I remember seeing you at the other Jack’s, the one you modeled your new bar on. I’ve been taking care of you for a loong time, Wheeler. Watching over you; waiting in the shadows, as I like to say. Ready to pounce when trouble comes up. And it will.
Category Archives: HANA LEI
00420314 (snow)
“Is that sup-pose to be… me? IS THAT… suppose… to be… MEEE? What’s going on here? Wh-wha–”
“Let me show you your future to explain,” I said back from beyond the 4th wall.
“Yeah okay yeah I guess I see your point I guess I see.” He shook his head. “Jack, eh?”
“Jack,” I said. And then I showed him where I took out (the) yellow.
“Yellow Jack” shaping up (also: Conejo)
She was at the point of auditioning acts for the new bar. This one was a stand up comedian from Cork.
“What do you call a parade of rabbits hopping backwards?”
“Receding hare lines,” he answers himself after a beat. She finds that joke especially pertinent, since she copied a lot of this decor from a place named Rabbit Island.
Rabbit Island items: free to copy yourself!
“I don’t need to hear any more,” she spoke up. “You’re on the bill.”
00420309 (all together now)
Nothing there in the cat house. She begins again.
Green red and blue predominate going up the stairs.
And then yellow at the top as the light slightly shifts to show the star’s interior.
Looking further along the same line: TILE.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0309, HANA LEI
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.
Philosophy time now: 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
Walsh County (Pitch Darkly)
“Look dear, I caught another one (!).”
“Hold on, Mary. Hold on. It’s Baker calling.”
“Baker? Hi!”
(reply)
“Yeah, we’re getting along great. A little cold of course but it is North–”
(reply)
“What was that? Hold on, let me take this darn Russian cap off with the ear flaps and all.”
—–
“Okay go ahead, sir.”
(reply)
“Yeah, I heard that now.” He covers the phone with his hand and whispers over to fishing Mary. “Baker says he needs to talk to us as soon as we get back to town.” He listens again…
(reply)
“Mary Ball, eh? Well that’s *one* of her names.”
(reply)
“George, right.” He removes the phone from his ear but doesn’t cover the face up this time while saying over to his wife in a louder voice: “He wants to know how you acquired the Killing Shack, you know, the one over in Epping Woods.”
“Why does he want to know that?” She was happy fishing right now. She didn’t want to be reminded of that horrendous past on her well deserved vacation. Calm, she said to herself. Caalllmm.
“I’ll ask him.” Phone to bare ear again. “Baker, what’s going on?”
(reply)
“Virginia neck country again, eh? Just like with—”
(reply)
“Dead ball era, huh? That’s *my* era, where I came from. Where the *ERA* was real low, he he. Get it? My era. My ER–”
(reply)
“Okay, thanks. See you when we get back.”
(reply)
“We will. Thanks.” And Baker Bloch hangs up on the other side.
—–
“Did you mention the antipoison?”
“No,” Baker responds to Hucka. “I thought he’d had enough to chew on today.”
“Agreed I suppose. So we’re on for next Tuesday?”
“8 o’clock sharp.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0303, Big Woods, HANA LEI, Jeogeot, North Dakota
00420216 (original shock)
And this is where we came in.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0216, ADC, HANA LEI
gone bye bye
In this “Amazing Digital Circus” teaser, ringmaster Caine directly references Kane (Pixels) and his famed Back Room bacteria creature. Knew it.
And then there’s the abstracted Kaufmo clown character from the pilot, who some spell as Cofmo. Including me here. Poor Cofmo. But good guy (?) Caine takes care of the immediate danger for himself and his still intact circus employees by banishing the poor transmogrified creature to an underworld, underwater realm.
“Honey? Honey? Snap out of it again. Look at me look at me. Honey?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0215, ADC, Back Rooms, HANA LEI
00420213
“King Rodney,” the Shadow spoke. He turned, confronted it.
“Me? I’m no king. I’m just a ruler of a country, democratic in nature. Now, anyways.”
“The Country of Morrow. Otherwise: Cofmo.”
“Well, yeah. That’s it. A country, not a kingdom.”
“But you train ants. I mean, you have ant warriors. In your fort — make that: forts.”
“Use to. When I was a kid I suppose. Now I’m they’re grown up. I have adult games to play.”
“So I’ve heard,” the Shadow spoke. A pause, then: “What year is it, ruler of Cofmo? I mean, can you sit in a diner with a white girl or even an Asian girl and get away with it? Can you listen to the Everly Brothers blaring from a jukebox? Or do you have to settle for Fats Domino?”
“I… don’t know. 1984 I guess. Last I checked. What time do *you* think it is? Shadow. My Shadow I’m supposing.”
“Correct. You are just confronting yourself. Because this is a dream. I know something that you need to know. About the abstracting.”
“The what?” And he woke up.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0213, HANA LEI
Old Hen
Newt looked down after he’d finished, deep in thought. “Amazing,” he finally spoke. “What in blue blazes did I just eat?”
Wendy beamed a smile at him, just like on the logo. “It’s called a *hot dog*.”
“A *what* dog?”
“A hot dog. Made from the freshest ingredients. No pig anuses if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all (!).”
“Nor snouts, nor hooves. Only mechanically separated meat byproducts — I’ve been told to call it muscle trimming.”
“It’s humans,” Newt deadpanned. “Isn’t it?”
“*No*. Ridiculous man.”
“Okay,” he said, standing up and wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I’m going to have to do my research before we make a deal.”
—–
They were back at the Pink Hippo, name slightly changed to hide the innocent involved. “I did my research,” Newt started after he made his introduction. “I had to brainwash you into thinking our meeting never happened. Bottom line: *don’t* sell those things to the general public any more. I was right about the humans (!).”
Several people dancing nearby overheard the conversation. Soon it was all about town. Kangerootown would never have a Wendy’s in its midst, the name of the red topped establishment being sullied beyond repair. March turned out to be a really bad month of the year for the likewise red topped gal before him.
“Dance?” he said, trying to ease the pain. No smile now. Turn that upside down into a full out cry, which the dancers also recorded. Where’s the beef, Wendy? Where’s the beef?
Not in this reality as it turned out. *This* Wendy’s franchise was basically over before it started. Soon, quite soon, she would turn into a vegetarian and change the course of her life. But first we have to get her to Castle Town in the South.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0042, 0208, Castle Town+, HANA LEI, Kangerootown+, Omega, The Cross
Sunklands 