“I wonder where that Bigfoot picture is at the Consignment sim, Hucka? Instead: mermaids at the same spot. And everything else seems to have shifted around as well — windmill in front instead of back, and so on. It’s like a parallel version of itself.
Hucka?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0409, HANA LEI
Okay so they were the same avatar at the core: Wheeler Wilson. This black haired Fern Stalin, this yellow or blonde haired Lichen Roosevelt, the ditzy one — the “Yellow Kid” — and then the red dooed Wendy, closer to Wheeler than any of the others in the moment because she was being read. It was a newspaper situation, then, black and white — well, yellow — and then the thing being scrutinized, the alien, the intruder onto their lands. One Wendy Wilson from Arkansaw, Kansas, they determined. Yellow journalism all around, because this was not as advertised. They made it into a way bigger deal than what it was, or at least Lichen did.
“Tell me more about this nephew Stumpy,” requested Fern later at the interrogation, 3rd of the day (Friday) and 15 minutes after she ate her last supper (chicken). She was ready to end it all. She hadn’t talked but she knew they would break her down. Pain wasn’t her ace in the hole. Instead: pleasure; hole in one. If the year 1898 gave us the first silent Oz movie (Star Wars Negative 10), then 1948 ended it all. “Tell me about TILE, about how you came about getting *here*. We’ve been here for almost 10 years. Why *now*?”
The pills manifested in her mouth, 1/2 red and 1/2 blue. Purple, then: dare she go through with it? Her sentence was almost over. And so on the 5th day (swallow) she…
—–
“We were so close, Lichen,” expressed Fern afterwards, staring at the bovine remains. “This explains a lot. I’m ready to start studying that manifesto with you in earnest. Let’s go to this Stumpy’s next meeting; tell him about his loss and what we saw.”
“As much as we can.”
“Right. And get Herbert to clean up all this mess.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0316, HANA LEI, Voyageurs+
“She came through the cake portal off the Southwest Corridor.”
“I know where the cake portal is,” black haired Fern Stalin reprimanded the more mentally challenged Lichen Roosevelt, a classic ditzy blonde. “What have you found so far?” Understandably, and good to know, Lichen was a subordinate to Fern, which is why she got first shot at an analysis before the bigger gun moved in. Fern’s mind could turn into a fiery, raging bazooka if needed.
“We know she’s not fully human, maybe as little as half human. As you can see, there’s a pink-ish tone to her skin, and I’m not talking about flesh colored pink but pink pink, as in ‘Some Like It Hot’ pink.”
“Looks pretty cool to me,” Fern stated, eyeballing the being and not sensing a Marilyn Monroe type situation. This *red* could turn out to be pretty smart, like herself. That old saying, black and red good in bed, spontaneously sprang to mind. But yellow’s a different fellow, some tacked on. Like herself. “What else?”
“She’s got scars on her face, perhaps from an operation. Oh, she’s got 4 stomachs. Like a cow!”
“She *doesn’t*.” Fern let her guard down in the surrealness of the moment.
“Just kidding.”
Fern frowned but was proud of Lichen for the joke, since they had been talking about the TILE Manifesto and the line, “And so on the 5th day he cowed”, just this morning at the commissary kitchen — good setup. Maybe her intelligence shows up more in humor. Didn’t she use to do stand up comedy down at the Toasty Toad? Or was it Tasty? She could check later on the interwebs. Maybe that was Pete Perk over at marketing, come to think of it. Lichen was just dating him, just tagging along. And something happened to Pete, yes, and she had to take the stage. He choked on a toad? No, that can’t be it. He choked *at* the Toad. Got stage fright. Lichen filled in. I remember, yeah, she was pretty good, pretty tasty. Something else… ahh, back to the task at hand. The intruding alien. But what if this really *does* have something to do with TILE.
“Let’s get back to the face marks. What size were they and what part of the face were they on? Could be a disguise, like Eddy the Phosphorescent Leech over in Zilchboro. Did you check the scars? Did you measure their width, length, angle, and depth?” Fern knew Lichen in all likelihood didn’t do this. She had the upper hand again as usual.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0314, HANA LEI, Voyageurs+
“What is it, Twin Wendy?”
“A doorway.”
Pause. “What doorway?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0313, HANA LEI, Voyageurs+
“It was a little toddler. Just like you Toddles. In fact…”
“Don’t say it,” she requested while having another spurt. We had just finished up the 3rd game of pool after she sank the Homer ball — as we started to call it in game 1 — for the win. I retrieved the yellow sphere from the side pocket and placed it back in the center, along with all the others. Losers have to rack. I kept pondering while I did. Toddles was now about 5′ 10″, so not a toddler. I was wrong in that, a loser once more. 3 feet to start, then a little under 4 1/2 after the second, then this. How much would she grow? I thought back to broken Big Boy at the entrance to the abandoned and clearly haunted park with the baby holding a doll. This tall? I fairly easily made it between the legs, but clearly an error to enter.
“Continue your story,” she requested while bending over to break the triangle (*crack!*). 6 balls sunk right off the bat; odds are stacked way against him to begin. With height comes increased skills, seemingly. I decided to appease her.
“Kite flying Jimmy Jackson and fly fishing Johnny Jimson were down at the pier, absorbed in their pastimes and trying to ignore the stench of the bodies that had freshly washed up on the shore that morning.”
“‘Ahh, there’s our old friend Reader perusing the octopus book’, I said, peering around the pier more, ‘perhaps looking for a smell spell to end it all.'”
“Octopus? Where’s this going?” she asked. The 7 ball was sunk, then the 2, then the 6. Did she even have any left; had she already won once more? He checked: not the Homer ball this time, but the orange, the 5th. It seemed to smile at him, telling him she was the one, the only. Here was All Orange in the flesh. The pool stick lowered, aimed…
“… annnd *CUT*!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0307, Elven Mist, HANA LEI, Rose Heaven-
“Daaaanger,” Edwin the ghost moaned in warning. But Halloween Jack had to find out what lie ahead. The cold, the *contrast*, irresistibly drew him in.
Jack hesitated just beyond where the drab ground turned white, making his shoes wet.
What are these particles of light falling from the sky? He lets one alight on his skeletal tongue. Delicious! Frozen water, melting in the mouth almost upon touch. The ground is composed of these, he realizes. No melt this time! He tries to watch it build up around a nearby evergreen tree but doesn’t have the patience. So much to see! He marches forward, moistened feet be damned.
What’s this? A fellow sentient being? Made of the same ice?? “Hellooo!”
“Howdy!” the snowman cheerfully replied, indeed alive during the season. “Welcome to Christmas! Or thereabouts,” he tacks on. Jack smiled broadly. Sally is going to *love* it here, he thinks.
Soon they were together listening to Snowmanster play a selection of her favorite holiday tunes.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0103, HANA LEI, NE Hills, NWES Island
Barry DeBoy stares at the blank canvas he knows he must fill in soon. CITY, a concept that must be born if the city itself is to be saved. Almost a 90 percent chance of it now. He’ll take the odds.
He pinches himself to make sure he’s awake (he is). Wearing the red tie has made him nervous about that down through the months — before, he was always dreaming when he had it on. No more. Something happened: a reversal, a change of heart even, he senses. Miss Graham has given it back. But why?
“It was me,” Hucka Doobie spoke at a nearby table. “Come on into the picture. PICT ON PICT. Come on,” she urged.
“What’s he doing?”
“She. But that’s what we have to find out. Temple.”
“Wheeler. Of course.”
“Yes.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0616, Canada/Picturetown, Google Street View, HANA LEI
He was dreaming again, hence the tie. “This is a little f-ed up,” he said to the woman nearby, who didn’t reply. No, he didn’t like this place. He had found a limit. Wendy would not be his daughter or something. He’d leave all that to Toothpick and Elberta and their Deep South ways (!). He’d have to talk to Eraserhead Man about this shoot, compare it to DaBob in that other production he worked in, the one less famous. Or was it more famous. Snap out of it, snap out of it! he cried inside while snapping his fingers, which, of course, passed through each other. Tarboo Bay, DaBob, The Twins… they were all together; all in on this. What does it mean? He better get Wendy to safety and out of the shiny light of revealing film while she’s still wearing that dress. He knows a guy who knows a guy in Snowlands who has a remote-ish cabin kind of tucked away in some small woods, getting smaller by the month but Barry DeBoy doesn’t know that in the present. He’d only find out about the deforestation of Purden in the future through a rogue Snowman gone good instead of the usual bad but still with a bad Santa, one called Satan, an obvious anagram (too obvious). The Snowman’s name is… well, let’s just wait. Regular readers of this here blog and derivative photo-novels probably already know the name. Let’s just make it the title of this here post.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0602, HANA LEI, Washington
Turns out it was all just a dream. The pink plastic couch Andy Warhole sat upon while fellow artist Barry DeBoy dreamed lying down on the same is gone, and the 2 rooms of the apartment have indeed merged, just like Andy wished. Dreams and reality are certainly getting mixed up in ol’ NWES City, soon to be changed to NWES Town if certain members of the city council had their way, in reaction to all the “cities” springing up around it, like arrogant, belligerent suburbs. First there was Zen City, then Meat City. The list goes on. And then there’s Collagesity, which had the audacity to neatly and tightly integrate itself into the very fabric of NWES City and become one with it almost, another insult to the term. How could something call itself a city (or sity in this case) and be so much smaller than NWES City, lost in the coattails like a small child to a towering mother. No, these *satellites* must not be termed cities. It is wrong. And in comic reaction the mother who has the only real claim to the name (it feels) might instead abort it.
But we digress. We need to find out the whereabouts of Barry DeBoy. Poor thing: he’s lost his original home in the city to fire (Norm the Cashier’s Flower Shop), and then the apartment with the pink couch, as we’ve mentioned, is all just a dream. We must find out where he’s *really* dreaming, physically that is. He *must* have a location in town, er, the city — let’s not move too fast on that.
—–
He is dreaming again of his beach, searching for the one who also gave up red but with no physical presence yet found.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0511, Black Ice, HANA LEI, NWES Island
Later they all ate sushi with oversized toothpicks at Black Diamond’s. Big Wanda with “deflated horns”, as I’ve called her floppy pigtails, was in charge, Spore’s plan in action. Master judo samurai Black Diamond (background) gave Little Oakley Annie the honorable name Green River during a pre-meal tea ceremony and her mama the name Kummer, which was short (he explained) for, “coming mother”. Or so that’s what they thought he meant. We were working with places in Washington again, switched from Illinois switched from Mississippi. Faulkner had no hold here, the Rule of the 100 and the way of fame and fortune conveniently forgotten. Zzz was not about Faulkner, nope. This was the mother, this was the father, but not the son, the fruity one.
Big Wanda spoke. “Little Annie Oakley, *sorry*, Green River, has fallen asleep again, cutting zzz’s instead of being in the moment. Too much fighting in life will do that, drain you of the oh-so-precious life force because you have done so with others.” She turns. “But you’re holding up well, Old Grey. How’s that floating device going?”
“Pretty good,” Old Grey admitted, knowing indeed what is holding her up and propelling her forward. Snowmanster and she will be at the tree again soon. In fact: they’re there.
“Interesting,” Core-Alena says to begin in his-her feminine/masculine voice and staring toward Old Grey’s way.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0506, HANA LEI, Heterocera, Iris, Washington
Sunklands 