“It may have been the sudden change of environment, but Leörmn had great difficulty at staying focused.”

Aspidistra Merryweather, suddenly disconcertingly finding herself in a completely different place, with a new name and an unfamiliar body, was marginally relieved to discover that the wonderful synchronicity of the random quote selector hadn’t changed.

“Thank heaven for small mercies” she muttered to herself, fully aware that mercies and heaven were self made, as were sudden changes of environment. “I’m not called Aspidistra for nothing, after all. I have in built capablities for growing well in the dark”

Of course Aspidistra’s qualities, although unique, were not particularly useful when it came to gaining paid employment. She lamented this fact at some length to her best friend Dick Tator. Dick did his best to console the distraught Aspidistra, even offering to teach her to speak in a more posh accent, but to no avail. She was inconsolable.

I am going to hell in a handbasket! she cried. I am completely unemployable! Will I sink to the lowest level of society? To a world without money or moral obligation?

It seemed decidedly odd to Dick that his friend believed that she created the very heavens, yet could not create a job for herself.

What is it you would love to do above all else, dear Aspidistra? asked Dick gently. For he was a kind hearted soul, deep down.

Without hesitation Aspidistra replied, I would like to sing songs! songs of joy! songs that make people dance!

Unfortunately Aspidistra couldn’t remember the dream that she had told Dick. I wish I could remember it, she muttered to herself. I suppose if Dick suggested I sing the joys of life upon awakening that it must have been an unpleasant dream, she mused, and as such it’s perhaps not terribly important that I recall it.

“What are you mumbling about now, Aspidistra?” groaned Philodendron, her sister. “It’s hard enough to get some sleep as it is with you glowing all the time; if you’re going to keep mumbling as well, well, it’s just not fair!”

“I wasn’t even speaking aloud, Phil!” retorted Aspidistra, stung at the unfairness of the accusation. “You shouldn’t be listening in to my thoughts in the first place, you nosey parker.”

Philodendron sighed and rolled over, pulling the blankets over her head in an attempt to block out the glow and the mental chatter bombarding her from every direction. I really need to learn how to block all this, she thought, I can’t seem to get a moments peace anymore.

“You’re right, you do, Phil” replied her sister.

“AARRGGHH!” Phil shouted. “Don’t keep answering my thoughts, they’re private! Bugger off!”

“Speaking of infinite details,” said Björn who was watching a circus program with a muscular looking man who balancing his contortionist partner who was attempting to balance plants on her face.

“What?” said Iris who was already dozing on the couch.

“Sorry dear, I was just talking to myself, have nice dreams”, he said, stroking gently her freckled face.

He continued in his head, slightly dozing off himself.

“One two, one two. Testing the acoustics… Sounds good.”

“Funny how these thoughts come in and out… It occurred to me something funny.”

:fleuron:

“Can you add a plush toy in your dream?”
“Oh sure darling. What kind of?”
“A baby aardvark”

:fleuron:

Björn wasn’t very comfortable yet, he started to toss and turn until he realized he was seated on Iris’ plush aardvark. He fondly placed the little soft thing in Iris’ arms and returned to his thoughts.

“There, it’s inserted…”
“Now, your reality can be viewed to some extent as the most complex, yet the most simple of assemblage. You may liken it if you will to a room with mirrors (*). Ancient Indian mystics have spoken of Indra’s net where droplets of waters are each reflecting all of the other ones; these are the same images.
It is not new information to you, the fact that you are seeing your reflection in your world, or that it is a sort of illusion reflecting you, but this is not the point we want to highlight here.

Consider that the room in which you are is reflected an infinite amount of times in every direction. In a sense, they are all the same. They are you. Now, we come to the interesting part. You may very well decide to explore the room next to you with its shining details, by going through one of these mirrors. Some individuals quite enjoy such explorations, they call it past or future or even probabilities, other dimensions etc. And by moving into the next room, it becomes their present.

You now realize that you have not really moved, since all rooms reflect only you. And you may want to continue in the direction you are exploring and go into more rooms. It’s alright. But some individuals realize that all rooms are equivalent, and that from where you stand, you can view the point you wish to explore in one part of the mirrors reflections. This is being present. You shift your attention, and expand your vision of the tiny part, rather than moving towards it with great efforts.

Now, when you are dreaming, the very nature of dreams is the same. It gives you a whole fractal hologram to ponder. You may get carried away by wanting to remember all the tiny details, because in doing so, what you are doing is simply opening rooms upon rooms upon rooms. And more details will be created for you! Or you can simply realize that the details are all contained within your feeling of being present, and standing in the middle of one of these rooms, and not one of them is more important than the next.

Connect to your feeling, and all the natural movements of your explorations will be automagically connected. And we bid you a nice fractal dream exploration.”

The transitory times were hectic, to say the least, though it did not always appear as such for everyone involved.

For focuses, still living at the helm of the Shipft, riding the turbulent waves of change, it was a very delicate period.
The last wave had propelled them very far in a short time, and they had rejoiced that their promised new land was in sight. Finally.

But little did they know that the land in question was only still a reflection of the old. They had created it to let themselves rest, and spew out their stress, their anger and frustration, while behind the curtains the activity was intense with the careful and barely noticed moving of props.

Sometimes, the riders of wave had glimpses of that movement. But it still felt as if they were left on their own. Most of the activity seemed to have shifted to other grounds, and that was a ground they didn’t realize they had access to already.

Like the rainbow Bifröst leading to Asgard, all these bridges between the realms would soon start to crumble. It wouldn’t be possible to have one foot here and another there, not any longer.
Choices will be made.
They are being made.

And then, the Circle of power, the one Ring will be melt into a burning core of ‘lova’, and the Shite will be healed and shifted. (well, tentatively heehee)

Col had been in the business of intergalactic sleuthing and profiling for many years now and his tall broad stature and kind, poised black face was well known all around. They used to call him “the Zebra”, not so much because he made black and white statements —he was very nuanced— but because of his unusualness and knack for blending himself in questions.
As a matter of fact, he’s made himself quite a reputation of a highly skilled professional, with no one up to par for finding clues and solving mysteries.

Col Umbro’s motto was “all you have to do is to ask the right questions, in the right order.”
Of course, he wouldn’t tell which way was the “right” one and which was not. But one thing was sure enough, most people completely overlooked the last part of the sentence.

And that was what he intended to teach to his next assignment. A distant focus of his essence in mid-shift. For the moment, dream projections were the easiest and safest way to catch their attention, because they were not accustomed to a shifted state enough to pay attention to more physical projections.

It was hilarious to see that most of the enthusiastic ones were waiting for unexpected events to come and rapture them in awe. Sillies… For one, “unexpected” shouldn’t be so… expected.
Besides, most of the time, (most of the now) people were simply blind to the facts not in alignment with their allowance for disbelief. A pink elephant, say… They had grown so blasé that should they even see it standing in from of them, that they would probably then dismiss its appearance as another miracle of genetics (or debasement thereof)...
So, reaching them would actually require quite a tactful and sly approach. Qualities he possessed enough.

“Who’s this new person appearing disguised in a pseudonym?” His assignment was wondering.

They had forgotten rule number one. Nothing is hidden from you. Granted, a pseudonym is a mask, but the choice of the mask is revealing enough of a clue.
Then, you had to ask the questions in the right order. “Who is it?” should be the last of them all. Same with all the “how’s”. “What and why” where more important questions to consider.
Once you got the “what”, the who is so self-evident, that it would not even retain the slightest of interests…

He had found a nice slot, just after an entertaining equilibristics dream show. Making a dream for his assignment would be fun. And probably even more fun as she was the most impossible subject who wouldn’t remember dreams at all! He would have to use a proxy dreamer. Someone close enough to her. He knew exactly who to choose…

Harvey was thinking if anything had escaped his friend’s keen eye for details…
She was so good at it that his attempt was only futile and hopeless.

He gave a distracted look at the menu of the restaurant.
He’d kept getting the strangest reads recently by “mis-understanding” other people’s words, in an entirely bizarre yet funny and enlightening way. Like when his friend talked about Bifrost, he first thought she was talking about getting roasted beef.

Speaking of which, the menu was saying (so he first read)

“pig bed wonder
hairy expect reason liked universe
behind certain Tina doctor busy light individual”

“Oh, egg Benedict for starters” she said, “sounds just great”
“What? Why did I read ‘pig bed something?’” he muttered to himself.
“Pig?... Did you just say ‘pig’? I am sure that is a synch… can’t remember what though… Piggy I have to remember”

Harvey noticed that he had seen pigs recently as well. The first occurrence was after a crappy condition, about recycling pigs’ waste to make gas; and the other was about a pig feeding piglets on the road.

Harvey wondered for a moment why he’d thought he’d heard “Sylvander”... He made Lavender repeat her name to be sure he got it right.

At least, that was easier to remember than Aspooh’s full name.

A striped cute little piggy… He’d heard about those funny Japanese Tokyo X ones. Speaking of Xs, there was a ten steps list to remember to help him out of procrastinating further on his current task that Lavy had kindly sent to him, but bugger if he could remember any one of them…

Now… if that were to be a Japanese pig, they would have to learn how to say ‘Essence’ in Japanese... :yahoo_thinking:

I think Aspooh is too busy mourning her cat which she had embalmed and mummified to pay any attention to the piglet (it be).

“Did you know that ancient Egyptians shaved their eyebrows in sign of mourn when the family cat died?”

What do you think of “Cellar door” as a name? Some eminent linguist has proposed it was the most beautiful association of nouns in the whole English language…

Now, Lavender was puzzled; why in the name of all the angels’ choir, Harvey was speaking of nun associations? Soon he’ll be talking of peanuts at that rate…

This whole Shifting business was definitely taking its toll on uncanny understandings…

“You can laugh Philodendron, but what on earth am I going to do with a piglet?”

“Hey, Asp” Phildendron was still chuckling at her sister Aspidistra’s reaction to the piglet news “Why don’t you make a deal with Lavender, tell her you’ll only accept the piglet if it comes with a years supply of that DMT stuff.”

“So I can share it will you, Phil?” Asp raised an eyebrow. “I don’t like haggling though, you know what I’m like. Looking a gift horse in the mouth and all that, no accidents and all the rest of it. I mean, I must be creating this piglet gift myself, and acceptance is key, is it not?”

“Acceptance doesn’t mean literally accepting gifts of piglets, silly!”

“Well what DOES it mean then?”

“It means accepting that everything is fine, whatever you choose ~ whether you say yes to the pig, or no to the pig, you’re supposed to accept that it’s the perfect choice.”

“Well how the devil is a person to know which is the right choice then?”

“Well that’s just it, it doesn’t matter which choice you make. Not only that, it’s not a case of just one choice, either.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me, which sounds like absolute nonsense, is that if I choose to accept the pig gift now, I would have to choose tomorrow that I accepted the pig gift today, otherwise I would be choosing…..” Asp’s voice trailed off as she lost her thread.

“Yes! And not just once tomorrow, but in every moment you would have to choose that you chose the pig gift ~ otherwise you’d be choosing that you didn’t accept the pig ~ and that would be a choice too.”

“Oh don’t be silly, Phil, with so many choices to make in each moment you wouldn’t ever be finished choosing before it was the next moment, then you’d have to start choosing again ~ You’d never get anything done!”

When offered a gift of a pig
Aspidistra remembered the Stig Of the Dump
And then ran out of words
It had never been heard
But it happened
And she didn’t give a fig
Or even a hoot
Toot! Toot!

“I’m noticing alot of threes lately!” remarked Rhodedrendron, Aspidistra’s freind. “I wonder why?”

“I keep noticing sevens” replied Aspidistra.

A second Helper materialised, with another squirming bundle.

Yes, as well as the triplet birth of black and white striped piglets, the pregnancy also resulted in a quadruplet birth of miniature pink elephants. A very successful pregnancy. You will appreciate the significance of the seven of course?

Lavender didn’t have a clue, but as she had been rendered speechless, decided just to nod anyway.

Oh and one last word of advice – if you need any assistance in caring for your new born, we suggest you use gloogloo as a reliable source of seeking information. This is the Fellowship’s search engine of choice.

Oh! they are so cute! Aspidistra was almost overcome with emotion at Lavender’s generosity. You are such a dear, thoughtful, kind person Lavender.

It all kept getting stranger and stranger to Harvey —or aliener and aliener, he would have been tempted to say.
Maybe that was because of the ash blue giant aliens he’d made contact with recently. They were nice though; slender body and ample slow movements, but despite all feelings of eeriness, they appeared to be kind and loving beings. Of course, when he had told the others about it, all they had wanted to know was how many boobies they had, and whether their appendices were proportionate to their heights. Harvey couldn’t help but roll his third eye (he was tempted to wink it at first, but remembered how he failed to convey anything like this, people not knowing whether he was winking or simply blinking…).

Funny thing was that now he was getting distorted and disrupted (or so he thought) communications even in broad daylight.

The last one, when he was reading Grips, his favorite newspaper’s headlines on the newsstand went like:

Home energy merely start, cave created answer
Zhaana, Mlle friend within, needed hidden face
view Leormn somehow warm smiled whole week

Yesterday, after having being woken up by the squealing little piglets during the storm, he’d loitered around the neighbourhood in search for sleep, and found himself wanting to declaim nonsensical words about a girl gloogloo-dancing under the sun of Androoloosie (that’s the name he got, from some distant parallel reality).
Perhaps he should make some podcasts out of this, they may well be the sign of a vastly intelligent design the code of which some erudite researchers could crack up thanks to his contribution.

Yeah… crack up… They would…

A sudden message popped into the bathtub.
Opening the capsule, it was obvious it came from the future, as the color code was unmistakable.

Well Fall is officially here now. Time to get down to business. How would up to 3k extra a week fit into your life? We have alot of fun doing it and you can to. Call the number below to hear how you can get onboard.

The last part was more intriguing. Probably a code.

Lester’s ex-wife keeps the milk cold. Batman316 is a nugget.

He rose from the bubble of now cold goat milk bath for his sensitive skin, and dried his muscular body.
For this mission, he probably would have to get onto those old generation portals. He always had a spare pants for those missions, as only bio material could travel though. He sure didn’t want his pants to disintegrate in the heat of the action.

Ann woke up thinking of Annabel Ingram. The name sounded very familiar, quite close to the name Annabel Ingman actually. The funny thing was that Ann had seen images of Annabel’s face, lots of them, a series of faces of all the ages of her life. She felt like a ‘real’ person’, whatever that meant. Ann wondered which came first ~ the ‘real’ woman that inspired the character, or did the character now have a life?

Sha and Glo were in bad shape.
He was concerned that the lack of moisture in the air was the cause for their demise.

Perhaps they longed for the summer’s sun, like everybody else. Gloria was apparently more badly affected than Sharon, her long disheveled hair gone all dry and brown, but he wanted to believe it just meant she was about to flower.

Decimus Spurius rubbed his eyes and scratched his head, befuddled. He’d been dreaming of Antonia Ludicrus, his sweetheart, and at first in the dream they were strolling along the beautiful beach at Baelo Claudia, upwind of the garum pots. But then they were inside some kind of building, and Antonia was pressing little black squares with numerals on each one, but they were strange numerals the like of which he’d never seen, interspersed with a few familiar ones. She leaned over the greyish black slab, frowning, glancing up occasionally to a brilliant square light placed in front of her on the table.

Decimus sighed. The dream made no sense at all, but he was filled with longing to see Antonia again. It had been months since he’d seen her, and he hated Saltum , hated that he’d been reposted so many days walk from her.

And look at the funny messages her business cards have on them! Lavender pulled a selection of cards from her purse. I mean how weird is this:

Lester’s ex-wife keeps the milk cold. Batman316 is a nugget

and listen to this one:

We have a lot of fun doing it and you can too.

So I just knew it had to be some sort of clue. So you know me … I just had to make an appointment to see her!

Oh of course, agreed Decimus, scratching his ear. You don’t have a business card for Dr Limur in there by any chance do you?

oh no, sorry. Anyway, before I meet Annabel, I intend to go shopping for some new parasites. Aspidistra asked me to bring some back for her … and it is the least I can do really.

Yes, parasites sound great, sighed Decimus. You know the name of Annabel Ingram does ring a bell. Is she the one who takes guided tours of the Doorway of the Goddess Amarylis Moo Rue?

Are Nut Bans Promoting Hysteria?

Every parent of a school-age child has heard the warnings about nuts. Some schools ban nuts entirely, while others set aside special nut-free tables.

While nuts are clearly a risk to some children, often the response to this health concern represents “a gross overreaction to the magnitude of the threat,” argues Dr Pistachio, an internal medicine doctor and professor at Pecan Medical School, in a recent column in the medical journal Nut Case.

Measures to protect children from nuts are becoming increasingly absurd and hysterical, say experts.

A nut rolling on the floor of a US school bus recently led to evacuation and decontamination for fear it might have affected the 10-year-old passengers, who were not classified as nuts.

Professor Pistachio said the issue was not whether nuts existed or whether they could occasionally be a serious threat. Nor was the issue whether reasonable preventative steps should be made for the few children who were documented as non-nuts, he argued.

“The issue is what accounts for the extreme responses to nuts.”

“We try to relieve anxiety about nuts by signs saying, ‘this is a nut free zone,’ which suggests that nuts are a clear and present danger,” Dr. Pistachio said. “But in doing so, we increase the anxiety.”

Being a severe nut shapes your whole life – and those of the people around you, as Cashew Cacahuete learned.

For most women trying to avoid the amorous advances of their husband, the line “Not tonight, I’ve got a headache” will suffice. For her, a simple “Don’t come near me, I am nuts” does the trick.

‘Nut phobias are a growing phenomenon of the last 10 to 15 years,” says Professor P. Nut, an expert in nuts who is conducting a study to see if exposure to nuts in early life can inhibit such phobias. “One reason is that we’re all far too scared and bored, so we start attacking friendly characters such as nuts.” Prof P. Nut says that in African and Asian countries where pregnant women aren’t discouraged from socializing with nuts, have very low levels of nut phobia. “These countries have higher levels of parasitic infections than ours, so it’s possible that their belief systems may be protected from phobias.”

He also disputes Department of Fear advice that advises pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers to avoid nuts. He says there may be a case for exposing children to nuts. “Those who meet nuts early in life may in fact be protected against nut phobia, in contrast with previous studies which have suggested the opposite.”

Greve Bord was up Shift Creek without a paddle. Shift Creek was in Loo Mash, and Greve wanted to get to Well Flyers before sundown, but he was going upstream and everyone knew that Well Flyers was downstream.

Aspidistra was packing her suitcase. Shopping for parasites wasn’t as straightforward as she had imagined it would be. The particular parasites that she required were anti nut phobia parasites, and could only be found in the eighth world. The third world had eventually succumbed to nut phobia, swiftly followed by several more worlds. Aspidistra had to hurry to the eighth world, as news had just filtered through the networks of a new case of nutterophobia in Shift Creek, in the seventh world.

“I just had the strangest dream, Rob” Jane said to her husband. “About a future probability, but it was really kind of silly.”

“What was it about?” he asked, leaning over the kitchen table to turn down the volume of the radio. Leon Russel’s new Back To The Island was playing, the waves rolling onto the shore mingled with the trucks thundering past on the busy road outside.

“Well, I’m pretty sure it was in the future, around 2009, and the kids were creating having a day off from school by throwing a peanut at the school building.”

Rob smiled at his wife, shaking his head.

“The class of ’75 today,” Jane continued, “Create a day off school by making a prank bomb scare phone call, but those kids in the future just threw a peanut at the place!”

“You sure do explore some far out probabilities, honey.”