I’d like to think this is my family. Father mother son.
And over there where the mother is staring? Baederwood. I have that much.
Now to find Dr. Tom who has information about the 2 Hills. Maybe a gardener too?
Let’s start here.
Category Archives: MAPS
00480106 (pets pet)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0106, Arkansas, Dokken Hollow+, Jeogeot, Twin Peaks
00480101 (new month, new photo-novel)
“Who are you? And what are you doing here??”
——
“He said he was this guy. I’m telling you Frank. These walls are haunted!”
“Simmer down, Philip. Say he *gave* this to you?”
“Yeah; just dropped it into my inventory and then vanished. Said he lived here. He’s lived here for a long time. Behind the fireplace; in the walls. Watching. This is a colored version of him where I saw a white one. But I know they’re the same. And… sorry about saying the word colored,” he apologized while looking over at his black friend, who took the mention in stride. “Like black-and-white and colored TVs I suppose,” Philip needlessly continued the apology. “No harm meant.”
“Watching, huh. Creepy.” Frank didn’t believe Philip’s story but was just going along for the ride.
“Like I said, Pierrot’s the name. Edward Pierrot. Said he died here or something, then mentioned Alabama. But now he’s back, he said. Like the Alabama Phoenix, whatever that means.”
“But… Phoenix is in Arizona. Dawg,” he added to make it more authentically him.
“I don’t know. But I, um, might not be coming up as much, Frank, to be honest with you. He’s *watching*. How can I play pinball in peace and escape all the stress of the world if I know *that*.”
“Truly an issue. Well, tell you what, Philip. I’ll dig into it, maybe hire some kind of exorcist, you know.”
“Really?” exuded Philip, still not catching on that Frank doesn’t believe anything he’s saying. “That would be *great*, bud.” And he punched him on the shoulder to show his gratitude and then excused himself, saying he’s late for dinner with Lexi down at the sea. He still didn’t like Frank to call Nawt Vaya a lake but Frank doesn’t do that much anymore. He’s caught on too. He likes it here! No dead fish smell, etc. Much better than the Alamo where it/they came from. “Remember the Alamo,” Philip likes to say. “And then forget all about it,” he adds the punchline, the joke of it all. Alamo > Nawt Vaya. Fate, they’ve determined. Lexi too in her own special way and special place manner.
After he went home, Frank continued to stare at the painting Philip left behind. Frank can’t return it immediately or Philip will see it show up in his lost and found folder and maybe get wise to his little game. So he just moves the thing up into the ceiling so he won’t have to look at it all the time. He’d have to talk to Lexi about Philip’s new issues first chance he gets. Maybe an extension of the ones we’ve seen him saddled with in photo-novel 47 — just completed in the nick of time for its end of August deadline, yay!
https://bakerbloch.com/virtual/sunklands-2025-middle/
Another Edward Pierrot from a land far removed now (Mythopolis).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0048, 0101, Alabama, Frank's Moving Castle, Jeogeot, Mythopolis, Nawt Vaya+, NVFS, Wazob
00470611
Not yet, then.
First, to deal with all the whiteness…
—–
“Looks like they landed in Victoria Harbor first,” he talks aloud to himself while studying the Hmm material in one of the many ring binders piled up all around him. “That’s where– Gus! Could you keep it down up there!”
“Let’s see… the list, yes, that’s where he– Gus! Dammit, better check in on him.”
“Gus, that’s too much wood. Put away some of the wood. I’m starting to sweat! And I can’t concentrate because of all the crackling. Tone it down!” Then Frank Lynn remembered Gus’s power and decides to add, “Please.” Don’t want to anger the fire deity that holds this whole giant castle together!
Gus puts away some of the wood.
“Now, where was I?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0611, Connecticut, Frank's Moving Castle, Jeogeot, Misty Mo+, Nawt Vaya+, New Island, NVFS
00470608
“Atomic energy,” Newt theorizes about the main way Gaston’s Newton revamped his now deceased older brother Stewart’s sim skipping ship. “Put it at the end of Barry De Boy’s ‘Does This Look Square to You?’ series. Claimed to be named for Isaac Newton but Jasper County’s right below and so instead it should be John.”
“John Newton, twin sergeant to William Jasper during the Battle of Ft. Moutrie in the Civil War,” Newt’s ever-partner Wheeler says more to the reader than anyone, since Newt knows all that. “And Newton County MS being the only county in the state that’s totally square. One Mississippi, two Mississippi — woops. Forgot the zero (!)”
“You finished?” Newt asks from the sacred ottoman under the sacred 4 colors add 4 more. Staring at giant versions of bread and milk on a big tin of perhaps choco chip cookies. Wheeler from the now not as sacred couch was staring at it too.
“Yeah. You go now.”
“I go now,” accepted Newt. “Wellll… we have a problem, a conundrum. We have Marion, Hucka, Philip, Nada, Lexi and probably Greg coming to Nawt Vaya here through that sim skipping ship.”
“Yeah? What’s the problem? They’re *here*. All of them. Except Marion and Hucka it seems.”
“But–”
“No butts. Continue.”
(to be continued)
“OH, I remember what we were going to talk about. This *couch*. And the bread and milk. And the whole location for Crooked.”
“Yeah,” says Newt. “Is this room, this building, actually here in Nawt Vaya, or is it over in Gaston? Could be both of course. But, what I’m asking is…”
“… which one’s more real?”
(to be continued)
“More real there.” Newt pauses. “Did I just skip over the end of the post?
—–
The couch is more comfortable and has more animations.
The bread and milk are normal sized.
The room has more character.
More real there, yeah. We continue….
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0608, Gaston+, Mississippi, Nawt Vaya+, NVFS
00470604 (76ers)
“Mt. Sandraman,” exclaims Eddy, not tired at all from the hike up since it’s only a 42 meter peak. Still he’s very happy they reached their intended goal for the, er, (photo-)novel. 6 sections in; kind of cutting in close….
“Pretty,” admits Shelley laying beside him in not nearly so high grass this time. Nor wavy. No wind here on *this* New Island. Or very little. “But nothing like the black and white one in my dreams.”
She rolls over, faces Eddy, her Edward, her New Island husband and just new husband period. “We can’t stay here, Ed. You know that.”
Eddy exhales. “I know.” He was tired of the argument of 6, slavery — at least in its triplicate form — vs. 7, freedom. He had to let all this go.
“We lost our thought-to-be villa.”
“We should have never left Sandraman here,” Eddy reinforces the loss. Perfect, though, they knew. For a brief time. Oh well.
“There’s always Gaston,” she tried to brighten the mood. “Dark Peak — more good times, right Ed?”
“Yes. Good times. But laaagggy.”
“Yeah. Austin is there, though, 3rd down in the pile of Firesign Theatre members still performing weekly at the Rhino. Or 2nd up.” She edges a little closer. “We could, let’s say, pluck him from the rest, sit him down and talk to him about… stuff.” She looks heavenward, as if seeing more in the sky. “And there’s also his island (sigh). More good times. It seems they would never end. Infinite supply of… you know.”
“I know.”
She rolls over again toward him. “He probably set all that up, you know. He wants to stay on our radar. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to manage. Look at what I provide you, he might say. Do this in remembrance of me.”
“Shel-ley,” reprimands Eddy, glancing over at her with a scolding look. Neither were religious in the traditional sense. But both also believed in the concept of evil in the form of, let’s call it, non-freedom. Witchcraft could be an element of that. Black magic. Control.
“At any rate, he wants us to read him. We also know that from Colorado.”
Eddy sat up. “Where are we *going* with this?” But he couldn’t help playing footsie with her through the frustration.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0604, Colorado, Gaston+, New Island
00470601 (The Hmm)
“I live in a very white house starting with a white roof you can clearly see from the air — why I made it that way.
“Um, white ceiling fans…
“… white power outlets.
“White paint all around. Every room, every piece of furniture, every piece of art even. I like white. And, hopefully, my family likes it *too*. They haven’t complained *so* far (laugh).”
“Soo, ahem, back to The Hmm.”
“Oh yeah (laugh). The Hmm. Well, we logically suspected the new gas compressor station across the rails — really white buildings over there and I respect that but, you know (laugh), I had to get to the bottom of this thing (!). So I went over there one day, complained that we were hearing that dad blasted hmm in my house over 400 yards away, and it seemed, well, it seemed to be affecting our health (!). And, you know, could they DO something about it? I was sure they were the culprit, the source of it all. And you know what they said, they blamed everything else. Electrical lines, the railroad, water pumps in a nearby pond, Interstate 84. Could be any of these… and more. But not *gas lines*. And they laughed right in my face! (laugh). And me a retired mechanical engineer. Heck, I probably knew how their operations worked better than 80% of them over there. Not as much difference between machines and chemicals as you’d think.”
“Understandable that you were irritated,” I tried to empathize. “Is that when you decided to move away? To someplace new?”
“Well, the wife and I thought, maybe we should try out a new town to get away from the sound. ‘New town’ we kept saying to each other when discussing it — over and over. And then it hit us: Newtown. The town right next door to us. We could start new; fresh. It seemed *fate*. I told her, honey, our house is just off the Newtown topo map, which I knew from my hmm research in the local area. But shortly I realized the gas compressor station was actually just *on* the Newtown map, which seemed to be a bad sign. No, the hoped for sanctuary turned out to be *much* much further away, not one but *several* oceans away. It all started that very next day, when I found the drawing of the woman running on the beach at a Newtown flea market while we were checking out the place. Giselle, ha, was actually a bit jealous of my obsession with the drawing, with *her*. It was the whiteness, you see.”
“We’re talking about New *Island* here, right?” I suppressed a joke about him skipping right over New York.
“Yeah. Our brief dream of living in Newtown only pointed to this actual new place where we could truly escape the problems with The Hmm. By being immersed in it!”
“You found the source.”
“Indeed we did (!!).”
“Not gas lines?”
“(Laugh) No, but that’s part of it too. It all came from that novel. By the girl.”
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0601, Connecticut, Google Street View, New Island
00470513
As soon as I flew over the place I knew I wanted to return. Several days later I was able to do just that. Last Thursday after Wednesday after Tuesday while eating a cheeseburger at Devil’s Den Food Shack down in base camp, owner and head cook and everything else Bret, who I had befriended in my week’s stay there, said that a blue rental car had kind of falling into his lap — he told me not to ask about details so I didn’t, ha. He knew about my fly over of Mammoth City, knew my burning desire to go back to that icy place way up on the ridge above the canyon. “Have it for the day,” he said, and threw me the keys while briefly turning away from the grill. “Just get it back before dark. And stick to the main roads. No side roads, especially snowy ones. Capisce?”
“Capisce.” What else could I say.
I reached the town about 2 that afternoon. A light snow was falling, but nothing sticking on the roads. But then I made the mistake of turning down a side road which I thought was still the main one. I shortly spotted a car parked alongside it that appeared to be the same as my own. Curious, I pulled in behind it and got out, deciding that this was as good a place as any to begin exploring the place on foot. I became grounded at that point. Just like my alter ego.
Yep, same exact make and model as I checked closer, same exact color, heck I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t have the same exact license plate #, although I stupidly forgot to check; might have even saved my life later on. Did the person who gave Bret the car also give this duplicate one to someone else? I thought at the time.
I started walking around the town but the subject kept niggling at my brain. Could it be possibly… me — or a variant version of me — a doppelganger I think they call them? Silly thoughts, I thought at the time. But then down at the lake toward the, ahem, end of my walk I ran into tracks that weren’t my own, and that I felt I *had* to follow. Which led me to my end. He left me in the water and walked away, saying thank you for my friendship, whatever that means.
Soon the car followed my body into the water. Groundy I later learned was his name. Posthumously obviously; my replacement. It took Bret a while to catch on, but eventually he did. There was a sadness about him after that which wasn’t present before. But he never said anything.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0513, Utah
00470512
Everyone Says “Hi” 24 x 24 on panel.
A painting inspired by the David Bowie song and part of the PBJ show with Jay Jacobs, Feb 2016.
It was weird, as I was painting this I couldn’t get any of the characters to smile. Later I found out that Bowie had passed away that day.
Here is a link to the song. https://youtu.be/um05lJzXD0w
—–
Just in his own little island, Jeffrey Phillips remained happy, clutching his Philip Linden doll to his partially bare bosom and remembering his connection with another Phillip named Jeffries, his name kind of reversed or where it came from. White was his world; pure; removed of color and complexity and foldouty nature. But all around this everyone was sad and unable to smile. Jeffrey knew something had to change. The Real World must intrude on this rosy environment. Again.
“INSERT THE THORN,” a voice boomed up in the air somewhere. *sliiiidee*
Ahh: there it is, brown instead of white like all the rest. A sticking point as it were, an impasse.
—–
And just like that Shelley was banned not only from that “new” sim but the kingdom/queendom as a whole. Good to know how they feel about her. Like another Brown, Molly this time, an unsinkable force to reckon with, however. I must MAKE SPACE for her whims and fancies while remaining active in this Our Second Lyfe. But not there obviously.
So Rose Heaven is no more for me. And David Bowie remains dead.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0512, Georgia, Jeogeot, NWES Island, Rose Heaven-
00470511 (Big Apples)
We’re in the original Amsterdam this time, not the New one over in America also known or more commonly known as New York (, New York). Famed Red Light District: not quite what I was expecting (!). Where are the XXX signs, the scantily dressed prostitutes lining the streets, distracting all our thoughts and motions? And, most importantly and more broadly, where was that gall darn golden auto that was suppose to be here waiting for me?
I’ve searched everywhere, every street, alleyway and side path. I’m beginning to think it was STOLEN, Grand Theft Auto style. One gap replaces the other?
Abruptly switching back from day to night, I reinsert the entrance to the library into the gap in an attempt to make things right again. Was I wrong to press the button? Did that cause all *this*? And did I really even press it in the first place? These questions haunt me to this day.
Or not…. Whatever: goodbye Red, Yellow, Green, Blue. I’m certain I’ll meet one or two or three or all 4 of you in another day in another light. See ya then. Be safe. And… thank you. For being my friend in that time.
Ahh, *there* you are. It worked!
33
But they were diverted away from the chase by the smart ass fox shockingly revealing who she actually was into a series of traffic cones leading their car directly into the back of a fake commercial truck where they were robbed of all the gold they were carrying and then dumped back into the desert, potential end of story. Until the fox traded apples for a banana and turned into a man.
“My SISTER??! Working on thee STREEEETTTS???!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0047, 0510, Europe
Sunklands 