Category Archives: California

WOW

“Do you not know me yet, Fern? I am the one you’re trying to forget.”

Fern wakes up, remembers everything.

—–

“Yellow Jack is where Philip Strevor turned back into Trevor Philips and resumed his Id role in the Grand Theft Auto game V,” explained Fern to Lichen later as the sun rose over her shoulder again. “Miss Janet was the key, and refusing to provide him service and saying he was still banned from the joint. He remembered his drug company, recalled his home in Sandy Shores. He was reassimilated, Lichen. Frank Lynn became the lead man after that, although we didn’t know it at the time. Frank Lynn, through Morro Bay, points to Nightsity. Did I explain the Morro Bay link yet?”

“I — I don’t think so, Fern.” Straw still not twirling. Still.

“But I have a new theory, Lichen my dearest,” she said, avoiding the temptation to spoon another pepper snake and mint ladder into her mouth swimming in what little was left of the now discolored milk in the bowl before her because of all the dissolved flavoring, the last of their kind. She wanted to speak as clear as a bell so that Lichen knew what was going down. “Aliens — now I believe it all points to the hippy egg camp outside of Sandy Shores and not Sandy Shores or Trevor or his trailer or business directly. A man named Night made it all — can’t be coincidence. But not with a K; with an N: the K person would not approve of equating his precious lord and savior Jesus with heretical aliens, you see.”

“I — see?”

“No, you don’t see, Lichen. But you will.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0043, 0312, California, Castle Town+, GTA, Omega

00410616

While Billie gassed herself up at the filling station next door, Philip had a bit of a lie down in his trailer. Gas station? he started pondering while laying there. When did Bombay Beach get a gas station? Then he laughed, a way to shake the dream off. Why did I call this place *that*? he he. I mean of course Sandy Beach. Then he realized this was wrong too: Sandy *Shores*.

He suddenly thought of Ron next door; wondered what he was cooking up. Why *meth* he realized. *His* meth. As soon as he starting dwelling on drugs he was gone from her, the Bug next door fading along with memories of Billie and even Marion, although the latter lingered on a little longer. Kept calling Ron Marion when he phoned him up, checking progress on the next batch; wondered if he’d been imbibing too much of it himself because of his peculiar thoughts this afternoon.

We have, in effect, returned him to his natural environment, his original home. Philip was no more as Trevor took over. He was soon to have a new gang of 3.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0616, California, GTA

00410615

“Anything, Philip?” asked Billie who was a Bug again. It was the next morning and the men, the boys, had gotten a fairly good rest during the night. And like I said, Billie didn’t need any. She counted 256 pieces of modern art that strolled or slid or lurched (etc.) down the road in front of them during the night. Fantastic — all seemingly benign. Maybe there’s hope for the town after all.

He stared at the house and the queer windmill blades affixed to the roof. “Nah, nothing.” But he was working on his coffee and had yet to wake up. Moving on…

—–

“Then how about his one? According to the Rock Star wiki, you picked up a woman injured in a wreck along the highway and delivered her to this safehouse, either dead or alive, depending how fast you got here.”

“Maybe… rings a bell?” Coffee sipped and done with, he was getting fuzzy memories now, unlike with the windmill house. Things were starting to get jogged up there. A woman, huh? he thinks, trying to picture her face, her… wounds. Belly, he sensed. Accident on the road, yes. Fellow… criminal? But then the vision faded. Moving on to the next structure…

—–

This did the trick, if not initially. Philip felt compelled to stop and get out of the car and explore this time. Marion was fine with it, since they still had to eat anyway. Billie turned from a car to a person again — transformation unseen to anyone else as far as they could tell — and all 3 walked up to the establishment’s door, Philip all the time staring around, starting to clearly see the overlap. Bombay Beach to Sandy Shores. But in his mind there were *2* bars with the same design. How’d that work?

And it is here that we *really* end our current story/photo-novel.

“Let’s let Philip go first,” suggested Billie. And she and Marion stood back and watched him enter.

“I’m remembering!” But they’d have to find another place to dine.

(to be continued)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0615, California, Google Street View, GTA

00410614

“Check it out guys. A TILE house, ha. And, let’s see, our place should be directly behind it on the next street over if I remember correctly.”

“Yes, here we are. Home sweet home, at least for this week, maybe longer if the sandstorms don’t move in afterwards as predicted. Can’t survive here in sandstorms, at least while you’re out exploring. And it stirs up a lot of toxins in the air and water too. A week it is,” Billie Jean Kidd decided then and there on the length of their stay in this here Bombay Beach, with virtual Sandy Shores layered on top of it.

She parks the car, which means she parks herself. She gets out of the car but it disappears behind her. A kid once more, her primary shape or one she herself likes to call home. Home for home.

“TILE again, you’ll notice,” she points out to her boys, speaking about the 4 colors, red yellow green blue, on the wall inside. “Nifty — another reason I knew this was the place.”

Philip Stevor and Marion Star Harding had said very little during the short trip from the SW corner of small Bombay Beach to here, more in the center. The heart, if you will. They were still dumbfounded at the turn of events. But Marion offered this while peering inside at the cold hard floor of the ruined shack. “Shotgun.”

“Nonsense, Marion Star Harding,” she said to this. “You’ll stay here in the house with me as I truly am. You too, Philip Strevor, whatever your middle name is. I refuse to turn back into the car just so you can have some cushion to your sleep. You’ll be here… with me.”

What could they do. They laid down on each side of her, determined to get some rest for what she called an even bigger day tomorrow.

“I’ll keep watch,” she volunteered, knowing there were other toxic dangers out there besides air, water, soil. Like Billie, modern art never sleeps.

She watched a tesseract, 2 surfboards in tuxedos, and a shark with a television for a stomach pass by without incident. And in the second minute she saw even more.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0614, California, Google Street View, GTA

00410613

Baker Bloch and bee-person/blog guru Hucka Doobie share a pizza while Philip continued to play his game over there, watching from afar as the virtual trailer park slowly repopulates itself with killable, expendable NPCs.

“You sure bringing Strevor back is a good idea, Baker? He’s kind of a psycho after all, especially if he’s off his pills. Does he have his pills on him, Baker? I hope you made sure of that. Else… we could be in a lot of trouble shortly… after he’s finished with his game and becomes bored again. Boredom leads to violence in this case. Believe me, I’ve seen it up close and personal when I was going out with Marion that brief bit in Gaston.”

“Sure it is,” Baker defended the idea. “He’ll, in fact, lead us right to your true love Marion Star Harding. They’re natural partners in crime — different types of partners.”

“I wondered about that for a while,” she said, scooping the artichokes off her slice. Baker knows I don’t like artichokes! she fumes internally. Yet, in his selfish manner, he ordered them anyway, not thinking about his dinner companion. So similar to Marion in that way, she thinks. But she loves him anyhow — both of ’em, she reckons. In different ways of course. Now.

—–

Okay, I’m beside the sign Philip said he would meet me at, Marion Star Harding thinks; now I just wait. He sniffs again, his face screws up like a walnut again. Philip better hurry, though, or I’m going to catch some kind of respiratory disease just standing here so close to that cursed sea, he thinks, not being able to get the rotted egg and salt stench out of his nostrils despite breathing through his mouth once more. What horrible germs and viruses are going down in his lungs?

Meanwhile on the opposite side of town, still portal hopping Marsha “Pink” Krakow seemingly arrives on the scene in her orange VW Beetle. After a long 2 1/2 month journey we’ve finally come full circle, you and I my loyal reader. We’re ready to end it here. But first we need to get Philip and Marion beside the same sign in the same town. A phone call from the latter should do the trick.

—–

“I’m here,” Philip said to his natural partner but not his lover. “Sorry about the mistake.”

“It’s that game again,” guesses Marion correctly. Distraction, he knew.

“Yup. Sorry again. Wrong reality.”

Having circled around the village in search of the correct Aisle of Palms indicator, the orange VW pulls up in perfect synchronicity. “Get in,” she said, and, without words, they did. They’d been expecting her. Their beloved Billie Jean Kidd in yet another guise, the third and final gang member and a shapeshifter of some power. She can take the appearance of a kid, an old woman, a young lady, a dog (poodle), and last but not least, a Bug. In short, Marsha “Pink” Krakow was never in the car to begin with here.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0613, Big Woods, California, Google Street View, GTA, Jeogeot

00410611

I’ve now come up with an Option 02 for Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate. Instead of crashing on Red Dead’s planet in his augmented ship, redesigned for space as well as sea, he winds up here.

As the only street in town not named for a number or letter, I think the implications are clear. This *is* Aisle of Palms. In a different form and connected to a different game besides Our Second Lyfe. A rival one, but not Red Dead’s again.

We’ve seen screenshots of it sprinkled about these here photo-novels. And also met at least the outer appearance of one of the 3 main protagonists. Or should I say, antagonist — hard to tell; up for debate. But not going by his original name and in a different gang of three.

https://bakerbloch.com/tag/philip-strevor/

And now he has a new home, same as the old home. Bombay Beach/Sandy Shores. Mr. Boss again to explain:

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0611, California, Google Street View, GTA

ROCKS

“We have to get rid of your kind to make room for the ships.”

“Oh okay.”

“We’ll give you a proper burial spot.”

“Query?” Rock would have raised a hand to ask an important question in his mind if he had any. But [Paper] already knew the answer.

“Quarry,” was his presumed corrective response. Stupid Rocks, he thought inwardly. We should cover them quickly to halt the dense talk.

Scissors then cut in, the hopeful champion of Rock and defender to the grave. But he would only beat her to a pulp when freed from his cage in the interrogation room, continuing the circle ad nauseam.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0032, 0601, California, Maebaleia/Satori, Nautilus, Outer Islands, Trinidad

And so it began.

De Boom Street. San Franciso. The only business establishment having a door on the short alley being one called *Lime*Light.

This very same De Boom Street lent its name to the very first 256×256 meter simulator (“sim”) of Second Life: Da Boom, an origin sometimes erroneously attached to the boom of the cosmic Big Bang, since this is where founder Philip Rosedale’s glorious virtual reality, perhaps the size of 1st state Delaware now, started and expanded out from. The Seed.

Similarly, Rosedale’s company of Linden Lab, that introduced Second Life to the general public in 2002, took its name from the San Francisco street it was located on at the time: Linden Street. So Philip Rosedale became Philip Linden in Second Life, his well known avatar form. All early Second Life sims derived their name from streets and alleys located near Linden Lab, but Da Boom was the first. De Boom to Da Boom. Yeah, come to think of it, I suppose they did slightly alter the name with the Big Bang in mind. Like “Da Bears”. Fate.

If we also travel up Linden Street in the current version of Google Street View, away from Linden Lab’s old site, we come across a man seemingly stashing something in a tree. A cache of some sort, perhaps.

Seems surprised, or perhaps *guilty*, for being caught in the act, doesn’t he?

When the Google car and its camera continue onward, he resumes his activity at the tree. Then, just afterwards, he gets in his own car (green Honda Civic) and leaves.

What is in the tree?

Could it be… treasure?

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0011, 0602, California, Google Street View, Utah

we know more

Baker *Beach*…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man#1986_to_1989

One of the roots of the annual event now known as Burning Man began as a bonfire ritual on the summer solstice in 1986 when Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco[8] and burned a 9-foot (2.7-meter) wooden man as well as a smaller wooden dog. Harvey has described his inspiration for burning these effigies as a spontaneous act of “radical self-expression”.[9] …. In 1987, the effigy grew to almost 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall, and by 1988, it had grown to around 40 feet (12 meters). Burning Man attendees informally called it “The Man,” and this name was given to each successive effigy, every year since Burning Man began.

Harvey stated that he did not see the movie The Wicker Man until many years later, so it played no part in his inspiration.

https://bakerbloch.wordpress.com/2014/11/14/more-map-stuff-01/

tumblr_neqbp7CXaB1sozjhxo1_1280

Returning to Lock Ness and Cherry Island:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Island_%28Loch_Ness%29

A castle stood on the island during the 15th century; this was constructed of stone and oak wood and was probably used as a fortified refuge. It has been suggested that Eilean Muireach may have been a hunting lodge, with Eilean Nan Con the home for the hunting dogs.[1]

Cherry Island = (residence of) man.

Dog Island = (residence of) dog.

Dog was forgotten about or submerged in time (after 1986 apparently). Man remained, sans smaller companion. Burning Man is bourne.

Burning Man is also a primary inspiration for Linden Labs’ Second Life, also in San Francisco like Baker Beach. An inworld event called Burn2 (originally Burning Life) has virtually attempted to recreate the excitement of Real Life’s Burning Man since 2003.

—–

More Burning Man:

Cacophony Society connection, c1989:

http://ljmichel.com/burningman/burningman.html

From the mouth of those involved, including more cacophonists (interesting, for example, that The Man may have started out as The Woman):

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/events/Hot-Mess.html

A pivotal year was 1996. Burning Man could become Woodstock or Altamont. The safer route was picked, which was inevitable. Else the whole event would be nuked.

$_57

Philip Linden Says Second Life Must Evolve Beyond Burning Man Era

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/09/burning-man.html

When Philip Linden resigned as CEO last year, I asserted that “The Burning Man era of Second Life is over.” But it is one thing for me to say that, and quite another for Philip himself to compare Second Life to Burning Man, and not just in the positive sense of a place that fosters freeform creation in an egalitarian community, as he always has — but tellingly, also in its most limiting connotation:

Presently, Second Life still isn’t very accessible – most people still don’t have the time to get over the steep learning curve and get to the amazing stuff inside. Similarly, the total number of people willing to drive 3 hours from Reno into the middle of a barren desert carrying a week’s worth of drinking water and food is limited.

At the moment, as Philip notes (having just returned from another Black Rock jaunt himself), Burning Man has reached a plateau of about 50,000 attendees. (As it happens, that’s roughly the number of Second Life users in-world at any given time.) This, he says, must change:

Try not to cling too tightly to what we have now. The design, the UI, the orientation experience, the tools – all these need to change, a LOT, for Second Life to become accessible to hundreds of millions. Those changes are sometimes going to be disruptive and painful… But a bigger part of my heart wants to see it reach everyone, and so we must evolve.

Background:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20070205/secondlife_cover.art.htm

(continued in: tale wag)

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Burning Life, California, Middletown, United Kingdom

and/or

baker02

baker01

Click to access how%20did%20baker.pdf

Baker has appeared before here:

https://bakerbloch.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/up-with-maps-01/

baker02

And “Caledonia” also appears in a second F&H,E! post.

https://bakerbloch.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/murdochs-islands/

Cherry Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Muireach, meaning Murdoch’s Island) is the only island in Loch Ness, Highland, Scotland, and is an example of a crannog.[1] The island is about 150 yards (140 m) from the shore near the southern end of the loch. The island was originally 160 feet (49 m) by 168 feet (51 m) across, but is now smaller as the level of the loch was raised when it became part of the Caledonian Canal.[1] The increase in the level of the loch caused a smaller natural island nearby Eilean Nan Con[2] (also known in its Anglicised form of “Dog Island”), to be totally submerged.

“Caledonia” submerges Dog I. and makes Cherry Island or “Murdoch’s Island” smaller. But Cherry Island is artificial in nature and wouldn’t be there atall without man. Smaller Eilean Nan Con or Dog I. is natural in contrast.

The name Baker is similarly submerged beneath Martel in Ohio near Caledonia (latter with Harding-Anderson overlap from past), but a twinned Baker, as it is, remains next to Caledonia in New York state. Not submerged or lost in the seas of history.

Caledonia (OH plus NY) represents the levels of Lock Ness and its Cherry and Dog isles. It follows that Baker equals past Lock Ness, pre-Caledonian Canal connected, with its Cherry Island and Dog Island both intact. Martel represents the present Caledonia Canal situation for the lock, with Cherry Island made smaller (now 51m x 49m) and Dog Island having completely disappeared.

(continued in: we know more)

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Filed under California, MAPS, Middletown, New York, Ohio, United Kingdom