Shelley’s head appeared directly below where Barry DeBoy should have been fishing on the pier. But it appears he’s wised up, dispensed with his pole, and headed back to the studio, realizing the futility of the act (once more). Ant may even be his best friend again, at least in his mind. And of course there’s Hucka. How much woman is she? Enough to roar?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0510, Corsica, Northwest
“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)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0509, Corsica, Northwest
appropriated from https://www.cidergallery.com/wad-blog/2022/7/5/meet-the-artist-folklore
Meet Barry DeBoy! His collage piece “Does this look square to you?” is in his current show, “Adventures in Tintown, Parts 1 through Tin”. When originally approached about the show, he already had the idea to do something that would work with tin and lead and other base metals, but in a way to make it fun and different from other portrayals.*
His 2017 gallery show in Omaha in Oklahoma was where he had discovered that he could pursue art as a career.
“I would describe myself and my art as goofy and something I don’t take too seriously, although art is super important to me and I am constantly making stuff. It’s both tin or lead and gold or, say, platinum at the same time. You dig?”
We do indeed, Barry. Keep on creating your stress-free and humorous art, you daffy alchemist!
—–
* note: Barry’s simple 2 part collage here (notice the disembodied nutcracker head) was later incorporated into a larger triptych of the series, becoming part of part 4c instead of standing alone at 7, which was replaced by the painting “Sassquatch” (picture not shown).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0506, Bogota, collages 2d, Ebbert, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma
Geez that gray woman has been out there quite a while, Shelley thinks, having woken up in a strange camper in the sim above Mortons Gap but then recalling the story. She could hear the crashing of the waves when she stirred, a reassuring sound. Arthur must be around. They were just too tired to walk all the way back to the hotel after visiting the Ant Castle up on the mountain, quite a climb to get to. So they just bunked down here as the sun set into the ocean, just to do something different, they agreed. “No one around,” spoke her newlywed husband. “Why not,” she replied. But that gray person… actual owner? Telling me I’m intruding on her property? Could just ask, she thought as she took another sip of coffee and continued reading the article she started, it seemed, a 1/2 hour ago. Ooo, she thought. Just there. The woman took on appearance; just for a second. Yes, staring right at me, it seems (!). Better gather up Arthur and head back to the hotel. Probably down on the beach.
—–
He comes here often and just sits and listens. “Getz/Gilberto” always seems to be spinning on the turntable, the record that started it all for bossa nova, as he learned. Steely eyed Luther stirs the patriotic soup slowly and deliberately, like an automaton instead of an actual person. ‘Nother “gray” being. And what has Clifton Mahoney got on the docket today? Well — beach. Just like Shelley and Arthur. Coming up is a collision course of information that would change everyone’s world. The Ant Castle was not what it seemed (!).
—–
Barry down at the pier would be involved too. Because after 8 straight days of angling it was about time to head home. Art studio. Just below the castle. Barry’d seen and heard things there he didn’t want to dwell upon, didn’t want to be in such close proximity to. Thus the trip into town, to the beach, to the pier. Sanity in contrast. Warm sense of people around. F-ing cold in the gray granite mountains above Mortons Gap this time of year, but not necessarily that kind of cold. Remote kind of cold, the worst type. Barry liked privacy when he painted but enough was enough. But, also, he couldn’t stay away forever, had to face the devil sometime.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0414, Corsica, Northwest
Greater and lesser.
OMG, Barry’s here. Fishing. The magic continues…
We’ll catch up with him a little later (!).
RN earns cash by making pots. Well: *a* pot. And it’s coming along very slowly, it appears.
Many cats in the city.
Will meditate for money. Arthur Kill decides to join him in the background.
A single red tree (object of meditation).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0316, Corsica, Northwest
He stared over at it while she stared at him. “Remember that day when we opened the box and came here?”
“Best day of my life,” said Lucy to this. Limes. Box full of limes. Unlimited tequila.
“I mean, we were *there* — Real Life — and then we were here — Second Lyfe.”
“And we had 3rd Life on our computers instead, yeah. Cool. Really neat. I instantly turned myself into Leia from Star Trek.”
“I mean,” he continued on this track. “You remember smells. Don’t you?”
“Smells?”
“And touch. Feeling and touching. Not just seeing, not just hearing. There use to be 5 senses, Lucy.”
“It’s beautiful here,” she deflected. “I can feel the spray of the ocean if I close my eyes. I can hear the porpoises. I *feel* like I have a purpose here — that’s the only ‘feel’ I need.”
“Okay, how about smell?” he tried again. Did *he* remember smell? He couldn’t quite recall it now. Maybe all a dream. He tried to trace it back. And why this fascination with Shelley when he already has Lucy? They’ve been married 6 years, been buried longer than that, but that was just a past life. Someone allowed them to open the box, someone raised them from the dead. Here. Small box for a coffin, but there you have it. More symbolic than anything, he reckoned.
“It’s been there for 6 7 years. Have we even tried to move it? Even once?”
“2019,” said Lucy to this. “Hurricane coming in. Wouldn’t budge. We came back and everything was okay. The only lingering effect was this pool of water that partially submerged our back yard. Water never left. But we always wanted a pool.”
“Not this kind,” shot back Keanoob. He didn’t *feel* like sitting down beside it today, partially submerging himself in this pool or whatever the heck it really was. A curse, he gathered, quite a long time ago, actually. Probably 2019 again.
He’s going into the mountains instead.
“Ant Castle?” Lucy said to this, use to his wandering off by now.
“I think I’ll go visit Barry instead at his studio.”
“Better call. You remember what happened last time.” Barry really gets involved in his art, as Keanoob found out that day.
Ah heck, he’ll stay local and go check out the Durexian-Trojan War Memorial again. In a park across the road; only 200 meters from here. Sometimes he can still hear the distance cannons if he lays real quiet in the re-created Durexian-Trojan shared tent over there. You lose a sense or 3 you gain a sense or 3. Or so they say.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0036, 0312, Corsica, Northwest
The Ember Botanical Institute where Barry DeBoy met with Andy Warhole, Ant, and Harrison Jett back in photo-novel 21 to talk about art and some other stuff is still there. Strangely I find myself banned from the property. Description reads: “… dedicated to corvid murder survival training, Rothko appreciation, neuroaugmentation, and antifascist remote viewing.” Seems I’ll never find out more of the story of the place now.
And, moving to the western edge of the same ridge — in Motocyclone this time — Ant’s castle (Ant Castle) is still around, apparently, greatly enlarged and painted black now, like himself. Could be more stories awaiting us here…
Barry’s old art studio just down the hill from it remains intact as well, hmmm.
Wheeler could go back to the EB Institute if not me; same for Bracket. Heck, same for Hucka Doobie the Bee, Baker Blinker, etc. — any of the core avatars except myself, Baker Bloch.
And then there’s that interesting seaside Japanese town centered in Mortons Gully below the Motocyclone peak where we’ve already seen several blog characters (Golden Jim, Marty, The Mann, maybe others) milling about in.
Closest Oracle match for that here:
A trio of men: Cowboy, Indian, Black. And behind them: still fuzzy. Maybe someone named… Frank?
—–
“I’m remembering,” spoke Jennifer “Shelley” Struthers, turning into that Lane, seeing further than before, beyond the edge of virtual reality itself. Stinkerfoot.
Roll him over, look into his eyes. MENTION that the gnome had disappeared. Someone purposely took it. I looked all around the rocks it once inhabited in its 2 locations that we know of.
CRUX — think of relationship with Apostrophe album, the apostrophe itself according to Frank.
Did the Tigers get to him anyway, despite being taken away from the more prominent rock perch and tucked, hopefully safely, behind a nearby tree? The story of County Park basically ends there, as another location I had my eye on for a toy happening was blocked — someone else was already present, a nice enough bloke but obviously living off the land. I knew where he lived; he was telling me that, albeit unconsciously in all likelihood, unless he was an alien himself, ha. He filled my space quite effectively. He, in all likelihood, needs it more.
Back to virtual…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0511, Blue Mountain, County Park, Paper Soap+, Soap
We had to go through Gold City and Barry and Stinkerfoot to get back to Zapppa and the Big Woods cemetery. He dug up the truth about Franklin. It wasn’t pretty.
There was no body; there was nobody.
—–
“Black Jack,” psychic Donald said in a related scene from Towerboro.
“Black Jack.”
The TV went to snow.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0406, Big Woods, Gold City-, Jeogeot, Towerboro
The Gods took pity on poor, naive Barry, took him over to what in my reality is a local biking park, perched him on a trail-side rock way up its 4038 foot high namesake summit for all to see when passing, to judge, to test their own meddle.
One succumbed. The Gods knew this would happen. His damaged eye was cleaned up and he was put behind a tree, more out of sight. The Tigers could not get to him here.
Barry was safe, but we are also finished with his story for now, along with his Mom’s. 112 and out.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0034, 0405, Blue Mountain, County Park
Sunklands 