particular number since that would be priced around the 20 dollars she gave him. He just got the terms confused when converting them to football measurements in his head on the walk over. Dimmy — kind of knows his football but not much else. 2nd string fullback for the Newtown Fighting Newts. With his physical talent he could have been a star. But, you know, the mind…
Without more words, he handed over the bills.
His mother watched him walk through the front door without the needed bag and became furious. “TOYS,” she barked. “You forgot the TOYS. Or did you misplace them on the way home? Did you even get the string?” Dimmy, use to such outbursts but still hurt by the stinging words, pulled out the wrapped thread from his back pocket. “Well, at least you did THAT much. I can make my line across 1 2 3 4 gullies but I can’t position toys along the way. What am I going to DO with you, Dimmy Gene? Your father, God rest his soul, would be SO disappointed in you now.”
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0411, Blue Mountain, County Park, Haze County, Jeogeot, Newtown
00470410
“And so that’s how the crash occurred, and for what reason. You should have figured this out long before. Blue Boy.”
Blue Boy? he thought. OH, she thinks I am…
—–
… a different person now, thought older and more mature Newt. I am no longer Pepi – Can – Kolya, he counts them off individually on his desk beside his steampunk computer, old like him but still quite functional for his needs. He likes the way the dimensions of the monitor seem ideal to display full screen versions of his blog pictures (for example).
“Sir? (pause) Sir?”
“Oh yes, young Fink,” he finally comes out of his daydreams and acknowledges the boy’s presence. “Heading home again?”
“No sir. Just arrived. It’s 4 o’clock.”
“Oh.” Newt looks at his watch; still not on his arm, though. 4 indeed. Not 7. Where didn’t the time fly? ha ha, he thinks with a laugh. “Heading upstairs, then?”
Yes sir,” said Fink. “With your permission of course.”
“Of course — our arrangement. You show up at 4, go upstairs and use my attic computer for 3 hours, come back down here and say goodbye at 7 along with a bit of a chat, and then you return to your treehouse home to do stuff with pal Jake while Wheeler and I enjoy our TV shows before my bedtime.”
Fink was thinking: he and Wheeler have different bedtimes? Interesting. But of course said nothing about this. Instead:
‘Yes sir.” And before he took his leave he decided to remind Newt that the mechanical contraption Bimbo from their native land of Oooooo will FINALLY be arriving tomorrow afternoon after a 4 month delay.
After a significant pause while Newt still stared at the screen before him, he said, “right, right,” and moved to shut the door on the young human. “You’ll excuse me, Fink. Sensitive material on the computer now. Not for young eyes. Goodbye. We’ll talk at 7.”
And then he went back to his desk to have a bit of a weepie. He’ll miss the fellow!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0410, Blue Mountain, County Park, Haze County, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya, NVFS
00470408
She turns away from it and looks down into the Ratskeller. One of the Eighty-eights and town manager Rag Doll, also known as Evelyn Hart, are waiting. Dare she go sit with them? She could still run away. They seem to have not spotted her yet at the top of the stairs. But she’d been studying that painting with cashmere robed Shelley for a while. They could have looked up here when she didn’t notice. Can’t take a chance, she realized. That’s how town rumors and gossip get started. And she’d had enough of that already in this place full of time and space.
But it wasn’t just one of the Eighty-eights down there. It was 2 of them, Eight and Eighty together. She’d imagined seeing Rag Doll aka Evelyn Hart all along, all this time while both glancing down there and simultaneously studying De Boy’s painting up here with Shelley. What gives?
—–
“I’m here to see the manager,” he said to Sue Anne the counter attendant of the moment. She waves her arm in the direction of the only other person in the diner while saying, “How about the owner?”
Promotion, ahh. Rag Doll aka Evelyn Hart was not in the same position Alessandra (= white-clad Wheeler) assumed she would be in this town of New.
She dug right into him. “You were suppose to turn right at the can. What *happened*?”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0408, Blue Mountain, County Park, Haze County, Jeogeot, Newtown
00470407 (Mine, man)
She’d finished her shooting. She’d put back on her finest cashmere robe. This was the result, proudly hung in the hallway leading down to Newtown’s Ratskeller. Barry De Boy’s self proclaimed magnum opus “Toy Play Thing Mine”, part of his “Does This Look Square to You?” series, being exactly 814 x 814 pixels in resolution. And directly kin in this series to the similarly square foldup of the “Foxtrot” album cover by Genesis from ’73 we’ve just seen back in post 01 of this section, also associated with Shelley and the request by new SC librarian Miss Ouri for her to come out from under the lamp and “get big” before them, which she refused to do as was appropriate and logical and decent. ’73: a good year for progressive rock albums indeed. Magical. Spread out centerfold in that case here:
The corresponding folded out version of “Toy Play Thing Mine” has been lost to time, which is in all likelihood for the best as well. But we do have this from “Foxtrot” again, specifically the long and epic “Supper’s Ready” track from side 2, as a kind of indication to what is going on. Green-Gray perpetual war results here again…
We now know that that “Foxtrot” described location of a plateau full of green grass and green trees with Narcissus gazing lovingly at his reflection circles back to this:
And its slowly but surely increasing number of *toys*.
Careful with it. Carefull. Very precious it is. And perhaps fragile. One long gust of wind from the real world all around could eradicate the magic and the spell. Make sure the colors are out of sight as best as possible, white here included. Hide the growing toy avatar village of Flathardt on the edge of this green plateau well. Do not put stuff like blue roses more toward the makeshift path than runs through it all as a possible tipoff to its presence. This is enough of a blue rose case already without such a physical marking. Flatness like this at the head of a hill does not occur naturally. Keep that always in mind during visits and updates.
Now if only the daily mountain rains would stop, UUGH.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0407, collages 2d, Flathardt, Haze County, Jeogeot, Newtown, Toy Avatars
00470315
“So Ice Cube who also stands in for Eraser is dead,” observing Nauty said about the crushing of the vowel object-characters in this game of FILE. “Done in by Ruby Gem’s spell centered on All Orange. But let’s back up, examine what these fruits actually represent. Everyone has an Orange, but only females have generally recognized Apples and males have generally recognized Bananas, Big Apples and Big Bananas we can call them. Although all have spaces on their body that can be filled with such.”
“Everyone is actually All Orange with Apples and Bananas to fill around (an agreed upon) center,” I attempted.
“Big Orange, right. Or Old Orange,” he wheezed out.
—–
Thanks to the pills she manifested in her mouth, Original Phyllis returned on the ottoman on the 2nd floor of the Crooked building in Constantynople, now depossessed or unlinked from the harmful inner spirit known as All Orange, who some call Big or even Old instead. Like Myrtle Beech for the latter. Shame we can’t get into more of her story right now but there’s only so much you can do with a 24 hour day these days. Outdoor fun like watching a tired dump truck driver unload a Big Arm beside a Big Banana in Flathardt with the help of a handy elephant can only last so long, else you run out of time for other stuff. Plus there’s the rain, the seemingly daily mountain showers and thunderstorms to contend with, PHEH. Else who *knows* what could be achieved. There would be an outdoor center congruent with the inner. But back to original Phyllis in her original role.
“Red yellow green blue,” she begins. “NO orange, NO–” She pauses. Is it about the orange? she briefly contemplates. NO, it’s not about the orange. Nor the violet. “NO violet,” she starts again in her loud, confident manner, pills in full effect now. “NO nothing else. We HAVE — our 4…..”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0315, Constantynople, Flathardt, Goikyland, Haze County, Nautilus
00470313
“I always wanted to break down the 4th wall,” Alice responded when I asked her if she liked her new home in the woods. “Now I can speak directly to you, the observer! We have no barriers between us.”
“Ka,” exuded Ka to her left, also joyful. “Skwi,” squeaked Skwi in glee to her right. If Mistress Alice is okay with this then her pet cat and squirrel respectively are too. Let the Flathardt experience commence!
Oh. I guess I should explain where we are. It’s a bit difficult. Let’s just move around and see who else is here and I’m sure everything will become crystal clear as soon as possible.
“Where do you want the Big Arm,” issued Ted the dump truck driver, tired from a long journey across upper Woodlawndia to get here.
“Just over there. Beside the Big Banana,” said pointing Pinky, sort of a manager here I suppose and dependent on outside help until the village gets its own fleet of trucks and drivers. “Ellie, give him a, er, *hand* if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing,” the elephant said after they all had a chuckle over the joke, even tired Ted, although he laughed the least. Still about 5 seconds.
Not really becoming clear yet… oh, here’s another group to investigate.
“This giant frog skin is soo smooth and colorful,” gushes Pantomime Penny to her father or perhaps her brother.
“Don’t touch it,” he says down to her. “Warts,” he summarizes. I was thinking poison and I believe by the look the lamb is giving him she did too.
Well, let’s just back up, zoom out. Out out out.
There we are. That grove of green pine trees, with undergrowth consisting only of rhododendron which you can’t really see from the air. And, most remarkable, despite this being the top of a hill, all land in this grove is completely and utterly flat. Hence the name Flathead, as in flat head of a hill. Plus that whole Montana thing we’ll get back to in a while.
The toy avatars that are already here debated whether to name their new community the same as the hill, Flathead, or instead go with Flatheart, meaning the heart of the hill since their community is much smaller than Flathead itself and in the basic center or “heart” of everything. At least in their eyes. They settled on a portmanteau of sorts: Flathardt, 1/2 head 1/2 heart (kind of). And one of the more vocal citizens at the meeting was a big Dale Earnhardt fan and owned a #8 toy race car in his honor (see right of frog above). So that probably played a role in the compromise name too.
What next for Flathardt? I’m guessing toy train tracks, since I’ll be the one hauling them up here and laying them down. I wanted to bring the tracks up today but I couldn’t find them in the junk heap that is our basement. So I settled for some other toys. Hopefully tomorrow, then. Weather should be okay again.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0047, 0313, Blue Mountain, Flathardt, Google Street View, Toy Avatars, Yards Mountain
00450310
He stands up upon the princess’ guard’s approach. “You’re up,” he says to this smiling Mr. X, just happy to be here in this time, this space. Mountaintop.
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0045, 0310, collages 2d, Haze County, Oooo
00420305 (blow the doors off something (also: Rabbit))
Time for Mary Ball and Pitch Usurpius Darkly to move on to the next leg of their extended fishing vacation…
…. Fox Island at Endlessly Antipodal. Note that Antipodal is very close to antipoison, almost as if it was in the same jacket near the same pocket. Juliet-like, balcony standing Sepisexton we’re talking about here again and her hidden vial of the latter. Just in case, as she puts it. The former is included in picks by not one but two Yellowmoon Ridge landowners who seem unconnected to each other, er, otherwise (where we’ve just seen Shelley and Arthur). That’s why I knew I had to send the Darklys or someone else in my family of avatars there to check it out, interact with the landscape and perhaps the residents, if any exist.
Everything in Our Second Lyfe is connect to each other as if in a fractal environment. It all drills down to the same thing over and over. Only Outside can save us, something beyond Our Second Lyfe. Haze County where I actually live up in the Real World is an obvious, top level way to escape this void. Similarly virtual but much more intensely verisimilitudinous Red Dead planet too — if I can figure out how to get Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate out of that fox body and into a human one again in St. Dennis, its only full fledged city and what some call the 8th wonder of that world. GoogleEarth and associated Street View is yet another way to latch onto something more real. Thing is, Our Second Lyfe is losing energy as games keep developing way above and beyond it. If it weren’t for the ability to create. Oh, and also the avatar customization and the incredible creativity of Our Second Lyfe residents in designing clothes, buildings, vehicles, all sorts of things. I seem to need to relay this to the reader of my blog to illustrate that I’m in sort of a tug of war between it and the rest of reality, including even other virtual worlds (and specifically, at least at this point, Red Dead Redemption 2, even though I don’t yet own the game itself, ha). I mean, right now in one of my other computer windows I’m looking at something that shouldn’t be possible. Something in Mary Ball’s old Killing Shack now located at the bottom of a lake in Decker on the original Bellissaria continent. How did I get to this point?
Then there’s the problem of OSL laaaggg.
So here we finally return to Pitch Darkly and Mary landing in their small fishing boat on what’s called Fox Island in the River of Bear. Of course it has other names — no surprise there — including Squirrel Island. Because of this little fellow, currently surrounded by sniffing foxes checking him out. But he’s actually a chipmunk; that’s what the foxes have surmised as well, being versed in Endlessly Antipodal geography and the naming of local things. “We’re still okay; still on top,” one speak-thinks to the other, actually being a part of one soul beneath the separate exteriors, a distinct advantage they have over humans.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so hasty in switching Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate back into a human body himself. See what he can still uncover as an urban fox.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0305, Bellisaria, Google Street View, Hana Lei^^, Haze County, RDR2, Western Hills
Hazelwood
There’s also what I’ve labelled a blue room and a red room about the place, but let’s start with the yellow or golden one, central in several ways. Tania, a Valentine’s gift from Gladly in days gone by, stares at a computer screen depicting a Rainbow Sphere twirling merrily in on itself. Makes her think of Christmas and her maw. Golden bars stacked on a table beside her. Small sofa with Saints style fleur-de-lis decorated throw pillows behind her of the same color. Her dress is also kind of the same hue. She sits in the middle of the manor, unobserved. The building she’s in twirls in on itself all around her too. One named Wayne, although the description says Wayen. Tania’s boss was never the best of spellers. Plumb pitiful actually, but don’t bring it up to her face or you may get a smack. So this is where we’ll begin.
The Maebaleia continent here is still relevant in Our Second Lyfe. So is Jeogeot, Heterocera, Sansara, Nautilus, Corsica, Gaeta V, Zindra, and, heck, don’t get me started about the various Bellisseria ones, as large now as all the original ones I’ve just listed combined I would suppose. Like Atlantis Rising — again in the middle of it all or between the 2 mainland hemispheres, linking them up in fact. Azores greatly expanded in relative scale.
Her replacement Patricia, a St. Patrick’s gift also from the past, arrives at the Secret Door Bookshelf waiting her turn. Not yet.
Still thinking of Xmas, she changes the screen. She replaces a beloved ornament named Girly Santa with a shiny new train, golden in hue as well up front, the place she decided it would poke out of the tree’s innards.
Her user found it in the woods. Just waiting for him. It turns a Christmas Tree into a Winter Tree proper, extending its life to, say, Arbor Day or thereabouts, he figures. Or at least March 17th.
Thanks “Bigfoot”!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0101, Concreek, Frank Park, Haze County, Maebaleia/Satori, Redsland, Whitehead Crossing
Sunklands 