An ongoing investigation.
Category Archives: 0003
Tipping Point
Baker Blinker requested Baker Bloch meet her at Perch about town business. She also said that Wheeler could join them as well if she wished, but Wheeler was busy over at the Nautilus continent again.
Baker Blinker began.
“I was walking around town after reducing the price of my land across Robin Lane a bit and checking the lag meter. I think Collagesity is too laggy. Here’s my idea. The 10×10 has a *presence* in the town, but there’s no need to display the whole thing. Use the Edwardston Station Gallery cube over in Rubi for that, and, backing up that, the one in Cayuga. Set up World of Collage in SoSo Mall, replacing your — *our* Wheeler-Jasper series. Get rid of the new building with Yale-Newton and Hidalgo. Just get rid of all the stuff prior to 2013. Focus on Fal Mouth, Power Tower, Boos, and Red Umbrella. And the new gallery developing in Castle Jack, whatever that is.”
Baker Blinker had a lot of thoughts going on for such a new concept. And, being owner of Collagesity North, she knew she had more clout than before on such matters.
“Come here,” she then requested. “Stand up and come here with me.” Baker Bloch got up from the table and went over to her. She pointed.
“See? See all those exposed textures over there in the new gallery. That’s what we have to get rid of. There’s really no choice.”
Baker Bloch understood. “Wheeler’s noticed the lag as well,” he said, “but is out and about so much she probably didn’t realize how bad it was getting. I’m sure she’d agree. So the Edwardston Station Gallery in the air somewhere. Let’s just put it directly above the center of Collagesity, how ’bout it?”
So begins the end of the golden age of groundside Collagesity, it appears. Second Lyfe still has its limits after all. The Blue Feather and its proximity to the forest becomes even more important for the future.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0019, Heterocera, Rubi
S. is for Soldier
Old Mabel had pulled in a suave chair from the patio of the Perch restaurant next door to become friendlier with Tin S. Man, who turned out to be a fount of knowledge once you got him to open up (heart exposed).
“All those Lower Minoans were celebrating the chopping of what they thought was the forest’s last tree,” he continued, “a brown cypress which now stands proudly again right beside Unch. They were gathered in the center of Lucky at sunset, hooting and hollering and carrying on, when the suddenly descended 200th whopped down terror from the skies with his thick, deadly cluster of limbs and leaves. Everyone dead, like ants under heel. Whop, whop, whop!” he emphasized, holding his axe high, blade outward.
“Fascinating,” said Old Mabel, carefully watching the axe. “When did you yourself arrive in the forest?”
Tin S. Man lowered his weapon again. “After the East-West Agreement. This opened up Our Second Lyfe to the world where I am from.”
“Oz,” spoke Old Mabel.
“Yes,” agreed Tin S. Man. “I was an experienced tree chopper there — my original name is even Nick Chopper.” He sighed. “But it was all because of the love of a Munchkin maid that I met my sad fate. An arm there, a leg here, then finally my head, my heart. All gone. Nicked away by my formerly trusted axe, enchanted by the jealous, evil witch who was her ward. I was fully tin when the Intense Shower came upon me unexpectantly that one summer afternoon while I was chopping away in the deep woods, freezing me up for perhaps all time. Then finally, after a long long wait, another maiden arrived: Dorothy of Kansas, along with her friend Scarecrow and, later, the Cowardly Lion. They became my friends. My Intense Friends. They oiled me back to life. My heart pumped blood again. I became Dr. Blood.”
“But how did you get *here*?” Old Mabel repeated.
“When the Reverse World came, I chopped in reverse. Kcaw, kcaw, kcaw,” he attempted. “Reverse chopping sound there,” he said, and smiled. “I used this new found talent to restore the Rubi Woods. It was a very satisfying chore. I liked it much better than the opposite, or removing parts of the woods. I believe a word for this satisfaction is karma. But it was strange nonetheless. Have you ever walked in reverse, talked in reverse? You may know what I’m talking about, then.”
“I *think* I understand,” said Old Mabel. She thought back to Little and herself writing backwards to hide their actual intent to Winfield, like when they sneaked out of the Dawg Pound to explored the forbidden Sandusty camp one weekend. Boy did they get in trouble.
“I learned of the 200th — Unch — the day I reverse chopped the 199th back to life,” Tin S. Man went on. “That brown cypress,” he clarified. “I knew there were 200 trees instead of 199 then because Collagesity had returned, as emphasized by my new and good friend Homer S. Simpson. S. — like me. His S. doesn’t stand for Soldier, though.”
Old Mabel tried to keep the metal giant focused. “Did Dorothy send you to the Rubi Woods?”
“Ozma,” he corrected. “The queen ruler. But Dorothy, of course, agreed to the task. They are in agreement about almost everything. Except one time…” He cut himself off there, reversing direction. “No, I better not. I respect both of them so much. We all have our differences.” But his heart had suddenly lost some warmth.”
“Another pointed question, then, Tin S. Man — Dr. Blood now. Are you Ray Davies?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly. No hesitation like in former times. “I am also the 11th beyond the 10. ‘Dark Side of the Rainbow’ is ten, like me (tin). Dorothy then finds me in the woods; brings me back to life, along with her friends, now my friends. I am Dr. Blood.”
“Thanks for telling me this.”
“You’re welcome, young maiden. I salute you.” He stands and salutes.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0117, Heterocera, Rubi
Dreams
Old Mabel had that dream last night again about being the “conductor” of a tiny, rain soaked village in a one tree forest.
The tree was having the same dream at the same time.
Both end with the tree smashing the village to bits.
The real forest.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0116, Heterocera, Rubi
Jiffy friendship
Old Mabel took a break from studying about The Beetles upstairs at The Table to hang with Jiff again. “Did you know John Lemon hated the sound of his own voice and asked his producer to smother it with ketchup?” she asked at one point.
“No I didn’t know that,” Jiff replied in his high pitched, wavering voice from the vase he put in place yesterday. “My turn in the chair again.”
“Why don’t we just sit together.” She was feeling more comfortable around him all the time. Peculiar: she doesn’t usually take to people like this. But there was something familiar about Jiff the Minoan, who could be both man or woman by the way, depending on the week.
“Alright,” he agreed, and joined Old Mabel in the blue retro seat. “Ahh,” he exclaimed as his little body sank back into the upholstery.
“There. That’s better,” said Old Mabel. “Best we both sit in this comfy chair, eh?” The proximity seemed familiar again — what was it about Jiff? Certainly not a physical attraction.
Seeming to pick up on Old Mabel’s thinking, Jiff said in a playful manner: “You couldn’t possibly fall for another refuge half your size?” His eyes gained a devious twinkle.
“No. I’m already taken, if not exactly in the present. Baker Bloch is my friend in the here and now but soon to be more, I feel. We will eventually become man and wife. I sense this. I *see* this.”
“Oh,” Jiff simply said back, expression changed.
“Here, let me brush your hair again,” Old Mabel then spoke, trying to smooth over the awkward moment. “Such beautiful hair. You say this is a traditional Minoan style? Tell me about your people again — if it’s not too painful.”
“It’s like I said before,” he started, quickly getting over the disappointment and remembering who he *really* was. Deep inside. “The portal opened up and we came through. Demos, I mean, *demons* were already there. Holiday demons mainly. Satan Santa and Snowmanster. Cookie the Crumbler. Mean dudes. But we outnumbered them, by a great margin. More and more of us poured through. Eventually a truce was made — Unch the Walky Tree wrote up the contract. The line between Rubi and Minoa was drawn.”
“What happened to the Rubi demons?” Old Mabel then asked. But Jiff was looking at the Blue Feather’s front door, mouth agape.
“What’s wrong?” She stared with Jiff toward the door.
“Nothing. Just thought I saw something pass by. Couldn’t be, though.”
“Who or what do you think it was?”
“Hold on,” he said and walked to the door, then peered down Old Cannon Road toward the woods. Just as he suspected.
He crossed the line again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0115, Heterocera, Rubi
2016 Year in Review 02
Reality
A big year for toy/junk happenings as well, although not on quite the same scale as virtual advances. To my great surprise, I was able to concoct another of these happenings in the Bigfoot area, just up the hill from the very successful Fall 2015 one. The attached name this time around was not Bigfoot or Bigfoot II but Chesterton. I’ll have a page or two created on it soon enough. The focus on Chesterton lasted from late April until early August, when my creative and blogging emphasis shifted back to Second Life and Collagesity for the remainder of 2016 (as chronicled in the “Collagesity 2016 Later” document already reviewed).
I feel very confident about these toy/junk happenings moving forward with this reinforced Bigfoot base now. Chesterton continues many of the same ideas as the earlier Bigfoot event.
Virtual Archives
Another big project I started more toward the end of the year was archiving the posts of not only the Sunklands blog, but also the Baker Blinker Blog coming before it. This would cover almost 9 total years. It’s difficult to remember the way I wrote before blogging, I took to it so easily and effortlessly — maybe too effortlessly. But the immersion has paid off big dividends down through the years, I feel, not the least of which are the two “books” I’ve been able to create just recently, a type of summarizing or flowering, I suppose, of this long term flow of energy. Anyway, you can access this archives through the “Virtual” link found on the Sunklands header. As of this writing, I have all of the Sunklands blog archived, and also about the first half of the Baker Blinker Blog. Not too awful much left to do (!) Then I guess I’ll have to protect the involved pictures as well, which most likely number in the several thousands. Well, the *blog* posts number close to 5000 so I know there’s considerably more pictures involved.
Just a couple more notes on this: for the Baker Blinker Blog archives I’ve created so far, I’ve decided to mix virtual and real life posts, since there’s relatively so little of the latter. This changes toward the end of that 2008-2012 blog, particularly about September 2011 or so. I’ll just have to see how my archiving game plan alters when I reach that point. For the Sunklands blog, I’ve already separated out the virtual related archives from the real life or hiking archives, although I haven’t gathered together the latter yet in pages. So just a note here that this process is going on, and I anticipate at least the virtual archives to be completed in several weeks at most.
MapS
Finally a note on my very long term map synchronicity project, which also assumed a new level of archival protection this year. Basically all information formerly located in marked up old atlases and notebooks has been transferred to Google Earth kml files. It took a while (about a month and a half as I recall) but the effort was most definitely worth it. I don’t plan to share this information on the Sunklands blog quite yet, though.
Onward into 2017!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0114
Table Meeting 01
The next day gave us the first official or at least semi-official meeting of The Table. Present were Wheeler, Baker Bloch, Tin S. Man or Dr. Blood, The Librarian, Curled Paper, Hucka Doobie, and then Old Mabel subbing in for a sick Salad Bar Jack. More was wrong with the famous Mmmmmm than he let on, however. Baker Bloch also seemed to stand in for Karoz Blogger, although no mention was made of that during the gathering.
Wheeler called the meeting to order at 7pm sharp. Following clockwise introductions ’round The Table, eyes turned to Baker Bloch, who attempted to give a brief and to-the-point review of their joint user baker b.’s audiovisual synchronicity “3 Friends of Belleville.”
“It’s much like ‘Dark Side of the Rainbow’,” he started, to which Wheeler quickly injected that they would look at that most famous of audiovisual synchs directly afterwards. “On the audio side, it’s simply the first 3 songs or tracks of Gentle Giant’s 1972 concept album ‘3 Friends’, unaltered in respect to playing time and order but with small breaks between filled in by other music. This would be several of the Erik Satie pieces most of us listened to last night (‘Sports and Divertissements’).”
“Is this 1972 BL or AL?” asked Old Mabel, who had studied all night in preparation for the gathering and was eager to make a strong showing.
“Neither,” answered Baker Bloch. “Remember we’re dealing with the Real World and its Real Time now. So this is 1972 A*D*, which stands for ‘After Death’, that is, after the death of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
“Never heard of him,” said Wheeler, trying to move the meeting on. “Old Mabel — and the rest — please refrain from asking questions until Baker finishes his report. Continue Baker… so I know these 3 tracks or songs from this Friendly Giant group are overlaid atop the movie ‘3 Friends.'”
“No,” corrected Baker. “The *Gentle* Giant *album* is named ‘3 Friends.’ The overlapped movie is ‘The Triplets of Belleville,’ an animation released several decades afterwards. A decade being 10 solar years,” he immediately tacked on, seeing more confused faces. Old Mabel wanted to ask about the relationship between these 3 friends on the audio side and the triplets on the visual side but held her tongue.
“The Satie pieces from (‘Sports and Divertissments’) also come in a particular order in the synch, but not 1-2-3, like the Gentle Giant tracks. Instead the pattern is 8-14-2, which, if you’ll notice, forms a *triangle* — another 3 or triplet — of numbers 6 apart.”
“These are the shocks,” injected Wheeler again, breaking her own stated request.
“Yes, I suppose so,” answers Baker.
“Which we’ll also talk about in ‘Dark Side of the Rainbow’. So I think that’s a good segue from one to the other. Anything else Baker Bloch?”
“I suppose not.” He straightened the numerous sheets of his report on The Table and placed them back in his black attache case.
“666, eh,” then states Wheeler reflectively as she searches for the appropriate Youtube video on the meeting screen. “Again.”
—–
Exactly 4 minutes after the start of “Dark Side of the Rainbow”, a sepia toned Dorothy in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz” fell off a pigpen fence while talking to farmhand Zeke about courage, timed exactly with the end of the first track off Pink Floyd’s seminal “Dark Side of the Moon” album (“Speak to Me/ Breathe”).
“This is not just *a* fall but *The Fall*, Baker Bloch explained afterwards, pausing the video here. “This is where true synchronicity kicks in. We are now witnessing something different; not from around here but from elsewhere.”
“Satan?” offers Wheeler.
“Biblically speaking,” answers Baker Bloch. “But this is resolved, it appears, in a later synch called ‘Quadrospirited’ and the beginning of (not TIDE but) TILE. Another song exactly 4 minutes long is involved. A song called ‘Four Minutes’ itself by a member of Pink Floyd again.”
“Oh dear, I need to run,” says Wheeler out of the blue, looking at the clock on the wall. “Nautilus seas and Doreena and Yvonne and such. Baker Bloch, if you would, please wrap up the meeting and then gather everyone downstairs to meet Jiff the Minoan, fresh from the woods. He’ll take over from here. Ta ta once more!”
She vanishes. Baker Bloch looks around The Table at the others, seeing a mixture of confusion and boredom. “Should we continue?” he offers.
“Nah,” states a yawning Hucka Doobie. “Let’s go meet this Jiff creature and get it over with.”
Not what they were expecting.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0113, Heterocera, Rubi
Listening (But Not Watching)
—–
1/2 hour later…
“I admit I fell a bit asleep about 1/2way in, Baker Bloch. But it was good. It was interesting. Pieces about nothing. Not sports obviously. A clever man. Insane probably as well. Velvet suits, pheh. It’s a shame we can’t watch “3 Friends of Belleville” in Our Second Lyfe here, Baker Bloch. Darn shame. Lucky users.”
What they couldn’t watch there:
January 8, 2017 · 10:49 am
Octopus
“I have a minute, Baker Bloch, to speak with you. The Librarian told me about your curiosity. Do you even know who *I* am Baker?”
“First off, I wish you wouldn’t show up as my mother.”
“Not the point,” Wheeler returned.
“Alright,” Baker then said with an exhale. “You are David Bowie, also known to this blog as Bogota. Or at least that’s what he — you I suppose — wanted to be called at the time. How’s that for a start?”
“A good start,” she says. “A perfect start. I am David Bowie. I am the leader on all collages to come. And by collages there I mean audiovisual collages. Not these [silly] 2d-ers [polluting] your town.”
“Now that’s not very nice, er, Wheeler,” said Baker Bloch back. “I thought you liked my collages.”
“I like the ideas behind the collages. The collages themselves are not what I call art. You use protected images[ to begin].”
“Well, that’s what I’ve chosen to do. You chose to show up here as my mother, I chose to use illegal images in my art and deem them educational and non-commercial. The ideas *are* the important thing, not the surface quality or even quantity.”
“So we agree,” she says. “Your art is trash.”
“I guess it’s trash in the sense that it is bits and pieces of discarded stuff by others lumped together to make something new and hopefully interesting, idea-wise.”
“Cool enough,” she then said, putting finger to lip. “Curled Paper, you’ve been your usual silent self. What’s your opinion of this town, the art in the town? Do you think it’s trash as well? Or do you think it is worth saving in and of itself? Or do you have an opinion at all? If you’re going to sit at The Table…” But Wheeler then bit her sarcastic tongue just in time to save some grace. Curled Paper still didn’t speak. Perhaps he was already insulted?
The Librarian chipped in some thoughts. “We need to speak of the album “3 Friends”. And the attached synchronicities. They are called synchronicities instead of collages, no?”
“Yes,” Baker Bloch answered.
“Please do,” added Wheeler with some sarcasm.
“Can I say their names on this blog? I know Hucka Doobie listed them out the other day. I was here.”
“Were you?” Baker Bloch truly couldn’t remember.
“Yes,” answers The Librarian. “So… can I?” He turns to Wheeler now and repeats the question. “Can I?”
Wheeler opens her eyes wide and looks toward Baker. “It’s up to us now.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0111, Heterocera, Rubi
Sunklands 