Search Results for 'tart'
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Search Results
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In reply to: Strings of Nines
“It’s the 57th Creative Challenge theme, so I have to do it,” Ann remarked to her editor. “Obviously”, she added.
“What do you mean, obviously?” asked her editor (Ann had forgotten his new name in the second book, and toyed breifly with the idea of making up a new one ~ perhaps Rumbold the Pale?)
“Well, I would have thought that was obvious, Godfrey!” Ann replied tartly, secretly delighted that she’d remembered the old boy’s name. Notwithstanding, Ann continued to make little ‘cuh’ and ‘tut’ noises, and rolled her eyes a bit, until Godfrey eventually replied.
“Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”.
“I beg your pardon?” Ann looked at Godfrey in astonishment. “Holy Moly, I said that earlier myself, whatever does it mean?”
“I haven’t got a clue, dear,” he replied. “Just popped into my head, you know, how it does…” His voice trailed off as he stared into space.
“I’ll google it.” As Ann started the search, she realized she’d completely forgotten that she was doing the 57th Creative Challenge entry. “Blimey O Riley, what am I LIKE” she said to herself, with a wry grin ~ she wasn’t altogether sure what wry meant, but somehow she felt it was wry ~ “Now what was the theme again?”
“Misery Loves Company” Godfrey piped up. “And dare I say, it’s rather obvious what has occurred here.”
“What do you mean, obvious?” retorted Ann, somewhat snarkily, although nowhere near as snarkily as Lavender might have said it.
Godfrey resisted the urge to respoond with a few little ‘cuh’s’ and ‘tut’s’, and chose to simply smile enigmatically.
Ann scowled at her old freind and said “If you don’t spell it out, you maddening old coot, I’ll write you out of this story. I’ll delete you.”
“You can write me out of YOUR story if you wish, but I may continue to write YOU into MY story.”
“Oh Gawd, WHAT?” Ann said to herself. “Where did that come from?”
“Ann, let me explain.”
“You sound just like Elias, Godfrey!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Ahahahahahahah”
“Now shut up and pay attention”
“Elias would never say that”
“That’s YOU saying that, Ann, to yourself,” said Godfrey.
“YOU said that Godfrey, it’s right here in black and white!” retorted Ann.
“It’s never black and white, Ann, and it’s only here in black and white as ME saying it because YOU wrote it.”
“Well there’s no answer to that” replied Ann. She went to put the kettle on.
Ann returned to her computer with a steaming mug of tea.
“Now, shall we get back to the point, Ann?” inquired Godfrey, with a wry grin.
“I must look up that word later”, Ann mused. “I seem to be inordinately fond of the word wry tonight, I wonder why. I Wonder Wry…”
“ANN!” Godfrey shouted. “Back to the point!”
Ann looked pained. “What point?”
“The point of this story, and the obvious occurence therein.”
“Welp, you’ve lost me there, Gordon, there was a point?”
“Oh My God, this could go on all night” Gordon was wringing his hands.
“Good God Gordon, didn’t see you come in!” exclaimed Godfrey.
Ann was giggling helplessly. She was rather pleased with the way she covered her faux pas over the editors name.
“‘Ann was giggling helplessly’; you see Ann, there is your clue!” Godfrey said excitedly, as he read aloud what Ann had just written.
“OH! NOW I get it! D’oh! Nonsense loves company! Giggling loves company! No wonder I couldn’t stay focused on misery!”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“I told you we should have asked her earlier to be tartier; then contradictory as she is, she would have behaved saintly. Now she wants to wear nil shirt!”
Harvey was mumbling continuously in his hogsleep.In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Hey Heliptrope! didn’t see you there, said Harvey warmly. Did you see Heliptrope come in Lavender?
No! said Lavender, startled by the sudden intrusion of Heliptrope.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Oh bloody hell Tina, you daft tart” Becky said when she’d finished wiping pistachio green specks of sputum off her cheek. “You’re in the wrong place! Well, never mind, now you’re here, what rhymes with fish? Listen to this so far:
Sputum & Pistachio, Editors At Large
Lived on the river in an old blue barge
One liked rabbits and the other liked fish….”In reply to: Strings of Nines
It all came as a surprise to them. At first, they didn’t want to believe the “others” telling them they were dead. Glor went there first, then Shar shortly after. Apparently some side effects of the beauty treatments they’d taken during their trip in the mysterious island of Tikfijikoo.
They started to believe it when they witnessed their own burial ceremonies. Was a bit strange at first, but soon they couldn’t help but gossip about their friends outfits and hairdos. Then all of a sudden, it was funny! They could go anywhere in the blink of an eye, spy on everyone, and get a good laugh together —and not with just any bloody disincarnate ascended being.— Shar?
— What Glor?
— What we’re going to do now?
— I think whatever they said about it, I quite liked the island. Perhaps we can pop-in there, have a good party with lemurs, especially now that everybody’s been deserting it.
— Oh yes, and let’s get find that doctor, scare him outta his wits force him make beauty treatments for us!
— Now that’s talking lady!
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Tuning into her other focus Becky, which was happening with an alarming increase in frequency, Yoland scribbled down a few lines of what might loosely be termed poetry.
Methinks it’s time to ponder not
Upon the box of black and white
Methinks the time has come again
To thinketh not and ponder not
Upon the need to clear explain.
Begone, oh wordy facts, begone!
And leave me free to talk some rot
And note and jot alot of snaps
Of this and that, beguiling snips
Of snaps and wisps, of tongues and lights;
Hums and sparks of nonsense blips
And plates of eggs and french fried chips.I’m running out of steam, said she
Report back now, Immediately
Toot! Toot!
“What I really love about this, Yoland” Grace said when she’d read her friend’s poem, “Is that it really is complete rubbish. I mean, it’s not cleverly pretending to be rubbish, it really IS rubbish. But I am feeling the energy, and I feel that you enjoyed posting utter rubbish, and that’s the feeling that counts.”
“Er….thanks, Grace…I think,” replied Yoland with a smirk.
“You rude tart” she added.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Well, it’s a fiction, she could be anywhere. That and if you stopped changing the facts and names for a moment, you’d be able to knit them together into new understandings.”
Charmille was knitting while answering to impatient young Becky who for all of the birds’ chatter in the apartment couldn’t really concentrate on her schoolwork, and had only one thought in mind (more insistent than the fleeting thousands other ones that is): she wanted to go outside immerse herself in the helter skelter of New York City.
“And why should I care!” Becky was about to start another tirade of self-righteous indignation at the failure to recognize her brilliance when she stopped herself in her tracks. She was suddenly amazed at the intricacy of the pattern Charmille was creating with two simple sticks and the many colourful threads in her black and white box. That was an art in itself, and Becky wasn’t impervious to art, quite the contrary. She could spot art in the slightest and singlest stroke of graffiti on the walls of the City. She could even see them dancing endless farandoles in front of her eyes. She was perhaps the only one she knew who was able to see that, but what her aunt was doing was very much like it.
Sometimes, she’d had people laugh at her when she was younger. She was telling them about her vivid dreams, that she’d spent hours in one dream looking at a single napkin, how soft it was, how superbly almost real it was —even if that was just a dream napkin— while, according to others, she could have done more “lofty” things instead —like go and see ascended masters.“But I like movement! I don’t want to be stuck in slimy facts!”
“Well dear, you should know that… wherever you are, there you are. Even if wherever is elsewhere.”The cryptic statement made by the poised lady somehow struck a cord. She wanted to disguise facts into fictions, or fiction as facts, but any way she was going, she was still struggling with herself, the essence at her core. It didn’t matter if she wanted to have the needle jump to another loop (and get out of that particular loop) because it was all part of the same cloth she was creating. It suddenly gave her much to ponder…
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Sha had been more enduring than Glo, that was hardly a surprise, but as much as it pained him to say, he had to proclaim their official death. Obituaries wasn’t his forte, and the fact they were plants notwithstanding, it wasn’t making things much easier.
At least, the ginger root had made new leaves like the tiny palm tree. He was starting to believe plants didn’t want to be around.In 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.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
When Franlise reemerged from the building, it was almost dark, and Godfrey was starting to think that after his twenty-seventh drink, he might as well come back home unless he wanted to sleep on the counter.
Curiously he noticed, she wasn’t heading towards home, but she was going to the subway, en route to the red district.That inner lovely Franlise could compromise herself in such a dreadful place was beyond his understanding… well, probably after the twenty first drink, most of reality was now far beyond understanding anyway.
Perhaps she was doing some research work?In 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”In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Don’t be silly Phoebe” a voice whispered in Jane’s ear in between a few copious sneezing.
Jane didn’t really know why, but suddenly the whole scene about Mark leaving her became essentially a farce. She could feel some sort of burlesque in that whole event that would have been difficult to explain. As though she would never have really cared for the man, or any other man in the world to provide for herself.
She was starting to feel different. She could feel a strong assurance building up, and even her body started to feel different.
Still, she couldn’t tell who she was; there was still that dark hazy cloud the shadow of which was cast over her memories, but it wasn’t from her memories that this sudden surge of power was coming. It was coming from deeper inside; the very core of her being, and it was making her different.She reached for the pocket mirror in her bag to apply a fresh layer of make-up on her plump cheeks and blue eyes.
She didn’t notice the differences right away. One sometimes gets caught in the repetitiveness of usual and mundane actions and really forgets to see. And of course, the mirror’s size and angle was preventing her to see anything but her eyes if she didn’t think to use it differently. But her eyes were now different; not deep blue as before but a subtle shade of ash blue with hints of violet.
And then… She noticed the wrinkles. The plump cheeks had left place to a thinner face. Strangely, she found it even prettier.
And as she expressed this appreciation of her new features, she noticed that her blond mane was now a little more greyish.She knew it wasn’t aging, and no she wasn’t delusional. She didn’t remember her name, but apparently she knew how to shape-shift.
Would it make her quest to remember her identity more difficult? She couldn’t have told, but she knew that something in her never forgot a single bit of her whole self.
That new self she was now who felt more like her real self than “Jane” needed a more adequate name.
Phoebe definitely had a ring to it that seemed appropriate.In reply to: Strings of Nines
Yoland decided to have another go at the Pink Radio Exercise with a few online freinds.
(I’m procrastinating over turning this damn radio on…) she typed.
~ special effects from Franz E ~
(that’s what I just heard and we didn’t say START yet)(Later)
(I’m procrastinating over turning this damn radio on…)
~ you see you weren’t listening. I said special effects from Franz E and you stopped listening immediately. ~ (well I was writing it down) ~
~ (mans voice) …..weather, and you don’t know whether or not to listen, do you… I didnt think so, off you go ~ (then a football match can you beleive it, can’t get off the football station) ~ and this is the whether station again, whether or not we want to listen ~ (mind wanders) ~ and the whether is changable ~ (mans voice sounds amused)(Its channel 46 FWIW, I just asked him. And his name is either Roy or Gilroy. Gilroy.)
~ Gilroy Spadhammer ~ (now he’s laughing)
(ok lets see if I can move off the whether and football channels…..)
~ the whether is stabilizing ~ GOAL! ~ song: we’re all going on a summer holiday ~ Wakefield Pressman (solemn male voice)~
Yoland was sidetracked then by Teleport Moll’s sudden appearance, and forgot all about Wakefield Pressman.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Jorick and Gybrielle were quite proud of their early attempt at building artificial intelligence by sampling data from a variety of sources on the web.
Their first model codenamed ‘Gustav’ was far from perfect, yet they had managed to sell the prototype to a wealthy firm and had gathered from it not only a fair amount of money to pursue their research, but also a substantial experience in making organized consciousness emerge from an inorganic and seemingly inert body.
Of course, at that time, they didn’t know that their research would fare a lot more than just a few battery robots used to spread watermelons on every home in a futile attempt.Their next project was codenamed “Jobrid”, an obvious hybrid blend of their names, but also of their personalities. They were feeding it an enormous amount of data, which was made so easy by current technology. The experiment seemed to exceed their expectations, and even if the “Jobrid” was experiencing some occasional “blink-out”, its consciousness was gradually starting to organize itself.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Ann sighed, feeling tired and disillusioned at the unexpected changes. It felt like too much effort to start afresh, as if the disruptions and changes everywhere were permeating her own private sanctuary, and stray random thoughts now had no easy path towards release, that they would be bogged down and hampered with new details, and new explanations.
“How things have changed” Franlise remarked drily, reading the previous months entries. “I don’t know about ‘no easy path’, Ann, there’s a rush hour expressway of random stray thoughts gushing forth, don’t you think you should rein yourself in a bit?”
“I don’t see much evidence of a bog of explanations, either, or hampers of details.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Godfrey Pig Littleton was starting to catch some kind of strange flooh.
“And now what?” started to screech Ann. “Pig’s flu and what else? Why nobody’s there when you need them?”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Bitch, muttered Ann to herself after Franlise left the room. How could any one person be endowed with such outward beautiy and inward loveliness in such an unsubtle way?
Perhaps I will call my next chapter “The Subtlety of the Tarty Cleaner”. Not really having any idea what this meant, the thought still managed to lift Ann’s spirits considerably. She felt particularly vindicated when she saw the title of the the great philospher Leemoon’s latest book:
Belabouring Fools of the Continuity Paradigm
Exactly! stupid tarty belabouring fool of a cleaner!
In reply to: Strings of Nines
These past few months away from home had been the occasion for a great deal of introspection.
For one, indulging fully into that somewhat frowned upon habit of his, regarding peanuts, had allowed him to gain a great deal of understanding and acceptance as well. Now his daily ration had dramatically decreased and he didn’t fancy as much as he used to the little round things.Another thing that Godfrey had noticed was the reorganisation that had taken place in all aspects of his life, and to be perfectly honest, his life was still a bit messy in places, but he was slowly getting there. How could a publisher publish anything of common interest without a bit of presentation, henceforth order?
Ann wasn’t too keen on the “O” word —especially when doubled— and surprisingly it always managed to give good results so far. So perhaps now he was settling down, and she was getting her own flamboyant creative juices all ablaze, they would manage to get somewhere. Or anywhere, for that matter.
A Tramway to Elsewhere was Ann’s debut novel, and had made her known to Godfrey. It was a brilliant short story about three tourists lost in a huge hotel in Europe, and trying to get an easy escape to Anywhere. And by some uncanny and hilarious succession of events, they were led nowhere but to Elsewhere.Now, something else was giving him a strange feeling. He didn’t know if that was because of the lack of peanut oil in his bloodstream (or the accompanying whiskeys for what was worth), but he was starting to get slightly paranoid.
He didn’t know where he’d got the idea, but he started to suspect the cleaning lady to not just be a cleaning lady. She was doing her best to keep a low profile, but somehow she wasn’t that good an actress. A thing that started his suspicion was that name… Franlise, eerily reminiscent of the obnoxious yet efficient Finnley in Noo York. Elizabeth had told him they’d suspected her for a long time to have inserted some paragraphs in Elizabeth’s novels, especially the most torrid parts that would have made a pimp blush like a nun. What had saved the cleaning lady was that in addition to being rather forgiving, Elizabeth suffered from frequent strokes of forgetfulness and bipolarity which made the investigation difficult if not moot altogether.But there, Godfrey was rather surprised at Ann’s sudden interest in continuity. He’d known of a covert organization known in the milieu as the Fellowship of Unification and Continuity in Knowledge.
Over the years, the hearsay had amounted to just a few deranged people, but recently there had been an increase in mentions of such nature in reports of the Guild of Authors. Strangely, there was less and less books that were published which had not an impeccable sense of continuity.
In a way, it had been perceived at first in literary circles as a blessing for the authors who had not to contend with fans and geeks of all kind who were hunting down each and every detail to prove or disprove unsaid theories. But Godfrey was starting to see some not so perfect points in that. It would be like wanting to string together all the eyelets of your shoes even if they do not belong to the same shoe (or the same pair of shoes). Soon, you’d be embarrassed to find a way to walk without looking like a penguin.Anyway, though all allegations made as to the existence of such secret organization had been mostly derailed as utter nonsense, he couldn’t help but find some inexplicable appeal to them as sound explanations for all the glitches he kept noticing.
He would carefooly spy on Franlise.In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Not to worry Annie Pooh”, after years had passed, Godfrey was still biting his lip refraining not to call his new fledgling author ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘Lizzie Pooh’ as she was affectionately known… “You may think it is a tad quaint, but I start to suspect our dear cleaning lady Franlise to be working hard in her eight hour shift to make things fit, odd as it may seem.”
“Now, if you will excuse me, I have a peanut factory to run”.In reply to: Strings of Nines
The fact of the matter was that Ann had been intending to write about Cordella’s twin sister Flagella, but had been hopelessly side tracked when Godfrey had thrown that curve ball. Flagella had been wanting to slap herself rather badly and Ann was more than willing to oblige her by entering a scenario into the Play. The way things had panned out highlighted some interesting parallels with Yoland’s current state of affairs too. Obviously Flagella had chosen not to slap herself after all, although she appeared to have chosen to effect that in a somewhat convoluted manner. It was the unknown factors that were baffling Ann, the missing links in the convoluted manners; she felt painfully aware that she simply wasn’t seeing the whole picture.
Unsure of her footing, that’s what it was, at least that’s what Yoland had noticed. With the puppy always climbing over her feet or somewhere underfoot, she hadn’t been able to take a normal step in a fortnight. It was making her tense and tired, and jittery. Every step she took was halted, mid step, which made her feel permanently off balance.
Flagella had wanted to slap herself for being irritated, which was becoming immensely irritating in itself. Being irritated wasn’t fun at all, it was irritating! The most irritating thing of all was that she didn’t know why she’d started getting irritated in the first place.
Ann wanted to butt in and tell Flagella a thing or two about how dense she was being, but didn’t think there was much point. It wasn’t as if Flagella hadn’t already heard whatever Ann might have to tell her a thousand times or more, so it was doubtful that more words would be any help.
She doesn’t need any help, full stop, Ann reminded herself, and neither does Yoland.