Join the new world

To celebrate posting my first attempt at picking a simple jazzy blues progression over top of an old bluesy-ish standard, in this case Shel Silverstein's "Ballad of Lucy Jordan" (olds may recall when it was made famous by Marianne Faithfull on her 1979 album, "Broken English"), I thought I'd share a cozy vignette of playing eRepublik...



The morning sun pried open the eyes of Phoenix Quinn.

He was aroused from slumber seated in his rocker on the porch of a quaint seaside hovel he called home. As PQ lifted his head, his laptop fell to the porchboards with a clunk. He looked out across the long grassy marsh and then squinted up at a cloud-spattered sky slowly turning shades of orange and pink.

He put off the chilly New England morning by pulling up on an ancient quilt his great-grandmother'd made, up around his shoulders. Comfy, his mind wandered over the thousands of friends, acquaintances, frenemies, cool cats, weirdos, and strangers he'd encountered in eRepublik.

The laptop, sitting askew at his feet, sported a friendly little message from Good Old Admin saying, "Are you still there?".


At the age of one hundred eighty-seven, PQ realized that, not only would he never be e-President of the e-United States - which was just fine since he'd never wanted to be - but also, he sighed thinking that he'd probably never succeed in fomenting a Global Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement either, one that would be capable of triggering a Fabulous e-Global e-Peoples War and General Rave that would transform the New World once and for all, bringing happiness and joy to all.

The breeze picked up coming in across the Bay. He snuggled into the quilt and recalled that at this point he was just happy to still have some hair on his head, which had helpfully flopped around in front his eyes to remind him of the fact.


Somewhere in the hovel a phone was ringing.

Not one of those beepety-beep-beep kind of little plastic devices. An actual phone. PQ had no idea where it was. Or who the damn thing belonged to. Probably a previous owner. Maybe it was down in the basement -- a scary dark hole that he never ventured into.

He just let the phone keep ringing, as he sat there softly singing "Two 6's Upside Down", the version of Woody Guthrie's unpublished tune that'd recently been reworked by Ken Casey and the Dropkick Murphys. He liked the way the DM's had recovered what nowadays might be called the punk rock spirit in Woody's work.


His husband was off to work out of town at a project in the Carolinas. Something to do with getting jobs for ex-cons to keep them clean and free. The dogs were out there somewhere in the marsh, hunting squirrels and avoiding coyotes. He'd fallen asleep monitoring a battle with his brave buddies in the venerable old Bear Cavalry militia. Fighting Hungarians or whatever. PQ could never keep straight who the enemy was this week. He just fought wherever Comrade Shiloh said to go, screaming "Ursa Fucking Fi!" as he punched the big red button and sipped his coffee while raining hell down on the miscreants.


He thought about what to do today. So many ways to spend the day. He could clean the hovel. Or weed the garden. Or tend the herb garden. Or go run naked through the marsh at low tide, screaming all way.

Wintertime, though. A bit chilly for that.

Thinking, probably first go throw some wood in the stove and make a nice pot of coffee. No sense going crazy worrying about things that might've been. Besides, he muttered to no one in particular, Shiloh said there'd be an epic some time today. Hmm, probably should take a nap first.






Until next time, xoxoxox, be kind to each other,
PQ