BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Conversation >

La Isla Barbelita

  
  

Page: (1)2

 
 
Mourne Kransky
20:31 / 03.12.02
It's the winter. Going to turn colder, even in tropical Lambeth, this weekend. I can't afford a holiday in the sun and I bloody deserve one.

So, I'm having it here. Welcome to the Hotel ZoCher, the premier resort on La Isla Barbelita, a little jewel of an island, just off the sultry, sunbaked, southern shores of Selfawaria.

ZoCher and his lovely partner, Ganesh, are just unpacking their wordly goods from crates and filling the place with precious things. All these rooms to let to weary barblers. No paparazzi, no alarm clocks, no key result areas, no traffic, no obligation, just decline and fall with convivial fellow Barbeloids.

Think I'll make myself a Brandy Alexander (once I've milked the goat) and sit on the terrace looking over to the distant coast of Selfawaria. I shall wear a solar topee and a cummer bund with white Somerset Maugham linen. Maybe a Beckhamesque sarong.

And houseboys, must have houseboys. Right, _pin and Ellis, you'll have to wear the leotards of servitude until Dermot O'Leary and Damien Lewis get here.

If I get bored with self-indulgence I might bestir myself later and join in Rothkoid's yoga class down by the pool. He has perfected his handstands now and his quiff will now support his weight and that of two volunteers from the audience, without bending.

Or I could go down to the basement and see what Lurid Archive and Mordant C@rneval are up to. They're suspiciously quiet. Bloody scientists. Probably just doing sums.

Maybe need some mental stumulus, myself. Could nip upstairs to the Kit-Cat Library where she has just downloaded black market Jack Fear and Dr Sax. And her spies have just tracked down the unpublished next volume of The Authority (under Warren Ellis' bed) and she has it on an inter-library loan.

We have lots of dusty old tomes but not many new titles. Her big book buying budget boss, The Lady of the Flowers, has misguidedly spent it all on a thousand shades of nail varnish. He did let Lurid have his purples and I have the whole Beckham range.

Bit peckish now. Think I'll nip down to the Zen kitchen and see what miracles Persephone has accomplished with her loaves and fishes in the cruelty-free kitchen. Ganesh interviews the fish first to identify the suicidal ones before Persephone grills them, with a little lemon and salt.

Got to go. Graham Norton's on just now. Appearing in the Chocolate Starfish Cabaret Bar, for One Nite Only. He's got both Sax and Jack Fear up on stage for the Dad Dancing competition. The big finale will be the indigent firemen in full uniform to moonlight as strippers.

Como puede ser verdad?

I want to be where the sun warms the sky...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:44 / 03.12.02
As the sun goes down, I've forsaken the cellar for the balcony. I'm adjusting the impeccable white linen collar of my shirt, straightening next season's Ray-Bans and sipping a perfect martini (shaken, not stirred). Lurid is propped against the bonnet of a Lamborghini, rolling a cold can against the taut muscles of his throat.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
21:06 / 03.12.02
I'm taking the evening on the beach, armed with cheap wine and expensive cigars.
 
 
The Strobe
21:37 / 03.12.02
Sitting somewhere on a rock, staring out to see, is Paleface. He appears to be dressed in curiously dark shades for such a summery place... not black, no, but dark blue certainly. And trousers as well. Well, when you're that Pale...

but yeah. Staring at the sea, crashing in and out, probably reading, possibly wearing the smelliest floppiest cricketing sunhat known to man, his mirrorshades, and a big grin.

Anyone else want to come and watch the sea go back and forth for a couple of hours with me?
 
 
Mazarine
21:55 / 03.12.02
Who's that down there at the other end of the beach? Waving? Oh look, it's Mazarine, run off from frosty upstate New York, complete with metal detector and makeshift Survivor style buff (translation: piece of cloth.) I've found some paperclips and forty-five cents in loose change, and what looked like buried treasure but turned out to be gelt. I abandon that, and sit on the sand playing with the tiny crabs and horseshoe crabs and arguing with seagulls, over a tasty cup of lemonade/limeade and some pringles. Someone get me when the tide's gonna come in, okay?
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
22:20 / 03.12.02
Bizunth squats in his protective cave. The hallucinations are all out there, taking in the sun, sipping complex cocktails and laughing. Always laughing. When will they stop? When will his imprisonment on this godforsaken rock end?
He eats a handful of sand and pulls his half-rotted seaweed blanket over his head.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
22:30 / 03.12.02
An old lady appears to be walking up the beach in a rather large straw hat and a dress that is far too long for her. A giant basket in one hand she is struggling along under the sun. Oh, wait, it's Janina and strangely enough she's out in daylight, no surprise then that the sun has an odd effect on her. She settles down and opens her basket to bring out an entire lamb roast dinner, plates and silver cutlery, somehow she can stomach it even in the high temperatures of the area.

Having consumed the food she walks behind the bar, magically arranged on the edge of the beach (quite suddenly), taking on her role as barmaid. 'Someone had to supply the drinks', she mutters under her breath, 'and everyone else would charge for them'.
 
 
Rollo Kim, on location
22:37 / 03.12.02
Even now, as Mr Kim snorkels his way out to Biz's lumicrous cavern with a dagger secured between transparent teeths... they chortle like sardonic wheelies. Their reign of self-indlugenette, sun-soaked chifoonery must be endeth, mmm, on the virdentinous sands of buggered-to-sand slave kiddies.

Polishing a taut, muscular turd, an attractive-to-the-point-of-difformity stranger approaches... those not cool enough to have already not have noticed the approach... look away in the hope of retaintionous their schule...
 
 
Cat Chant
22:42 / 03.12.02
Despite the heat, Professor Deva is, as ever, clothed from head to foot in formal black robes. The merest suggestion of cuff shows at the wrists, however; it is, by contrast, almost blindingly white, despite Dr Ganesh's attempt to get his inky calipers on the good professor's fingers.

Ze (hah!) paces solemnly up and down the beach, waiting for the magical indications to be correct for the harvesting of seaweed. Later, ze will drink deeply of wine and start ranting insanely at the top of hir voice; but for now ze is humble, scholarly and calm.

The moon sets, causing the green-and-silver brooch at hir waist to send out a tentative beam across the waters.
 
 
000
22:45 / 03.12.02
Chrome points out to someone's boyfriend that there is no topic abstract, just because he thrives on pointing out the things that are missing in the surroundings. But he has decided to be calm, been a lot like that for quite a while now, it's allright.

Although he knows jackshit about the maintenance of fruittrees, he nonetheless makes it his to learn from the internet and apply it to real life. And when he is not using energy on that, he is content with finally being somewhere warm - the reward for all the times spent in places with cold temperatures, he feels.

One day he can spend hours just swimming, an another studying the curious wild life around the isle.

Yes, he is content, this is a dream come true.
 
 
Rollo Kim, on location
22:50 / 03.12.02
The tranquilitude is thus interuptioned... a figant clipper duth approaching thee shore... sweating bloodstrooles and scutting oblivion upon this edenized dillusionette... a bloodflow of scuttuncerous spoilingbrads adecks the shore... inhereth...
 
 
Jack Fear
23:00 / 03.12.02
It's late in the evening. Wearing my shabby black funeral suit, I sit between Lilith Myth and Grant in a corner of the Club Flamingo, with my head on the table, watching the green bottles gather in front of me. A band is playing an unlikely selection of cover songs: the sound is like a collision between a Western swing band and a samba school, playing the New Wave songbook in Spanish—cheery, brash, and tuneful. There are about fourteen people on the stage, everybody singing or chanting or banging on something, all seemingly having a wonderful time as they brought an epic, unlikely version of "Once In A Lifetime" to a climax.

I am jet-lagged, drunk, and exhausted—more exhausted than drunk, but pretty goddam drunk for all that—having emptied many of those green bottles myself. "I can’t believe I fucking let you talk me into this. I must be crazy. I should be in bed," I moan.

Then the band starts another tune—jackhammer piano gave way to a twisty riff on the guitar and the horns. "Call it!" I cry to Grant.

He listens for a moment. "Sounds vaguely familiar… Lilith?"

"Roxy Music, isn't it? God, it makes me want to dance," she says.
"Mm-hmm. 'Prairie Rose,'" I nod.

"Texas," sing the singers in Spanish—tay-hhhhass.

Pertenezco alli, se parece…
Solitari'estrell', brille en pais grande…

"This is how you've trapped me, you unspeakable bastard," I say, pointing at Grant. "I need my sleep, but you bring me here knowing I will not be able to leave until this absurd band plays their last fucking ridiculous cover song of the night."

And the band sings Hey hey, le oigo el llamar de mi
Hey hey, Rosa Predera…

"Fuck it," I mutter, but before I can ask Lilith to dance I fall asleep face-down in my dessert.
 
 
telyn
23:01 / 03.12.02
..."as long as you let me boil your hat first" Harmony said to Paleface, agreeing to go and watch the sea.

"And I have to take my harp too, I want to sit and play to the waves."

With that she scurried of to fetch her hat boiling equiptment, and a small, rather battered contraption made from wood, metal and gut.
 
 
w1rebaby
23:07 / 03.12.02
But what's that noise above? It sounds like propellors... a biplane comes into view, far above, and a parachute opens with a tiny figure beneath it. Gently it drifts down until it lands, out of sight, on a distant corner of the island.

Ten minutes later, Fridge is seen walking across the sand, trousers rolled up to expose hairy shins. He has a laptop case around one shoulder and is trying to light a damp cigarette in the evening breeze.

"I can't access your wifi network. Who's the admin round here? The IAO won't hack itself, you know," he bellows, coughing. "And where's the bar? Ah, Janina, fabulous. A Mojito, if you'd be so kind, would be wonderful. I brought," he adds, and reaches into his bag, "some crisps." Five thousand dollars' worth of purloined AIDS medication falls unnoticed to the sand.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
23:11 / 03.12.02
Sure thing but I bet Persephone could rustle up something better then a packet of crisps in the kitchen! Maybe you should go and see her?
 
 
Rollo Kim, on location
23:18 / 03.12.02
Inexplicably... the subtle scent of tarragon...
 
 
Linus Dunce
23:28 / 03.12.02
From under the cool, dark water, Ignatius_J stares towards the shore, the bright sunshine burning his eyes to the red they are. "Ah," he sighs. A second later, the ping hits the hull of his submarine. The low-fi chime wakes him like a cheap alarm clock. He slams down the periscope, turns on the balls of his feet, then stops. "Christ. Will that bastard LET ME REST!"
 
 
Rollo Kim, on location
23:30 / 03.12.02
"Tread not yea the path to the child-crushed shores." Warndens Mr Kim, with tea-mugs placed carefully over his eyeses.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
00:47 / 04.12.02
Randy would be there, but he's stuck in a 'plane, mid-air, experiencing some kind of Groundhog Day style temporal loop.
 
 
Baz Auckland
02:07 / 04.12.02
The ever-classy Mr.Auckland emerges from a hole in the beach, shovel in hand. Even after digging 3000 miles through the earth, he still manages to saunter in from the beach. Although he is still sporting his winter apparel of the colder climes, he quickly proceeds to toss it to the nearby manservant.

"Tres tequilas de Hornitos por favour" he shouts at the waiter; while resting his top hat over his eyes in a jaunty manner, he proceeds to kick his feet up upon the table.

"como estan? la isla barbelita est el mejor!"
 
 
dj kali_ma
02:26 / 04.12.02
Fumbling for clothes in the dark, aphonia disturbs the sleep of her guest, a certain rockstar who would be well-put-out if their affair were ever made public.

"You going then, love?"

aphonia sighs. "Yes, dear. Didn't want to wake you. It seemed like you were in desperate need of some sleep."

The rockstar sits up and turns the light on near his bed just in time to watch aphonia's light brown ass disappear into a pair of black lace panties, quickly followed by a gold-beaded flapper-style dress falling into place over it.

"Zip you up?" he says in his charming accent, walking over to her and doing so. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he looks around the room, which is even more opulent than some of the rooms he'd stayed in (and trashed on occasion) over time. "Where the hell are we *this* time?"

"Some place called Hotel ZoCher. Got an invitation in the mail four days ago. Needed to get the fuck out of... where I'm from."

The rockstar smiles. "I've learned not to be too surprised to find myself wherever we end up. You say you do this when I least expect it?"

"I'm a horrible thief, love," aphonia says, pinning her black hair back into a loose wavy bun. "I'm stealing from the bank of seconds when you blink and sneeze. I'm stealing some of your dream time, too. You never remember me when you get back, you know."

The rockstar leans over, kisses the chinese "double-happiness" tattoo on her left shoulder. "I think I might feel your effects, though."

aphonia smiles a somewhat melacholy smile. "Perhaps. Anyway, you ought to get back. I've got some people to meet."

A pinch here, a blink there, and the rockstar wakes up just as he's landing at London Heathrow. Every so often, he gets really good sleep on an airplane. Most often not, though.

Meanwhile, back at the Hotel ZoCher, aphonia steps into the bar, dressed to kill, and in the mood for a greyhound.
 
 
Yagg
02:56 / 04.12.02
A series of sonic booms reverberate across the island and a tiny black wedge drops screaming from the sky. Just before it plunges into the waves, the nose tilts upwards and it floats gracefully over the dunes. Thrusters kicking up giant clouds of sand, it finally comes to rest near a grove of palm trees. Creaking and clanking can be heard as it cools down from the blazing inferno of reentry. A black cockpit atop the gleaming ebony hull slides open, and a figure in a skintight black spacesuit and helmet squeezes itself out and jumps down into the sand.

"Phshew!" says a rather sweaty Yagg, removing his cyber-interface headgear. He turns towards the waves, letting the sea breeze blow through his spiky blonde hair, cooling his overheated brain. Then he turns and faces inland. He cocks his head like an inquisitive puppy, listening. Music is heard in the distance, and laughter. He pitches his helmet casually in the direction of his spacecraft and starts trudging inland, shiny black boots leaving deep prints in the sand.

"Hope they've kept the drinks cold," he says aloud. A brightly colored bird hears him, but does not understand and flies away.
 
 
Saint Keggers
03:12 / 04.12.02
On the other side of the island a rickety old boat is seen landing on shore. Fron its deck emerge Kegboy, knife in hand, and an unknown person being dragged from the boat.
" You see, you bastard," Kegboy says, "I knew, if you could make a radio out of a coconut, you could fix that damn boat. You just needed the proper motivation".
"You killed them"
"Thats right"
"The skipper!"
"Yup"
"The movie star!"
"She did her best acting in her last film, a snuff film..if only I had had a video camera"
"The millionaire!"
"..and his wife"
"Marian!"
"Oh her I gave to the natives...last I saw she was volcano diving"
"Poor little Gilligan"
"No more little Gilligan...and now Proffesor...its your time..the tribe has spoken"
"Noooo!"
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
08:36 / 04.12.02
In the cruel light of early morning, with the sun lurching like a celestial beggar into the sky, Tezcatlipoca stumbles out of his room, his cheap suit stained with whiskey, his face carrying the broken dreams of last night's failures in the Casino.

He half-walks, half-stumbles along the veranda, squinting as the sunlight beats down upon his hangover, a crumbled note in his pocket, a carton of juice in one hand, and the roomkey to 101 in his other.

"Paradise," he mutters under his breath...
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
09:08 / 04.12.02
"...oooh, my head," mutters Stoatie, clutching his bucket and spade to him like holy relics. "Expensive cigars, my arse... what I wouldn't give for just some cigarettes right now". And forces himself roughly into a standing position, only to find that, during the night, sand has got into his wonderful egg mayonnaise sandwiches. "Oh well", he says, brightly, (as befits a fine upstanding Englishman), "they would have tasted like shit by now anyway. The sun's been up for ages, don'cha know."

Thus heartened, he tosses said sarnies to a basking shark (not a Basking Shark, mind you, just an ordinary shark that happens to be basking. In a basque, before you asque) and strolls off to greet his fellow islanders for a morning game of tennis. And probably some more wine.
 
 
Ariadne
09:28 / 04.12.02
Ariadne stomps along the beach, sand getting into her DM boots.

"I don’t LIKE beaches," she grumbles, brushing hair out of her eyes and wishing she’d brought her hat. "If I liked beaches, I'd still be in bloody New Zealand, wouldn't I? I move to London, meet good London pub people – and they drag me here? I bet they don't even have any veggie food about here. Damn foreign places. Where's the shade, I'm too hot."

At the far end of the beach she can see fringey sun umbrellas and she hopes they'll turn out to be beside a nice dark smokey pub. With baked potatoes and baked beans and pints of ale. And salt and vinegar crisps for pud – yum.
 
 
Sax
09:46 / 04.12.02
"Hello lady! You like mango? Papaya? Small resin statue of elephant with, rather disturbingly, smaller baby elephant inside its lattice-work stomach?

"Massage?"
 
 
Ariadne
09:51 / 04.12.02
"No, I bloody well don't. I want some rain, and shops, and bars and chipshops and ...."

Ariadne sits down on the sand and bursts into tears.
 
 
Sax
10:06 / 04.12.02
Sax walks along the tide-line, resplendent in a dazzlingly ethnic array of longhis, leather sandals, henna tattooes, hair wraps, beads, anklets and other trinkets. He has, in short, "gone native", as he perceives it. Even the beggars and beach hustlers are fed up of him as he walks around clumsily trying to get his mouth around local phrases, namesti-ing all over the parish and struggling to maintain interest in a paperback copy of a locally-written novel about knitting a ship out of palm fronds. He idly wonders where he can get a pint of Boddingtons from before forcing himself to slurp another glass of horrendously-bitter juice sold to him by a shifty type from the Magick forum.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:21 / 04.12.02
Just out to sea, past shoals of shoaly-type things and other aquatic malarkey, Stoatie catches a glimpse of a passing galleon. His piratical blood rages in his hungover veins, the hairs stand up on his hungover neck, and his hungover brain cries "PLUNDER!"

But his hungover body, having already decided tennis was too much effort, says "fuck it and be damned", and starts wending his long, lonely (though somewhat paradisiac and luxuriant) way back to the mansion.

"As long as there's none of them "island-based mysteries" to solve, he thinks. "I'm on holiday." (He was, of course, not consciously referring to Agatha Christie's dodgily-titled novel, nor to the adventures of that Five Of Renown, but to a really bad splatter movie he saw once. Well, okay, maybe not just the once. But not OFTEN, okay?)
 
 
Persephone
10:35 / 04.12.02
Munching on a suicidal fish before sunrise, Persephone frets over her cookbooks and looks for recipes that can be made over for vegetarians and vegans. She has just perfected the easiest, tastiest thin-crust pizza ever and decides that it can be made without cheese. Will vegans eat yeast? Just a tiny amount, only a quarter teaspoonful? She turns the pages quietly, so's not to wake up Husb in the other room.

He never gets friggin' insomnia. He's left on the counter a pineapple, a papaya, and a mango. His pumpkin cheesecake did not meet his exacting standards. (Yes, this was the case. But that's him, I thought it was very nice.)

She checks over the produce and notes that her shipment of "beetroot" has been mysteriously delayed. And doesn't ZoCher have the most Mona Lisa smile about that.
 
 
Ariadne
10:36 / 04.12.02
Ariadne finds that it's not all so bad after all. There's a whole library full of good books, run by Persephone and Kit-Cat Club, with comfy couches for lying around on. She pours herself a beer and lies down with a new Alasdair Gray book that she finds hidden behind a curtain.

An hour till lunch. Wonder what there'll be to eat?
 
 
Jack Fear
10:36 / 04.12.02
Awaking with bastard hangovers from our night at the Club Flamingo, the three of us rendezvous with the last member of our expedition—an anthropologist and mystic of international renown. His face is blank: one could go so far as to call him ... expressionless.

We soon begin our khaki-clad sojourn into the island's rugged interior. This is the part the tourists never see—the breathtaking volcanic rock formations, the steep valleys that vanish into mist, the cloud forests where butterflies the size of hawks zoom by snatching up unsuspecting geckoes. We are here in search of a fabled artifact, a great idol once worshipped by the mysterious natives of this island. No white man has ever seen it. Grant is our journalist of the bizarre, Lilith Myth our expert in folklore, expressionless our shaman: I'm here mostly to carry the gear.

After hours of rough hiking—machetes, bushwhacking, perilous ascents of cliff-faces, the whole nine—we find ourselves in a bowl-shaped valley of an eerie stillness. There is no time here, or so it seems: everything around us is ancient, and yet somehow untouched by the creeping jungle.

Before us looms the idol, a vast stone head that turns its blank, benevolent gaze across the island towards the sea. Its features are vaguely European—pug nose, short upper lip twisted in a sort of smirk. Strangest of all, little stalactites dot its crown like random tufts of hair. It is an amazing sight.

"From what we can tell," says our expressionless friend, "they called it Ta'ahm Koatz."

We gaze in silent awe. Suddenly, Grant clutches my arm. "Look!" he cries.

We follow his pointing finger and see to our astonished horror, that the idol of Ta'ahm Koatz is starting to open its eyes...
 
 
Ariadne
10:38 / 04.12.02
Vegan pizza! This is indeed heaven, thinks the yeast-loving Ariadne.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:54 / 04.12.02
"Koatz got off the boat", a wild-eyed passer-by says to Stoatie.

Stoatie decides on his way to the pavilion that finding some mangos would be a good idea. He's always wanted to be a saucier (did I spell that wrong?), so he thinks "yeah! I'm gonna get me some mangos!"

AND HE ALMOST GETS EATEN BY A FUCKING TIGER!!!

Suitably shaken, Stoatie composes a letter to his mother which, while innocent in meaning and content, would be horribly depressing and depressingly apposite if it happened to be being played JUST AFTER HE DIED.

Which he didn't.

Never realising the stupendousness of his marvellous escape, Stoatie went to buy more cigars. And booze.
 
  

Page: (1)2

 
  
Add Your Reply