Natty Bloomspice

ol' big balloon

7/19/2024 11:51pm

"The so-called Black Cat Twins are actually immense crystal structures mined in this particular area of the Chocolate Mountains. It was one of those hardscrabble colony planets you see so often in cultures at that stage. My parents had immigrated through a typically shady 'relocation agency' which meant ending up with so much debt, stranded on some godforsaken moon, your progeny were unlikely to ever escape it. Next slide, please."

"The twins were made of what was locally referred to as Chocolate Crystal, in that it was the crystalline form of this dust-bowl planetoid's basic composition. We now know that the exact chemical composition of such crystals is unimportant, but that their crystalline structure is formed from the tremendous tidal energies of what we used to call Pumpkin Spice."

"Next slide, please."

ol' big balloon

8/14/2022 10:23pm

"And... freeze," I tell my TA. "And zoom in about 200%"

"In this still from @Capt. Frank Clarence's body cam footage of the event," I continue, "I look like a fly crawling over an apricot, don't I?"

The class laughs. People always laugh when I use that line.

"A mere speck!" I add, for more laughs. "If the phenomena known locally as 'pumpkin face' were the sun, I'm merely a tiny black sunspot on its molten, orange surface." I walk up to the screen so it's projecting the orange color on me. "But how is this possible? True, the manifestation of Pumpkin I is large, but remember I was traveling in a small service vehicle called a 'rover,' that had four big tires and a roll bar and a small bed in the back. But in the dimensions of this picture I'm just the smallest dot."

As usual, Adrienne's had shot up first.

"Yes Adrienne."

"It's because you really were almost a mile away, on account of the time-space distortion generated by Pumpkin I. And Pumpkin I at this point had reached a breadth of almost 3 miles. The bodycam footage was actually looking deep into our reality at the time, not just activity on the skin of its own reality."

"Exactly right, Adrienne. Who else did the reading for today? Anyone?"

A few hands go up, but not very convincingly.

RINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

"Alright class. Everybody DO THE READING and next class we'll have a proper discussion on how your very own Mr. Bloomspice learned to navigate the Pumpkin Patch and pass back and forth between the worlds at his leisure. Class dismissed."

ol' big balloon

6/27/2021 11:15pm

"Awww, Hettie, why'd you gotta go an do that again?"

Hettie thinks she can get away with stealin' chewcumbers from Farmer Herb. She done it once and thought she was the Queen of the Chocolate Mountains and I told her she was lucky but what if Farmer Herb knowed it was her and he came and told pa, huh? What then? But when a season passed an nothin' happened and she gets all high in her britches again and sneaks off in the rover after dark, headin' back across the badlands.

It ain't safe goin' out like that alone even if you ain't fixin' to steal from a devil.