🎵If you want to get to heaven🎵
🎵You got to raise a little hell🎵
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0516, GTA
“I still have a home on Nautilus. It was a retirement gift — very pretty there. Lots of vegetation.”
Dr. Rabbid Baumbeer, still dealing primarily with bodily fluids but hoping to graduate to full blown psychiatry soon, looked at his e-machine and gauged this was true. “Describe… gift,” he decided to say.
It was the end of 31 and it was the end, period. March 1 of last year, 12:01 AM we’ll say. Eddie D’Aigle, who sometimes preferred D’Aigle, Eddie, especially if he was traveling in the Orient, had just retired from the private sector of the records management business, having made his fortune archiving the files of rock stars Ozzie Osbourne, Ozmo Daredevils, and the like. His last blog article for the latter, the last he did overall, was about how the song “Jackie Blue” was changed from “Jackie Pink,” which drew the attention of Pink, Marsha, Krakow. He had the evidence before him as he wrote: the altered lyrics, everything. “It was suppose to be about a man who peddled drugs during the day while working nights as a bartender, a very Dada affair,” he reinforced to her in a reply email, then, seeing her avid interest, invited her up to [Blue Mountain] to look at the actual, revised lyrics herself. “Come with your driver’s license or a birth certificate,” he said, “and our staff will bring the whole box out to you; I’ll put it on reserve and not reshelve. You can look at one file at a time, and just mark what you want copied with green (START) and red (STOP) paper we’ll provide.” She ended up photocopying the whole box. New 3d scanner the office just purchased did the trick in a 10th the time it would have taken the old fashioned way. Marsha’s, in fact, was the first request accomplished using that method. Boxy Marsha, she went down in office legend as. Prototype. Especially since Eddie, on his last day of work, helped her tote the (wrong?) box to her still hot pink car, soon to change to yellow. Thanks to what was inside. In many ways, she became the box she requested, a black and white facsimile of herself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0611, Blue Mountain, Nautilus, Omega, Retirement Islands, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island, Wild West
“I predict, Eddie, her Edward, that right in this seat Mr. Coy will appear soon and make a deal. I saw it–”
“Yeah yeah yeah, in your cards. Which apparently *I’ll* never see again.”
“*Unless…” Golden Goddess Nas pitched. 2nd date. More karma to pay but it might be worth it. Eddie looks down at lovely Marsha “Pink” Krakow, still singing away on the lime green karaoke stage inside. “Crazy Train” now, another crowd favorite since Osbourne is a local hero. Then just afterwards, her signature song. “Jackie Pink,” fully changed back to the original by this point. Her prison sentence is over. Golden Goddess speaks again as if for her.
“Are we on? Are we good to go?” “Crazy Train” was over. The belt comes off.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0602, Omega, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island, Utah
When Marsha “Pink” Krakow returned to what she knew was her true home now, Big Sandy on the oldest Bellissaria continent, her Mother was waiting. With a big surprise. “I bought this for you,” she said to her shocked daughter after she arrived, indicating the trailer. “Pink, you see, or as close as I could get to that hot variation you prefer.” Edward, her Eddie, was already blackening his patented vegetable stew dogs on what Wheeler told him was his new grill. He was already sold.
“Oh. And that pink scooter you’re standing beside! What do you think?”
Marsha was thinking of *price*, not necessarily money price but emotional price. And here it comes.
“I can see you’re speechless, dearest. Come sit beside me and we’ll talk.” Wheeler patted the lounging couch across from her and then pulled out an apple to eat. “Price?” Marsha wanted to ask her so bad. “Price price price?” And here it comes.
“Have you talked to Serenity since you’ve been here (chomp, chew chew chew)? Never mind, dear, I know you have. You told her about Shelley, my *actual* daughter.”
“*I’m* your daughter,” she wanted to protest at this point, but knew it technically wasn’t true — in a way. Shelley provided the body and added a lot to the personality as well. But Brown was also there inside. Conscience? Mere gestures? She wasn’t quite sure yet about the so-called 3rd component, the last of a trilogy. And then herself up front and on top of course, resurrected from what happened in photo-novel 19 that she doesn’t like to think about a lot. Cook for the Ozmo Devils. Dead in the head in bed like Jed. “Why didn’t you tell me about Serenity?” she actually said aloud. “That she wasn’t her cousin but her *wife*?”
“Oh it’s just one of those things that slips the mind (chomp; chew, chew, chew). Lots of important stuff going on up there,” and here she pauses in her apple eating to tap on her forehead. “I’m still the mayor of that damn Meat City and its dominant male energy. *I’m* more male than them, despite the body, the femininity,” she decided to put it. Marsha understood. Her mother had to put the town council (etc.) in their place or they’d gain the upper hand again, the blame misogynists. Dominant sex, *pheh*. Marsha had to do the same with her Eddie in a lesser way. It’s just how men are raised in our society in part, she figured. So she didn’t blame him *all* that much for his own, lesser brand of the disease of the mind.
Marsha had to ask this next”: “W-why, then, oh why… did you put me in prison? Turn me into a *doll* Feed me those drugs through my head to think that I *wasn’t* in prison but next door, singing karaoke until the wee hours of the night? With the fake doll looking on?”
“Rockaway Beach?” Wheeler started her answer, citing the name of the first place which was also its location. “Kenzie’s Korner in Kuradov?” she said the same about the second. Now the circumstances.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0501, Bellisaria, Sandfly
AND she’s started smoking pot. That’ll teach the Powers that Be, she thought while finally exhaling the wicked weed and then feeling the Devil pull her heart out through her belly button. All Orange, she thinks. “All Orange!” she cries, looking at the thing wriggling and writhing in front of her like a Red Incubus Baby. RIB she decided to call it on the spot as it was dropped to the ground and walked away on its own energy. Into the night — it would always be there from now on, she knew. Waiting…
There it is again and 10 times larger!
—–
He liked this particular apt. because he could keep an eye on Newton’s boat out in the harbour, a sim-skipper. He knew that if the unique ship was gone for any length of time, then it could come back with an outsider, which might be bad, really bad. He had too much invested here in this Gaston, formerly Mimosa. Pot was basically free, Philip’s pills were plentiful. It was perfect for the criminal duo. Shady dealings all around. Laggy but — small price to pay. And now he had Hucka. But did he really? She didn’t have the best reaction to that pot he provided her night before last, he continued to ponder. And she didn’t call last night like she promised.
She could figure a way to get out which would also be bad, leave a potential trail for others to follow, both out *and* in. He’ll have to review with her the collage and the pushing and the arrival at the jail. Casey One Hole, PHEH. He’s still around too, he knew.
“Marion, I’m *bored*. Let’s go do some drugs or something. Sex, drugs, rock–”
“Don’t say it,” Marion cut him off. Strum and Drum was playing one last time at the Rhino tonight and Hucka D. hadn’t called about a potential date. And it was protocol in this Sadie Hawkins kind of town for her to do so, females rolling the dice instead of the men in affairs of the heart. But… she said her heart was stolen over at the pool after she finished off his joint. Maybe he should have warned her about the potency, and that he’d been smoking so long that it took a powerful strain to do anything for him any more. Maybe — he looked over — maybe he was stuck with Philip after all.
“Okay,” he said. “But I still would like to drop by the concert sometime.”
“Will Levon be there?” the professional pill popper on the couch asked.
“You bet he will.” And he asked him to keep an eye out for Hucka too and to call if he sees or hears anything, he thought privately. She *did* leave the first part of the gig for a while the other night, the Ketchup Tom composed half which involved a lot of noise, she said afterwards. But she seemed to enjoy the transfigured “Jackie Blue” enough to end; asked a lot of questions about its origin and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and then the mountain they were named after. “Big Sandy,” she said at one time about the current band. “They said they were from Big Sandy.”
“Yeah?” Marion said back. “It’s a place. People have to come from places and go to other places,” he said matter of factly, adding a smile.
“There’s a boat out in the harbour there,” she then said, which immediately made him think of Newton’s boat but which turned out to be much larger. And more complicated.
“3 sims?!” he cried when she told him the dimensions of the thing. An internal sim-skipper, he dwelled about afterwards, complete unto itself. *Danger-ous*. But also completely fascinating.
“Philip?” he said in the present, hatching a new idea. “How would you like it if I bought us 2 golden tickets to visit the mainland?” *Or*, he then thought… hmm, how *exactly* did *Strum and Drum* get here, hmph? He knew about the Volkswagen Bug of course; it was still parked half on the sidewalk outside the club. But… it couldn’t just *come over* by itself from the mainland. Not without some kind of magical aid.
Daffy Duck had just blown up Uncle Scrooge with a rigged 100 dollar bill. “Say what?” Philip said, not breaking his stare from the TV and the blackened duck, suddenly realizing he was hungry.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0412, Gaston+
“Alright, alright. I’ll go over and talk to him. Just stop the screaming.”
Ozzie Osbourne walked out of Gaston’s Rhino Club with more information than when he came in. He had to go back to Meat City to perform. Wise if reluctant spiritual advisor Hucka Doobie told him why. Blocked!
Changing its color from gold to silver after going through the Mimosa portal, the VW bug pulled up on the sidewalk just outside. They spotted Osbourne and Osbourne spotted them but he just kept on walking. He had no need to talk to ones luckier than him. “A gig!” Ketchup Tom messaged Marsha “Pink” Krakow back in Big Sandy, who drove her car to get there since the punk was car-less, not even a drift conquering dune buggy to his name. The small vehicle was jammed full of guitars, speakers, drums, microphones, so on, with barely enough room left over for driver and passenger. They were talking all the time over of stardom and success and making it big. The sight of Ozzie Osbourne exiting the bar doubled this down.
—–
The noise of the resulting gig was too much for Hucka Doobie, who moved outside to stare at the bug they came in, wondering if it was the same she’d seen in (Meat City?) behind the strip mall. The mayor’s daughter, she recalled, busted for drugs and imprisoned in Rockaway Beach Prison for, what was it, 40 days? Or maybe 40 years? Anyway, they turned her into a doll and that was that so this couldn’t be the same gal. Could it? Hucka Doobie ponders possibilities and impossibilities while listening to the end of “Fire Ants,” transitioned expertly into the follow up but lesser hit “Water Uncles.” Then Marsha’s part of the gig kicked in, starting with a cover of “I will Survive” by 70s pop star artist Gloria Gaynor. Relieved the noise had died down, Hucka Doobie breaks her stare from the car and heads inside again. She needed to find out the truth (“Rockaway Beach” now). She’d made way for these up and comers by telling one of the biggest stars on the planet that his stint was cancelled here in Gaston — just walked out, huffing and puffing, blown away that some small fry, backwater place could do this to him (“Crazy Train”). And he was only here as a favor to an old friend, another “Oz” mate. A Daredevil some called him. Death of a cook. The gig was suppose to be for her. And, turned out, it was (transfigured “Jackie Blue”).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0410, Gaston+, Omega, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
So unable to do so herself because she was underaged and also didn’t have a payment record on file with the Lab, Marsha “Pink” Krakow had to take her place on the lime green karaoke stage of Kenzie’s Korner in Kuradov while she watched as best she could from outside. Marsha tried to sing to her as much as possible through the window, feeling sorry for the self proclaimed war scarred doll-girl. She warmed up with “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, a crowd favorite from the 70s. Then it was on to “Rockaway Beach” by The Ramones from about the same time period — she was getting closer. Then Ozzie Ozbourne’s “Crazy Train” took her all the way home to “Jackie Blue” by another “Oz” act, Ozark Mountain Daredevils in that case. She knew she was singing all about herself now, like a canary. Canary in a mine? No, just canary, she realized. “Oooo hoo hoo, Jackie Blue,” she belted out the first line like there was no tomorrow. Which there wasn’t.
She’d never left her doll cage. Drugged up by the implant in her head to believe she was free again and her imprisoner was her friend, not fiend. *They* recorded it all.
And then the next night she went down the stairs that didn’t exist and out of the neighboring Rockaway Beach prison and did the same. Over and over and over. Slowly, gradually, the Ozmo Daredevils song lyrics began to change; take their true form. She was beginning to remember. They almost had the final original version.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0409, Omega, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
When she got back from her trip to the Pleiades which wasn’t the Pleiades, Mrs. Ordinary found everything around her to be mundane, just *blah*. Sand sand sand from north to south in this here Big Sandy she called home, yellow, long and boring. She needed to spice up her life with a bit of extra, like she had while aboard the USS Galaxy, certainly not boring atall, although they had to get through that one giant meteor in the way by boring through it via a lasered out hole. Definitely excitement there!
She put down her boring book about Atlantis, Easter Island and such and rang up neighbor Marsha “Pink” Krakow, seeing if she wanted to get together for some tea, something different for her day. She’d heard of a tiny cafe opening up in Pugwash just across the Big Channel. She checked before she called — open at 7, the website stated. 7:05am now. Just in time for an early breakfast too since she saw they had flapjacks available, her favorite.
Marsha beside her Eddie in bed yawned before answering her cell phone. First thought: Mom has the shingles again and I have to come down and take care of her. But she checked the number before swiping. Unknown, the indicator indicated. Relief. She swiped.
“Hello, Marsha? It’s Bethany, er, Ginger. Listen, just wondering if you wanted to catch an early breakfast at that new place just across the Big Channel. I checked: open at 7. Seats are limited so figured I’d call now to see if you’re up for it.”
Marsha yawned again, glanced over at her Sleeping Beauty comfortably snoozing away, and said, “Sure. Just give me 15 minutes to change and I’ll meet you there.” She needed a friend to talk to as well. Life, Second or not, was getting more and more complicated, what with Ketchup Tom and now Serenity Lane entering the picture in this here section.
—–
“Oh the light’s just beautiful here. Isn’t it beautiful?” Different* from where I live, she ponders, looking up into the sky to see if she can spot the Pleiades before the harsh sun washes all the night time away. No luck.
“Sure thing, er, Ginger.” Was it Ginger? Marsha “Pink” Krakow still wasn’t sure. They had finished their flapjacks, 1 apiece since both were on some kind of diets. Look at her, Marsha was thinking prior to ordering; so trim! But Mrs. Ordinary was thinking the same thing about Marsha. And so the one flapjack apiece, easy on the syrup. Then afterwards, not tea but rum, Mrs. Ordinary decided, which Marsha went along with. Why not? She could sober up on whatever little drunkenness occurred before Eddie even stirs out of his slumber, 12 o’clock being the earliest he rises since his early retirement in March of last year. Lots of money in records management outside the public sector. And he worked for the rock industry, Ozmo Daredevils, Ozzie Osbourne and the like. For the former, he chronicled how “Jackie Pink” turned into “Jackie Blue” in the company blog, which brought him to the attention of curious Marsha wondering about her own “Pink” name and how it came to be. Through it she learned that boys and girls use to be dressed in pink and blue respectively back in the 50s 30s instead of visa versa. And so it began.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0315, Bellisaria, Sandfly
She was working on her laptop now, Eddie still around, still enjoying the view of the ocean here while sipping on his 3rd slurpee of the day, a drink provided free of charge by the wooden lounger he sat upon. Maybe he shouldn’t go back either.
He pondered freedom in general while lounging and sipping. No payment for land, yet still with the girl of his, I suppose, dreams, at least in a virtual sense. And Edward coming into town as well, a needed sounding board. He can stop using local bartender Nas for that purpose, he guessed. Which would eliminate some other temptations. Meat City, pheh, he thinks. What has Karma brought me here? He thinks of its actual name. Kama, pretty close to karma, probably close enough to count. Edward, though. He must go back for Edward, start pretending they have a relationship beyond cousinship. He forces himself into an animation where he sits down his slurpee on the table between them. He caught a glimpse of what she was working on. The blog. *This* blog. It sort of spooked him. So much so that he decided not to ask about it. Something about Ozark Mountain, he gleaned, although he didn’t see the Daredevils part to end this time. Something else instead. Anyway he needed to get back and start cooking — grilling — since Ginger wouldn’t be around for that any longer. Been wanting to try out the new grill George gave him anyway.
“I should go,” he said, standing up.
“Do you have to?” she responded.
“Yep. I suppose. I have to get back for Edward.”
“Oh. All right. If you must.”
“You’ll be okay out here.”
“I know. I’ll keep the suit on; I’ll remember soon enough.”
But she didn’t, too tempted by the Sun that one fine day in August’s May not far away atall. And she paid that visit to Eddie and Edward to give them a piece of her mind, “borrowing” her mother’s car which was then spotted by the Chief of Police (trapped!). It was all falling down like a house full of cards. But first things first…
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0211, Omega, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island
George left town shortly after that, having been paid a handsome sum by the mayor’s office for his services. Ted took over his forman’s job unsurprisingly but already had his eyes on a position a bit higher up in the salt mine, maybe that one currently occupied by Perchy Jeff. George gave his grill to Eddie as a parting gift, thus the start of the all important hobby that got him hooked up with Wanda Marsha Ginger in the first place. Back there at the beginning of this section, over in Big Sandy on the old Bellissaria continent where he dug out her stuck VW. We’ll return there soon. First things first, though.
“How good a listener are you, Nas?” he asked after she poured his drink, a frosty beer with a pinch of root in it, ginger like his girl. He was down in the local dive bar below the apartment. Back in the Broadwater section of town, off the grid for sure since the roads only go about 2/3rds the way ’round the square place.
“Good as you wish, tee hee. What do you have in mind? Big Boy?”
“No, nothing like that,” Eddie waved off the suggestion, still happy at home of course. “I need something more like a sounding board. To air my thoughts. Old Man George split town, you see. I could bounce stuff off him like it was rubber.”
“I’m a good bouncer,” she tried again, eager for a trick and a tail herself.
He reached over and grabbed the handle on his beer, took a sip. “Listen, you’ve been here a pretty long time. Just like George. I mean, before he left and all.”
“5 years,” she said. “Going on 9.” She knew the numbers didn’t add up but neither did time here.
“Do you recall… the Ozark Mtn. Daredevils? They had a cook who died. Got murdered actually.” He of course didn’t add, “Ginger thinks she’s this cook.” Not yet. Maybe after a couple of root laced beers, maybe 5-9.
Nas thinks back, tries to remember. “Lot of rock bands come through here,” she excused her memory. “Ozzie Osbourne played over at the beach that has his name now in its honor (for instance).”
“Didn’t know that,” Eddie replied to this, contemplating a possible connection between the two. “Is that where he ate the bat?”
“No that was up in the real world somewhere. As virtual as the act sounds, I know. But: real.”
“Hmm.” Eddie wasn’t so sure about that. Nor the reality of the Ozmo Devils being in Meat City. 4th. He remembers Golden (psychic) telling him about the 4th. Pay attention to it, she said. Look for it; be aware of it. Gold itself.
“The glam rocker Donovan was another act that came through,” Nas recalled, trying to be as helpful as possible, stay on Eddie’s good side. Because she still had designs. Despite his seeming happiness. Events could turn, she knew. And she could be waiting in the wings. “But they corrupted the spelling when a sim was also named for him. Donathan it became, a typist’s error at the then mayor’s office. Ray Blueberry, a Marshian from up in Big Swamp. Didn’t last long after that. Lot’s of glam rock fans around here. Bowie could come down from his Black Death Star and be a god of this place if he wished.”
Yes, thought Eddie. Nas the bartender will be helpful. Likes to talk. Seems pretty smart. He’ll overlook the sluttiness. He won’t tumble for another. Surely Ginger will come around. Or whatever her name was, he ends.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0040, 0209, Omega, Urbane Blue/Fishers Island