00330501
“Two toy avatars, one advanced — novel 8 — beyond his origins to become truly human and all the advantages and disadvantages involved. The other remained a base, a root. No evolution, for good or bad. This is of course our Grassy.”
“Who I’ve banned from The Table.” She looks around, sees Newt beside her, observes Baker Bloch across from her. “I love Grassy like a green son…”
“I know, I remember — novel 8 as well.”
“But the blue moved on, *up* to me. My height and beyond. Grassy is so small, especially if you take away his outer, delicious, candy coated shell.”
“Like a turtle,” Baker Bloch added.
“He has Hawaiian shorts. Embarrassing, actually.”
“He’s so sweet (though).” Baker makes a pouty face. “Reconsider?”
Wheeler reaches back into her own refrigerator to match Baker Bloch’s for more ice for her drink — a Russian Roulette I believe, courtesy of the ever inventive Marty, way back in ’65 for this one I recollect, along with an embryonic version of “Back in the USSR,” which had just been playing actually. Maybe prompted Wheeler to make the drink in the first place — most likely did as I think of it. I’m catching up (with red).
Plop plop. “No.”
the problem with toys (whiches)
“Let’s split this crazytown,” said Red to his cousin Grassy as they crossed the tracks and drove away from the scene…
… at the same time they just arrived.
“Whatup guys?” the amalgamation of figures in the center said in greeting, not knowing the difference.
—–
“No I’m not putting up with that,” she doubled down, remembering the spectacle from the future.
“(The situation will) clear up; get better,” countered Baker. “First try.” After a pause: “We could simply *ask* Grassy about it.”
Wheeler was thinking the same thing. Red was about to change over to green.
—–
“Aloha!” he said, garish Hawaiian shorts thankfully hidden by the table. He immediately starts staring at the book, the hand.
“Welcome back Grassy,” relented Wheeler. She looks over at Baker. She knew she would be called Flip at these meetings from now on as compensation. Or win a wrestling trip to fabled Muff-Birmingham in the far corners of space, whichever door she so chooses. She opens the door of the refrigerator to see which one.
“Coke, Grassy?” she called over while grabbing, but Grassy was no longer there. Sprite instead.
Several of them, in fact. “Here we are!” said the seeming leader of the three.
Land o’ TILE (telescope)
“I rest my fingers lightly against the bird house while peering inside.
“A red appears, with blue and yellow in background.
“Earlier I had posed on green.
“And that’s my report for today, Baker Bloch. Can I go now? Borneo awaits.”
“Sure.”
on a line 04
Three new toys in [insert name] as of today, 6 legged blue-green horsie in center. Didn’t realize they lined up until I stood back and took a gander at the whole.
And boy did *these* kind of holes get me in trouble. Still unknown type of hissing creature! But I escaped to tell the tale. Luckily I didn’t come directly face to face with ’em.
Best guess right now: an owl or a possum, possibly a badger. Too large of a hiss for a snake. Not growly enough for a mountain lion or any other type of wild cat.
I’ll be quarantining off these tiny fissure caves until further notice. Maybe dead of winter I can revisit. My Mt. Tom is certainly holding surprises (!). Will go back today and take a couple of more toys with me for the fledgling rock village. Report soon…
Table Room (cutting down to size)
“Take *that*… *pixy*. Think you can come onto *my* territory and steal –”
“What’s ya doing?” Baker Bloch walking in. Wheeler thought he was out exploring Nautilus this afternoon per usual. No: staying home instead; hanging out in another tower of the castle, unseen until now. “Rain,” he rationalized to Wheeler after catching her by surprise. Pixy! He makes a note to check that out later. “In the forecast all day,” he says without sitting. Better to stand at this awkward moment for a quicker escape.
“And the rumblings, yeah,” she said, also seeing the occasional lightning in the air and trying to keep confidence in her voice. A rare off day for Our Second Lyfe. She shouldn’t have taken the risk. Now she has to explain.
“Sooo. Who’s this again? Pixley was it (internal snicker)?”
—-
A *rival*, he pondered later, returning to his tower-for-the-day. Something to do with Greenleaf, she said. The rock village. Pretty eyes, though. And I guess the rest was built around that. Nice something else as well. Said she came from a magical place called Pettry Bottom, not far from Red Dragon that is the same as Blue Pennant in the past. Must have something to do with Helen, then. And 3.16, she said. The *others* are gaining power. What *others*?
“I took her over to smaller Hooterville out of the big city glare and then beat the pulp out of her,” she also excused herself, buying into my joke and eating an orange. Hmmm.
In retrospect I think of Baker Blinker and what happened to her via Karoz, history sort of repeating itself.
Wheeler remains a force to be reckoned with. “Pixley” knows that now. Might as well pit a top-of-her-game Tina Louise against a wannabe Mary Ann Summers. Relevant.
another small toy influx to Aloha (Aloha?)… and more
A new Red — or is it the same as the old Red — offers Grassy Noll a tempting present (*the* present?) to lure him back across the tracks and into the village proper. If only he could get his dad gum car turned around (wrestle, tussle).
Cpt. Americus at a junction is saying, “Peace for all. Today is a special day. Make up. Rejoin the flock that is your tribe, Grassy Fitzgerald Noll.” When Americus uses the middle names, you know he’s totally serial about something. Special day it is. He’s all about beginnings, middles, ends. Because the latter is coming and he well knows it. “Celebrate while we can!” he could also say this day in a month beyond May. “Soon there will be no crossing the line, crossing the tracks. We will be where we’re suppose to be in time and that is that.”
More drama on my Mt. Tom. Apparently this camp site was burned badly enough to be evacuated. A rug appears to have caught on fire. Whether accident or on purpose is a larger question. Are there nefarious agents working on this high hill on the edge of the town I live in, maybe the actual owners of the land? Because this site is well across the line from legal into illegal. “No trespassing!” the perpetrator might have shouted as the flames did their dastardly deed.
Another camp site further down the same ridge with rather elaborate stone work. Suspiciously so, perhaps. Rock can’t be burned, you’ll note.
balls
I’m never going to understand this world, Edward Daigle thought while running around a different continent tonight. The forbidden one. The pixy fairy in the water heard.
“Blue,” she gurgled while staring at the glowing orb before her eyes, and then blew on it even harder.
00330508
She came across him studying the one fully in Corrigan and not split between that sim and Pixy (Pixy!). Eddy and his blue ball, she thought. He’s finally found it.
“So Eddy knows you’re here,” he asked after she spoke a while. His Eddy, her Edward.
“Yeah. Met him recently. We’ve been…”
“… traveling. Me too. Stayed in a place over on the Jeogeot continent called Towerboro — believe it was part of now extinct Middletown at one time.”
“Cool.” Of course everyone had heard of Middletown. It was taught in all the schools, young middle old alike. Middletown was legendary, like Atlantis.
“Interesting people,” he continued. “A woman who plays nifty tricks with cards for one,” he says, the memory of that night and her talent with fingers producing a smile on his (one pink) lips. “And then another person, a guy, who was psychic, who was always pointing at something and predicting things that were going to happen. The two knew each other.” He turned to face his 3rd cousin, 1 in a set of 3 and not a 1st cousin twice more removed; I can say this fairly confidently because they were about the same age. “And he went by different names, first Kactus, then Donald, then the last… the last…” He searches his memory for the name that Tessie then provides for him.
“Freddie,” she said. Remarkably, she had had her own encounter with him during a recent trip to Dub’s Jungle (or thereabouts), and from what Edward, her Eddy, described it must have been the same person. Pointing, predicting, like an Oracle. “‘Blackbart’, he said, indicating an empty space in the sea that soon was filled with a flying boat, a sporty one as far away from a sailboat as you could possibly get.”
“‘Blackjack’ for me.” Her Edward became the same as our Edward, identical cousins all around.
“Ever heard of the expression, ‘peeling a lemon’?” she then asked everyone involved.
in a name
Arthur Kill teleported over to Monty and the former location of his new-ish girlfriend Tessa’s motel, now abandoned or “razed” as she lastly put it. Thus the need for her castle, she said, more lies but twisted ones with knots of truth along the way. No indication of the previous owner’s name he was looking for in the land description, pheh. He decides he needs to kill someone later today to let off steam from this failure, perhaps that butcher over in nearby Bouncer who chose to bed down with a prostitute for a wife. Fits his (new-ish) code, Blue Rose style.
But then, below him in a corner of the parcel: a *blue ball*. Success? Will the former owner’s true name be revealed through this trace left behind.
When he flies down to its seeming location in the corner of the abandoned land he was investigating: nothing, though. Then he sees it again, one parcel over and considerably tinier. Impossibility!
That’s when he realized it was attached to *him*. “Radar,” he cussed, which is the same thing both backwards and forwards. Doesn’t matter where he goes, there he is. DELETE Not any more. But who had been tracking him in the meantime? Tessa? Butcher? Prostitute/wife even? Better get back to hq (castle) and make his report. Funny that the object was also owned by someone named simply “castle” according to the description. Probably a connection, then, he thought. But he didn’t want to follow that lead too far, didn’t want to color his report until he could catchup with the proceedings. He also decides to temporarily delete the blue rose in his lapel just in case. He can always retrieve it from his inventory later. Nope, he then thinks. Better delete it from there as well. I’ll ask [delete name] for another one. Good ol’ [delete name], he thinks, originator of the [delete name] team that investigates [delete actions]. He’s been meaning to [delete action] him as well. This will give him the chance — two birds with one stone, ha — after he gets the object he wants. Not *needs*: *wants*.”
(to be continued)
Aloha (Aloha?) and thereabouts
Empty throne. Note the also newly placed female green Mmmmmm to its right, controversial in the news recently for so-called “reverse sassification.”
Who lives here?
Remarkably, I saw a garter snake sunning itself between these 2 spoons in the dirt today at nearby what-I-call Lineboro (photo from about 2 weeks ago).
I know this fellow!
Earlier I had posed on green.
“You saw me today, Baker Bloch. No mistake.”
Baker looked across the table at Wheeler, whose face then changed. “Am Iiiii nothiinngggg?”
—–
This was in a collage called “Moon Landing”, of course deleted now from virtual reality since Collagesity is gone.
And then in a nearby collage of the former Power Tower gallery called “Victory”.
And, in fact, another one from the same series (Lis), facing backwards this time (“Cereal Characters”).
https://bakerbloch.com/collages/gilatona-lis-03/
Wheeler, herself now facing the other way, changed back. “Just so you’ll know I’m around,” she explained the transformation. “Now (slow turn). About that hissing…”
Thirteenville 02
How could this video be 4:44 by accident?
Local psychic (some say) and kook (most say) Kactus/Donald/Freddie seems to hold the answer.
“Sweep,” he said as “Heathen” (demo) kept playing on the turntable with Ziggy style David Bowie looking on from a poster. And they did. Almost.
After posting the best record in the NBA, Moses Malone predicted on this day in 1983 that the Philadephia 76ers would sweep their way to the championship when he declared “Fo’ Fo’ Fo’” prior to the start of the playoffs.
Of course, the 76ers nearly delivered on his prediction. They posted a 12-1 record en route to defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals to win the championship. The lone loss occurred in the Eastern Conference finals when the Milwaukee Bucks defeated them in Game 5.
00330513
So here we are, Charlotte. Back at the beginning. Anything different you notice?
“Shhh,” Charlotte requested. “Someone’s fading in.”
Hey, where’d *he* come from, thinks observing Orilia from the bar, always aware of the comings and goings of customers. But this was no ordinary man. Instead: cartoonist, or so they assumed.
He then produced one of the latest from his pocket, unfolding it before their eyes.
“Jem,” Charlotte uttered, recognizing the inspiration.
“Yes?” Jim answered, not knowing if she was referring to one or the other. He then produced another from the other pocket, likewise unfolding.
“Jem,” stated Charlotte more firmly, pointing this time.
Jim understood. Jim L. Brown, with the L standing for nothing. At least that’s always what his parents told him. Actually we know it stands for the number 12, as in 4+4+4. “You… knew her?”
“Know,” says Edward Daigle, chipping in. “We know her.” She’s not dead… yet, he thinks with malice. His stern stare matches Charlotte’s. This was *wrong*. “Nice trick, by the way,” he said of Jim L. Brown’s manifesting act. Magician as well, they assumed. Cartoonist and magician: hand in hand. A combination bourne in the depths of hell itself, they also quickly decided.
Seeing the loathing, he scrambles to explain himself. “You don’t understand, people. I’m here to *help*. I don’t like this either. *John* is to blame, not me.”
Edward’s stare turns toward Charlotte and visa versa. “Twins?” they utter simultaneously to each other.
(to be continued)
Lapara
“Good,” he exclaimed, jumping out of the teleport hammock. “I’m where I’m suppose to be. Rainbow Falls.”
He turns, he walks. “Now to find Little Tonshi Ashokan.”
00330515
“TILE, baby. Look! You were *right*. At the marketplace… just like you said.”
“Yeah, me *big* now. 12.” She kept her grin while opening her hands to display 10 fingers and then not flashing the additional, needed 2 to complete. Psychic, if not the brightest.
“You sure are, Pumpkin,” Cloris Bleachman said, trying to overlook the miscounting; scrub it from her mind. Perhaps 12 is sometimes 10 in this new math they teach at school these days, she rationalized. But not far underneath the fake shiny surface she knew this was a lie. Poor Betty. Good thing she has this psychic ability or else her life would be ruined. And maybe she’ll turn out to be a looker later on, able to use her body for material gain if not her mind. Attract the right kind of husband, Cloris meant here of course. One with green in his pockets.
“See here?” she called to gain her child’s attention again. “Red, blue, yellow… just like you said,” she tested.
Betty stuck out her arms and twirled around in place, reciting back, “red… yellow… *blue*,” with the “blue” making her come to a stop again, arms all wrapped up around her before dropping by her side once more.
“And…?” Cloris encouraged. “Come on, Betty. You said it before. Look here.” She resorted to pointing. “What’s this in this here, er, dish? The last one.”
Getting on her tippy toes and taking a gander, Betty heard a hissy “Am I nothing?” in her head and decided not to answer, also seeing the face. She knew not to cross it unless to mark out of existence. And she wasn’t ready for that. She enjoyed her powers and didn’t want to relinquish them… to him.
(to be continued)
00330516
“What’s in your pocketbook, lady?” she asked innocently of course, being a child and all. No malice or subterfuge involved.
“Oh. Just grown up stuff, darling. You’ll know soon enough.”
“12? I’m 12 now. Will I know (*sniff*) this year?” She wiped her nose of a little bit of snot produced in a sneeze several minutes back now. Must be the flowers, Dafney thought, but in actuality it was her perfume, grown up stuff intruding on more delicate nostrils.
“Oh, maybe not.” Dafney then took in her companion in the moment better. She sat up on her tiny pretend vehicle a little straighter to seem taller, older. She wanted to hear that she would know this year. Dafney obviously relented, seeing that sweet face, those saucer eyes.
“Yes, yes I see it now.” She rubbed the top of her head playfully. “Maturity. Yes I think you’ll know this year.”
“Hurrah!” the kid cried and, happy with the exchange, moved herself and her little piggy car or whatever down to the next available person, interacting with them about what *they* were doing in the moment. It was Sunday and Sandy was at the park. This is what she did. Her mother was just over there, observing. But otherwise letting Sandy do her thing. She had a break and that’s what was important for her. Sundays, blessed Sundays, when she could temporarily pass her loquacious kid onto others.
Dafney pulled out her phone, dialed the numbers that would get her in contact with Redbird, her current flame. Unless it was Bluebird. Heck, she’ll give them both a call/text. But first — a banana. Yellow before red and blue she always said. She hardly ever thinks of green and how that fits into the overall picture. The 4th. She’s not a true Tilist… and she’s grown up, which might mean she’ll never be.
Towerboro > ???
“How much for it, then?”
“I keep telling you Miss.”
“Ms., actually.”
“Ms. That the artwork over there you’re asking about is not for sale. That one right over there.” He points for emphasis, but she doesn’t look. She’d seen enough. She *wanted* it. “Orders of the owner,” he says again.
“How about… I tell you that I created ‘Heathen’? How ’bout that?”
Benny looked Wheeler over better, noticed the forehead especially. “But… you’re a *demo*.”
“Precisely,” she shot back. She smiled that secret smile which told him she knew more than him, and that she was on top now. They set them up and she bowls them over per usual. He had no other choice; couldn’t take a chance that she was actually *the one*. He sighed.
“Very well. Follow me.”
She was ready to flip the hair back to reveal the other eye if needed. But it wasn’t.
“Just down the walk,” he said heading out the door.
Sunklands 