Tag Archives: Karl^*+$

March 3, 2026 · 7:25 am

00490507

Gorillaz, working as a team, a true 4n1 or TILE, are able to defeat the giant malignant worm thingies and move on to the next phase of their musical career, 8 I believe. Or is it 5?

Anyhow, the Spirit House here cannot stand up to their combined red yellow green blue powers and breaks apart and sinks into the earth where it came from; Hell, I suppose.

So what does this have to do with *Chet’s* band Scissorrun©, back in Rodentia on the continent of Jeogeot in the metaverse of Our Second Lyfe, or at least My Second Lyfe? Let’s move barside again at Walk By Night, focus in on the faces of the people sitting there this time listening to the band: manager Biff Carter and — let’s go with Jennifer Lane, all grown up from Jenny Lane like a forgotten, weedy road off the main beat. Like I said before, at this stage there’s only Chet on lead guitar and vocals and Karl on drums and backing vocals. No bass, which Karl will fill in later. Biff has made a decision about hiring another band member, the 3rd. New lead vocals allowing Chet to focus on his guitar. Or at least that’s how they broke it to Chet. In truth — as I also reviewed a bit before — his screechy voice leaves something to be desired for commercially minded Biff (raven-like he put it before). And he convinced Karl that they couldn’t scale to the top of the rock heap as they desired unless some changes occurred in that area.

“Let’s list out the Scissorrun©-Gorillaz comparisons as they stand now,” he says to Jennifer, trying to put everything in 1-2-3-4 order while checking his notes in the red book he always carries around these days. “Chet equals Murdoc, but lead guitar instead of bass. Karl equals Russel, but eventually moves to bass instead of drums. You are 2-D, a new sweet lead vocalist but with a change of sex — and also you have to age to where you are, ahem, *now*. And then, um, Noodle.” Biff is suddenly stymied. Noodle maybe should be the new drummer to replace Karl? But what about little Sherwood who, like Shelley, also has some serious growing up to do before assuming that role?? Things still need to be worked out before moving into *their* next phase, 1 I believe. Only the beginning.

“Look over here,” Shelley says to Biff to end. “Look into my eyes.” Library in there, he sees. TBC

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0049, 0507, Dokken Hollow+, Jeogeot, Michigan

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February 23, 2026 · 6:34 pm

00490413

It was now time to see the band in action. In this early stage, Karl was on drums, not younger brother Sherwood who was still quite too little to play, although his talented hands could already snatch flies out of mid-air circling around his crib without fail (but, bigger question perhaps, *why* were they circling there, ho?). No bass guitarist in the band, then; Karl would serve that function in the future. Only him and then Chet on lead guitar and vocals, with Karl supplying backing vocals when needed. I’m debating whether to say that Chet, like his pretty much double Murdoc from Gorillaz — unplanned most of these parallels between the two fake bands are once more — gave up his role as lead singer to another, for Murdoc’s case this being the also red masked crooner known as 2-D seen in that last post of this here current photo-novel. Hmm. He doesn’t sound *bad* as I sit there at the bar, listening with restaurant manager turned band manager Biff Carter, last seen in Tonsiltown I believe. Or thereabouts. But he also certainly doesn’t sound “good” as in a traditional way of singing, even for rock stars. More commercially minded Biff was thinking along the same lines because he said over to me about a minute into “Paper” (their original single and perhaps their best still), “kind of sounds like a raven in heat, doesn’t he?” and then he laughed but also he was kind of crying a bit too. Because he knew he would have to go back to the dirty 1 dining room/10 x 10 foot cooking area/small shared sex bathroom with no sink restaurant on the edge of town if this whole band thing didn’t pan out. Yeah, he was mulling it over I could tell. No harm done in *auditioning* singers, he may have been thinking here. As long as Chet doesn’t know. Karl? Maybe he should let him in on it too? Karl surely doesn’t thinking Chet is the best of the best in terms of vocals, knows they can’t scale to the top like they desire with him as frontman.

Meanwhile, Jenny Lane sings solo down at the Mago docks as Charles Anson looks on. He’s cooking up a plan, evil of course as is his base nature. Is this the girl? he asked himself after the singing came within earshot as he kept wandering around town, looking for… something. Had he found the one in his dreams at last, a siren’s call across a chasm separating good and bad like Tennessee from Kentucky? He had to find out.

Anson, he thinks while the high pitched, golden throated warbling continues. The child’s name will be Anson too. Now to get to work on that time machine. (TBC)

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January 17, 2022 · 8:22 pm

The missing triangle piece.

Turns out Karl was his invention all along.

Different cartoon character, same results.

Survival beyond the watermelon.

“I’ll spill everything,” said Karl to Mrs. Ordinary in her not-so-ordinary hometown of Chapel Vile after the mountainous hike with her aunt to rendezvous with the Ant. “Whaddaya want to know?”

“Thanks for meeting with me. I wasn’t sure — you were my friend still — after last time.”

“Of course I am. Old old water under the bridge. Us *cores* gotta stick together, eh? he he.” He slapped his flabby side to reinforce the healing aspect.

“Yes,” sip. But she couldn’t get the bloodlust scene out of her head.

A broken rib to end, but, like them apparently, it cleaned up nicely. The observing 88’s helped a lot with their prompt calling of the ambulance and police, good custodians both.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0031, 0212, Carrcass-00, Corsica, ENIGMA, Nautilus, Northwest, Wild West

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January 19, 2021 · 7:11 am

fuzzy navels

“What’s up, boss. I’m back, as you see.” Stumpy wanted MAT (Man About Time) to comment on his return, ask him what he’s been up to. Man About Time didn’t even know the formerly headless man went missing.

“Where’s Karl?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, hoss. He’s gone. So is Moe. I’m *back*.”

MAT tried to recall the bartender’s name. “You were… missing something.”

“My *head* is all. You almost didn’t hire me for the job because of it. Then Gotham came along and I became a head, almost the opposite. But then it all balanced out, thanks to the red, the wine. Red and blue coordinated. I’m back.”

“That… doesn’t make any sense.” Mild but to the point.

Stumpy began to wax philosophically, inspired by the pot dreams. “Life is a 3d movie, both red and blue. Stereoscop-ic. The trick is to see them *together*, make everything real around you. It’s tricky, yeah, but it’s worth it in the end. I’m 3d, you’re 3d. The bar is 3d. The new trailer park just over the street edge in front of the store is 3d…”

“Ahh yes, thanks. That’s what I came in for. I wanted to ask about renting a trailer, er, Stimpy. From Jim K. Polk.” The Man About Time then remembered he had already rented the trailer, already paid the last month’s rent, already cleaned out the premises and came here to find Stumpy back on the job. It’s like the Karl/Moe intermediate period never existed. He looked around the room. Another head should be here besides Stumpy’s and my own, he thought. But it was hit out of the ballpark, bruised and battered somewhere far over a left field fence.

Man About Time was worried about flipping around time because he was now the logical candidate to replace Baker Bloch once the blog protagonist moved on to the White Palace, which already might have occurred. Now that fellow candidate Jeffrie Phillips has left town with that cryptozoologist who hangs out down at Spunky’s. Where was Spunky anyway? I recall 2 people of that name in town, one small, red, and with horns. The other…

“I see you’re still confused about time,” Stumpy spoke up, seeing the glazed look in MAT’s eyes.

“H-how long have you been back?” MAT managed.

“Just got back. Ask me where I’ve been. Buy a returned employee a drink why don’t you. I’ll buy you one and we’ll call it even.”

But then Stumpy forgot all about the experience in the Green Yarn sim as well, and his gig there. Gigi was always at the bar, but he doesn’t recall that either. He had the unfortunately experience of going into the 1898 room and falling asleep, replacing Jeffrie in the bed — another replacement for him. Stumpy stares at MAT, MAT stares at Stumpy. They suddenly realize one is as much of a mess as the other, unable to replace anybody, anywhere, any*thing*.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0402, Apple's Orchard, NWES Island

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November 25, 2020 · 7:09 am

hired

New NWES City resident Stumpy was eager to get some local color and received a couple bucketfuls at Moe’s, a centrally placed watering hole. We cut to the most relevant story the bartender told this night. “Homer?” he said after Stumpy inquired more about the famed bar brawl where Mr. Smipson lost his head which had to be kept in a jar of formaldehyde to be preserved like a pickle for possible future restoration. “Right over there.” Moe points beyond Stumpy to the pool table where it happened. “He broke a pool stick for a weapon, Homie did too. Out of the ball park for the both of ’em. But, turns out, Lemmy’s — as they called him — Lemmy’s head was real and Homer’s wasn’t. *He* was just a mascot, although it seemed to be the other way around what with the ice skating gig and all. That’s when reality began to break down. Who *else* is just a mascot and not real in this here town? Probably a lot of us. Probably more than we care to know. So we stopped talking about it, stopped yapping about it. The bar fell silent when the topic of lost heads was ever brought up. So that’s why *you* caused such a stir with your appearance tonight. You don’t have a head, yet you live!” Moe decided he better shut up for the night and started cleaning beer glasses again. Besides he didn’t have any lines left. See! he thought to himself while staring at the void between the shoulders of the man perched on a bar stool in front of him. This is what happens when this is brought up. Irreality!

The spotted figure in the picture near the pool table then stepped out of it and into this world, one who calls himself Gotham. The one who took Homer’s head away from the jar through this same portal several weeks ago for possible repair, leaving Moe with a nice (if shady seeming) nest egg at the bottom of it. But yet he was back now: unretired. Gotham had also returned to remind him of this. Moe didn’t run the bar any longer. A man named MAT had bought it and made him redundant, or, yes, forced him into an early retirement as a better option. The bar had closed 2 hours ago. In his mild, spacey way, MAT had simply forgotten to lock the front door (4th wall) when he left, distracted by a brewing storm and thunderous lightning and wind and such, let’s say. We were operating on alty time, as Gotham later termed it, sitting at the bar with Stumpy and Moe and trying to get the latter to go home to his lovely wife Dinah and put an end to coming back to work and all. “You won’t get paid,” he reminded Moe, but that wasn’t the point.

As Jaspery night yielded to Newtony day, Moe’s presence began to fade and another took his place: 1/2 and 1/2 here. Gotham turns to Stumpy. “Now about that head…”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0023, 0212, Apple's Orchard, Montana, NWES Island

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October 31, 2020 · 4:46 pm

pre-Gong

“A message from Elberta,” she chipperly chirped to begin.

“Oh yeah?” He’d been waiting a long long time. He’d cross his arms and tap his foot to signal impatience if he possessed any. About all he had left were some basic facial features and his gruff, booming voice, now reverberating across a sickly, cold, monochromatic basin.

“The deed is done. The Smipsons bartender is gone, perhaps even dead.” “Like yourself,” Bethulia the messenger chicken wanted to add but stopped herself, ending instead with: “You can move in.” Shakily, one might put it, as she continued to stand in its shadow and stare at the dark, foreboding spheroid, the realization of what actually happened dawning on her. This was not warming sunbeams, light. This was the opposite. The cosmos had been swallowed whole, starting with the pole.

“Remind me: which of us came first?” Yes, Karl wasn’t quite ready yet to return from the Land of the Dead, the Land of Jasper. He remains a zero, a null, a void — for now. Not a true hero any longer. Bethulia relays this observation back to Elberta and gets fed lots of feed for it. She’d almost made a vast mistake. She didn’t realize Karl and Moe’s deadly Egg were the same.

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March 12, 2020 · 9:30 am

freedom

Jeffrie Phillips begins his latest assignment proper back in Instabar, the sim highlighted in section 3. Might as well be Sector R.

Perhaps the last dinner of the late, great Mr. and Mrs. Achilles T. Pippin — The Pippins, he considers, who of course include Mary with her red umbrella we suspiciously see little of, even though at least one character says she carries it around all the time. Better check on that, he thinks…

He finds the red wine stale but acceptable for an Australian. Better start looking around for that umbrella, he ruminates.

Hold on, he ponders. This seems unusual, hmm. Cyan… cyanide. Cy Twomile, one of the two most recent victims in this here photo-novel, even though he’s locally known as Big Black Smoke. Derogatory racial name? He better find a computer somewhere.

But what’s this? In the Peppins’ living room: red, blue, and then a yellow lemon on top. And cyan turns to red in inverted color mode — which he, like Aqua Dude before him, can switch on and off when needed, which he does here.

Yes, something about that coat hanger or whatever it was, he contemplates while sitting in the swing beside the 32 square meter house that caused all the messy Instabar trouble in the first place. Buster Damm, hrmph. Popping in and out of this reality at his convenience to cause harm and mischief, like a little, blood sucking gremlin or something. If only we could trace him back to his Pot-D origins.

He decides to check the “coat hanger’s” description remotely while enjoying his hot coffee the swing graciously provided for him, pretty good for Cambodian.

Ahh. *Cage* stand. Bird cage. But where’s the bird? Or *birds*, even?

He travels further back in time than ever to find out.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0018, 0409, Corsica, Instabar

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February 9, 2020 · 11:15 am

judgment

Exhausted, Tronesisia finally stopped playing the harp for tonight. She looked around, red eye still in place. Where was she? The afterlife?

No. Still in Danshire.

And there were other instruments left to play in the same antiquated house. She switches to keyboards and fingers something different. The red eye finally recedes.

In the next room, Herbert Gold, Furry Karl, Heidi Hunt Ives, Norris, and perhaps some others not in this particular shot fade into view to listen in on the gorgeous music, flowing like platinum prune into their ears and senses. That was actually the name of the song: “Platinum Prune.” Or “In Search of…”, with the almost priceless prune theoretically showing up at the end of the overall suite of songs, drawing them inward and onward. Much better than Steel Raisin. We begin a journey.

—–

She paused in reading her just published novel “Olive, Green and Pink”. “Ben, dear, it’s gotten suddenly quite chilly in here. Could you put another log on the fireplace?”

“‘Bout bedtime,” he counters, faking a yawn and not sensing anything out of the ordinary himself. One thing on his mind right now.

Picking up on this, she stares over at him after he finishes, trying to decide. Book or boy?

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0018, 0108, Benangatron+, Corsica

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August 27, 2019 · 8:00 am

confluence

Afterwards she took off her shoes and sat beside the old motel pool, now closed for dysentery reasons. No details need be applied. She would immediately wash her feet in the Dari-Creme bathroom just behind. Mother had returned to their modest but clean downtown apartment, sterilized like all the rest during the Great Disinfection of ‘011.

Ahh, fate, she though. Having a beautiful mother who everyone is attracted to more than her, even her own classmates like Multiface, like Preston Weston. She then dwells on the brace burdened lad who sits behind her in geography class, taught by the same mother. It’s one of the reasons she got the tattoo — so that he would see it all the time. Satori, she pondered. *Not* Maebaleia. This would teach him and everyone else that she was a Northerner at heart and always would be, despite some dubious origins. Stamped in flesh, as it were. Fixated in time and space and… options. No option for her any longer. “The name — of the continent — is *Satori,*”  she shouted at her mother one day. Then it was off to the parlor to ink some color on her neck and back.

She pondered more tonight while daring to dangle her feet in the pool a little longer, like the alley that use to center the village which was so ill of repute. Creepy Alley they called it for a reason. Before receiving her teaching certificate in ’08, her own mother use to hang out in that place. There were rumors — unsubstantiated for the most part. But it was beyond doubt that mother took the occasional walk on the wild side, playing Nico to any Lou Reed who decided to properly peel their banana. Where was Zappa when you needed him? But that was the province of Annie (Anorexia), who isn’t part of the present story. Shame, though. Maybe we’ll be able to fit her in later.

—–

And there she is.

“Who’s out there, baby doll,” Karl gruffed. “Is it *him*?? Let me at him, let me at him!”

“It’s – not – him,” Annie metered out, trying to calm her latest husband down. “It’s *her*.”

Karl waited a beat for an explanation, then: “Her *who*?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0015, 0509, Maebaleia/Satori, Pipersville/Sink X

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November 17, 2018 · 7:57 am

you’re it

—–

“So Karl (Karl!). What’s the story with the painting of the little girl with the blue purse?”

“That goes back a looong way, Dr. Superhero. With *blue* bowtie,” he adds on.

“Please, Mr. Bartender. Do tell.”

“I just did.”

He realizes the bowtie is the same as the purse, listening Mystic Girl thinks from the far side of the bar. Both tack ons. But does he realize he *is* the painting now? I created him. I should know.

“Something just happened, Karl.”

“Oh boy,” the furry bartender exclaimed anxiously, and quickly left the scene, claiming to be restocking in back.

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