Category Archives: 0509

June 3, 2023 · 9:25 am

caught

Turns out Philip Linden, maker of Our Second Lyfe itself, was a neighbor to me on my island of Constants, but he was another one of those on the edge, ready to drop off the world — his world, after all — with any significant push or wind. Boy does *he* have a whopper of a story to tell, though. Hopefully he can get to it at least in part before gravity and entropy does its inevitable damage.

Dancing Chuck awaits downstairs after it is all said and done, a reward for a job well done. Throw a towel on why don’t you (!).

I knew something I had to tell him: that this wasn’t His Second Lyfe any longer; this island was different. Looking into the future, perhaps that’s the info which pushes him over the edge, causing him to fall to pieces. I’ll try out that theory soon. At least he doesn’t seem to have a swollen head about world creation any longer. Less to break when he tumbles.

—–

Elves on the roof, another tale to tell.

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April 4, 2023 · 11:07 am

00370509

Even in Sweet Nanon’s Morning light, it was a creepy place, what with its rickety old picket fence, grown up yard, and weatherworn appearance. Dare our heroine go inside? That would be Crazy. Crazy Ass Blue. Let’s do it!

Turns out the basement was the worst part but that was just because of all the kitty litter, a blockage of sorts. The heroine carefully descends…

—–

Part 02…

It was a tight squeeze but she made it, newly placed crown just fitting under ceiling. Top of the kitty tower, Queen of the Basement. She surveys her queendom and deems it needs cleaning up. Pretty badly. She’s lost control of her 15 year old girl and 4 year old boy, her subjects. Better return to the Room and draw out a plan.

But she looked and looked but couldn’t find her way back. Just walls. She forgot that she was already in the Room. And always had been.

She exits the house disappointed.

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January 16, 2023 · 8:58 pm

00360509

“Baker Bloch’s soo gullible,” spoke Hucka Doobie to our right, certainly *not* an insect in this situation. Instead: a full fledged woman, complete with all the working parts. “He thinks I’ve reverted. Why would I want to be a bee again? I gave that up ages ago, along with the attached masculinity. And I’ve been faking the transformation back for months, maybe years.”

“Yeah,” chipped in Barry Deboy, famous artist of the Yellowmoon peninsula with his latest series, “Adventures in Tintown”, being a much talked about hit and spectacle. Imaginary defunct tiny town on the outskirts of Mortons Gap, residents say, marveling and shaking their collective heads at the inventiveness. What will that genius come up with next? “He thinks I’m scared of the Ant Castle up here,” Barry continues. “Why… Ant’s one of my best friends (!).” He turns to his right. “Aren’t you Ant?”

Ant didn’t remember or recognize the fellow but he acknowledged the close friendship anyway. That’s the problem with running a business the size of a small banana republic. Lots of friends — hard to keep up with. He’ll take the guy’s word. “Sure, chum,” he said, hoping to catch his actual name later.

“And I guess he thinks you live over in Fearzom on that smaller mountain to the southeast. Good one, Ant.”

But Ant *did* live there. He didn’t live here, in the skybox above the location of his old castle. Back ran the castle and its grounds now, rebuilt from the ground up after the fire explosion of ’83. Ant actually didn’t live in Our Second Lyfe at all. He’s too busy with his business, with his many friends. Real Life we’re talking about here. In Our Second Lyfe he was just an ant, nothing less nothing more. An oversized one, true. And he invented the Bell telephone. Oops, there’s a ring now. The Devil probably, since we were speaking about it.

“Gotta take this.” Ant was hoping it was a call leading him back to the Real World. Exoskeleton costume starting to weigh him down. He answers with his free hand, Tom Collins in the other. Barry’s rock’n a Russian Roulette, and I believe Hucka Doobie holds some ginger ale. She’s not against imbibing but not on the job. And this definitely was work. Acting. With these Bozos. She wonders again if Barry is borderline autistic, so bad he was at it. She’s about convinced. The topo maps did it for her. But he makes up for it in other areas, she thinks (see: last paragraph).

“Hallo?”

Ant sets down his drink and moves away from the others after hearing the voice. Devil indeed.

“Iiii… didn’t expect to hear *back* from you so soon, he he.”

Answer.

“Comedian, yeah. Always. Soo… (he lowered his voice even more) have you made a decision about the girl? Will she be able to keep, you know… her *head*?”

Hucka Doobie knew what the call was about but she prepared to feign ignorance. Barry just wanted to get back to his collages. More fame, more adulation!  It was like a drug to him.

They were dating, by the way. Barry and Hucka. Baker Bloch had no clue about that as well.

(to be continued)

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November 14, 2022 · 1:54 pm

00350509

The Mouse is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He first appears in Chapter II “The Pool of Tears”, encountering Alice while both swim in it, and who panics at her mention of the word “cat.”

The Dormouse is a sleepy character in “A Mad Tea-Party”, Chapter VII, who wakes up enough to tell Alice the story of 3 sisters trapped in a treacle well and drawing pictures of things starting with “m” such as as mousetraps, memory, and muchness.

Although the Mouse does not appear in the classic 1951 Disney film based on the book, part of his personality has been integrated with Dormouse’s.

Black clad Shelley reads the same in the distance while sitting from our angle between 2 toy blocks featuring these similar but different rodents.

Thank you, once again, Gemini.

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September 13, 2022 · 4:44 am

00340509

“The only Butt that’s going to show up in this photo is mine,” spoke up Silentghost, tired of the bog down, but also noting the deleted or unsuccessful profile pic involved yet another purple outfit. Fitting: too fitting. Supposed notorious outlaw on the run Wilson had nothing to say, since she was actually Wheeler. What kind of luck did she have assuming the name of a fugitive from the law?? What did it speak of her character to attract this person into her life?

“I — don’t remember taking that picture, I swear,” she said, plotting her defense. She didn’t. Not her pic!

“Com’on,” insisted Silentghost. “Ρùℜ℘Îē?”

There is another me out there, thought Wilson Wheeler both wrongly and rightly.

Observing Shelley had seen it too but she wasn’t shocked or damaged in any way. Instead: curious. Futuristic (outfit), she pondered. *From* the future. And so it was. She told this to Wilson who was actually Wheeler. Time is being confused, she added in her psychic manner.

She traced the picture back to last Halloween. The lone blog post published from that day, toward the last of photo-novel 29 which I am just re-reading now, was certainly quite purple in nature and mentioned a purple swamp shack in particular, along with Prince’s “Purple Rain” album.

https://bakerbloch.com/2021/10/31/00290608/

“I’m going back to that swamp,” she said to Newt on the phone later. Paper-Soap: he was there too. He studied the post while she spoke. Box… Borneo. They were not even really dating at the time. Perhaps they still weren’t, although they’d been married since.

Shelley contemplated the post afterwards too. *She* was there, at the resurrection beach with Cat-Witch who is… *Wheeler*. Just the day before.

Whatever happened to Liz?

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July 5, 2022 · 3:56 pm

in a name

Arthur Kill teleported over to Monty and the former location of his new-ish girlfriend Tessa’s motel, now abandoned or “razed” as she lastly put it. Thus the need for her castle, she said, more lies but twisted ones with knots of truth along the way. No indication of the previous owner’s name he was looking for in the land description, pheh. He decides he needs to kill someone later today to let off steam from this failure, perhaps that butcher over in nearby Bouncer who chose to bed down with a prostitute for a wife. Fits his (new-ish) code, Blue Rose style.

But then, below him in a corner of the parcel: a *blue ball*. Success? Will the former owner’s true name be revealed through this trace left behind.

When he flies down to its seeming location in the corner of the abandoned land he was investigating: nothing, though. Then he sees it again, one parcel over and considerably tinier. Impossibility!

That’s when he realized it was attached to *him*. “Radar,” he cussed, which is the same thing both backwards and forwards. Doesn’t matter where he goes, there he is. DELETE Not any more. But who had been tracking him in the meantime? Tessa? Butcher? Prostitute/wife even? Better get back to hq (castle) and make his report. Funny that the object was also owned by someone named simply “castle” according to the description. Probably a connection, then, he thought. But he didn’t want to follow that lead too far, didn’t want to color his report until he could catchup with the proceedings. He also decides to temporarily delete the blue rose in his lapel just in case. He can always retrieve it from his inventory later. Nope, he then thinks. Better delete it from there as well. I’ll ask [delete name] for another one. Good ol’ [delete name], he thinks, originator of the [delete name] team that investigates [delete actions]. He’s been meaning to [delete action] him as well. This will give him the chance — two birds with one stone, ha — after he gets the object he wants. Not *needs*: *wants*.”

(to be continued)

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April 20, 2022 · 10:05 am

West Hel*en*

“She can control everything in Lower Austra, once it is defined, boundaries and all. But outside…”

“Gone,” she realized. “Lost.”

“Like beachcomber Pepi ‘Can’ Kolya. Saved by Nauty who has knowledge of the Big Picture. The complete puzzle, pieces all in the right place. It’s because he comes from…”

“Iowa,” she finished again.

Man About Time looked over. “But you’re not Miss Ouri,” he continued mildly.

“And you’re not Baker Bloch,” she said in turn.

“Hmm.” He pondered whether to get a coke to drink. K K Cola here. Damn copyright infringement laws. Wheeler had wine. He wondered where she got it.

“I have one blue eye and one green eye — damaged,” she started again after a guzzle. “I don’t have two matching eyes like Ouri.”

“*Miss* Ouri,” Man About Time dutifully wanted to say but held his almost always mild tongue. No need to bring Texas Pete into this, his mama always said about verbal acidities. She trained him well; he absorbed everything he could from her. Poor Mama, he lamented. Hanging with the angels now.

Instead: “Where did you get the wine?”

“A barrel,” she said, and then winked. I think the green eye remained open but difficult to tell. All eyes looked the same to him. After Miss Ouri.

(to be continued)

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February 15, 2022 · 8:04 am

peppery

“Hey loverboy,” she said, spying him spying through the limbs at the limbs. “Tree’s over *here*.” Marty moves his eyes from what Lichen called her sister to the now Santa-less tree. “Now all we have to do is change the lights out and we’re done, Christmas Tree to Winter Tree completed.” Marty kept thinking about the sisters, one black haired, one blonde, the one that less interests him strangely enough now his hair had been dyed. Ditsy was her name, she said. Didn’t sound like a real name to him, didn’t ring true. Yet they just showed up and got down on the floor and started talking to each other, giggling, whispering. The other one’s name was Zizzy; just as improbable. They said they were twins.

“Now you’re just looking in the air at something,” she said, still spying. “Come over here and help me take the colored lights off and put the white lights on. Say goodbye to Christmas.”

It was Valentine’s Day and indeed the traditional end of the X-mas season, just like Halloween was the beginning. It now stretched to almost a third of the year, Labor Day and St. Patrick’s Day soon to be threatened at each end if he was reading the signs correctly, which said “Happy Holidays” reduced to one. It was like the Nazis. It was like Attila the Hun. Soon it might be just Christmas and its polar opposite, 4th of Juli, standing. And then…

“*Dearest*,” she said more sharply. “Over here. *Now*.”

——

Soon they would reach the star at the top and have an important decision to make.

Niece Amanda kept carrying around her new uncle’s crappy Valentine’s bear present around, contemplating pushing him into the tree from this angle and ending the ruse. Might be what tips the balance in her favor, she thinks, sensing the building tension between the two. Zizzy, pheh. It was always going to be something new.

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December 15, 2021 · 11:28 pm

00300509

Safe Zone — where had Keith B. heard that expression? Of course: *Marilyn*. He asked about it to Jim B., currently playing the role of Alvin Jr., son of Alvin Sr. who climbed that beanstalk in Wales all the way to… some say The Moon, others: Uranus. But, as stated, we happen to know it was Mars, an in-between compromise.

Alvin Jr. listened to the query, wishing that darn phone would ring for a change and interrupt this conversation, hopefully distract Keith B. to a different topic. And why did he come down here to the ranger station anyway this morning? Must be looking for more spots to hunt, Alvin mused. “Safe Zone?” he answered Keith B. “Oh, that’s just a map that came with the station. Has nothing to do with the actual park here. Just a generic map. I… haven’t even looked at it that closely.” He peers at the map he knows all too well, pretending to see it as with new eyes. “Echo, eh?” he says, pronouncing the map name below Safe Zone. “Overrun,” he continues in that vein. He thinks of the zombies here, the Germans, but also the Italians. Came in through the portal from the Great War. “Sounds like, eh, something from a game or something, dunno.” He shakes his head, convincingly he hopes. He’s surprised Keith B. hadn’t seen the map before but that was just part of the magic of the place, good and bad. You often see things when you’re suppose to, not when common sense tells you you should. Keith B. should have spotted this anomaly of a map long ago, inquired about the Safe Zone shortly after he arrived in Paper-Soap, say. But it was the same with Alvin. *Jr.*. People kept mixing him up with his  dear old papa and it irritated the *hell* out of him. He’d stopped going to church because of it. But he’d heard there was new trouble brewing over there. He decides to ask Keith — a presented tangent after all.

“Heard Preacher Zoidboro knocked the congregation for a loop yesterday,” he frames it. He knew the power of the 4 would come in eventually and attempt to topple the totalitarianism of the 3. And he knew the Monolith would have something to do with it — just didn’t know the details. Until now.

“Ah, yes,” Keith B. said back, prying his eyes from the map to Alvin Jr.’s relief. He’s going to subtly alter that thing as soon as the man from Nautilus leaves. Take out mention of the Safe Zone first. There *is* no Safe Zone. Thanks to Keith, pheh.

Turns out the congregation of the Trinity Church is split down the middle on the subject of 3 vs. 4. It’s the beanstalk all over again, thinks Alvin.

5 years ago:

“You alright up there Pops!!”

“Pops!!?”

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October 22, 2021 · 2:45 pm

Clarksey

“I was stuck,” Keith B. tried to explain about The Room. “I was caught.”

“Yeah, by *me*.” The cube is the sphere is the sea is the whale. The flip style notepad and push style lead pencil remained unsheathed this time but Jenny knew. Jennifer now. The Mann emerged from a plastic cocoon. It was in all the books, a running motif. Keith B. was stuck in more ways than one. 29 now, beginning HERE.

“It’s just what The Mann does. When the Wo-mann is away. Look at Marion Star Harding, still dreaming of dead Heidi in his own way. When the (new) director does her shoots up at Cass City.”

Jennifer looks around, still confused about the location. This could be Cass City, this could be Pipersville… or Storybrook. But instead: Whiskey plus Clarksburg, Whisclarkseyburg, then (maybe). Whiskey *inside* Clarksburg. She was stuck!

She stopped looking around, spacing out. “What… is the name of this place..?” Should she call him daddy, papa, Keith B.? She decided the last.

Keith B. didn’t look around. He knew where he was. And it didn’t work. He’d been uncovered, as if from a secret space.

Former private detective Wendell “Biff” Carter, back on the beat, stopped redding the read book and looked over. That was her all right, he surmised, seeing the eyes. Mrs. Know-It-All.

(to be continued)

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