Monthly Archives: June 2025

June 29, 2025 · 8:27 pm

00470305

The US of A’s only Dream Island lies in Flathead Lake, Montana, a 197 square mile body of water divided, appropriately enough, between the counties of Flathead to the north and Lake to its south, making the interesting equation Flathead + Lake = Flathead Lake. Dream Island, not much more than a football field in breadth, is found clinging to its southwestern coast near Big Arm.

The only really clear angle we have of the island in Google Street View is from Highway 93 as pictured below. From this 2011 screen capture, we see what appears to be several manmade structures and a glint in the trees indicating something else.

But by the time Google gets around to photographing the island again from the same spot in 2018, all of these objects are gone and the island seems to be totally bereft of human traces. Queer.

So in digging a little deeper, found this tiny Dream Island in a remote section of Montana had an interesting history. There was indeed a legitimate residence on the island at one time, owned by Juanita Daly whose well known family made their fortune from the state’s lucrative copper mining industry. When the property was sold after Juanita passed away in 2011 — the year of the first snapshot of Dream Island above — the new owners decided to clear the island of buildings, which also included a guest house and a boat house. Juanita was also known to entertain rich and famous personalities at her small slice of paradise, like legendary comedian Phyllis Diller photographed here in 1981 on the island with her.

But Ms. Diller is not the only famous person photographed on the island, at least according to some Google Earth photos I uncovered pinned to the same location. Remember the object-character Firey from a couple of posts back? Well here he is in what appears to be either the main house of the island or the guest house! Was he also a celebrity friend of Juanita’s? If so, this would have to be at the very end of her life, since the “Battle for Dream Island” web series where he was showcased only started in January 2010. Let’s come back to this.

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June 29, 2025 · 2:43 pm

00470304 (lost ally)

Spongeberg tried to ignore the long haired, slightly smelly man sitting in the phone booth next to him while retrieving his canned drink from the machine. But no good.

“Umm, spare some change for a Green-Grey war veteran?” he prompted as Spongeberg was about to move away after a refreshing sip.

He glanced over, detected no immediate disability. “Depends on what’s wrong with you,” he decided to say unfeelingly. Can’t even bother to pick up his cup for begging, pheh, he thinks. Lazy bum as well. Then Roth moves more into the light to expose his hands that weren’t there, also exposing the reason the cup had to remain on the ground in front of him.

“Oh,” said Spongeberg to this, still considering whether to give him even a hard earned dime of his money. He drops a nickel into the cup, prepares to move on. He walks slowly so as not to rattle all the change that still remained in his pockets. Didn’t work. Roth watches him with his own disdain as he fades into the distance…

Up the road connecting Highway 13 and Highway 14 over the mountainous beige spine of Lower Austra separating them he goes. Aiming to catch a Second Lyfe to Real Life plane back home to Whitehead Crossing before dying again on the road like a dog in this cursed world, his own severe handicap here.

The two men could have become chums then and there, sharing Spongeberg’s drink while discussing disabilities personal and societal. But Spongeberg chose to remain free of all that, not tied down to a new friendship, despite the benefits he might reap.

This is actually an alternate story to the one presented here in photo-novel 13. But also a warning. Extreme freedom sometimes has a price, and something like a nickel won’t cover it.

https://bakerbloch.com/2019/04/11/88829/

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June 27, 2025 · 2:24 pm

00470303 (6666 posts, 666 pages — coincidence?)

“And so that’s how it all started, this story of FILE derived from TILE,” observing Nauty declared in his wise guy way. “We simply had to move Firey from 4th to 1st in this bottom group of 4 to spell out the word F-I-L-E with the first letters of their reordered names. F stands in for T because these are the 2 straight letters of the alphabet which can contain 7 sub-letters per the TILE game structure. The BFDI object-character colors here also match the 4 of TILE in red green blue yellow of course, although the individual letter to color correspondences are different from the game board. I could go on and on, but I’ll ask you the burning question that now presents itself up front and center alongside or even on top of repositioned Firey: What happened to the Dream Island all these characters were so fiercely battling over, often to their deaths? We know the answer to that too, given it presents itself as a constant in *our* world.”

“Constance,” I say to this, citing the name of the FILE sim that is also the name of the island in question.

“Correct,” he wheezes. “We should return but I’m not sure that’s possible given all else that’s happened in the meantime.” Since the demise of my attempted urban center there I dubbed Constantynople, I understood. Back toward the end of photo-novel 39 I believe. Checking….. checking….. Yes. 39. The island seems to have changed little in the intervening 2 or so years, indeed an aberration for such a large group of separately owned properties in the ever changing world that is Our Second Lyfe. It truly appears to represents some sort of sticky outie constant.


pin filled map of Constance Island with my former Constantynople at the top

“But we still have, let’s see, the rest of FILE,” I said, “the other 30 sims in this column that Constance more or less centers. Minus the hacked off 1 at the top.”


Constance Island in the middle of the 32>31 Nautilus continent “FILE” (purple column)

“Exactly centers including the hacked off 1 at the top,” furthers Nauty, knowing his continent better than me, since it is the same as his body in essence, pins stuck just there there there there, and so on and so forth. Constance is just a start. But also an end. “(The sim of) Ten Pages is 10 up from the bottom,” he continues with his FILE knowledge, “indicating that the 32 minus 1 (the top sim was wacked off in the retirement process), taken as a whole, are pages of a book, perhaps a chapter, perhaps more.”

“A section,” I say. But then I knew it had to be 2 if so.

“The… doorstep to the Temple of TILE was positioned right smack in the center of the 32 sim FILE,” he pinpoints while wheezing out.

Suddenly I knew what had to be done.

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June 24, 2025 · 1:54 pm

00470302

“I wonder if Rockstar is mad at me. For, you know, not getting the Beethoven thing; being, ahem, deaf about it.”

“Nah. He’s going through a lot of crap in his life right now,” I continue talking to myself on a high road over on the old continent of Our Second Lyfe, a location pointed out to me by an old acquaintance. “I’m just being paranoid, creating situations where there are none. Okay, better get back to Vortexville or, maybe better, ‘false’ New Island so I can kickstart my new novel again. ‘The Hmm.’ Bothering another one of my, he he, *allies* for a change. So naughty!”

“Yes?” he wheezed, manifesting on the ledge before me.

“No not *you* Nauty,” I said, looking over at him, not too surprised by the sudden manifestation for some reason, as if I was expecting it. Nothing’s changed: he’s still the same old Nauty with long, sharp pins stuck through his burlap body just there there there and there. We might seem equal in stature from the above snapshot…

… but we’re not. Not much different in that regard than, say, towering Kong up there is to me judging by his big foot over there from this angle. Not much different atall. Hmm.

Suddenly just like that I was in a different place with more pins, many more. This was Nauty again, I understood, but turned into a whole continent, or a representation thereof. I walk through his pin marking the former location of Spongeberg’s Mystenopolis…

… toward Center.

(to be continued)

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June 24, 2025 · 5:47 am

00470301 (Now I am become Life?)

After the meeting, Spongeberg rendezvoused with Mmmmmm toy avatar and old friend Grassy Noll by the pond not far below Carolin’s new place. Sharing a bottle of mulberry wine they start talking about the past, namely Spongeberg’s former home of Mystenopolis and its towering statue of Christ the Redeemer just up the ridge, now derezzed quite a few years back along with the town itself. He misses the place and laments its passing.

“But we still have the Faune,” Grassy said to all this, firmly in the present while staring straight ahead at it. “Its opposite but also complement. Your 12×12 ‘Atom’ founded in Mystenopolis can still be used for constructive instead of destructive ways. Time can be reversed, *hiccup*. Excuse me!”


Spongeberg back at his Route 14 home recovering from the drinking and thinking about what Grassy said.

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June 23, 2025 · 6:39 am

00470216

He exited the stylist with a haircut so bad that Google Street View decided to blur it out. Which gets to Spongeberg’s next point…

“Minoa was like a bad haircut in that the stylist had to go, the designer. So I moved you to Fordham up on the beige ridge above us, placed you in a corner there. Eventually this led to Eddy in the current photo-novel, child of Hermon who is also a monster created by another, the CREATOR in this case. Stylist is another word.”

“Snip snip here, snip snip there,” I said to this, thinking of a lion. Thinking of *the* Lion. Gurdjieffian.

I am the stylist he speaks of, I knew by now.

“What couldn’t you fix about your creation, Wheeler? The hair. That jagged, ragged black awful hair.”

“I tried. I really did.”

“By making his face your own. Like staring into a pool of water.”

“Right. But he changed, became independent of me. Through New York.”

“Through *Black Lake,* New York. Old Gregg.”

“I guess,” I answered, thinking of another bad haircut.

“Eddy might be different,” Spongeberg continued. “So also says New York. 2 Coopers as it turned out.”

“Me as Shelley,” I noted. The red haired version, just to mix things up.

And so we’ve come back to the second…

… which is actually the first.

Spongeberg hee-hawed about it and then took his leave from us, also ending this section.

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June 22, 2025 · 10:01 pm

00470215 (enter The Destroyer)

“Psst,” Wheeler whispers over to Carolin after commenting on the 2 Coopers. “What’s Spongeberg doing here?”

“Oh,” said Carolin, looking over at the couch where he was sitting, just biding his time it seems. “I was going to use him in this particular scene instead of you. Then I thought since we were talking about your name and all and your prominent role as chief female in the blog, I’d just have you enter instead.”

“Oh. Well, what’s he still doing here?”

“Oh, umm, well. Umm… I guess he must still be pertinent,” she realizes. “He’s, er, a resident of this area after all, along with that being his last name. “Spongeberg Resident!” she calls over, jolting him awake from his micro-nap. “I’ve decided to have you in this scene after all. Come over here and join Wheeler and me. I assume you know Wheeler.”

“Everyone knows Wheeler,” he said distantly but moving closer in his cool, sauntering way after managing to get up from the couch. “Especially me.” He was upon them.

“Hi Wheeler.”

Carolin waves for her.

(to be continued)

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June 22, 2025 · 7:42 am

00470214 (somewhere in the lower central part of the virtual Our Second Lyfe continent known as Nautilus…)

“Hi. In today’s post we’ll be taking a closer look at New York state, filling in the corners and gaps. Okay, let’s start friend!

“First up we have the village of Malone in the upper eastern part of the state which produced former vice president William Wheeler who served under Rutherford B. Hayes and succeeded Henry Wilson in that post. But not *this* post, ha. Okay, I’ll cool it with the inept humor. Wheeler Malone Wilson: the full name of the primary female of our blog succeeding, in her own way, Baker Blinker. She claims to hang out with Rutherford B. Hayes in some kind of time machine situation who she calls R. “Booger” Hayes and also says is the first president of the United States never to be its president. Moving on…

“… to Owls Head just beyond Malone, formerly known as Ringville.

“Oh look. Here comes Wheeler Wilson in the flesh to join us. We were just discussing your middle name.”

“Malone?” she asks while walking into the scene.

“Yes, as in reviewing the corners and gaps left in New York to end the current section also known as New York. Here, have a seat beside me.” She rezzed a chair next to the fern.

“Thank you.

“Well… did you mention the ‘fo fo fo’ chat of basketball legend Moses Malone, predicting a 4-4-4 sweep for his Philadelphia 76ers in the 1983 NBA playoffs and its 3 projected series? Off by one.”

“Making it a Baker’s dozen sweep, yes. No I haven’t mentioned Moses Malone. Do you want to talk about Malone town’s Chasm Falls next to Owls Head-formerly-Ringville or do you want me to?”

“444 doubled up, even,” she starts again without a beat. “Its cemetery a chasm itself, one that everyone eventually has to fall into. Those who wear the owls head rings when entering are doubly damned or at least doubly troubled.”

“Moving us to the next county over and its Coopers Corners just below Palmersville,” says cap wearing Carolin. “In the lower eastern part of the state we have Coopers Corners again, a location that actually masks the first in our country’s official geographic database. 2 Coopers.”

“That must have been the one just found you told me about,” says Wheeler.

“It is (!).”

“Cool.”

(to be continued)

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June 20, 2025 · 1:43 pm

00470213 (1/2 way to Nowheresville (Tomasina))

“Stop beating, Hank. Stop. BEATING”

Hank knew it was technically slapping so he didn’t stop. Until the gun came out, *POP*.

“Take that. POP.”

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June 20, 2025 · 7:49 am

00470212

Ho ho ho, what’s *this*? Siri thought, riding through the ancient amphitheater toward it. I don’t remember this giant statue from my previous visit to Tousaint.

Then she recalled surrogate father Gerald telling her about the construction of what he called a “skyscraper” in this general location by the river. That must be it, she determined, riding down to the almost 100 foot tall object. Unbeknownst to him it seems, he was describing one of its construction phases.

Gerald’s view of it as of her previous visit (re-creation).

From a worshipper praying at its base, she learned the name of the prophet which this represents. Lebioda. Introduced to the kingdom by the grandmother of current princess Anna of Lea herself, he said, surprised that this lass didn’t get off her high horse and bend down and worship with him upon learning this bit of information. Stranger, he thought; *tourist* to this realm. And he spat on the ground in his mind if not in reality. His eyes betrayed his scorn of her, though.

Instead: “I’m surprised they roused enough drunken workers around here to get the job done,” the still mounted girl said down to him with a smirk on her face. He rose from the ground; probably would have slapped the girl if her cheeks were within reach for this slur against the good people of his kingdom. But she rode off untouched and unharmed. Lucky for him.

When she got back to the vineyard she asked Gerald about it, jabbing him as well, as is her manner. “I ran across your *skyscraper* today while riding around the countryside.”

“Skyscraper?” Gerald questions, not remembering that he invented the term in the first place.

“Yeah,” said Siri, that smirk back in place on her face.

Gerald honestly didn’t know what his surrogate daughter was on about. Because he simply was on another timeline where the finished statue didn’t exist. They talk together here but they weren’t together. A gap formed at that place by the river which was never successfully bridged.

A related statue in a different game — surrounded by true skyscrapers:

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