Search Results for 'straw'

“Did you have to come out here and interrupt my quiet reverie on gardeners nether regions, Godfrey?” Liz said crossly. “And what is that on your head? Your bald spot is covered in dried spaghetti.”

Guiltily, Godfrey tried to remove the debris from his pate.

“Why, you old rascal! You’ve been a peeping tom again, skulking around in someone elses thread!” Liz shook her head and tut tutted. The head shaking dislodged a crumpled ball of paper from her straw hat, which flew across the lawn in the breeze and landed at Roberto’s feet. The handsome gardener bent down further to pick it up, revealing more buttock.

“Cheers!” said Bea, batting her eyelashes at Gustave while trying to suppress a grimace at another round of cackling coming from the contest in the function room. The combined effect was an alarming expression sensation saturation, and Gustave took an involuntary step backwards. He bumped into Linda Pol, who was wrapping her luscious lips around an authentic straw and sucking up voraciously the glowing rainbow cocktail.

“Linda! Fancy seeing you here!” Gustave exclaimed, trying to suppress a cackle at the sight of the rainbow cocktail running from Linda’s nostrils as she tried not to choke.

“Gustave! What on earth are you doing here with that old slapper!” she replied in between coughs and splutters, with a dismissive glance at Bea.

Fortunately Bea was cackling so loudly at the sight of Linda choking that she failed to hear the remark.

Not for the first time, Consuela, dolled up to the nines behind the bar in a purple wig and elaborate make up, wondered what it was about humans that they found it so amusing when people choked.

“I must say all this bending is jolly awkward.” grumbled Tinia-Tiffany Bloo. “The sooner we get these aliens escorted back to earth and we are able to return to Thereon the better.

“Stop whining will you!” snapped Betty Bloo, her antagonism in large part due to intense jealousy at Tinia’s gorgeous pale robin egg blue colouring. “It is totally unprofessional.”

Tinia smiled sweetly as she ducked her head under her arm. That poor Betty, she really drew the short straw with that awful pigmentation.

I think I might have over~egged the brûlée again, thought Elizabeth, but was immediately distracted by the rock hard knob end of stollen shoved into a truffle box on the caravan shelf.
This really is the last straw, she exclaimed self righteously.

“They said seventeen seconds, but I never would have believed it! Did you see that?”
“Seventeen seconds to barbecue a fish that size? Take a bit longer than that, Sha” replied Gloria.
Sharon rolled her eyes and turned to Mavis. “See that, our Mavis? See how that fish landed right on our barbecue?”
“Another trick out of that book you’ve been reading, was it?” Mavis replied. “Not bad really, but why were you asking for a fish? None of us like fish.”
“Ah, well….I wasn’t asking for a fish exactly, no. But the way it landed seventeen seconds from when I changed my energy, well…”
Gloria rolled her eyes and yawned. “When you work it out, I’m sure you’ll let us know. What did you ask for, anyway?”
Sharon blushed. “Remember that hot Russian guy I had a dream about the other night?”
Mavis and Gloria looked at the fish, looked at each other, and burst out laughing. They were still laughing when Igor landed in the strawberry pool just a few feet away from where they were sitting, soaking them to the skin. The barbecue took a direct hit from the pink deluge, and hissed.
Igor took a deep breath and dived under the water as Sharon staggered into the pool, while Mavis and Gloria hooted from the shore.

It hadn’t been easy to obtain Sadie a pay raise. The management always seemed to look for new ways to cut the costs wanted to give her an extra for the good job. Although this time, LP could put the golden balls and the rebirth of the network in the balance. They could have had enough to give the whole team a decent salary. Indeed, it wasn’t really fair that the young queens were not paid at all. Unless of course you counted props, wigs and fake eyelashes. Eventually, Linda got Sadie the extra and the raise she had asked for, and new contracts for the three young queens. She shall not forget the tears of joy in their eyes when she announced them they were part of the big Queer Network family. It had made her feel good and generous even if it was not her money she was giving.

Linda Pol wrapped her luscious lips around an authentic straw and sucked up voraciously the glowing rainbow cocktail. Mmmmm, this new Peas’cocktail is divine, she thought. After the buzz created by their last network and that mysterious quest of Saint Germain for Peasland, peas-thingies were everywhere. She put the glass back on the edge of the Jacuzzi and looked at the little magenta umbrella for a moment. She didn’t know what was the most pleasing, the bubbles gently massaging her back in the water, or the gorgeous scenery of the Merry Otter resort in Maui. Linda Pol hadn’t had good vacation in a long long time, and if she had been in vacation this place could totally be one of her first choices destinations.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t there for vacations or relaxation. She wasn’t there for exercise either. She had been asked to attend a conference and meet with one of those new Random Science scientists specialized in the ambergris tiles. As if it was a joke from the Universe, her name was Amber Graystone. But Linda Pol had long learned that there were no such thing as unusualness, you just hadn’t seen enough of the world.

A boy came to refill her cocktail. Girl, you spend too much time looking at young bums, she thought, ageing beliefs were everywhere. She was feeling drowsy with the bubbles and the alcohol, almost dreaming of whales and ambergris.

“… Graystone is taking her job too seriously”, said a man’s voice.

Linda Pol opened her eye, just enough so that her fake eyelashes could still hide she was awake. When she was young, her curiosity had put her in trouble more times than the number of her pair of shoes. She had developed strategies and an incredible butt recognition skill. It had helped her win many contests in her youth and avoid boring conversations later on.

The two men wore bath suits. Linda could clearly see that one of the butts was slack and lifeless. Almost avoiding the contact with the fabric. An American butt fed with hamburgers and soda. The rest of the silhouette seemed to naturally spread out from its central component.

The other one moved like a mustang, the shiny red lycra was only here to help you see more clearly the outline of the flesh, not hide it. The curve of the bottom of the spine indicated a Russian ancestry. She felt a rush of adrenaline. She loved how Russians rolled their Rs. They could do many things with a rolling tongue.

“You want me to take carrre of herrr ?” asked a voice carrying ice.

“No, just remind her to whom she owes her subsidies. And her results.”

The pond was full of black tadpoles. The creatures were wriggling restlessly, following invisible currents, connecting dark stains packed with thousands of them. Benjamin Goat immersed a small plastic bottle into one of the biggest node, it sucked the little buggers like a fat syringe.
“Such a small container won’t reduce their population too much”, he thought. Indeed, he had always wondered why there were so many of them in the early stages and why you would see so few frogs or toads. The remaining tadpoles were beginning to gather around his hand. He repressed a shiver. A new idea for a movie just sprang up from his subconscious. Something to do with man-eater tadpoles. That would certainly hit the box office for months.
He smiled. There were enough of them in the bottle.

“Yuck!” said a fat pink lady before licking her strawberry ice cream.

“It’s for my son”, said Benjamin just before realizing he was justifying again. His psychiatrist had told him there was no need for justifying, it was like apologizing, and he needn’t apologize, he was the great Benjamin Goat after all. He snorted and mimicked drinking from his bottle. This time, she was disgusted. She made the mistake to hold her ice cream too far from herself and one of those Gib’s monkey with the pink ass stole it. She was shouting now, people would pay attention to her instead of him. People always pay attention to what’s more annoying.
Paradoxically, he felt a pang of jealousy. He was not used to let go of others’ attention.

His cell phone vibrated, three long vibrations and seven short ones. The code for his secret society. It was a great idea to put it in his last movie, unfortunately it hadn’t had the desired effect. People were so gullible that they would believe everything that came out in a fiction movie.
“The Jesuit is in the place”, said a vocoded voice. That was all. It could only mean one thing. It was all going according to the plan. He smiled and handed out the bottle to a kid. He wouldn’t need that after all.

The end of Being Veronica’s season four coincided strangely with the end of time day. She had eventually become a channeler. Still full of images and sounds of time travels, space projections and probabilities, Yann decided it was time for him to go fetch some Shanghainese food for the evening. They were going to Taipei for the week end with Yurick, meeting with an artist friend who’d promised to show them around.

Outside the air was chilly, it almost had that peculiar smell Yann associated with frost. When he first decided to come to Shanghai, it was with the secret hope it would be warmer than Paris, but currently it seemed to be as cold and chilly a city. At least, Taipei would feel a bit warmer, he thought with a misty sigh, the weather forecast announced at least 23°C. What better occasion for the beginning of the new timeline.

The store was not very far from the house, you just had to turn left at the corner and it was right here after the laundry service. It was a small shop, with only tangerins, oranges, a few apples and bananas. The shopekeeper and his wife greeted him. Yann was still feeling shy with the Chinese, mostly because he couldn’t speak their language yet. He’d begun taking lessons, but there was so much to learn. He smiled and quickly resumed his focus on the fruits. Some bananas were calling him, quite ripe actually. He hesitated, took them and almost put them in a plastic bag, but he noticed they were maybe too ripe, the skin was cracked in some areas and he could see the white flesh of the fruit turning brown. He nonchalently put them back on the stall as the shopekeeper was showing him the strawberries.

Yann smiled and he couldn’t remember how to say no, so instead he laughed and waved his hand in protest. The man didn’t insist and went back to the counter. He didn’t seem to be concerned by the end of time.

The Strawberry Aliens entered via the portal near the effigy in Bristol Cathedral. Although they were invisible to the unshifted eye, and their actual entrance had gone entirely unnoticed, Lilac knew they had arrived, and wept.

The world had gone mad overnight.

Ann spent the morning (or a mere half hour, if truth be told) enjoying her physicality in the gentle autumn morning sun before returning indoors. The drop in temperature was still new enough to remember to appreciate fully. She felt at peace with her world, a happy balance of words and sunbeams, that is until she perused the latest additions to the BA (Bash Ann, by the looks of things) group project.

Ann frowned. Who the heck was Harvey? It was almost the last straw, despite Ann’s sunny mood. The very idea of trawling back through the paperwork to find out who he was, and indeed who everyone else was, was too daunting. “If it’s not fun don’t do it!” That’s what they all said. Over and over again they said “if it’s not fun don’t do it”.

The writing was fun, and the random reading was fun, but it wasn’t fun ~ in fact, it gave her a headache ~ to try and remember who and when and where everyone was. Perplexed, Ann wondered if she simply wasn’t cut out for working in a group. On the other hand, she simply wasn’t a loner either.

“Be remebering,” the disembodied voice whispered in her left ear, “That they are all YOU.”

Oh! Right, yes….herm….well where does that leave me?

“Right at the centre of it all, as always,” the voice replied.

Er, so it’s all MY story, then? The whole thing is all me, all mine? All the characters are ME?

“Quite!”

So I can do whatever I want, then?

“Of course!”

Right then, so I can write whatever I want, which is fun, and not write what I don’t want, which isn’t fun, and that will be quite alright, will it?

“Correct!” the voice chuckled indulgently. “And it may behoove you” it continued in a conspiratorial tone, “To remember than any flak from the others in the group, is in fact, YOU giving YOURSELF a flakking reflection.”

Oh. Well Right Ho, then. Toot! Toot!

It had been rather a bold move on Tajine’s part, especially as she was a new member of the staff at Little Big Hopeswell, but an ingenious one, or so she thought. Tajine always aimed to please; nothing gave her more pleasure than to arrange wonderful little surprises for people based on her assumptions of what would please them. In her few short weeks with Ann, she couldn’t help but notice the disparaging remarks her publisher, Pig Littleon, habitually made about Ann’s work. The last straw for Tajine had been when Godfrey referrred to Ann’s streams of thought as ‘incoherent’, and it was at that point that the plan began to form in her mind.

“Compliments to the new cook! I must say, that was the most delicious bacon sandwich I have ever tasted,” remarked Arthur, wiping his lips with a napkin. “You must ask Tajine where she buys her bacon, it has an enticingly subtle hint of peanut, quite delicious!”

“Oh bloody hell, Godfrey, I can’t get the font thing to work today either.” Ann wondered if it was anything to do with the tuna imagery she kept getting, then decided that she was clutching at straws. “Who was it that said something about increasingly rubbish?” Ann suddenly wondered.

Some interesting syncs:

Discussing the comment on Franiel and Vincentius with Francie, some things of interest:

F: hahaha i laughed at the egg bit
E: bit silly I reckon but somehow it synch’ed with two movies we’ve been watching yesterday
F: yes, good to have a bit of silly in our otherwise serious story
E: In one, there is that ghost girl who stalks her husband new love affair, and ends up speaking through a parrot
And the other, there is this shaman old woman who remote-views her people went on a quest, and ends up dying in stead of a girl, so that the young one lives…

F: oh that is like your plants in the courtyard dream too —just had a recollection of you saying one gave up its pot for the other one
E: Oh yes, true… Perhaps it’s just like a layering, like you do for strawberries, you use parts of the roots to do new plants…
“Layering is more complicated than taking cuttings, but has the advantage that the propagated portion can continue to receive water and nutrients from the parent plant while it is forming roots.”

E: “In air layering (or marcotting), the target region is wounded and then surrounded in a moisture-retaining wrapper such as sphagnum moss “

“Peat moss is also a critical element for growing mushrooms” that’ll make Tracy happy
“In New Zealand, care is taken during the harvesting of sphagnum moss”

F: “it can also be used as a substrate for tarantulas as it is easy to burrow into”

E: “Such Sphagnum bogs can also preserve human hair and clothing, one of the most noteworthy examples being Egtved Girl , Denmark”. Egg and B.C. sync

F: cool name, Egtved. Oh thats interesting about the Egtved girl: due to be public this month
E: oh, well spotted!
F: shall we all pop over and check it out
E: Ahahaha sure …

He was climbing the steep path to the spring. His attention moving swiftly from one location to another, generating his human flesh body consciousness at each moment. At times he was not generating such a continuous movement and could appear in another place without having physically generated the objective appearance of the movement.

He had no name, he had no necessity for it himself. One of his other focuses was aware of him as John, the Straw Man. That would be the intersection of their focuses. He smiled back at him as he was aware of their connection in that moment. Continuing his exploration of the surrounding, before generating the physical spring, he was also communicating with other focuses or other aspects of consciousness. He was also exploring the shift of attention in different mergences with different qualities of essences. Being dispersed he was part of these other essences also, though it is a rough translation of it.

The movement of the path under his feet was smooth. The quality incorporated in the ground was facilitating his progression to the spring. It was not yet in his main focuses of attention, though it was close, some of his alternate aspects were already there and enjoying the premises and the non physical aspects of its reality. He added some mushrooms aspects in his surrounding as they were conveyed by his John aspect… they were connected to another of his friend. Oh! and a few ostrich eggs suddenly appeared

Yellorange green current of a snoot was swirling around some trees. The John aspect of himself was amazed at the beauty he was generating, and as he was felling Pashi moving her attention toward him in a softurplime mergence, this new aspect of consciousness manifested the spring. The ears of this focus were experiencing the different layers of its movement.