Category Archives: 06

00240606

“What assets can *you* bring to me, Mr. Baker Bloch.” I wish Stefan [last name yet to be determine] had a German accent but it would be too hard to write. He was applying for an apartment in the Kidd Tower in Apple’s Orchard, a prospective neighbor, then, to the Man About Time who’d be living directly above him in the penthouse suite. This here was Mr. Babyface’s old apartment. Mr. Babyface had decided to move away from the city to carve out a bucolic life for himself in the land of Hana Lei, wherever the f-ck that was. Maybe Rose Heaven.

“Well,” Baker Bloch began his answer. “You’ll become an automatic member of the exclusive Blue Feather Club, with 10 percent discount on all items at any of the Baker Bloch owned businesses in town. That would include, let’s see, the consignment store down in Black Ice, the Red Umbrella (gallery) in same, the Rosehaven Yarn Shop — that would be selling story yarns and not yarn yarns mind you.”

“Shoot,” Stefan mildly cussed here. He was a natural born knitter, weaving and bobbing the needles to whittle away the dreary nights. But he could live with this handicap. Still full price for the yarn yarn. Baker Bloch continued without a beat.

“Then The Cones — that’s the all you can eat buffet style restaurant atop the Blue Feather, part of the overall Sunklands Institute complex. That would be, er, right down there or over there.” Baker Bloch pointed out the transparent wall to his left toward said complex. You can clearly make out the towers at the top from his perspective. Stefan had none of this. He remained undecided whether to move to NWES City, despite what Baker considered his pretty pitch, like a lob thrown to a junior leaguer who could then hit it out of the park on any given day. This was a given. It was up to Stefan to throw away the chance, make a clear error of judgement. Baker held all the aces, he felt.

“I know Pansy Mouse,” Stefan stated out of left field, a game changer. Baker’s plans suddenly flew up in the air like a pack of misshuffled cards.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0606, Apple's Orchard, NWES Island

Menace revealed

Herbert Gold brings April Mae flowers.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0605, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

Four Corners 02

He knew exactly where to look. He heads across the road toward the hills.

He pauses to roll two dice at Gigi’s place, red and white. “Twins,” he exclaims, seeing the result. “Good. I’m on the right track.” Certain Death can be avoided tonight.

He moves forward…

A wise sparrow looks down from a tree behind him. He stands in flowers again, pansies. This is where it will happen. He waits. He, again, knows Certain Death is not stalking him. This is the day, this is the portal. He waits. The sparrow knows too.

His head begins to vibrate rapidly. It has begun.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0604, Bellisaria, Four Corners

Four Corners

“Dum de *dum* de *dum*.” Riiiiinnnng. “Oh dear.” Riiiiiiiinnnng. “That’s the phone.”

“Where, honey?”

“Over… *there*.” Riiinnng.

“Over where, honey?”

“On the wall.” Riiinnnng. “Just over… *there*.”

“The wall… the phone on the wall?”

Riiinnnng. “Yes. Don’t you remember. The phone… on the wall.”

“The *pay phone*? The one that hadn’t worked for 20 years?” Rinnnnng.

“Yes. I think. Go check. I’m scared. I’ll be back in my room.” Riinnng.

She was so happy just seconds before. Now the world seemed to be ending.

Riinnnng. Herbert Glenn Gold walks over, answers the phone. Riinnnn– “Hello?”

—–

“You have become old, Stefan.”

“No… not old. I can still rock.”

“You are a classical man through and through now. Get up out of the rocker. You cannot rock any longer. You are an old man. You…”

“Pansy,” he said, trying to reassure. “I acquiesce.” Old Stefan steps away from the DJ equipment and the dance floor as a whole, walks outside, stands in the flower bed.

—–

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0603, Bellisaria, Four Corners

00240602

A room with no door (Shop 10, Kowloon):

Downstairs:

“Come in, Fern Stallin.”

—–

“Yeah, I’m not Fern Stalin.”

“Ohh, but you *aare*.” Pause.

“Anyway…”

“Cornfield,” the Old Man in a Narrow Room interrupted crisply. “I’m sensing… Corrnfield, yess.” The place had lightened up.

Blue Berry Girl, 1/2way back to Rules of Rose by this point, looked around without questioning more. She vaguely recalls twins named Cornfield, born in, yes, Valentine. A place called Valentine.

“Youuurr… *rememmberring*.”

“Listen, um, Old Man. It was nice visiting you but I have other places to go tonight.”

“Youuu… will *returrnnn*.”

—–

—–

Walking the RR in the Inbetween World. Watch out from behind!

—–

“Yoouuu… havve *returrrnned*.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0602, Bellisaria, Kowloon+, Purden/Snowlands, Sandfly, Sansara

moving forward…

Maybe I need to think about Blue Berry Girl more, since she perhaps has become more central. She’s not Blurmaid as I anticipated in this half shell at the X shaped crossroads in the heart of the Maebaleia/Satori continent, but maybe her story is more crucial. What do we know of her so far?

This is as good a time as any to create a kind of year in review post, short in nature. The virus is of course the big news in 2020, and everyone has been impacted to one large degree or another, including us. But we’ve also been more fortunate than most. We haven’t lost our jobs (knock on wooden head), we remain healthy (again with the knocks on the head), and, despite both working from home in the main, the wife and I are getting along swimmingly. I can’t imagine a couple being locked indoors together this winter that doesn’t like each other. Lots of divorces will come out of this. Loss of jobs, splitting up of families. What happened in 2020 will be impacting us for years to come.

That’s why it’s so urgent for Joe Biden and his administration to push legislation and acts through as quickly as possible to bring relief Americans so desperately need. Bring us affordable health care and education; reform the prison system and military-industrial complex. Enact *now*, as soon as possible, sweeping climate change mandates that will help us save the planet (we should be leaders on this!) and stop further catastrophes to heap on top of the ones we already face from other directions as a nation. I remain optimistic but also realistic, given the history of the Democratic party up to this point and the sheer lunacy, right now, within their counterparts, the Republicans, who remain an actual political party only in name, unable to help anyone but the rich and powerful who don’t need it. Trickle down economics is a myth by this time.

I know steps are being taken. I’m just not sure they’re enough. All great nations have their turn, then fall back and yield to others on the rise. I think this virus is exposing who we really are. We cannot be the leaders in the future with the present systems in place. We can’t just return to the “normal” of the Obama years. We’re falling behind.

OKAY, getting back to the blog and my safe zone (yea!), I’ve had a really good year there, along with lots of local hiking. I’m extremely blessed to be living in the community we do, with oodles of beautiful, protected park land very close by. This is something I’d also like to focus on this year, and years to come. Return to real life photos and art, and a bit more away from virtual stuff and My Second Lyfe. A bit — because both will continue in tandem with each other for some time.

Happy 2021!

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0601, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

Heaven

“Did you find her yet, my little, precious Herbert Glenn Gold down at my feet?”

“I… suppose you mean Tessa,” he said up with a markedly weaker voice than Parasol’s. “I… *know* you mean..”

“You’re stalling,” Parasol declared down toward her other feet. The ones of the Rainbow Butterfly; Pickle I’ve called it in this here blog and attached photo-novel, about to be closed up for a day or three. Just to be complete, Parasol is also the same as Witch Hazel, but she must make a choice first. That of red (service to self). Blue would be better, and so she keeps pressing. The girl must be found, she rationalizes. *Then* I can decide which way to flip! This seemed to be an error of thinking. Herbert Glenn Gold was about to pass through her legs and leave, she sensed. He had had enough of abuses; had to put up with a lot of this with his then wife April Mae Flowers. Former: because he was dead now. She decided to use this angle to create a save.

“Would you like me to tell you how you died? Would you wish now to know how you got *here*?” The fiery Golden Sphere beside them spun on without noise. There was no air yet they talk.

Herbert Glenn Gold pondered again whether he wanted to know this. Would it help? He decided before, in the long run, it wouldn’t. He would still be taking the psychological pictures wherever he went. The portal could not be sealed back up. He affirms this to Parasol above him. He knew she was somehow responsible for him. It was a weird relationship, with many incarnations. Father, mother, brother, sister, wife, husband, uncle, aunt, so on. But for now it was more perhaps a mother-son relationship, with he being the son. Gold, like the.

“*Herbert*,” she interrupted his reverie. “I need the girl.”

END OF “SUNKLANDS 2020-2021 WINTER” PART 1!

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0617, HANA LEI

Comedian

“Were you seen, Jupiter?”

Jupiter? But Groover remembered who he was at the core. Jupiter, yes. “I don’t think so.” He thought back to the visit by Tickie this morning, intent on finding him and taking him back to an aspiring cryptozoologist in his hometown for study and perhaps fame and fortune, or so the Undertaker said. For he is the illusive, the one and only Knob Noster! Well, there were three of us, counting the wife and the kid. He needs to send them a postcard.

“What about the other fellow, the Man About Town it said in his outfit description? I wonder: *what* town? The same as Tickie’s? They didn’t seem to know each other that well. Did they?” She turned her scowling face toward Groover, wishing reciprocation.

“MAT, yes. I mean, no. They didn’t seem to know each other that well. He must be in on it. Why would he come to the Game Room to meet with him otherwise. Certainly not to play *Pac-man*.”  Jupiter/Groover here makes an imitation of a pac-man gobbling up ghosts and the like with his pac-man-like mouth. Understanding the Anti-Bart reference, Olive Oylstick still finds it only mildly funny. More is afoot now. She stares out again at the… tree? Is that what this is in the space formerly occupied by the House of Joy?

Groover gasps. “There it is again (!). Sideways.”

Olive Oylstick had an insight. “Do that thing with your mouth again you just did.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0616, Bellisaria, Four Corners

Brendan

“Brrrr. Cold down at the beach. I think I’ll stay right here in front of this fire for a while, brother of mine.”

Kick-Ass Boos, unlike his brother, didn’t have cold feet, although they were bare. He’d given up his shoes just a minute before. He didn’t want to reveal too much too soon. Instead: “Well… what do you think about this town, village, community, whatever? This…” Kick-Ass Boos couldn’t remember the name all of a sudden, like it had been yanked from his memory by a falsity of time.

Kick-Ass Bogota kept warming his hands while chatting about the subject. “It’s okay, I guess. I like the swimming pool. I like the blues bar here. Something to do at night! And the game room, of course. We’ll head up there next — check it out.”

“The mountains and that pretty lake too.” ALERT

“Yes, that too,” the brother agreed. He drew back from the fire, toasty for the moment. “Whatever, we *can’t* go back to Black Ice. Evicted.”

“Yeah. Plus Elberta is gone from town too. What’s the point of staying on.”

Thinking about their old, common girlfriend, Kick-Ass Bogota glanced away from the fire at his brother, traditional rivalries stoked along with attached suspicions. He recalled a different name. “Who exactly recommended this place to you again?”

“Oh just a friend,” Kick-Ass Boos quickly answered, not wanting an awkward gap. “He likes the blues; he knew this place.”

“A blues friend,” Kick-Ass Bogota said, returning his hands toward the fire.

Good one, thought Kick-Ass Boos. Very close, except it was only one blues. Blue, then. And the friend was… *Darn*. Can’t remember again.

Tickie walked through the door. “*There* you are.”

Kick-Ass Bogota swung around. Gig is up, Kick-Ass Boos realized.

“How’d you get down here so fast? And what is that blue costume you’re wearing?”

“You’re… the *blues* friend,” Kick-Ass Bogota guessed correctly. Or blue *friends*, he thought while looking from one to the other, still not seeing his brother’s true face because of the bag.

15 minutes later, the Undertaker stood in the flower garden on the side of the house, taking pictures.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0615, Bellisaria, Four Corners

00230614

“Back to the old give and go, huh?”

MAT didn’t understand this comment, but he kept his mouth shut. He assumed a “this might be bull” position, which Marsha Slot (aka Olive Oylstick), the TILE channeler/tarot reader, picked up on, like a town.

“No bull,” she said. “Instead… COW,” she realized, staring deeper into the smokey sphere between her hands. “You missed something.” She stared forward now with everpresent scowl. Yet she was not a cruel person. The expression was a built in feature. She planned to change it one day. When she got the money. One 50 linden reading at a time.

“Cow?” MAT immediately thought of Cow Hill which he was tempted to visit yesterday but didn’t have the time. He didn’t *make* the time. He didn’t know what he’d find there but he did have the urge. While he was in the area again — just a hop and a skip up from Tiger’s place.

“I’m seeing a protrusion. A… fifth. A cow full of air which blows the wrong way, knocking, yes, knocking off a hat.”

That would be Slash Girl, MAT realized. No bull indeed!

—–

Tickie came back from the bathroom; stared into an empty room with a vacant TILE tarot (etc.) reading table. Scratching his head again, he realized he had gone forward into the past once more. Better get back to the Blues bar.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0614, Bellisaria, Four Corners