Category Archives: Buildings

sticky point

“Why are we here, Summerhill?”

“You know why. Because it’s the only place I absolutely *can* stand in this here flat piece of–”

“Summerhill!” interrupts high priest clown Amos Sandman, her colorful opposite in ecclesiastical matters. If only the *owners* could hear. He peers around nervously, as if the bushes and trees and flowers had eyes. Perhaps they do. “Do you know how much *rent* is around here?”

“Arm and a leg, I know. Angel’s Rest indeed, pheh. More like Devil’s—”

“Now, now!” intervenes Sandman again, eager for a break in this line of talking. Perhaps they should resume walking. If the vegetation has eyes and also ears, let them hear leisurely chatting of a lazy summer afternoon, see random smelling of roses and thistles, and the occasional prick of a thorn or needle despite carefulness, for there are so many around. He stares at the wienies stuck on a finely waxed, hand crafted stick between them, hot dogs if you speak uncouth around these here parts. Maybe that could be a new topic.

Summerhill Nova, white as Elmer’s glue (that was the point), shuffles her feet on her own luxurious forest rug before her. “Can’t *stand* it.” She stifles an urge to stand to emphasize her point. She too now stares at the wienies in their midst, recently roasted to a delicate crisp. Not too languid and limp of course, but also not too staunch and rigid. On a scale of 10 to 13, about an 11, then, or maybe a 12. From her perspective the two objects perfectly cover the head of the clown priest except for the eyes that see and ears that hear, albeit the latter hidden in thick, curly red clown hair. She ponders the meaning of the juxtaposition. Does the vegetation lushly lying around them also know that Sandman is full of unknown ingredients of dubious origins? That must be it. I see you for what you are (etc.).

Sandman catches her stare and makes his own interpretation of the framed overlap, opposite in direction for him. “We are like two peas in a pod, you and me.” He points between them and then they are perfectly done.

Summerhill has to accept that.

(to be continued?)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0026, 0607, Angel's Rest, Church of Ood, Fries with Cheese

Mouse Island

I didn’t get out of the pod, which had turned into a boat. Soon enough I was darting toward Dizneyland, probably Pansy as well. I could only hope.

I stepped out of the boat and walked across the entry dock as quietly as I could. Maybe if I didn’t wake up anyone I could get out of this alive.

A squeaking board. “Halt!!”

Nope.

—–

We ate supper that night in silence. The knife we used to cut the pizza lay just beyond reach. I had two options as I saw it. We could either kill each other… or kiss each other. But this was Wheeler, I reminded myself. A Blurmaid — blue mermaid — but still: Wheeler. The whole separation of state and power came back to me like a punching fist, a jabbing knife. Looks like killing is the option.

“CUT!!” the director shouted behind the scenes. “That was GREAT. Now do it like you’re two monkeys climbing up a tree to grab the same banana. Annnnd ACTION!!”

The improv suggestion didn’t work. We sat there still, staring at each other. If I could only describe the look in her eyes. Two pools… whirlpools perhaps. I wish I was somewhere else.

—–

I was in the Temple now, having just completed the second of 2 whirls of the rainbow labyrinth on the bottom floor. Blue all around, but white here in the center. Just like her and her eyes. I was trapped like a fly between two window panes. I looked over at crooning Mercury propped up against a dead tree and understood more about what he went through.

Blue yellow red green, and then, secondly, cobalt purple orange maroon. If only there were just letters and not letters and numbers together then the world could remain perfect.

—–

“The switch from Kansas to Oz equals the switch from yellow to red as if through a door. Blue and yellow are Kansas, which remain perfect. Red and green are Oz, Munchkinland and the Yellow Brick Road to begin and encompass the whole. This *should* be perfect but it has been singly corrupted. And this is where we must understand *numbers* beyond letters. 13 in the first has been reduced to 12 in the second, with numbers adding 1/4th from the outside. This ‘outside’ is what we must really begin to understand. Because that is the direction of the Abyss and not God.”

I didn’t want to hear this TILE talk from Man About Time, attempting to explain my latest dream-reality. I knew Wheeler had created it all to teach me a valuable lesson. Don’t f-ck with mermaids. Or mice.

I am Pansy. Zero Hero.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0604, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Rim Isles, Temple of TILE

separate

Later (or was it earlier?) he was looking at a portrait in one of the city galleries and recognized what he thought were the models. “Wheeler,” he muttered aloud, seeing the Triune that would always rule him. If he didn’t have Collagesity. He *must* hold onto Collagesity. He’ll get the crime spree under control. April Mae Flowers, yes, accomplished the actual homicides, he tried to assure himself. Didn’t work. He knew there were at least 5 active criminals in town (because of the fingerprince), despite only 3 registered residents so far. Danny, who tried to kill *him*, was, true, cleaning out his trailer, getting ready for banishment to… somewhere, Jeffrie Phillips hadn’t decided. Some place that has a lot of broken bathrooms, he he he. Or maybe where they all *worked*, ha ha ha, so he won’t have anything to do. Yes, Hell can be a place of complete, utter boredom too, he realized in the moment. So can Heaven — Heaven and Hell both… which means probably neither exists.

He must think of religion more. There are currently at least 3 active churches in town, or will be — they’re *built* is what I mean. Rezzed. There’s, obviously, the Temple of TILE, and Man About Town — MAT — certainly hasn’t given up on reactivating the old Collagesity ruling deity Carrcassonnee still up on the 3rd floor there, especially since (her replacement) Wheeler seems to be out of the picture. But all he can get out of her still is, “Iiiiiiiiii,” which may mean an uncompleted sentence about herself or maybe the “eye” that dominates her appearance. The eye is broke, he remembers — MAT told him that. That’s the 7th beyond the “unconscious” 6 prims of the body. That is the paradox of the 7 and the 6, the Sepisexton Enigma he termed it at another time. Wacky ol’ MAT, Jeffrie thinks. He’ll always be between one thing or another because of his non-fixed, variable nature. And he’ll probably never get Carrcassonnee to utter anything again except that one word, that one letter perhaps.

He looks again at the picture in the gallery and out of his thoughts. He decides (this must be later, then) that he’ll talk Charlene the Punk out of coming to Collagesity, if she hasn’t already decided herself. She has her business here, and can serve omelettes and other breakfast items in an untimely fashion. No doubt the local residents are use to such lags — heck, they may not even think about them much anymore. Like a fish living in water.

What he could even do is drop mention of Bad Kitten/Zado, Elsa, Darlene, and probably another one or two or three he isn’t thinking about. That’ll keep her here, he assumes. But he can always visit. Often. As often as all the others will allow.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0117, Neptune, NWES Island, Temple of TILE

00250109

She’s quite pretty with the long eyelashes and I can see how Jeffrey might be attracted to her, he says to himself while studying. He’s trying not to stare over at the temple and its green tree still; trying to be distracted. TILE will have to wait. There’s Jeffrey Phillips to help first.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0109, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Temple of TILE

about town 02

“And that’s about it, sir,” he spoke mildly, as usual, to the new town ruler. “Tour: complete.”

Jeffrey Philips stares at the entrance to the new collage series, called simply Picturetown and breaking the pattern of former series, all of which are named for towns and villages in and around Jasper County, Illinois — a map of which they stand upon here, in fact. Like Falmouth housed in the Fal Mouth Moon gallery that Danny cleans up, for example. He ponders whether to go through the door representing the beginning of the series. Instead he focuses on the surface aspects; he’s learning to ride or jump situations in order to remain objective, like a good ruler should.

“These… Rosehaven people… from this Picturetown. Are they aware we are using their store front here?”

Man About Time looked at Jeffrey Philips, trying to gauge what direction he was heading. “Does it matter?” he decides to say, and let it rest on that.

“I don’t know, I’m just wondering…”

“They will not care… they are artists as well.”

“Maybe we should talk to them.”

“Why, sir, don’t we enter the (new) exhibit and see what they would see if they knew about it.” His voice was gaining confidence. He realized Jeffrey Philips helped temper his mildness with his rugged individuality. This is a man fixed in time, unlike himself. He lets time move all around him rather than inside. MAT wondered who the latest girl is… he’d heard rumors of a woman alternately named Zado and Bad Kitten. He’s been meaning to look that up on the interwebs… maybe when he returns to his lower penthouse apartment at Kidd Tower. And he needs to finish decorating (!). So lazy; but I’ve had to help Jeffrey Philips so much lately. He knows so little about what we do here. And then there’s Carrcassonnee. He resists looking over at the top of the Temple of TILE from this vantage point; needs to keep focused on Jeffrey. This was a pivot point of some sort. Will he go inside? Is he afraid of losing… perspective?

“Not today, Man About Time.”

“MAT, please,” Man About Time insists about his name. Confidence. He is ever so slightly — baby steps — moving away from Time into something else. Town, perhaps. He then has the urge to look left at Roger Pine Ridge’s new house which isn’t there. A sudden backslide, pheh.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0025, 0108, Collagesity Fordham-, Lower Austra, Nautilus, Temple of TILE

wedding 03

Weddings at St. Mary’s traditionally took place after the Munday sermon so Preacher Stephan had to sacrifice a Renaldo O’Donnell clown first to appease the Gods. Tradition as well.

“Oops, that was a real squirter Pitch, ha.” The Darklys excused themselves to go home and wash clothes.

Afterwards church officials found the sacrificial altar was too heavy to move, so they made do with a cheap wedding booth found buried in a pile of junk at the back of the annex. Toothpick and Elberta then said their “I do’s” to Preacher Ziegler, since Preacher Stephan, a Northerner, refused to acknowledge the Deep South tradition of marrying siblings as kosher.

At the reception, Marty sang one of his beautiful love ditties to Saffie sitting with Toothpick, Elberta and best man Zapppa, hoping to get a better rental unit out of it.

Time to cut the cake. Big Wanda becomes annoyed about the orange butterflies that keep flying off her head in the excitement and leaves the task solely to Toothpick.

As feared, Her Majesty the local bigfoot/yeti came up from the new hole behind St. Mary’s to pay her respects to the newlyweds but was surprisingly controlled by the Corona-V pirates and ended up not eating anyone.

Lastly: group picture. Everyone had a laugh about all the innuendos.

And that’s it! Log another Collagesity or Sunklands photo-novel in the books.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0022, 0705, Apple's Orchard, Black Ice, Church of Ood, NWES Island

back!

Crack reporter Tulsa’s headlining newspaper article for the NWES Gazette turned out to be laughable. Carrcassonnee was not dead; Gill Alex made sure of that. Overnight, he established Collagesity’s Temple of TILE in Marwood along with reassembling the great olive being’s 6 body pieces back together, with the 7th, eye, being worked on. Once that’s done, it’s done! The 7th is always tricky but I’m sure he’ll manage it. After all, this is the former Little Robert Plant Variant we’re talking about here, who was from quite nearby Nowtown which destroyed even closer, neighboring Zen City with an atomic bomb called the Tall Cool One, elsewhere: Kevin. I can’t make this stuff up. It happened! But that is zen and this was now. Um.

In fact I have an old map of Jeogeot to help prove all this, showing the position of Nowtown and Zen City on what’s called The Claw of the continent, with the sprawling NWES metropolis forming a number of years later just NW of Zen City. There may even be some past-present overlap between the two. And to make things even stranger, the old city of Sternberg also marked on this map is now the site of NWES City’s parallel, somewhat smaller sister burg centered in the Xenosaur sim. Our Second Lyfe still produces quite amazing coincidences! And to add even more, Sternberg was where Little Robert Plant Variant gave up his tube, but I jump ahead of myself too far. We first have to understand why Page didn’t go along with the Sunklands Initiative at the time, unwilling to disengage from the, by now, radioactive Zeppelin brand. Plant, both 16 and 59 at once, worked alone after that.


Carrcasssonnee: almost ready to speak again.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0021, 0501, Black Ice, Jeogeot, Marwood, Neptune, NWES Island, Somerset, Temple of TILE

labyrinth at the Temple of TILE

It was an interesting color pattern and one she would end up studying for many years to come.

Now if I could only get the deity upstairs to speak something sensible. “I” just doesn’t cut it.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0020, 0211, Buildings, Corsica, Urqhart

the ones

“The Fries with Cheese branch of the Main Cheese Church and the Church of the Cult of Oo’d over there have existed side by side in Collagesity for well over a year now. Clown sacrifices (Oodites) next door to a religion (Cheesies) headed by a clown. But they get along fairly well — it’s a small town and everyone knows everyone. No need for protracted bickering, with the proverbial hatchet buried quite long ago underneath a ceremonial rock straddling their shared property line.” Baker turns and then points. “I think you can see it right down there.”

Wheeler leans over and peers too. “Yes. I see it.”

“Knives are the weapon of choice now, but only within the church.”

“Okay, good.”

Baker returns his attention to the story. “Drawing back to look at the bigger picture, the hatchet remains more exposed, a lingering effect of the VHC City-Pond District War. VHC City is where the Cult of Oo’d started, an underground movement at first that has secretly returned to that location in the highest ranks, wegee boards and planchettes in hand. Summerhill Nova, owner of most of the underground in that town, is titular head of the Oodties now as well, although they disguise themselves as Christians (ELMERS) for broader appeal. And as we’ve learned, the Pond District is home of the Main Church of Cheese currently fronted by the Good Rev. Amos T. Sandman.”

“Who I have a date with tonight, lucky me.” The gown she chose for the occasion suited her well, Baker thought. She was trying to use her position of power to gain information. He continues…

“Summerhill has remained pure and white as glue to promote the above ground version of her religion. Amos T. Sandman’s appearance is like a bouquet of blossoming color.  Yet dig down just a little and it is clear these two leaders have much in common beneath opposing surfaces. Each is a *hatchet* themselves.”

“Explain,” requested Wheeler while holding up a pocket mirror and applying more lipstick.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0018, 0308, Church of Ood, Collagesity Fordham-, Fries with Cheese, Lower Austra, Nautilus

Lord’s burg

“It’s time to get a form, Summerhill Nova,” The Lord said in her head, the same one that spoke to fellow Oodite Ben Wolf, and perhaps still does (more later on that — involves the *second* Bena — we’ll see what happens). Oh, they don’t call themselves that name any longer. Christians they are now. No more underground planchette movements in the middle of the night. That can only spell TROUBLE. Wegee is no longer the key. *Visibly*.

Summerhill knew full well who the Lord was. She use to rent to him. But 20 linden dollars a month and her will to charity can only go so far. *If* he returns it will be for the regular price, the one everyone else pays that stays “x” amount of time. And it will depend on the destruction of Collagesity. Just like before. And she told him that in *his* head.

I asked her about the missing wall at the Point of It All, the one where my collage formerly hung in the underground, where The Musician became Sikul Himakt once again several years back now to translated the codes and symbols correctly. She said it was just a building mistake, corrected at one point. Didn’t have anything to do with me and my art. Oh, but I begged to differ. It has *everything* to do with it.

“When you erased that wall — those *rooms*,” I explained patiently in her head, “you changed reality. Something was let loose; something was lost.”

She asked again about Pitch Darkly so I told her the full story of what I knew up until now. She was rather shocked he was in Bena. And even the older, original house in Instabar, about as close as I could get to that summit that represents the “featured” peak of the present section.

“You’ll have another Red Pepper incident if you don’t watch out.”

She was right, I realized while spotting an avatar in the house just above it. I wisely decided to delete the structure…

… delete the structure

… delete the structure. Oh heck. I can’t do it.


Blue #3 door to Sister sim that caused Baker Bloch so much trouble when he went through it is wisely blocked now by art.

She kept pressing. “What of the name Bemberg for, er, my sim?”

I said it was an Oracle thing. Like Sikul Himakt. Like Vainom Kug. I resisted saying once more she didn’t die in Vain but in VHC City, but I did segue from that into telling her there was a Firesign Theater angle to all this, involving member Phil Austin in part. Maybe in a major part. I explained the choice of the name Melder for the sim her church was in. And next door: Fharsine. “Melder points to Elmer and the underground,” I said. “That’s why you are…”

“… white as glue?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0018, 0306, Church of Ood, Corsica, Heterocera, Instabar, VHC City