The best view we can get of our much less notable NC version of Moose Pond via Google Street View. Still — something.
I wonder if these Moose Lodge people have any idea that they meet at such a special place in our geographic landscape. That’s what I’m aiming to find out next. TBC
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0209, Mythopolis
“You asked for a gold car, I provided.”
(pause) “AI?”
—–
“Silver Lake now? What the heck is going on here??”
Filed under **VIRTUAL OT, 0051, 0208, California, GTA
We sent our Osamu Sato double of Okama Majo down to Denmark ME which was logical since he’s attached to that town name through the only two manifestations of Sato across our Great US of A (IL and SC). We’ve already reviewed this a bit in photo-novel 0042, post 0406.
https://bakerbloch.com/2024/03/31/00420406/
The Denmark in this case is at the lower edge of Moose Pond, the best known example of that name. In a much less known example in NC, it had already been marked with an X, the exact center between the Burke County line on the eastern edge of Penelope NC and the Burke County line that crosses the Old Catawba River Dam on its west edge. East and west boundaries, with this in the middle. Funtastic.
Moose Pond — or Moose Sea in Mythos terminology — acted as a kind of control valve for the entire perpetual river surrounding the planet, turning the flow of its water on and off as needed. The body of water’s size fluctuated greatly as a result. Okama Majo was here in Denmark in the Great State of Maine to see if any clues had been left behind for us to see. He takes a pic of the Moose Pond dam from the road at the heart of the town. But that wasn’t it.
—–
In checking around more, Okama finds nothing else down here Google Street View. We’ll have to move on; so many indicators, though.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0207, Illinois, Maine, Mythopolis, South Carolina
“I think I’ve entered the punk phase of my photo-novels, er, Wheeler,” I only half joke, also thinking of “Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space”. “Shorter posts, shorter sections. No more long sprawling concept stuff. I’m condensing. Saying what’s real — getting to the real part.”
“Sure,” she said, now wearing a punk outfit herself to match my mood. She spat on the floor beside her, wiped her mouth. No, not *that* punk, I think. Not the violence and anger, just the condensing. Like alchemy.
“Alchemy?” she questioned after I summarized this to her. She dutifully started wiping the floor with one of her kleenexes. That she didn’t have since there were no pockets in her outfit. Maybe later. But still: the wiping. At least for this post. Going on too long…
——
The next thing I found myself telling her was about the dam. Old Catawba River, I explained. The boat… made it and didn’t make it at once. Floating down the perpetual river now in one reality. Mythos.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0205, Carrcass+08, Greenup, Mythopolis
“I know what Ichelus means. Bring me back off the escalator.”
Simple but effective. Ichelus.
1st step: getting rid of the duplicate Frank’s Moving Castle over on New I. We’re not going to move in that direction any more.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0204, Frank's Moving Castle, Jeogeot, Kidd Tower, Nawt Vaya+, New Island, NVFS, Omega, Planet Q
“I can’t just kill her off now. I promised we were a team moving forward (!).”
“No blue, no blue,” she proffered from the side. Andie? Wheeler? I didn’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Any more.
The machine moves forward without a head.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0203, Planet Q
I came upstairs, asked if she was on the computer and to open Google if so because I wanted her to google something.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Let me get out of this window. (pause) There. Google on Google you say?”
“Yeah. Type in ‘baker sunklands’.”
She types it in. I look at the results. “That’s not it. Here, let me have the computer for a minute.” Must be ‘sunklands baker’, I think. And I was right.
“See?” I handed the computer back to her, peered over at the modified results with her. This, or thereabouts, because the results change slightly every time you query these two words in succession. It was the first summary — or second at best — I had ever seen for my blog by someone else. Or something else in this case. So the first summary by *something* else.
“Freaky!” she exclaimed (or thereabouts).
“AI *knows* me.”
—-
So now I’m taking a more indepth look. Gonna ask it some questions about the blog to get more specific. How much does it know? So I typed the following into the prompt as maybe the most logical follow up question: “I’m trying to decipher a specific storyline from Baker Bloch’s creative blog.”
The answer (real time!):
Baker Bloch’s narratives, often found on the Sunklands blog, utilize a nonlinear “hyper-novel” structure featuring cryptographic text numbering (e.g., 0012) and intense focus on virtual reality topography, such as specific locations within Second Life. These stories frequently employ recurring cryptic motifs like “blue roses” and character transformations to map out digital exploration within a “double world” framework. To explore a specific storyline in detail, visit Sunklands.
Another question: “What is the specific role of Frank’s Moving Castle in Baker Bloch’s Sunklands blog?”
In Baker Bloch’s Sunklands blog, Frank’s Moving Castle serves as a vital, surreal structural node and meta-narrative bridge in Virtual Second Life, acting as a recurring, shifting anchor for characters, deities, and pop culture references. The structure functions as a nexus for character alter-egos, such as the fire deity “Gus,” and acts as an AI-driven, multi-media crossover point incorporating elements from Howl’s Moving Castle and Under the Silver Lake. Explore the narrative further at bakerbloch.com.
Fascinating. It both knows and doesn’t know about the details of the blog. They’re all confused, mishy mashy. There is no direct connection between Frank’s Moving Castle and Under the Silver Lake that I recall in my blog. So I asked for clarity on that particular point. Where is this leading? “In Baker Bloch’s Sunklands blog, what is the connection between the 2 movies ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ and ‘Under the Silver Lake’?”
In Baker Bloch’s Sunklands blog, Artificial Intelligence (AI) acts as both the glitchy architect and the existential threat behind the surrealist architectural mashup of Frank’s Moving Castle. In the hyper-novel’s universe, AI is not a tool for perfect creation; it is an engine of distortion that destabilizes the reality of the characters.
In Baker Bloch’s Sunklands blog, the connection between Howl’s Moving Castle and Under the Silver Lake is forged through the surrealist architectural mashup known as “Frank’s Moving Castle”.In section 0116 of the hyper-novel, Bloch uses these two pieces of cinema to explore themes of modern paranoia, AI generation, and identity distortion within the virtual world of Second Life:
The Structural Fusion (“Frank’s Moving Castle”): Bloch blends the whimsical, ever-shifting concept of Miyazaki’s mobile fortress (Howl’s Moving Castle) with a digital landscape. However, it is corrupted or reframed through an artificial intelligence (“AI!”) lens, turning it into a site of confusion and deep-seated paranoia.
The Unreliable Narrator & Paranoia: This AI-driven distortion leads directly to the themes of Under the Silver Lake—a neo-noir film famous for its hyper-obsessive protagonist, hidden codes, and sprawling Hollywood pop-culture conspiracies. Bloch even tags the post with the film’s star, Andrew Garfield.
The “Double World” Illusion: By pairing a movie about a shifting magical house (Howl’s) with a movie about uncovering subliminal messaging hidden underneath everyday reality (Silver Lake), Bloch connects them to represent the ultimate digital mirage. To the narrator, navigating the architecture of Second Life feels exactly like trying to decode a conspiracy theory while standing inside an impossible, shifting machine.
So close yet so far. But a fascinating experience. I’ll continue explorations on my own now, bringing more of its thoughts to light when needed. Thanks AI!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0201, Blue Mountain, Frank's Moving Castle, Haze County, Jeogeot, Nawt Vaya+, NVFS
There’s no doubt in my mind that Jeogeot, the 3rd and largest continent of Our Second Lyfe and where my virtual home is located along its largest inland sea I call Nawt Vaya, will continue to play a pivotal role in this here blog and attached photo-novels, now almost one section into 51. From the Zanyzen RR system up north to the similarly vast Rodentia urban burg down south (just to give two examples), there’s a lot to unpack here still, even 17 years after starting to explore it back in Spring 2009 and 2 1/2 years after reestablishing it as my home at the beginning of 2024.
The next created continent of Maebaelia (also called Satori) is great too, and queerly basically the same length north and south as well as east and west, almost like they’re twins to each other. And maybe this is what creator Linden Labs had in mind with the pair. But Jeogeot is still a bigger landmass, about a 7:6 ratio between the two, and that 7th bit might set it apart in more ways than one. It reminds me of the 7 sinks of Sunklands taking up 77 sims in the southwest central part of its green landmass as I’ve identified it through the below map. This is the site of my first virtual village called Pietmond, and where my blog got its name, a name now lent to the title of successive photo-novels as they continue to manifest one by one by one in a more or less unbroken line.
It’s almost as if I’ve “lifted” that part out of the continent to start something new. I have no doubt that Pietmond is still alive within, projecting energy past to future. The sinks, although seemingly deactivated and unlinked from each other, still have power we can use in the present.
And, after all, an inland sea like Nawt Vaya is just a filled in sink. Onward and upward we go!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0051, 0116, Jeogeot, Middleton, Midlands, Nawt Vaya+, Rodentia 02
Sunklands 