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In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
wondered lilac, threads tart finally remarked “suppose entrance nothing?” told giant blubbit voice majorburgmester “ones link orange family case turn random heads”
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Racy Mc Tartshall had been absent for so long that it was hardly any wonder that nobody remembered her, despite the importance of her mission which had long since been forgotten. Mc Tart, as she was affectionately known (or would have been if anyone had remembered her) was a tartist of the highest calibre, consistently producing hugh class tart (which was of course three grades higher than high, and 2 grades higher than hagh, and so forth). Mc Tart had been investigating Nosebook, sniffing out potential distortions, claritortions, connectortions and myriad other contortions, for the distortium, claritortium, connectortium and contortium, respectively ~ focusing mainly on the connectortium, naturally enough.
While researching something or other that was no doubt relevant at the time but had long been forgotten, Mc Tart met Alfred in the Library. ““Aha! Alfred in the Library with a Book, was it!” she exclamined. “I knew I’d find a clue here”. “It wasn’t me!” he retorted, aghast. “It was Albert in the Chapless Pants club with a Rolling Pin!” Mc Tart, feigning an all knowing expression, replied “Ahhhh” and made a mental note to investigate.
Mental notes, known as m’otes for short, floated like wisps in the air currents and occasionally sparkled in the sunbeams, although more often than not, they clumped together under the bed in bunny shapes, slowly dying of boredom. Thankfully the sheer pointlessness of mental notes ~ m’otes ~ made not a whit of difference in the grand scheme of the connectortium investigation because of the abundant nature of Fluce’s ~ (fucking lucky chance encounters), notwithstanding the heated debates continuing in the Distortium about the precise nature of Fluce’s and their relationship to M’Otes ~ or not, depending on the point one wished to make at any particular time.
And so it was by Fluce that Mc Tart met Blithe, Heck and Walty in “le Tunnel” one dreary grey Noremember afternoon. There was nothing to suggest, on first inspection, any thing of interest for the Connectortium mission, but Mc Tart was not discouraged. “Many a moth maketh maths marbles” she reminded herself as she perused the nenu (which, the reader will deduce, is a hugher class of menu).
[link: high class]
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Arona was starting to get cold in the pinkini. She wondered how the lady with the green hair managed to keep warm with so little (not to say as much as nothing) on her skin.
She probably had some fuel more lasting than just Nhum.
Upon seeing that (not the nakie lady, Flove forbid, but the freezing Arona and the night falling down), chivalrous Vinny and Bucky went to gather some bones and fire to spend the night around a nice bonefire. Just what she needed for a keetle of hot tea.Note from the observing Sue Maffey, who started quickly to get high and delirious on Nhum tea in chippendale cups and mumbled to herself and patient Minky-in-crutches in between a few hiccups: “you knew that a bonfire is actually a fire made of bones, originally said of fires in which the bones of slaughtered animals were burned, allegedly a Gaengelic tradition of the slaughter season in autumn (Samhain, which was soon to come).”
She almost gasped wondering where their camelephants had suddenly gone and why that purple reckless dragon suddenly looked satiated.By now, almost everyone else who was there, including (but not only) Mandrake, Yickesy, Winky-nakie-greenie-Messmeerah-with-her-carved-jamón and Mrs Janet had thought the same at least once. That and wondering whether they’d ever get to see that famed Jiborium.
So much for cheap package tours.In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Just in case there are any mindful readers, and for further clarification and continuation, let it be noted that Alfred eventually realised he was not trapped at all. An old tunnel, once used by members of the Distortium for clandestine purposes, had an opening in Alfred’s yard. He was able to use this tunnel make his way out of his yard and continue his journey to the library.
{link Distortium}
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Last call for Wingarailicamdeneliarkarmellyukiran! All passsengers wishing to disembark at the Distortium, please queue up on the left. Passengers for the Retortium, on the right please.”
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]
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
After his failed attempts to gain control over the Land of Peas, and his being thrown out of the Majorburghouse body first and framed head second by an angry mob of infuriated Peaslanders (which was something to be noted, since Peaslanders were usually quite the happy bunch), the Majorburgmester now bereft of anything but his will, was thinking it was high time for a u-turn in his carreer.
His dear blubbits had apparently mostly vanished out of sight, some said trapped in a blinking giant spider’s cobweb blinked out of Peasland, some others said suffocated under shiny duct tape, and even some said baked in ashes and almonds — those last obviously were the maddest of the lot.
It seemed like all the Dimensions had conspired to his defeat.Now hardly a Majorburgmester, the title having now been offered by the cheerful crowd to the raucous and unexpected hero (after they hesitated for a good hour if it should be given to the herald of the liberation, that stupid Gandfleur whatever its name of a dog), he was now again known as B. Weazeltweezel (the B. standing for Bartabous, his mother having a fondness for names in “-ous” like Precious, his elder sister, and Pulpous his second sister; a chance his father was a man of more common sense, otherwise he surely would have been named Houmous himself).
The newfound venture didn’t wait long to manifest. In the not so distant past, he had already suspected something fishy about Lady Fin Min Hoot and now he knew. She was a high member of the Bridge Tarts Order, and though it was a secretive and feminine order, he had always loved a challenge.
He felt he could muster all the tartiness and bridginess needed to be granted access to their secrets.Galvanized as he was, were he to successfully infiltrate the order, he knew he didn’t really stand a chance without something else. By nothing short of a synchronistic chance, Fwick, the saucerer had given him the leftovers of a potion he didn’t know what to make of.
In a gulp (and a few gargppls) Batabous was rapidly changed into a rather convincing dame matron, with slight mustache and ample bosom.
Tarty Bridgies, here I come… he said in a falsetto voice that needed work. … soon everybody will know about Lady… Bartaba
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
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: Strings of Nines
They were thick as theives, freinds for thousands of centuries, or even more; sometimes thick, sometimes theives, and anything else you might imagine. They got together again and again in this time and that, here, there and elsewhere, just for the fun of it. There was nothing they liked more than a puzzling occurance, or a riddle, or a basket full of clues to ponder over, unravel, and turn around and around, toying with meanings until they found one they liked. They had a home in The City, sort of a home base so to speak, where they met regularly each night in the dream state, regardless of which time or place they spent their waking hours. It was sometimes a releif to meet up at home in The City and always a pleasure: sometimes it was hard to stay under the radar back down on the ground, it was part of the job to stand out in the crowd, which often resulted in a lynching, or a ducking, or the stocks, at the very least. All too often it ended up on top of a bonfire, tied to a stake.
One day in one of the Decembers, in amongst all the sweet dreams they often shared, they started having some unsettling group dreams, where they all felt like they were betwixt and between, falling through the cracks you might say. It was a feeling similar to dying of thirst, although it wasn’t really a physical thirst, it was more than that, a hungry yearning sort of thing. Some of them had strange nightmares, of a monstrous beast, and some of them actually saw beasts in the daytime too, especially on those falling through the cracks days. When they met up at home in The City, they compared notes about the beasts, and not always, but sometimes they found they were mirroring each others beasts. That often ended up in a heated debate, because the more mirroring that occurred, the more real the beast seemed. Some said that the beasts that appeared when you fell through the cracks were in a deep ravine, in a manner of speaking, and not of this plane at all. Others argued that if the beasts appeared through the cracks, then they were on this plane.
And so it went on, and on. There were many more puzzling occurances to come, and lots of meanings to be considered, rejected, or taken on board for the friends, as thick as thieves, to turn around and around, and hold up to the mirror for closer inspection and dissection. They were making a tapestry, a huge rich colourful tapestry, and all the puzzling occurences, and even the beasts, were depicted in the colourful threads and patterns. They were the warp, you might say, of the weave. Love was the weft.
“Congratulations, Liz” Godfrey remarked drily. “Are you supposed to use three months worth of creative writing challenges in one entry?”
“Don’t be silly, Godfrey, of course not. Rules are meant to be broken, that’s what they’re for.”
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
wonder free dancing
*note: toot certain, usually quickly.
Hot gift heads deep,
Lady professor;
Clue stranger,
Next portal
retorted
voice taken
replied threads.Thank Sanso
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
When Fwick was gone, the Majorburgmester started to grind his teeth in an annoyed manner, fumbling through his notes.
“How dare he! Killing my precious blubbits! And even if he manages to bread that stinking spider, which I highly doubt, that clown won’t live long enough to even kill the first of my dear ones!”
The Majorburgmester was hoping his plan of Peasland domination would come to fruition soon. And then all the Mungibbs in the world would be his, MWAHAHAHAH.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“SOON IT WILL BE REVEALED!” thundered Pickel.
The others, after recovering from their shock, looked at Pickel in surprise.
“What are you on about boy?” asked Pee.
Pickel was as confused as the others. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “It just came from .. no where…”
“Well keep it down will you, you will scare the bird we are taking to the Keeper of the Portal, whose name eludes me but he has a long beard and is old and arthritic, in order to get the bird to sing 4 notes, no more and no less, in order to open the portal and get to ED and save New Peasland from the plague of the Blubbits.”
Pee was feeling a need to clarify. Not for the first time he was wondering if volunteering for this dangerous mission had been wise. He fortified himself with the thought of Mungibbs.
“What are Mungibbs, Daddy?” asked Silly.
Pickel was quiet. He could feel the silver object burning a hole in his pocket.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Almost unperturbed by the sudden distraction coming from the remarkably head-in-the-clouds Doily, despite her seemingly headlessness-lessness, and applying instead his famous adage, Better stick to one’s own nonsense than follow another’s Mewrich thundered “Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll explain about the beard, so that we can all get back to our business, and you out to your quest (and off my home)”.
“Yes! Will you finally tell us about the bird, the notes, and all that buggery to get to that Eighth dimension and vanquish the darn blubbits invasion!” Pee Stoll almost cried out.
Carefully, Mewrich reached out for a tiny peacock in his aviary, a poor thing which was plucking its feathers after all that noise, that he may as well have chosen at random from the menagerie.
“Take this bird, and make it sing four notes, I said FOUR! not one more, not one less! in front of the great portal of Nibabuz and you should be able to get past the old Keeper… JUST DON’T try to interrupt me, by the coils of the great Snakipooh, you rude tart!” “You have to get past the Keeper, but he’s old and a bit arthritic, so all you’ve got to do is have him walk on his beard, and get past him.”Dolores was about to add a little flourish, but all of them, the headless Stoll family, and Doily’s eccentric entourage where ushered out of the cave by the angered Saucerer. And every Peaslander knew you wouldn’t anger a Saucerer without having to deal with dreadful consequences. The green wig of Dolores being probably the remnant of one of these consequences.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Will Tarkin had written an explanatory note to enclose with the box of leeks, to explain his unforseen difficulty in acquiring celery, and to please excuse the substitute leeks.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Suddenly, they began to hear little muffled sounds coming from the roof.
“Oh! not that pop corn rain again…” sighed Mewrich Peamon.
If Silly still had her head on, she would have looked thrilled and excited by the anticipation of making a pop-corn-man or throwing pop-corn balls at her brother. Where was he? Oh here, just coming from the other other room. She couldn’t see the guilty look on his face, of course, as he got no head… but their mother could, and she was taking notes of all of it for when they’d be back.In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“And how do I play these notes?” asked Pee raucously. “I can’t even see them without my head.”
“Mmmh! Yes that could be a problem” acquiesced Fwick. The saucerer scratched his chin for a few seconds as he couldn’t remember where he had put that ancient device.
“Well maybe I could just send you to the bird keeper, and he can give you one of our last Anthornis Melanura…”
“I beg your pardon?” Pee’s voice was more raucous than ever, it was quite disturbing to the saucerer who wasn’t used to talking with a headless Peaman, but he couldn’t show his discomfort though, as he thought of it, the headless Peaman was also eyeless and couldn’t see his discomfort.
“Hum! This is the ancient name of the legendary Bul Bird of New Peasland. Mewrich Peamon, the bird keeper, his family has been breeding these birds since the great Peaphetess Frean Psea found these notes some millenia ago; they are the only ones which can open the ED. Any other sequence of notes would… well we don’t know exactly what could occur. You’re on your own on this one, Pee. ehr, I’m sorry, ehh, But be assured that I’ll take care of Peanelope for you.”“Oh! You’re too kind, Saucerer” said Pee who couldn’t have known that his faithful wife and the Saucerer were having an affair.
A sudden cry from Lilly startled them both. She had burst into tears and her brother was looking like a culprit. But Fwick wasn’t sure as he hadn’t got a head either…
“What have you done, Pickel?” asked Pee with his raucous voice.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Ah there you are at last,” muttered Fwick to the cloaked man. “Before you leave I must get you to sign this form.”
“What is it?” asked Pee.
“Good Lord, what the F was that noise!” shouted Fwick, looking around in fright. “Ah! I see you have been endowed with a remarkably raucous voice! You startled me!” Taking some deep breaths to calm himself, Fwick continued.
“It is a disclaimer … a technical matter, basically saying be it on your own heads …” Fwick paused to chuckle at his own joke, “Ahem as I was saying, basically absolving me from any responsibility should you encounter any difficulties on your excursions into the Eight Dimension, or ED as we Saucerers call it. When you have signed, I can give you the four notes which will open ED for you.”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
There was a blue light spiral whirlwinding in the center of what should have been a head. Ann seemed not at all surprised as if she had taken too much of those weeds of hers, though Lavender was terrified. Was that a wormhole? She coughed a few times.
“Please, pardon me!” said the raucous voice coming from the center of the spiral. Ann was so fascinated that she stretched her arm to touch the vortex. In doing so, the voice took goaty characteristics that made her giggle.
“We need your help…” said the goaty voice, which hurried to add “In peace, always…”For a moment, Lavender thought she heard someone coughing from the other end of the wormhole. But with Ann messing with the vortex who knows what it could have been.
Note from the editor: in another version of the story, it has been a double of Ann playing with a device. Her voice was sounding much like the one of Darn Vadoor in Stare Worms before he informed Lurk that he was his janitor.
