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June 14, 2009 at 8:59 am #2263
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Ann Tattler beamed in delight, unable to conceal her pleasure and surprise. She had scraped in a pass for “Continuity Class for Complete Beginners”. It had taken months, but under the excellent tutelage of Prof Frantic Moose, she had finally cracked it.
Her next hurdle was “Meaningful Writing for the Scattered Brain”.
Her pleasure evaporated somewhat when she read the pithy course description.
Things most profound can be found in the most shallow conversation. Prof Leone Laminae
Sadly, I am not sure that “profound” is one of my strong points, she confided later to her twin sister Sally.
June 14, 2009 at 2:13 am #2253In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Eau de Nil, what could the Fellowship mean? mused Lavender as she attempted to rectify her mistake on the green shade fiasco.
June 14, 2009 at 1:49 am #2251In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
AH HA! shouted Harvey, with his distinctive nasal twang. I KNEW it was you really you Heliptrope! This is about W.A.R.P.E.D. and the dreaming fiasco isn’t it!
Dreaming fiasco? I can assure you that this is not about any dreaming fiasco. Although I shall be sure to mention this “dreaming fiasco” to the Fellowship upon my return, said Heliptrope, snarkily, feeling a little put out that his cover had been blown so quickly. No this is a message for Lavvie.
What is it? Is it about the piglets? I still feel guilty about giving them away.
Heliptrope sighed. Quiet both of you. The message is this: “Eau de Nil”
What? Eau de Nil? What in the name of Flove is Eau de Nil?
Heliptrope smiled mysteriously and took his leave.
June 14, 2009 at 1:35 am #2250In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Lavender’s embrace had very nearly dislodged Heliptropes curly grey wig, revealing his bald head. The Messengers of the Fellowship were always carefully disguised as bossy old bats, cunningly concealing their true identity.
June 14, 2009 at 1:10 am #2249In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Now, now Lavvie dear, you know I detest hugging. Grandma Heliotrope extricated herself from Lavender’s embrace. It is so bohemian. If you wish to show me affection then a smile will suffice. A cup of hot vegemite would not go amiss either. Then I have an important message from the Fellowship for you. Sadly, you really have managed to get yourself in a pickle this time my dear Lavvie.
June 13, 2009 at 2:23 am #2614In reply to: Strings of Nines
June 13, 2009 at 2:15 am #2611In reply to: Strings of Nines
No, I think YOU are in the wrong place, said Tina indignantly, in a low and quite sexy voice thanks to her chest congestion. We are supposed to be in DANCING course, NOT creative writing!
June 7, 2009 at 12:19 am #2608In reply to: Strings of Nines
Becky was liking her dancing courses; there was this funny guy with an outrageously bright canary yellow shirt and a funny accent who taught them some Asian-based moves last time, and she’d been puzzled for awhile, frozen in her tracks and speechless for a moment (which didn’t often occur), as the guy was so weird and yet serious looking that she didn’t know if she should laugh hysterically at his preposterous wiggling butt moves, or keep serious like the others.
That’s where she noticed a girl in the class. Like her, she was lost in wonderment while all of the others where respectfully following the teacher’s movements with a polite straight face.As she was feeling bubbles of hysterical laughter desperately struggling to burst at the surface, she quickly exited the classroom, only to find that the other girl was there too.
“Ahaha, is he some sort of wacko or what?” Becky couldn’t help but laugh even if the other one seemed affected somehow, yet not indifferent to the humour of the situation.
“Bloody oath, yeah… Madder than Almad this one”
“You’re not from here are you?” Becky asked, noticing a delicious variation of British accent in the girl’s voice.
“No, from New Zealand. Name’s Tina, Tina Prout. Well you can forget the last name anyway, I’m going to change that.”
“Delighted, I’m Becky Vane. Would you fancy some vegemite on toast?”
“Sure, let’s get out of here quickly.”
“Toot toot! School’s out!… Mmm, looks like it’s ‘pissing down’ outside… Is that how you say in Kiwi?”June 3, 2009 at 1:49 am #2047In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
Dark….
common?
Keep images;
hear others…Eyes
Recent movements.
Heard,
Follow…
Kept questions.Individuals
Library ~
Thanks, come fact!
Littleton smile:
deal?
feeling… rather….Cat!
Ones eye…Accept self.
May 29, 2009 at 8:50 am #2240In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Lavender was not really sure she understood what Harvey was talking about.
Poor thing. Does he feel like a frog with no sense of purpose? she wondered. The injury to his nose had been devastating of course, yet Lavender firmly believed that there was purpose to all things.
If you don’t believe that, then the whole system falls down, she had said to Harvey, in her sympathetic AND adorable voice.
What system is that? asked Harvey gloomily, wishing he had a voice like Lavenders. Since the accident there had been a distinct nasal twang to his voice. He thought miserably of how quickly W.A.R.P.E.D. had released him from his contract following a complaint from Sha and Glor after he had dropped the four poster bed. The additional weight of dear Lavender had just been a little too much, even for HIS nose. Not only that, he had he lost his weightlifting vocation and his good looks were also severely compromised. The surgeons had not been overly optimistic that his nose would ever completely recover.
well you weren’t really THAT good looking, said the softly voiced Lavender, hoping to cheer Harvey up.
May 23, 2009 at 12:26 pm #2238In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Believe it or not, it suddenly seems like the shifting symphony makes more sense than the ninth (and Beethoven doesn’t make you dumb), if you see my drift…”
“I could, if you’d stop talking in riddles” Lavender told Harvey with but the slightest hint of exasperation in her otherwise perfectly adorable soft and beautiful voice.“I don’t even know what I’m talking about actually, it’s like I’m channeling some deranged poet”
“Yeah, that or being taken over by aliens …”“You know, I miss a sense of continuity… When I can’t follow the leaping frog in at least a pattern that makes sense, I gradually loose all interest. At least if I know the frog is going that way to look for tasty maggots, or that other way to lay a few eggs, or that other way to mate with psychotropic toads, I can hop or fly along… “
Lavender smiled a lovely smile.“There it’s like a frog without purpose; it’s running in all directions, keep changing colours like a chameleon, and no matter how I try, I can’t figure the simplest pattern.”
“Maybe you should ask your super computer floogle ?”
“Yeah… it would tell me that figures without a pattern are called irrational or even transcendent… Not that it would help me in the least. Usually, when you can’t find a pattern, it’s because you don’t use the proper decomposition.”
“You want to dissect the poor frog?”
“No… Not even sure why I bother with the frog at all… It can do what it wants in the pond after all…”May 21, 2009 at 2:14 pm #2601In reply to: Strings of Nines
Yoland decided to stick to fiction for awhile rather than the reporting of facts. She would even go so far as to disguise the facts to look like fiction, because fiction never got you into trouble, so she was inclined to think after the mornings rude awakening. If she simply said ‘I made it up’ in future, well, it seemed an easier way. Yoland decided to talk to herself for the forseeable future too, rather than to anyone else. She would make up characters to talk to, but it would all be made up, none of it would be the reporting of facts. She was through with facts, facts were too much trouble. Making it all up was easier.
While she was eating her marmite buttered toast, she opened the book at random that she had taken to bed with her the previous night, but hadn’t opened.
Once again, Yoland exclaimed “What a coincidence”, and wondered if coincidences would ever cease to be enchanting and fun. She doubted it, somehow. Each coincidence was always such a tiny tantalizing glimpse of so much more.
“…..you merely perceive a small portion of any given action,” Yoland read, “and when you cease to perceive it then it seems to you that the action itself ceases, and so an artificial boundary is erected.
“It has not occured to you, you see, to attempt to look OVER this boundary, so to speak, because you have taken it for granted that nothing exists on the other side. I am not here speaking necessarily of death, though this is the obvious instance of course. I am speaking of something much more subtle. I am speaking of ANY small seemingly insignificant action that you perform during an ordinary day, and HERE we are coming close.”
Yoland reckoned Seth was pretty close to what she’d been saying the previous night.
“You percieve only the most initial elements of such an action. It is as if you threw a ball, and could only follow the ball three inches away in space ~ then the ball would seem to vanish to you. The action would therefore seem completed. You would think it idiotic to imagine what happened to the ball when you could see it no longer, for habit would work in such a way that the disappearance of the ball would seem natural and normal, and a part of the nature of things.
“So, comparing the ball to an action, you perceive but the smallest portion of any given action, even one performed by yourself. It does not occur to you that there is more to perceive.”
Yoland was inclined to agree. Then she suddenly remembered that she was making it all up from now on, and went for a stroll around the Kasbah.
May 21, 2009 at 1:22 am #2598In reply to: Strings of Nines
Ann was beginning to wonder about the two Yoland threads that she appeared to have created, somewhat unwittingly, and possibly ill advisedly. There had been some discussions on bi polar extremes recently at one of her quilting bees, and there were all the black and white outfits and soft furnishings at the lunch party, as well as the interior designers flowers all coming up white this year instead of colours.
Ann knew enough about the magnitudes of potential strings (otherwise known as MP’s) to appreciate that she had a choice whether to attach any symbolic meaning to any of this, or not, in myraids of merry multitudinous ways, methodical, medicinal, mesmerising, or otherwise.
May 21, 2009 at 12:56 am #2596In reply to: Strings of Nines
“ As we have stated previously, these terms are quite limiting for explanation purposes. The terminology is not incorrect, by any means. It is only expressing a much, much smaller impression to you than, in actuality, these terms represent. If your interpretation of these terms is too literal, you may find yourself accepting concepts which have only been explained to you partially; for our explanation of concepts is only a minute portion of the entirety of any idea, or concept, or “doctrine.” Only playing, my friend! These concepts must be taken in at this present time, within your present understanding, to the intellect; and the intellect must be allowed to trigger the intuition, allowing a full circle of thought, so to speak; this full circle being a continuous flow of information to assimilation, to actualization, to creation ” — Patel
Not AGAIN!! shouted Becky. For the past week every time she tried to open her blog page, it always opened on this old post of Patels. Usually, by a circuitous route, she did eventually manage to arrive on her most recent post…..but not today! That monkey Patel wouldn’t let Becky look at any other post but this.
Funny coincidence really that she’d watched the cartoon last night called Madagascar, starrring Patel himself as King of the Lemurs. Becky had to laugh. A rave party of dancing lemurs on ecstasy!
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Yoland. “Fancy landing on that Patel quote again today!”
Yoland knew Patel was around when the frying sausages had popped and spit fat at her. She had lost count of the amount of times that Patel had popped in with this quote. More strings and circles….and lemurs, too! At the lunch party the previous day, Yoland had been discussing evolution, and the missing link, and the next day a lemur-like skeleton was being heralded in the newspapers as the missing link.
Patel, as the missing link ~ Yoland had to laugh.
May 21, 2009 at 12:32 am #2595In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Just do it. Either just do it, or just make something up” she told herself. Again. “Either do it, or make it up, but stop thinking about it and talking about it.” Yoland sighed and turned on the radio. It was an old pink one, the kind with the dials that turn, and a pull out antenna. The antenna was a bit rusty at the bottom and didn’t rotate very well, which made it a bit tricky to get a clear reception without alot of preliminary juggling around and fidgeting. The dogs under her desk scratched themselves noisily as Yoland fiddled with the radio.
“In the backwater….”
“…yes you’ve got the Splain Channel loud and clear now all you have to do is focus on what the next word is and then write it down without thinking about the spelling, as you can see you are looking at the keybaord and tryping”, Yoland smiled at the typo, “the words that you are hearing without trying to anallzye them too much now. ok are you ready? We’re going to do some balloon exercise first to get the ball rolling, you see, there are many ways to blow up a balloon, and I’ll be the first to tell you you’re doing it wrong, I am kidding, of course.”
Yoland smiled, inching forward on the chair to accomodate the dog that had wormed his way round her back, wondering whether or not to move him.
“Your chair is fine the way it is, that’s a very common delaying tactic my freind, and one you are quite familiar with. Now, pay attention once again to simply the words that you hear as you are writing, watching the keys is rather mesmerising is it not….”
Yoland did a quick reality check and agreed that she was feeling a bit mesmerized, and realized that she possibly could feel considerably more mesmerized if she stopped doing reality checks.
“…and as you watch your fingers moving along in a rather detached way, you can detach your attachment to knowing what the next word might be and simply write what you hear; we are practicing the sliding away from the strict hold on trying to anticpate the net words and then you freeze the flow, it shouldn’t be tiring if you let go and relax a bit and simply allow your fingers to move of their own accord while you relax your shoulders…”
What a load of rubbish, thought Yoland, as she adjusted her chair, which had a habit of suddenly dropping down an inch, just enough to make it hard for her to reach the keyboard. Sighing, she wondered about ever getting a satisfactory answer to her Really Big Questions, the ones that nobody had answered so far. All she ever managed to tune into was rambling waffling inane….
“….you feel that your questions are so large that the capacity for distortion is huge, and you feel that other questions are easily answered via other routes and methods, and this is correct.”
Yoland wondered what THAT was supposed to mean.
“Ok we can forget questions then and I will tell you a story.”
Yoland relaxed. That sounded easier.
“Once upon a time there was a beer fisherman from the planet of Oxbloodshire.”
Oh here we go, she thought. What’s coming next…
“Whether or not you find clues in there is entirely your choice to create them, and all are equally valid. This is such a simple thing: that even the most seemingly miniscule sentences contain a myriad of potential diversions and convergences, routes, patterns, nets, from even the tiniest particle of an idea. All of them are boundlessly creative offshoots which become a particular stream, or string.”
Yoland found herself wondering where some of them started, and found she didn’t know where to start.
“With the question of syncronicities every point of them is the start point, the end point, the main point, the moot point, and the connecting links as well, as are all the others. When you get your ball of string in a tangle, it’s easier to throw it away and start a new one.”
Yoland was inclined to agree, but wondered if that sounded like sensible advice.
“Immediately the new one starts linking up all kinds of things in a new interconnected design pattern, and then when that gets in a right tangle, a fresh ball of string awaits; the tangled ones aren’t in a tangle at all when you’re not tangled up within it.”
Well, that certainly sounded resonable, Yoland had to admit.
“And why waste time with old tangles anyway when you can start afresh and just make something up, for no particular reason?”
Bloody good question, why not indeed? Yoland decided to start making things up there and then, and turned her computer off and went to pack her case.
May 14, 2009 at 8:24 pm #2590In reply to: Strings of Nines
Franlise read the message from the Fellowship with mixed emotions.
The Fellowship congratulates and thanks you for your continuity work on the script. We acknowledge the extreme difficulties you contend with as you face erratic forces resistant to any form of continuity and seeking only to create meaningless threads. The Fellowship also advises the script will be even further improved if you could sexy it up a bit.
May 14, 2009 at 8:36 am #2586In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Now would you believe you were actually worried for her?” she told Georges, raising from the sand of the Kandulim where they were doing some people remote-gazing.
“Well, for a moment I was, and you know that Salome. Even if we have not followed the same path, ours have crossed a few times, and I’m grateful for what she taught me in the beginning.”
“I know, although I never really got that part of her… well other than from your experiences I mean.”
“She even starts to remember her parrot, that was quite unexpected.”
“ Do you believe she’ll be able to travel out of that other dimension easily?”
“I don’t know… After that bravado escape from the Baron’s submarine, and the rough sea, I supposed she would need more time to recover and bring herself together, but she seems to have taken care of that in an interesting manner.”
“Look! Ahahaha”
“What?”
“Did you notice she stole the poor guy’s cufflinks! She’s so mean ahahah, she never got past those magpie’s instincts”May 8, 2009 at 4:37 pm #2583In reply to: Strings of Nines
~ “We are broadcasting today from planet Xavier.”~ wrote Rich Kendall, who was also online having a go at the radio exercise. ~ “The Happiness index on the Xavier stock exchange has gone up 75 points. It seems that a fellow named Morris Fishbaum has decided to stop berating himself for his supposed failures in the past, and has embraced a new self image. This change in Mr. Birnbaum has had a ripple effect automatically lifting up many others who also had been dwelling on past “mistakes.” Mr. Fishbaum’s metamorphosis leads analysts to forecast a new all time high for the Happiness Index within the next month. That’s the story from the Xavier financial markets and have a nice day.” ~
He continued: ~ “Morris Fishbaum is alive and well and living off the coast of Gibraltar
And rumor has it Morris has become very good friends with a local celebrity in Gibraltar that shall not be named except for the initials TM” ~“Otherwise known as Teleport Moll”, Yoland pointed out.
~ “Roy Gilroy was also mentioned in an article as to spending lots of time with Morris Fishbaum but that’s a whole other story.” ~
May 3, 2009 at 2:02 pm #2572In reply to: Strings of Nines
Santiago, Chile, May 2020
For the last past years, Becky now a pretty young teenager had been traveling from one school to another to pursue her artistic aspiration, but more so to discover as many places as possible. Schools were a necessary evil, for as long as she was too young to choose without her father’s consent, but at least she could choose which one she wanted to go to.
Although she barely remembered it now, she already did a fair deal of traveling out of the body when she was younger, helping her to map out the places and order in which she wanted to see them later. All of that subjective programming of sorts was now extremely helpful to her forgetful nature, as all she needed do was to trust her impulses to go here and there.
She would then magically find a distant relative who had been lost in the far ends of the family tree, or a friend of a friend who would accept to host her or recommend her to a friend. From there, her open nature and smiles did the rest to win them over.In a month from now, she would be eighteen, and she wanted to go somewhere else, perhaps settle down for a little while. She had taken a world map and thrown a few coloured pins to let randomness choose for her, as she trusted it was her proper way of essence, so to speak. To her surprise, none of the pins seemed to stick but a single one in the vicinity of New York. America wasn’t her natural choice of predilection, but she knew she could trust the random flow of events. And to top that, she knew her aunt Charmille was living there. It would be easy then.
Charmille was the elder sister of Sabine Baina N’Diaye, Becky’s mother and first wife of Dan. She was a middle-aged eccentric and cheerful lady, who had never married, proudly saying that it was what had kept her young at heart. She was living in Brooklyn with a dozen birds twittering all day, and a few cats and other creatures the neighbours would give her to care for while they were away.
When she learnt that her niece would come here for three months, she first thought that it was a darn long time to be nice to anybody. But then she smiled and went preparing the spare room and brush the cats’ hair off the sheets.
May 2, 2009 at 10:21 pm #2571In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Glor…”
“What dear?”
“Glor, ain’t you bored silly in that cottage?”
“Well Sha, now that our Joe and ‘arry are gone fishin’ all day… and thinking of our glorious days on that island…”
“Tell no more! I was thinking of that too… Would be good to have another beauty treatment for sure…”
“Any idea where that doctor might be now Shar?”
“As a matter of fact, I do…”
“You’re kidding me Shar!”
“I’ve got a cousin in Spain, ya know…”
“Who? Barb?”
“Yeah, Barbie. I’ve got news from her from time to time, when she’s squatting in those tourists houses in Spain while they’re empty in the low season.”
“And what? Tell me all, I’m dying Shar!”
“I’ll tell you if you bloddy stop interrupting! Now, last week, she mentioned she heard from a woman in Spain that they saw a doctor during a silly nut-age conference, he was talking of rejuvenating cures, and she even got a sample.”
“A sample?”
“Yeah, a bloody sample. She told me those silly twats gave them to their dogs! Can you believe it Glor’?”
“The silly buggers! Throwing away precious reejoo-whatever samples!”
“Anyway, the doctor was speaking with whales too. Every year he told them (Barbie told me) going upside down in the sea to upgrade his whale speech.”
“Whale speech you say Shar…”
“Kind of rings a bell init?”
“Hell yeah! I remember Vessie told us about those funny swimming suits for the Doctor. Could be him!”
“You know what?”
“What Shar?”
“I’m having a funny brainwave now… I’m thinking we need some vacation in Spain…”
“And leave Gustav to cook the bloody fish for the boys ! You’re brilliant Shar!” -
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