Tag Archives: Keith B.^*+$&

birthplace of TILE (‘nother one)

“Listen to these words,” Preacher Zoidboro commands from his pulpit of power, shuffling the first page back to the top. He’d been reading it all afternoon and then one evening and then another afternoon after a morning break for contemplation. It had been slipped under the door to his parsonage out back at 7:15 on Tuesday by the blackest of hands, as dark as licorice candy. “‘Four’s Company, parentheses, Three’s a Crowd, close parentheses,'” he starts, reading the title first of course. “‘Let’s make this,’ ahem, ‘shit happen.'”

Gasps from the audience, but not from the pronouncement of the word shit, deemed a cuss word in this here neck of the woods. They couldn’t hear that part the preacher said it so low. Instead: the inferred defamation of the Holy Trinity. It was in the name of the church! What in Hell’s Bells was the Preacher thinking, doing this? they thought as one.

“‘Let’s begin with a,’ uherm, ‘joke, quote unquote,'” he continues to read from Sepisexton’s text on the mount. Sweat beads on his forehead. Dare he go through with it? Alvin would be pleased, though. He always liked Alvin. “‘A Spade walks into a bar with a Heart,'” he ventures forward into a brave new world. “‘The audience says nothing.'”

The audience says nothing.

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00300505

“I’m as high as you (*wheeze*) now. Let’s trade.” He hands him the chips, he passes him the bong. The cycle begins again.

Having finished chopping the wood for tonight, Greg Ogden plays on his roundabout, also going in circles but in a different way. He’s getting in the mood to paint.

In a darker perspective, rogue clown Sepisexton sits down by the small beach of the same rental unit and ponders a cry, thinking back to when she was just Sepi and Sexton all separated out. She wonders if she should split, depressing party over except for the really serious heads like Even and Steven smushed together over there on the bench behind that painted Martin rock. She decides it should be between sections 6 and 7 of this here photo-novel, 30 in a series of, dare I say it, 31? Because there will be a 7 born from 6 the way things are progressing, fer sure. Just like the last one (but unlike 28, 27, 26 before it).

Let’s see, what else here? There’s Ted, another head, on the swings that won’t swing. He doesn’t care at this point, tripping the light fantastic.

And then of course the Monolith itself towering above it all, which Greg will paint a bit later for the umpteenth time. Call it his new Treasure Hill. He plans to make bookoos of money from the art soon. Very soon, he contemplates. As soon as Agents 23 and 47 phone him back with some figures. But in truth they were just investigating his drug ring, being police and not business agents. They’d have enough evidence for a bust soon. Let’s call them Crack and Whack.

Oh, I forgot about Marilyn back at one of the teepees beside Keith B.’s cabin on the other side of the Monolith from Greg’s rental unit, just across the long and dusty road. ‘Nother one, pheh: currently plucking feathers from a hen for a new batch of arrows while Sylvester the Stallion looks on…

… make that chipping an arrowhead with a chisel and ballhammer. Um…

She turns her back on peeing Keith B. while carving an arrow shaft with a chore knife, the final tableau, wondering why he doesn’t do his business in the woods like all the other animals. The place still stinks but she doesn’t mind — she’s not the neighbor who complained (Suzzy Q, the teepee dweller across the way who up and moved day before yesterday’s tomorrow). Probably infected with the virus as well, wouldn’t you think, perhaps catching it from him. Because they were an item, maybe still are. She reminds him so much of his sister, which is probably not a good thing. She feels safe around him — her Safe Zone here — because she knows he would kill to protect her. He blacks out and another stuffed animal is set up in the woods just over there next to a cave, or perhaps just over here beside a camping tent. Like Mother.

Done (both of them). “Head’s up!” she calls. An arrow whizzes by, just missing his now forward facing abdomen and landing at his feet.

(to be continued?)

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Mother.

He read well into the evening with Cubby still by his side, still waiting for his mother to return. Although he didn’t speak any longer — the magic had worn off for the time being — it’s as if the cub’s thoughts were transferred to the pages. Magic was not good here at night, thus the return of the virus symptoms for poor, confused Keith B. over at his cabin just beyond the woods, across the road. He had taken the paper pills but they didn’t seem to do him no good. He sniffed the air. No odor from the outhouse, although he wasn’t able to clean it due to lack of suds. Tamatoa the tamed wolf hound had spilled the product trying to put it into his mouth to obey his master’s command to retrieve it for him from the washing machine just over there. Oh to have an actual human servant around for such chores (!). But he wasn’t suppose to think such thoughts. Not after Alvin [delete name], and the beanstalk they found that went all the way to heaven, some say the Moon, some say Uranus. But it ended up being a compromise: Mars. Halfway between the fuzzy warmth of the full white Moon and the bitter cold of Uranus, only perceptible to the sharpest of eyes if they know exactly where to look in a blackened sky. So one could say the Moon and Uranus were opposites, like Keith B. here. He doesn’t even remember how the preservation started. END

START

Mother.

I’m right over here, son. Just out of sight. I haven’t eaten in several days, but I’m certainly stuffed to the gills. I’d laugh if I wasn’t crying. I’ll be with you, though. Cubby. Dennis. Warren — we never decided on a name, just kept calling you Cubby. My bad. Maybe that new guy you’re with, Biffy or something, can give you a proper name. But stay away from Keith. Keith did bad (as well).

(to be continued)

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preservation

He decided to test this reality. He pulled out some wadded up and hardened little pieces of paper from his pocket and dropped it into Keith B.’s hand, saying they were for the virus. “Thanks!” the older man from his childhood said, saving them for later that night when the headaches started. Oh the power of suggestion, Biff marveled, and returned to his book. He was at the end of Paper. He turned the page…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0503, Paper, Paper Soap+, Pennsylvania

Paper-Soap National Park

Biff Carter looked up from the red book he was always reading, wondering where they were. Keith B. was to his right, talking to Cubby the bear cub about his lost mother. “She’ll show up soon,” he tried to reassure, but Cubby had seen her wander off into the Hunting Zone, confused in the twilight’s last gleaming. Many of her kind don’t come out of there, she said earlier to the young bear, her third in a litter of two, although she didn’t know that fact at the time. A magical bear he was; able to talk and converse with the humans — like Keith B. here. “In the meantime, you just stay put here with… sorry, what was your name stranger?” he asked over to Biff, sucking on a piece of lettuce between his teeth left over from supper at Rusty’s. He couldn’t handle the beef stew what with the state of that kitchen in back — he’d seen the health inspector’s rating writing on the wall. Better stick with salad, he decided. No meat.

You know my name, Biff wanted to say back, but instead just said it for him. He looked over. Did it ring a bell? Dirty diner? Always redding the read book? He could tell by Keith’s expression that it didn’t. He felt abandoned by the older guy from his childhood ever since the death of his grandmama, who was practically like his mother, raising him up after the death of his dad Dirk, who had already lost his wife, his mother, to another kind of virus long ago, not long after he was born actually. Dirk thought that the birth may have done her in, or at least weakened her to the effects of the virus, but this wasn’t really true. Or was it? Anyway, Dirk kind of blamed the boy for her death. Her name was… right on the tip of my tongue….

Elizabeth, he decided, thinking back to the book. He raised it to his eyes again and continued. Paper now. Rock earlier. Scissors coming up soon. His mother had some and she contemplated doing his father in once more. Because of the boy.

(to be continued)

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003005-One

He lamented the Smuggler’s Bay portal being cut off on the other side of the Soap sim from Paper and then realized for the first time that the tunnel looks like a slice of bread. He’d *thought* that before, hmm. Anyway, Phyllis could not be reached. *Pills* could not be reached. Shit happens, but he doesn’t know where now. He must return to his lonely cabin to do his needed chores…

… like cleaning the outhouse today; had to be done; neighbor’s complaining about the smell which wasn’t bothering him as much but must have been that bout with the virus affecting his nose. He can’t tell when Rusty’s fixing breakfast over at the Tombstone Diner any more — could always smell that early in the morning before.

“Tamatoa,” he joked to his tamed wolf hound. “Go fetch me the cleaning suds over on the washing machine over there.” Tamatoa, of course, didn’t respond the way he requested. Or did he?

(to be continued)

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00300416

“You must love me exactly as I love you!”

And so we’ve returned to Black Lake in a very unexpected way through Misty and her partially submerged beau, soon to be husband (??); circled back around. We have similar choices that we did before here, then. Return to Paper Soap from Paperweight using the resonant keyword Paper? A painter paints, a complainer complains. I’m no painter and I’m no complainer. I can go with the flow, even if it doesn’t involve oiling it up and applying to canvas. Joey Avatar knows how comfortable canvas feels now (!). I don’t need to break a couple of nails to understand, but I do need to hammer a couple. In our fence. I’m looking out our Real Life window now. So many people outside, though. If only they would go away for at least that one special day of the year. Hmm.

And I still have a foothold in Paper-Soap, with transfigured Moes’ pink welcome mat seen here back in the sewer tunnels behind sitting old Keith B. I always seem to have to brighten up the place considerably with “Phototools – Lo Gun Light” sky to snap a proper enough picture. But the dark, conjoined sims seems very important still — moving down the road. Photo-novel 31 should start just after Christmas or around the New Year. Omicron’s moving in from the north west east south too. Soon we’ll be surrounded on all sides, blocked in. I need to keep my options open. I’ve had a good run at my job. I’m saying goodbye to the school as a whole, wrapping things up. I know where my mentors are, the painterly ones, the ones that draw as well, were able to bridge the gap between the two disciplines, like Paul Clay. I was relaying to a student I was working with the other day about not liking clay, as in pottery. Foundation classes were cool, but when I moved on to the specialty courses, like pottery, like *weaving* — not a weaver — I lost interest. I dropped out. I returned 6 years later under the good graces of the college, completed my art degree. But, as stated, I’m not a painter, even thought that was my declared emphasis. Never was. I’m not a Warren. I’m not a Dennis.

But what do I have instead? A canvas true, if a map can be considered as such. It’s the world as a whole but it’s very focused in on our US of A. And within that US of A: Iowa. Ringgold County, even — just one county. And at the center of that county: a hypercube; there can be no doubt. You look inside the translucent layers, like paper, and see the bottom writing on the walls. Everywhere.

We continue…

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marina (new killer star)

He figured this was his boat since he had the keys. And the Maebaleia battle flag. Was he finally heading home, away from *here*? He needed to get off this island at least. He knew that. But where? So many ports of call on this aptly named continent of Nautilus. He might as well be a submarine and attack it from the rear. But he was a woman’s man, he recalls. He had a sister.

She let him go. She’d read in the script she was suppose to do this but he didn’t know that, not quite yet. He’d received the pink April copy that morning in the post and she’d already gotten the July blue, with white between them. He wasn’t even in-between, as if stuck on one side of a flag. At least he wasn’t sitting in back and it flapping and slapping him, like poor Zach Black, still without his Jazz Attack, also thanks to Fern. Fern was *real* smart if you didn’t get that part, that role. Because you probably couldn’t. I’d give it at least a 145 to comprehend and play accurately. Sarah I think was the actor’s name, with Jody playing Marilyn, a somewhat lesser challenge. But that was all a long time ago now. I was a different person, a mere child in comparison.

The old and white man had a task, he knew this. To get the hell out of Dodge. West might be best since East is least. Little did he know that Fern Stalin would be waiting for him there as well.

(to be continued)

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a state of being timeless

“Avalon,” he said without turning, remaining old and gray instead of black and white. The Room would always be his center, another Box come to think of it. Trapped.

“Yeah,” ditzy blonde Marilyn says back to him, still cleaning that glass, almost wearing it out like with sandpaper now. She should think of another task to perform. She’s stuck as if in a rut. But at least her mouth, her *mind* is still working forward. As well as backwards. “Some say Our Second Lyfe started here — in Dex — instead of Babylon.”

“Whore of Babylon,” he responded. “There *is* no Whore of Babylon.” He should know since he was there. “It’s all… make-believe.” He said it with disgust, she thought. He’s bitter about something else. A hidden truth. He could have done the deed as well as young Travis, she gleaned. If circumstances were different. She turned.

He assumed the position of a man, she a woman.

“You know, I had a sister once,” he started his confession on that late April day on the 4th of July.

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Old and White

The wheels in his mind kept spinning. I’m in Dex, he thought rapidly. But in olden days this island, this *town*, was named Avalon according to that map over there on the wall, not too far from (the Isle of) Babylon but also: not too close. A gap between, but Smaller Water instead of Bigger Water. He had to prepare. The past meets the future and it’s not pretty. Pink (or red) does not bode well for a man. He’d been tested. Red it was. The lipstick remained. He could not remove it now, however hard he tried.

“Try again,” W. urged from the side, still just out of sight, of reach. He could only talk to her as if via phone.

She remained black and white as she twirled and whirled, like a rotisserie chicken in the Wild West of Nautilus, he believed, beyond the reach of phone. Hurry up, he thought, rid of the lipstick for now but not for long. This was a battle of Madam and I’m Adam. He turns.

At least Marilyn is here. Sing us that national anthem again, dearest.

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