Search Results for 'ask'
-
Search Results
-
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
“Do leaves really talk?” she wondered as the smoke of the herb tea dissipated off the kitchen’s mirror credence. “Let’s see about that,” she continued, carrying the tray with the cup of tea and the scones to the computer room, from where a few oink sounds were beckoning her.
Probably her friends asking for a chat, some random rubbish or the last juicy news about the president’s wife who happened to be visiting in the area. In truth, she wouldn’t have even known, had it not be for her foreign friends. The local neighbours really couldn’t give a fig. That was figuratively speaking of course. The fig trees were already full of green fruits, that if odds were good wouldn’t turn up as half-sodden half-rotten food for snails on the cobblestone pathway this year.She added a zest of fresh lemon to the tea. She liked it bitter. The leaves were starting to settle at the bottom of the cup while she lit up a cigarette, throwing a cursory glance at the tens of messages waiting for her to peruse. Which was more interesting? She could figure out wavy things as feeble and changing as her cigarette’s smoke in between the leaves patterns, as well as in between the lines of haphazard messages from all the contacts. But those she loved the most were the pages she leafed through her books.
Yesterday, she started to do something purely daft, as she liked — a sort of challenge, if you will; or perhaps, a strong repressed desire. Sometimes it takes you years to do things you were thinking about when you were but a child. The moment you allow yourself the pleasure to indulge and overcome the resilient beliefs that it’s something forbidden or insidiously wrong is all the sweeter.
And she was tasting it like a sour sweet, with a touch of forbidden and the zest of excitement. Or more like horseradish. Ooh, does she live the green stuff too. Prickly at first, going up to your nose, and living you crying but begging for more. She makes a note to buy some next week (note that she’ll probably forget).
So what did she do? She took some of her precious books and started to tear up and cut through the pages. A blasphemy almost, for someone like her who revered books. Of course, at first she only took the bad ones, the romantic rubbish and the dog-eared now useless kitchen books, but then realized, what would be the point of gathering new information by assembling random pages cut off from a variety of books, if it wasn’t made from quality ingredients. Well, it surely stands to reason, even though her culinary reason had been on voyage the last twenty years as far as she knew. Anyway. Those leafs were starting to talk better than any bloody tea leaves could.
[link: talking leaves]
Topic: Snowflakes of Tens
“Let’s play a new game, shall we”, Grandpa Wrick said to his hectic and untamable grandchildren.
“We will start a snowflake. Only rule of the game, is that you have to go into the story. You can only insert things inside, and go inwards, and develop what’s already put into place by what’s been in the thread. That’s the only way you can expand the story. By expanding its details.”“How so?” asked India Louise who never paid attention.
“Just like that”, Wrick said, “if what I just told you was the beginning of a snowflake, you could develop things about the place we’re in. Think about it as a spatial story, frozen in time. And use the objects of events put in places by others as triggers and as portals to a more refined and in-depth view of the story.”
“Shall you start with your story Indy?”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“I don’t really know, Godfrey, do I have to have you DO something? I’m not even sure what the word thread means anymore, there seem to be so many threads already everywhere. Can we start a cloth instead?”
“A bloody cloth?” Godfrey asked, scratching his balls. “And I am not scratching my balls, Lizzie, what on earth did you say that for?!”
“No idea, was it a sync?”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“What would you have me do, Lizzie darling?” Godfrey asked slightly puzzled, as he was still longing for a good cup of anything to get him into the present and into the morning.
“You could start a new thread if it would help, I would even reopen the very first one, yes I would do that…” Godfrey continued
“Truth is, things are never quite the same during Finnley’s winterly vacations” He said to the cup that Elizabeth just brought him “She was the one with the brilliant rewrites and scissors magic…”In reply to: Strings of Nines
Evangeline Spiggot sat outside the DDT bosses office, nervously twiddling her pony tail. She had no idea why she’d been summoned, but the tone of the memo was ominous. Eventually her boss, The Right Honourable B. F. Deale, was ready to see her.
“What ho!” said Evangeline, in an effort to sound breezy and efficient.
B.F. Deale glared. “Can you explain yourself?” he asked grimly.
“Why, yes, sir! Sumari belonging, Ilda aligned, politic….”
“I’m talking about DDT!” he shouted. “You’ve been diverting all our disaster damage calls to that ridiculous channeling show!”
“Ah” she replied, “Yes, well, it seemed much more fun.”
“Ah” replied B.F. Deale, momentarily non plussed. When he’d finsished unnecesarily shuffling some papers around on his desk, he continued. “Well, what about the disaster damage team? Hhhm? How are they supposed to, er, deal with disasters if they don’t even know about them?”
Evangeline paused, giving the impression that she was deep in thought. In actual fact, she was deep in no thought, due to the influence of the Dead Dick Tracy channeled messages.
“Well, sir, perhaps this indicates a changing trend towards having more fun and less disasters? Perhaps we could diversify, start our own Fun Department?”
“By George, I think you’re on to something, Spiggot! I will hire someone to investigate this trend.”
“Might I suggest Blithe Gambol, P.I.? Very hightly recommended, so I hear.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
With a temper he may have inherited from his mother (albeit adoptive), the shanghaied boy was proving to be quite a hassle to contend with. Minky was exhausted.
First Yikes (that was the given name of the boy) had cried, pouted, and when gagged enough so that he wouldn’t be heard, he had then refused to walk, and even threatened to hold his breath till he would die. Good luck with this one, had laughed Minky (who had tried it before, but it never worked, and bossy old Messmeerah had promptly kicked him back to work). Actually, he was more annoyed with the refusing to walk kind of tantrum, because that meant he had to trudge with the boy on his back or on a luge, all the way to the evil lair —which wasn’t that evil, by the way, if you managed to focus away from the bloody stained altar…
But there was something more serious he was quite anxious about —besides his bossy and irritable, though everlastingly beauteous, boss. He feared a certain purple dragon was on their trail…
If I were you, came the ruffled sound from the makeshift luge that wouldn’t be the dragon I’d be worried about… Yikes was inwardly beautifully laughing (a trait he may have inherited by osmosis from Arona) thinking of how terrible Mandrake could be if asked to fetch something —a task he was too proud to refuse, and yet that he loathed to accomplish, as it was more fit to a canine than to his subtle feline standard.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Sadness, whilst not being entirely unheard of, was alot more uncommon during the days of the Gardenation. The weather was kindness itself, and everyone, naturally enough, was at liberty to grow whatever they wanted in their gardens. There were no rules and regulations in the Gardenation; it worked on a sort of expanded “pay forward” system, not that there was any pay, or forward thinking for that matter, involved. The genesis of the new collaberation of independant garden nations (although it was actually more of a renaissance, simultaneous time notwithstanding) had come about as a result of the widespread discontent of the populace with all of the political parties, in just about every nation on the planet.
During a particularly wild and raucous bridge tart birthday party (they were always having birthday parties; it was always somebody’s birthday somewhere, after all) the avant garde shift pioneers, as well as the twelve Wisp rats, came up with a plan ~ of sorts. It was more of an imaginative play really.
One of the children had been bemoaning the fact that his friend in another nation could grow whatever he wanted in his garden, and he couldn’t, in his own nation. He asked the bridge tarts if they could create a new nation, from all the independant garden nations all over the world. The bridge tarts decided that it was a fine idea and set about bridging the independant garden nations all over the world together, in energy.
Some of the bridge tarts worked on the connecting links between the garden nations all over the globe, and some of the bridge tarts were instrumental in innovative new gardening ideas. One of them experimented with pulling funny faces at the seedlings, which resulted in bizarre comical blooms. New ideas bounced from one gardenation to another, originating you might say in all gardenations at the same time, so connected were they in energy.
Given sufficient motivation, the Gardenation might have started sooner ~ notwithstanding simultaneous time. Or perhaps they already did.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Peackle dragged his father by the sleeve and showed him the delirious aunt speaking in tongues.
See, dad, I think she got that special direct line with the Eight’s Dimension now…
Oh, I see… a broken Pee saidTheir victory over Mother Blubbit seemed utterly and bitterly Pyrrhic at the moment, considering all the nonsense (damned be the Eighth Dimension) their trip has brought to otherwisely very non-nonsensical Peasland. Would they ever get back to normal again?
He preferred to believe she’d just again overindulged on Peaskol, the famoul (famously foul) alcohol brewed from overripe peas known though all Peasland to clean old clogged pipes. That and smoking tea leaves of course…
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Really, Godfrey, do you think it’s wise to let the children play tea parties down there? Every time I take a peek, it looks like they’re making a hell of a mess,” asked Elizabeth with a worried frown. “Just look at the mess they’re making with that cake. I dread to think what will happen when they ice it.”
“I think part of the problem” Godfrey replied wryly “Is that they iced it before it had finished rising.”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Good thing for Pee and the others deep in the furcano; having no head to start with, they didn’t suffocate from the heinous Mother Blubbit attack.
Nothing of that sort could be said for the adventurer in the Fly Boat, as they sadly had to go back to the heliport, owing to the dreadful weather condition.
“WHAT IN THE NAME OF TARTINUN IS HAPPENING NOW!?” asked in a terribly raucous voice Pee, unable to see his way through the smoke. (Tartinun was the goddess of Peagemite, a holy yeastly paste made of fermented peas, consumed by shamans in order to bridge the gaps to the Great Unhead Aknown).
Unable to withstand the sheer amount of decibels of that raucous cry of despair, Mother Blubbit suddenly drop dead of a spleen failure.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Lilac.
“Whistling for aurora’s, silly” replied Nasturtium, commonly known as Nasty. “We did an energy pooling for auroras to come further south the other day, and I just heard from Petunia that they’ll come if we whistle. So I’m whistling!”
Lilac rolled her eyes and wandered off into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Nasturtium grinned when she heard Lilac whistling. Or was it the kettle?
“You know that bright aurora green?” Nasturtium said as Lilac returned with two steaming mugs of tea. “Well, my TV went that colour yesterday, green all over it was, bright green, just like the green of aurora’s.”
“I suppose you’ll be saying it was a personal visit from the aurora people” replied Lilac with a snort.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Fish” said Raxie when asked what she would like for her Fragmentation Day lunch. Fish synchronicities had been sprouting up all over the plaice, sturgeoning you might say, if you were wanting to include the word burgeoning, burgeoning like the gnarly old grape vines waking up and unleashing green on the chalky hills.
“The synchronicities and connections were like individual blades of grass turning into a meadow, singing and sighing as one in the breezes,” Elizabeth replied.
“Well this is my own personal meadow” Raxie pointed out “These are all mine”.
“Oops”
“Who said that?”
“Was it that guy over there in the bowler hat and checkered past?”
“Don’t mention checkered pasts!” Elizabeth exclaimed, “Or the Ooh Dimension! You’ll open the sluice gates….”
“Antidisestablishmentarianism”
“Who said that?” Elizabeth and Raxie exclaimed together.
“I don’t know, but that guy in the bowler hat’s disappeared, and can you see that fellow starting to appear over there? Must be a multidimensional Port Hole or something…”
“Well, we know what a Froopish and fabulously magical place this is, so it stands to reason…”
“Reason?” Raxie and Elizabeth were reduced to giggles at the very idea of reason having any standing.
“A portal to the Froop dimension, here? Wow! Can I see?”
“You’ll have to wear these goggles. And it will require some stamina, are you sure?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure” replied Elizabeth tartly. And then she began to intuit something.
“I don’t need googles*, silly!” she laughed. “I already AM multidimensional, I don’t need anyone elses googles. But it’s ok if you want to wear the googles” she added, not wishing to sound judgemental.
“Actually, I like this amethyst crystal myself, I like the frequency. I have dreams of amethyst sometimes, they are a delight.”
“Come and look at this sunset if you want to see a delight,” said Raxie, who was still a bit miffed about the goggles. “Who needs another dimension when we’ve got this one?”
Elizabeth sighed with speechless awe at the spectacular sunset, a reflection of all her colours, and all her dear ones colours, all blended together with magic aqua and sparks of blue and tones of orange blossom.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Arona, it hasn’t made any sense for ages.” replied Yikesy sagely. “If you ask me, it’s time to start a new thread.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
As if they had conspired to make it funnier, Yurick found on his answering machine twice the same question later in the day: “Are you still there?” had asked both Malika and Dory.
That was without counting Finn’s “when you’re back, welcome back.”
Maybe he was just blinking without noticing it.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“I think they’re lost beyond hope” Muckus went back reporting to the evil Majorburgmester
“Oh good!”
“Probably more hopelessly lost than being in the Eighth if you ask me, last time I checked on them, there was a woman running for her head to the Furnace of the Furcano, and all the others following her…”
“Sounds hairy.” the Major couldn’t help but add with a smirk on his face (framed and hanged to the wall) and a twitch in his left nostril.In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Who are you calling dreary, you rude tart?” asked Lavender. “It’s YOU that’s never around when I am.”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“These old ezines and blogs are fascinating” remarked Periwinkle, passing the one she had just been reading to Daffodil. “Thank goodness some folks had the foresight to print some of them!”
“I know, imagine if they hadn’t. We’d have no artefacts for the collection. Well, we have all those flat discs, but no way to decipher them. Oh, did I tell you? Bignonia found something even older than the discs!”
“NO!” exclaimed Periwinkle “Do tell!”
“Yes, even older! Funny looking contraption, with two reels and a ribbon. An information storage device, so they say, although they haven’t discovered how to decipher it.”
“I wonder why we’re still not simply accessing that information without, well, without messing around with the physical contraption, you know?”
“Wouldn’t be any point in being here in the first place, if we weren’t going to mess around with physical things, silly” replied Daffodil.
There was no answer to that, so Periwikle didn’t answer. She continued to thumb through the printed pages.
Periwinkle and Daffodil sat together on the patio in the warm spring sunshine, sipping lemonade
and leafing through the papers. Bright white clouds in cartoon shapes romped across the blue sky,
and the birds chattered in the trees,
occasionally landing on the printed pages and cocking their heads sideways to read for a moment, before flying off to tell their friends, which was usually followed by a raucous group cackling.
“Dear Goofenoff” read Daffodil, “This one looks interesting Peri, someone here is asking for advice on a problem.”
“What’s a “problem”, Daffy?” asked Periwinkle. “For that matter, what does the word “advice” mean? Oh, never mind” she said as she noticed Daffodil rolling her eyes, “I’ll look it up in my pre shift dictionary of defunct words.”
“She’s asking the Snoot too, about the same problem. Oh, I think I’ve heard of them! It’s coming back to me, the old Snoot’n‘Goof team, they were quite famous in the beginning of the century, I remember hearing about them before in a Shift History discussion.”
“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of them, but then, I’ve never been into history like you, dear. So what is this “problem” all about, then?”
“I’ll read it out to you, it’s way too convoluted to put in a nutshell. Lordy, they sure did complicate matters back then, it’s almost unbeleivable, really, but anyway, here goes:
Dear Goofenoff,
I don’t know what to do! I am confused about which probable version of a blog freind, let’s call him MrZ, I have chosen to align with. The first probable version was ok, nothing to worry about, and then I drew into my awareness the probable versions of MrZ that some of my freinds had chosen to align with….”
“Blimey”, interrupted Periwinkle, who was starting to fidget. “Is it much longer?”
“It’s alot longer, so be patient. Where was I? Oh yes:
“….and while that was very interesting indeed, and led to lots of usefully emotionally heated discussions, I started to align with their probable version, at times, although not consistently, which led to some confusion. So then I had a chat with someone who was more in alignment with my original probable version, although there were aspects of that probable version that were a little in alignment with the other folks probable version, notwithstanding. I suppose I was still in alignment with the other folks probable version when it came to my attention that there was another individual that might be aligning with a probable version, and my question is, in a nutshell, is it any of my business which probable version the new individual on the scene is aligning with?”
“Well, I can tell you the answer to that!” exclaimed Periwinkle.
Daffodil rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear, WE know the answer, but the point is, SHE didn’t know the answer at the time, which is why she asked Goofenoff.”
“If you ask me, she knew the answer all along” Periwinkle intuited. “What did Goofenoff say anyway?”
“He said:
Are you requiring a short or a long answer?”
Daffodil turned the page to continue reading. She frowned, and flicked through a few pages.
“What a shame, some of these pages appear to be missing! Now we’ll never know what Goofenoff said.”
Periwinkle laughed. “Well, never mind that anyway, have you seen the random story quote today? Rather synchronistic I’d say, listen to this bit:
Illi felt much better, and was sitting at the breakfast table, basking in the warm shafts of sunlight filtering in through the window, and listening to the birds singing in the lemon tree outside.”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Did you notice that, Pee? THE CODE HAS BEEN TAMPERED WITH AGAIN!
Isn’t it back to how it was in the first place, Doily? Pee scatched his, er, shoulders. (he couldn’t remember if he had his head with him or not)
NO! It bloody well isn’t, it’s a good jib I’m here with you, you’d have been hoodwinked just like the others. It’s MEANT to look like it’s as it was, but it isn’t, Doily said grimly.
What was it in the first place, then? asked Pee.
Buggered if I know, replied Doily, scratching her elbow.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
The clever Peasland Majorburgmester who had been informed of the unlikely and much untimely return of Pee’s group, had indeed asked his minion Muckus to move around some of the signalization icons in the hope of luring and losing the group in the part of the land where the Blubbit Mother of Them All was ruling in a fierce and unchallenged (and he would add ruthless) manner.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Doily said matter-of-factly to her little troop of headless travellers “Fancy a cup of tea?”
As none of them really cared to answer to the obvious fact that they didn’t have any teapot or sugar not to mention milk, lemon, and of course tea (other than a few random leaves that could have been used as an ersatz) she pursued her inspired tirade “Did you know that the Reunited Landers invented tea-bags by the way?”
Silence again.
“I just suddenly remembered, and it’s the funniest thing believe me… Those bloody Yorkies were sent some tea samples in silk pouches and they thought it the next best thing since the invention of boiled water and asked for more!…”
“Perhaps we should catch the blubbits in silk pouches…” she added after a moment.
“Frankly, anyone wanting to get home?” she then said with a bit of alarm in her voice “This Eighth Dimension doesn’t really got the promises of fun they sold us.”“I was starting to think the same,” Pee answered raucously, startling everyone off their self induced Kuzhedoor trance state.