The Bob Saga: XXXXI: Bob's Triumphant Return

Written 1 November, 2010

The Bob Saga

XXXXI: Bob's Triumphant Return

All's well that ends well.

The Head of I'mSoNotADiva Bartlett is in transit to art prison.

Neelix Nesselrode and Sleezy Spinosa were quietly married at the Cathedral of Wyrms. Neelix has a new job announcing giant snail races on Treet TV.

Golemdum is now a trustee at the robot sanitorium on Whimsy Kaboom.

AlexHayden Junibalya was recently appointed The Queen's Own Rakehell.

Sweetie and BonBon Michelin are collaborating on a book about the history of the beignet.

After 41 posts filled with absurdity, ridiculousness, and variations on AlexHayden Junibalya's name, I'm taking a much-needed vacation in a tropical paradise. That would be Whimsy, my home.

And Bob? Our 30-foot, 40-ton, deified granite Paleolithic drinking bird is back in place, supplying energy for all of Whimsy.

Thank you, readers, for putting up with all this.

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The Bob Saga: XXXX: Resolution

Chey Loves Her Watermelon Gun

Written 31 October, 2010

The Bob Saga

XXXX: Resolution

Sweetie and I worked our way through the hysterical crowd as Diva's head spun slowly to a stop,

"Man, you talk about your performance art," said a Philip Linden lookalike. "This is freaking PERFORMANCE ART."

From her katana stilts, positioned high above my head, Sweetie curtsied and said, "Thank you, thank you." The crowd cheered.

"And now," said Sweetie to her adoring public, "I will introduce you to yet another new form of art. Let's hear it for Anti-Criminal Performance Art! I will now arrest the head of I'mSoNotADiva Bartlett!"

I frowned up at Sweetie. "Does this mean I'm going to have to stop shooting her with my watermelon gun?" I asked.

"I'm afraid so, dear Cheyenne. We must all make sacrifices for the sake of art."

"Grrr," I said, but I put the gun away.

But not before taking one final shot.

AlexHayden approached, holding Diva's head at arm's length. "Jolly good show," he said, and handed Diva to Sweetie, who handed Diva to a mounted cop. "Book her," she said.

"Thanks for your help, Alex," I said. "Sorry for being so hard on you in the blog."

"No worries," he said. "If you'll take care of that bloody hummingbird I'll call it even." And then he rezzed his custom-made Aston-Martin and drove away. It looked to me as if he crashed at the sim boundary.

I approached the remaning golem, which was standing stock-still. There was a trail of mud on its cheek, and as I watched, a tear trickled down.

One of the horse cops looked as if he was thinking about arresting the remaining golem, but I shook my head no and he moved along.

I dropped a landmark on the golem. "If you need a place to stay there's a docking station open at the HAL 9000 Memorial Detention Facility for the Robotically Criminally Insane," I said. "Up at our robot sanitorium."

Neelix had been broadcasting non-stop, to the chagrin of his peers, who were working desperately to rid their mouths of the remnants of Sweetie's throwing scones. I caught Neelix' eye and he grinned and nodded, but when I said, "There's only one loose end. Sleez--" I stopped because he was frantically shaking his head and making zipping motions with his fingers and lips.

I spoke into his microphone. "I suppose we'll never know who delivered the blackmail letters," I said. "I guess it'll just be another one of those Second Life mysteries, like where prims go when they die and why can Sweetie get only 38 levels of subfolders in her inventory."

"Thanks," IMed Neelix. "Sleezy is a poor excuse for a journalist, but she'll all I have."

Sweetie was busily giving interviews to a half dozen Second Life magazines. "It's important to blend science and art," she said. "Take for instance, the beignet..."

And with that, dear readers, after more than a month of the saga of Bob, our drinking bird, we wish you...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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The Bob Saga: XXXXIX: Victory Snatched From the Jaws of Defeat

Golemdum (or is it Golemdee?) Hurling Diva's Head

Written 31 October, 2010

The Bob Saga

XXXIX: Victory Snatched From the Jaws of Defeat

Bob was in imminent danger. Golemdum-- or was it Golemdee?-- was lumbering toward him, with instructions to destroy. The golem not only had a good head start; the crowd, which was now hysterical, was between us and our beloved Bob.

I jumped high into the air and crashed to the ground. "Damn!" I said. "It's a no fly zone!"

Sweetie said, "I"m stuck in this hand-clenching animation. I'm useless."

"What a time to be in Viewer 2!" I lamented. It would take me hours of menu parsting to find the right command. I, too, was helpless.

I could see no hope. But then something amazing happened. A grinding, booming sound and seemed more like a rock slide than a voice said. "No! Love Bob!" The golem holding Diva's head had spoken!  We all watched in fascination as it drew the pumpkin containing the head of I'mSoNotADiva Bartlett far behind its head and hurled it, two-handed, at its brother golem.

"Nooooooo," came Diva's voice, in full Second Life stereo, as the pumpkin passed over the heads of the crowd.

"Damn, that's freaking amazing in 7.0 surround sound," said someone.

"Noooooo," continued Diva, as the pumpkin tumbled through the air.

"It's Diva doppler," someone else said.

At that moment Neelix realized his full potential as a reporter. "It's a forward pass!" he said. "The receiving golem is going long... long... the pumpkin is falling short... No it isn't!" Just then, the pumpkin struck the golem from behind at the knees. It-- the pumpkin, not the golem-- shattered, throwing pulp and seeds 30 meters in an outstanding particle effect. The golem balanced crazily for a long moment, then tumbled over the railing, crashing  into the dry creekbed far below. I watched it shatter into a million crazy pieces of clay.

"The receiver is down," cried Neelix. "Fumble! Fumble!"

On the bridge the gourd-juice-drenched head of I'mSoNotADiva Bartlett spun crazily on the planks.

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The Bob Saga: XXXVIII: Chaos

Golemdum and Golemdee Amidst the Flowers

Written 31 October, 2010

The Bob Saga

XXXVIII: Chaos

The moment was frozen in time. I'mSoNotADiva Bartlett, her disembodied head buried inside a hollowed-out pumpkin, was being held high above the head of her golem. Sweetie, towering above the crowd on her katana stilts, faced toward diva, her fist making the black power sign. The crowd was immobile.

On a small hillock to the left of the stage, the second golem tugged on the cord holding a sheet in place over the large figure that Diva was proclaiming the world's first piece of criminal performance art.

Then everything went into motion. The drape fell. The crowd gasped. I screamed.

But it wasn't Bob behind the drape. No, it was the intact figure of The Man from the recently-finished Burning Life Festival.

"No, screamed Diva. "That's not supposed to be there!"

"But-- but I saw him burn!" someone said. It was Neelix Nesselrode. He was the only reporter able to talk; the rest, including his partner Sleezy Spinoza, had mouths full of Sweetie's special caramel and rock-hard fragments of throwing scones.

"Ha!" cried Sweetie. "And who's the master criminal performance artist now? I stole the stolen performance art!"

"And all that time I thought you were holed up in your fortress of solitude!" I said.

Diva's face was bright red. "You'll pay for this!" she thundered.

Sweetie smiled at me. "Our good friend AlexHayden Junibalya distracted security at Burn while I replaced the Man with prims of my own devising," she said. "Or, rather, yours, dear Cheyenne. I'm afraid I sacrificed one of your spare Gorts. Diva's plan was for Bob to be here, under the sheet. So I stole Bob back and put the Burning Man in his place last night. Bob is safe on the other side of the bridge, at the entry point. I didn't have time to take him home."

"You think you've won," roared Diva, "but I'll see the end of your precious Bob!" She turned to the golem on the hillock. "Destroy it," she commanded. The golem began to shuffle off  in the direction of the bridge. Toward Bob.

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The Bob Saga: XXXVII: The Unveiling

The Head of I'mSoNotaDiva Bartlett
Looking Good in a Pumpkin

Written 30 October, 2010

The Bob Saga

XXXVII: The Unveiling

Using the notecard illegally copied by Neelix Nesselrode, Sweetie and I, in disguise, jumped to I'mSoNotADiva Bartlett's unveiling.

We had no idea what, exactly, Diva would be unveiling as her premiere piece of criminal performance art, but both of us suspected it might have something to do with our Bob. Our plan was to protect our 30-foot, 40-ton, deified granite purloined drinking bird at all costs.

We had purposefully arrived early so we could scout our surroundings, but apparently everyone else had jumped early to avoid the rush. We were barely able to get in.

We had materialized at night, in a valley surrounded by low hills. Behind us, a bridge vanished into the distance. In front of us, firefly particles and tiki torches provided soft light while vendors sold ImSoNotADiva t-shirts from a line of tents. We Heart Diva pennants flapped in the wind.

"Remarkable," said Sweetie. "There are more than a thousand people on the sim. How is that possible?"

"Stolen technology!" I said. "Diva must be using the new Open Sim software. In her former capacity with the U.S. Justice Department she would have access."

"Looks like she gets 45,000 prims, too," said Sweetie. "I'm envious. Are you certain we're not in InWorldz?"

"Nope, we're on the Agni grid. It's Second Life."

"Any sign of Bob?"

"My Conover's object scanner isn't showing him," I said, "but parts of the sim are no-build. He could be in any of them."

"Oh, I think Diva is about to make her entrance," Sweetie said. Then, louder, in her best fake Cockney accent, "Scones! Get your carmel-covered throwing scones here! Three for two Lindens or five for twenty Lindens."

"Five for twenty?" I asked.

"For those poor at math," Sweetie said smugly, "it's a bargain."

Diva-- or rather, Diva's  head, arrived in a shower of particle effects, escorted by four Bay City policemen on horses emblazoned with the words Fast, Easy, Fun. The crowd grew hushed.

Diva began. "Ladies, gentlemen, ladies pretending to be gentlemen, gentlemen pretending to be ladies, humanoids of indeterminate sex, robots, vampires, tinies, furries, artists, agents, promoters, critics, curators and patrons, I welcome you tonight to a celebration of the birth of something new and vital to the virtual universe-- criminal performance art!"

"Someone is actually applauding her!" hissed Sweetie. "Can you believe it?"

"Sorry," I said.

"Why is it art?" thundered Diva through a wall of speakers. "Why? Because I say it is! Why is it criminal? Because it's against the law! And why is it a performance? Because it requires a lot of energy and ingenuity to pull off something this clever!" The crowd roared.

Sweetie was busy dispensing her caramel-covered throwing scones, and it seemed to me she was selling a lot in the pen in which the journalists were corralled. I dunno, maybe journalists aren't good at math.

Diva's head-- that being all that was left of her these days-- was embedded in a carved pumpkin and spectacularly lit by a phanyx of no-doubt stolen nuclear avatar personal lights. It was flanked by two pillars of stone.

Wait! Were the stones moving? Yes, they were!

"Pssst!" I said to Sweetie. "Those rocks are the golems!"

"Yes," Sweetie said. "Here, Sleezy, have a free caramel scone."

The golem on the right reached out a clay arm and lifted Diva's pumpkin high into the air. As the crowd cheered, Diva continued her speech. "For too long Second Life art has consisted of particle emitters moving in random patterns," she screamed. "For too long Second Life art has consisted of strangely-shaped prims stacked atop one another and called sculpture! For too long Second Life art has consisted of imported first-life photographs in one-prim frames! For too long Second Life art has been pretention wrapped in ego and pasted onto prims! For too long Second Life art has manifested itself as first-life architecture brought to virtual space. For too long Second Life art has been musicians singing other people's songs in their bedrooms in their underwear to people in their own bedrooms in their own underwear! For too long Second Life art has consisted of ripped-off quotations pasted in avatars' profile pages!"

Diva continued as the crowd-- with the exception of the reporters' area, which was uncharacteristically quiet-- screamed in approval. "Art is what I say it is!" she shouted. "I'm the-- yes, I'm going to say it-- the ultimate Diva of SLart!"

The audience was going nuts. "What has been lacking is the criminal element! A van Gogh is just a van Gogh," she said, "but a STOLEN van Gogh-- that's art!

"Art must have a criminal element," she screamed. "What is Linden Lab's permissions system but a deliberate attempt to suppress our ability to steal objects to create art? What are the Terms of Service but a plot to destroy our ability to pursue our criminal careers? We must be free to take what is not ours-- for our art! For our art!"

"Yaaaay!" typed the audience.

"My new criminal performance piece-- which we will now unveil-- will re-establish art in Second Life-- and it won't be just art-- it will be art as it was meant to be, made vibrant by cunning, conniving, and thuggery. I call it Criminal Performance Art! I urge you to avail yourself of our fine line of CPA t-shirts, postcards, and embossed mugs."

The crowd, thanks to cunningly hidden poseballs, did The Wave as the leftmost golem shuffled over to a huge white-draped form.

"Bob!" I shouted. "Bob is under there!"

Diva continued. "Our first piece in the new school of Criminal Performance Art is under this drape," she said. "On my signal, my henchm-- assistant here-- will pull the cord and reveal what is beneath.

"We found this piece of art neglected on the sim of Whimsy," she said, "where it had been reliably rocking back and forth for more than two years. It being our prerogative, we took it.

"What makes this work so exceptional," she said, "was the effect on its creators and former owners. They responded predictably, and we drew them out with a series of clever postcards and false ransom demands.  We cleverly manipulated one of them into providing month-long coverage (and hence publicity) in her blog.

"Until now no one has DARED to blend criminality with art. We are the first--"

An amplified voice suddenly cut Diva off. "J'Accuse!" it roared.

"Who said that?" screamed Diva, as the crowd wheeled to look at-- Sweetie.

"You lie!" Sweetie yelled through her freebie megaphone. "You're not the first!"

"I know that voice," said Diva. "You! You!"

"You're not the first criminal performance artist," said Sweetie. "I'm the first!"

"No! You can't be!"

"I'm her nemesis," said Sweetie, in a confidential aside to the crowd. Then, through the megaphone, "Who embarked upon a life of high-fashion crime, wearing only the most in-vogue designer dresses and stole only the most exclusive designer items? The Fashionista Bandits, that's who! And who are the Fashionista Bandits? Me! And Cheyenne!"

"I know nothing," I said to the stunned crowd. "Nothing!"

"Who broke the security at the Moulin Rouge and blogged about it? Me! Who broke into the Bay City Police Department and turned their bland office into high concept space? Who removed their accursed donuts and replaced them with that ultimate of pastry art, the beignet? Who? Me!"

"It was all her," I said, as the policemen on horseback began to edge toward us.

"Whose illegal redesign of the horridly-textured scanners of the Teleportation Security Authority inspired a 15-part blogline about her crimes and subsequent trial? It was me. It was me! It was all me!"

"It was her," I said.

"What was all that if not performance?" Sweetie said. "What was it if not art? What was it if not criminal? You're not the first. You're a fraud, Diva!"

"Seize her!" screamed Diva, and the police horses broke into a trot, headed toward us.

"Look at me," yelled Sweetie. "Just look at me! I'm the very picture of the modern criminal performance artist! I'm the original! And I'm here to stop this travesty!"

"You're too late," screamed Diva. She gestured (with her eyes, of course) at the golem beside the draped figure. It pulled on a cord, and the drape fell.

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The Bob Saga: XXXVI: Sweetie Perfects Her Disguise

Katana Stilts

Written 29 October, 2010

The Bob Saga

XXXVI: Sweetie Perfects Her Disguise

Sweetie looked fantabulous in her costume. Her katanas made her imminently recognizable, but she looked wonderful.

"Uh, that's not working," I said.

"I'm not finished," she said. Suddenly she was three feet taller and her swords had disappeared.

"Katana stilts," she said. "The latest from Curio Obscura. Essential for a carnival barker."

"Is that what you are?" I asked dubiously.

"I am," she said. "Want to know what I'm selling?"

"I'm afraid to ask," I said.

"English throwing scones," she said, "dipped in caramel and rolled in peanuts."

"Those should sell," I said, "but you're imminently recognizable."

"But I've not yet attached the piece de resistance," said said. Suddenly she was wearing the largest hairdo I had ever seen.

"Curio Obscura?" I asked.

"But of course," she said. "Everybody will be so busy watching the dancers on the ballroom in my hair to pay any attention to my face."

"Is that a waltz they're doing?" I asked.

"See," she said brightly, "it's working already."

"Are you ready to jump?" I asked.

"Ready," she said.

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The Bob Saga: XXXV: Chey Visits MI6

Written 29 October, 2010

The Bob Saga

XXXV: Chey Visits MI6

"How do I look?" I asked.

"Like Casper the Friendly Ghost," Sweetie said.

Not long ago my bald hair base went rogue. Every time I put it on I unrezzed-- turned into a cloud of smoke. I saw me as a ghost and others saw me as a ghost. It drove me crazy until I figured it out.

So I was a foggy ghost, appropriate enough for Halloween. To further disguise myself, I was using a hated display name. The name I had chosen was Sarah Palin. I selected it because I was pretty sure Diva identified with Palin's sociopathy. You betcha.

I had talked AlexHayden Jumponapila into getting me an audience with Q at MI6 headquarters. Q had liked it when I arrived with a screen full of HUDS. I was wearing a Mystitool that would allow me to cage or trap Diva, and a HUD that would search the area for any prim named Bob. A purchased compass HUD and an altimeter HUD of my own devising would keep me oriented, and the built-in radar of the Mystitool would give me notice of nearby avatars.

I was immediately attracted to Q's watermelon gun. Watermelons are large and bulky and have a great deal of inertia, making them effective weapons in any area with push turned on. Q tried his best to talk me out of the watermelon gun.

"It's still in development," he said. "Highly unreliable. Can I interest you in this shoe dagger?"

"No."

"How about a garrote watch?"

"No."

"Exploding attache case?"

"Sweetie will be taking care of the explosives," I said.

"Folding electrocution chair?"

"Thank you, no."

"Voice changer?"

"Second Life already has one of  those. Does your suck as much?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Then no."

"Cake bomb?"

"Is it devil's food?"

"Sorry, no, carrot with cream cheese icing."

"Don't need it."

"Fountain pen gun?"

"No."

"Cigarette lighter camera?"

"No one smokes these days."

"Flamethrower hair spray can?"

"No."

"Those watermelon guns are tricky," Q said. "Seed shrapnel, you know. How about a nice Aston-Martin with revolving license plates and villain-catching bumper?"

"No."

"It has leather seats."

"NO."

"There are machine guns concealed behind the headlights."

"NO!"

"It also has the infamous oil slick feature."

"NO, NO, NO!"

"It's on your head, then," Q said. "I won't be responsible if that watermelon gun gets you into trouble."

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