PHOTO-NOVEL 30
breakthrough
—–
White as Heaven, he stood at the open door on the back of the windmill, watching from a distance. Black, he determined. And probably red as well. He should join them, make his presence known. What does he have to hide *now*?
He quickly hides his red hand from observation, a medical condition but also blood. Our Duncan Avocado. He was also looking for something. He’d lost his cap, perhaps in the woods. He was scratching his head, wondering where it went, but then realized this exposed his weakness to the white guy up the hill. He’s also on something, as in onto something. A box. Could this be… Borneo?
As the white guy approached, he thinks back to Scratchy (sim) and another weakness exposed. The inability to keep track of the one thing in life he is responsible for: George. “White as Heaven” was there. He had some advice to dispense. “You’ve been working on the railroad. I can tell (by your hands).”
Was it a labor of love? he thought after the brief conversation was over. Bart might know. If he wasn’t dead as well.
“Go to the Red,” the white guy essentially commanded. “The Old White Lady did. Your *ma*.”
He somehow got stuck in the windmill on his way over. Back to square one.
Later: Duncan’s soup disappeared and he knew he was in trouble.
(to be continued)
killings 02
The guys from Paper-Soap arrive.
“Watch out for that German! Hey, there’s another one, look out!”
Sam Drunker
“We don’t like your kind around here, you *hippies*, with your *peace* signs.”
“We’re *not* hippies,” Norris and Pietmond demanded in front of their parked, garishly colored van, trying to get their bearings in this queer place. Its wheels simply would not turn without them. “We’re gypsies.”
“And killing citizens right and left after you just entered the gates of town,” he continued his rant and attached deadly glare.
“They were *zombies*. They would kill *us* without thinking about it!”
“Nevertheless. Zombies are people too. Besides… you need a license in this town to kill zombies. Heh, I’ve been waiting to say that to someone for a long time. People around here don’t listen. But *you*…”
“Strangers.” Norris understood this must be one of the disgruntled Pro-Dead he’s heard about in the general Sunklands area. The reason they’re there in the first place. He nodded toward Pietmond, knowing they were on the right track. He produced the blue feather from his grey pocketbook. “Know anything about *this*?”
The farmer-lawyer recalls. His mind drifts back to that day in early May of last week’s July. He falls back but then springs forward, pitchfork in hand. He’s gonna make *them* dead. Then he can defend their rights properly, heh.
(to be continued)
mistletoe doorway
“Grapes?” he guessed while passing the stomping, pretty, beret bedecked lady.
“Raspberries,” she exclaimed back in a shaky voice, her legs and attached body going up and down, up and down. Soon all would be red and it wouldn’t matter. It was the first of many sightings for the girl in this as yet unnamed place. A place in Sunklands with Pietmond Boy and Norris roaming about it, perhaps zombies now but perhaps still alive. 1/2 and 1/2 would be another guess to insert here; eye for an eye.
On with the show…
They have quite the audience.
Always wanted to dance with a white girl, he wished to say but of course bit his tongue.
“Would you look at them down there.”
“Disgraceful,” the other agreed.
00300106
“Hey, a red and green balloon,” Duncan said later after the two disgruntled women left, tired of the spectacle. Duncan noticed. Moving quickly, he purposefully took their high falutin seats, daring anyone around to say anything. They didn’t like black people ’round these parts but Duncan had gleaned they were also scared of them.
“Never mind that,” the as yet unnamed raspberry beret wearing lady said, staring disbelievingly in the opposite direction. I know it was something blue and yellow but I wasn’t sure what yet. We’d have to wait until another night (night night!).
Later: Oh. Just the rising sun.
battleground boy
He stares down at the soup ladle he still holds in his red hands, understanding it is a mnemonic device. “George,” he utters aloud, having lost track of the one person in the world he’s not suppose to. Again.
But George was safely tucked in dreams right now, talking to red headed Marty about TILE while floating on his Lake. A boy of 13 to 10 back to 13, over and over. Right now: 13, 6 inches taller than the shortest version. “Duncan was fortunately looking the other way this time,” he says to the young boy, if not the youngest. “Toward the red and green balloon. We may not be as fortunate the next time. The raspberry lady guides.” He leaves it at that.
He sips his stale lemonade and is gone.
George wakes up, wondering who “we” is.
more black and white
After visiting Blue-Yellow and attempting to watch his sun rise, I hop on a passing trolley and head downtown…
… soon reaching THE Cave. Or at least A Cave.
It strikes me that it would be wrong to keep calling this character Axis-Windmill in a town created by an actual German. So we’re going to go with a new one. Not reverting to Windmill Man — too easy. Bronze John looks on, trying to gauge, trying to help. He was so successful with the Beatles with an A naming.
The Beatles are such archetypes, penetrating many synchronicity systems.
All bands can be related to them. For example, Pink Floyd are the psychedelic Beatles, Firesign Theatre are the comic Beatles, and The Residents are the bizarro Beatles. Frank Zappa with his Mothers strongly reacted to them; the Rolling Stones…
I was told by fortuneteller Esmerelda a while back that the answers lie in a cave. In the related collage, cacophony musician Charles Ives pokes his head out of one sideways, wondering if he’ll have anything left to say. He’s sorry about Cowell, he speaks through the entrance, the mouth. He’s sorry about Connecticut and Danbury and the clashing of bands. Connecticut forgives, but he’ll have to make them laugh, make them suckers instead of seekers, and get small in the exchange. Thimble Islands’ General Tom Thumb might know, if he’s paying attention. Misery becomes Mystery (up to date).
I wonder about New York’s Central Park in the Dark, and the Unanswered Question. I think back to the Amazon jungle and the Indian who becomes a Spaceman, search fulfilled; “aliens” found — this would represent the end of the 4th. Concord (Sonata)… maybe that’s next. Oh, and Karl finding the waterfall (Rainbow) and reading the scrapbook and discovering a new ending, leading him to set aside the old life and the attached house and move on. I thought about Charles Ives today in perusing my table of tiles, wondering if I’ll get the chance to tell anyone about it besides the wife and a best friend. It’s pretty remarkable.
Here is where I’ll be reborn, or at least acquire a new name.
“Who are you?”
“Helmet Newton?” he or she answers as a question.
Scratchy 02
“What does it mean, W?”
“You’re such a funny person, asking so many questions.”
“Stairway to Heaven, I’m guessing. End of Up(pelin).”
“So many…”
——
Anyway, this was Heaven, White as.
Better get back to George.
—–
*There* it is (!)
200 Motels: A Space Oddity
“We’re closed,” she states levelly to Duncan while he says nothing, just peering in a store to see what’s there. We’d be closed to you lot anyway, she thinks while continuing to sweep, not paying him any more attention. Long… and dusty… road. Where’s your raspberry girl, she additionally thinks a few seconds later. Word’s gotten around.
Since she doesn’t have a name, some have just started calling her Annaball or Annabell as a joke, and always in white with the attached, mocking graffiti, like this one here on the northwest train tunnel of town. Always the crossed out “a” corrected with “e” — John Lennon would not be proud. A white girl should not be messing with a black man in any shape, form. This was a warning to all the Annaballs or bells of the world: stay in line; stay in your color.
Three glowing white nuns, white angel in background to reinforce the Heaven aspect, pray for their souls as they watch the heathens up front, also praying.
But not for forgiveness. For enlightenment. How to marry black and white in this town full of bigots and make it work. Two words (again): Helmet Newton. This is the place.
dualities (no fire)
He was playing Schumann under the gun, this Franz Wagner. Raspberry Girl, aka Annaball or bell, was in the background getting limber on the bars and warming up for her shooting. And what a night it was (!).
—–
“This was not the night it was,” corrected W here, coming out of the background. “You can (still) only shoot zombies in this town and zombies are identified by the German war helmets, spiked or non-spiked. Probably something someone came up with in a bar, inebriated halfway to Hell, perhaps through a drugged drink.”
I stopped playing in the Middle of C. W zoomed in; Raspberry/Annaball-bell had projected out of sight, perhaps zooming herself, through the ceiling and into the sky via built up centrifugal force. Who knows what can be read and studied in this black and white town full of bigots, zombies and some other stuff. “Helmet Newton might know,” I said my thoughts aloud to her, “if we could identify the Hell who he was.”
“She,” W inserted. “Don’t forget the ‘she'”.
He continued…
00300114
“We just wait for the pianist and the dancer to come out of there and then we pounce, understand people?” He gobbled another pretend goober, waiting for affirmation. “Yes,” answered Iffy Ziegler to his left after a beat. “Suppose,” came Belinda Zoomer’s vaguer reply to his right after 3 more. She wasn’t use to taking orders from a man, especially *this* man, this Chef-Inspector Petty, preparer of fine gourmet dishes by day, sleuthing out criminals from the underbelly of society by night. This was dusk. Almost time to move in. He downs the last imaginary peanut, throwing the imaginary bag it came in over his shoulder and into the tall grass and weeds behind him. Nonchalantly — all in one movement. He wanted to impress the young’n’s here with his moves, his cool motions. Cool motions paired with cool emotions. If someone was paying attention to him, giving him what he wanted. Iffy and Belinda ignored the cool move. He was becoming hot; he tugged at his collar as if trying to let steam off from within. The music inside, the *racket*, finally ended. What atonality to end his life! thought Chef-Inspector Petty here, watching the last bits of the Sun’s hateful sphere finally descend below the horizon. He checks the opposite direction: the blessed Moon, he imagines further, seeing it full and red and white as night. He howls at it (in his mind). The heat recedes, sun fully gone. A moment of crisis fully averted now. “Get ready,” he says, calm and collected. The door to the dance studio opens…
00300115
He was zooming in on the real-as-life bell now and not the imaginary sun. So dark, so *Axis*. We’re suppose to forget about the war, he can hear his father’s voice echo in his brain now. Yet the bells continued, the wedding of black and white over (“No go, no go!” the people demanded). And so here it is still, sitting outside the church like a leftover piece of Hell. Damnit, Zoomer, he thought, why aren’t you moving! The footsteps were getting closer. 4 beats now since the doors opened, letting the pianist and the dancer loose in the nighttime world again. Vampires? Chef-detective Petty thought. That’s at least one thing we need to eliminate. No more waiting. Zoomer wasn’t turning but he did. Iffy had turned three beats ago, make that five. Probably because he was best at his job. John Lennon isn’t proud: beats turn to beets and we’re back to square one. In Idaho.
“I da ho you’re looking for,” confessed Raspberry Girl/Annaball-bell to him back at the station after intense scrutiny and pressure. He was about to bust an important chain in the City Gang bunch of women of the night. Weakest link…
(to be continued)
reversed 02
She was trying to close up and then he marches in here. The new guy in town, she’s heard. No one knows his name yet. He sits down. She keeps mopping, keeps to her closing tasks. He waits for her to speak. She waits for him to talk. No… one… knows… her name.
“Wagner?” he finally guesses. “I heard there was a family of Wagners in town, one who runs the bar by the big bell. He indicates the sign to his right on the counter. “Bell’s Kulturcafe… I assume that’s you?”
“Marilyn,” she decides, thinking about the first name of another ditzy blonde. Two of ’em in fact, one also a Munster. But not that type of monster. Reversed.
“Marilyn… Wagner, then?” he keeps pursuing.
—–
He finally got that lower alcohol Bell’s beer that he wanted but not much more. He knew she was Marilyn and that’s about all. Maybe that was enough for tonight — wine wasn’t doing him right these days; downing it like it was water and he was a new Jesus but not in a good way. Beer would slow him down and Bell’s was just right: still very tasty. *Must* be a connection with that bell just outside. Or just over there. Or just around the corner. *Downtown* anyway. He tries to get his bearings so he can wheel around it in his mind more. He *could* ask for directions — surely she would give him directions.
“And CUT!” shouted the director behind the camera. “Let’s film that scene again, and this time let’s go with black and white. More noir.”
—–
Turns out Bell’s bar was kind of on the opposite side of downtown from that church bell Chef-Inspector Petty was contemplating about in that last post here, so maybe no connection.
downtown [insert name]
spikey
“We’ve got to keep an eye out on that [black guy] walking over there, Virus.”
“Rrrrrrr–rough!”
“Good boy.”
—–
“Just black and white,” The Mann determined about some lips in another 0117 post to end. “No pink.”
lines
The Sun and Moon seem to be moving very fast in this town.
“I thought I’d come talk to you first, Marilyn, clarify some stuff about your angle in this, ahem, evolving story. We have bigots in town, we have zombies, probably all wearing spiked or non-spiked helmets. Like that policeman who keeps eyeing me all around town.”
She wanted to say Tank but held back. And Bazooka — Bazooka was his dad, and, as former captain of the force back in the good ol’ days, the one who wore the spiked helmet. Tank: just a bright blue cap. Put him in the bigot category.
Then she remembered the slip of paper in her jeans pocket, the one she was suppose to pull out in case she got stuck. She pulled, she read. “Moms, don’t let your boys grow up to be Dimmy Jean.”
Silence. Was that helpful? she pondered, staring into his watery eyes. Was he… crying?
—–
Dimmy wipes the counter down nervously, thinking that 1/2 the people in the room are watching him and half aren’t. But he doesn’t know which. He tries to determine friend from foe through the caps and helmets but all the lines get blurred together. He’s lost it. He needs to go home but he doesn’t even know where that is any more. Home is here I suppose, he says to himself. He pours two shots of Jack Daniels, one for the raccoon man and one for himself. “Here’s to home,” he proclaims while raising his glass, resigned to the fact. Over in one gulp, he pours another while 1/2 the room still eyes him.
Genes
“I love you, Dimmy. I really do (*smooch*).”
I’ve got to get back to the station now, he thought, wiping the pink from his lips. Can’t let Wanda see he’s been kissed (!).
—–
Gene was a family name, not a proper first name in the Occident style of things. His father, Daffy, was a seller of fine clothing over at the mall, and expected Dimmy to follow in his tracks. But Dimmy wasn’t doing well in school. Daffy decided to hire a private tutor with his hard earned money, but unwisely selected Marilyn. Marilyn hated Wanda. Marilyn would do anything to get back at Wanda for what she did to her in the 5th grade. Marilyn soon had dim Dimmy wrapped around her little finger. Marilyn kissed. Dimmy wiped, realizing what he’s gotten himself into. A pickle!
—–
She was pounding her nightstick menacingly into her left hand, sitting, waiting. “You were *suppose* to be here at *four* to *pick* *me* up*. Where have you *been*??”
“I don’t know.” He tried to think of a better line but couldn’t. Dim, as stated.
mustard seed
“Remember, heh, remember the Pickleland static murders, Wanda? Good times. Back then you were known as Michelle Roundup and, me, Bill Mustardgas. Good undercover work. We nabbed those snowmen.”
“And got some nummy popcorn out of it too!” she joked back, but then became serious. She wasn’t with Tank any longer, either professionally or personally which, for her, usually go hand in hand. Dimmy was the exception, and Marilyn is about to solve that problem. “Tank?”
“Yeah?” He waited with baited breathe. Were they a team again? Had he done good by telling her that Dimmy’s new pink lipstick was actually Marilyn’s new lipstick and that Dimmy wasn’t applying it himself, despite the rumors about town, rumors planted by Marilyn herself, still trying to get back at Wanda after all these years. This was still a black and white situation, which meant black vs. white, which means good vs. evil. Trouble is, no one knows who is who and which is which. Both witches in a way to everyone around. East vs. West is another way to put it.
“I think we should study static again.” She met his eyes. She was dead serious about this. “You take, say, Tennessee, and, me, Kentucky.”
All Tank’s effort has paid off!
this town (no breakthrough)
Stuck on a mountain, Norris waits for the train to stop and pick him up. Problem is, he himself is the train, the trees, the mountain. This is plainly displayed for others to see.
Duncan Avocado confidently enters the store, noting the colored writing on the wall. Safe zone here.
He spies what he wants on the top shelf. “I’ll take, let’s see, the policeman, the fireman, and that, um, Star Trek military robot I believe, Rootitooti or something.” He wanted to own them all, practically the entire public safety force.
“5 bucks,” she said so softly he asked her to repeat the price, which she did even fainter. He never got the cost; the train kept spinning and spinning round the small granite summit like a carousel.
One day…
root of the problem
He found her in a town full of bigots and zombies on the other side of the wall, a mere apple’s toss from where he was before. Annaball or Annabell, the pretty, white, raspberry beret wearing woman of the night who was dating that [black guy] who just broke into town one day, stole all its dignity. She had ambitions, she did. The hooker aspect was just to tide her over until her *real* dreams kicked in. Plus she really wasn’t a hooker; they just hung that tag on her back because of the incident in the alley and it stuck. A lot of things get stuck in this town of 9 that can’t quite reach 10, however hard it might try at times (try 3.16 instead of 3). “And to think she use to teach our children!” exclaimed one when learning about the alley. “Abhorrent,” hissed the other sitting across from the first, still below the TILE colored lights where green mysteriously switches with yellow at times, another round and round situation. If only the carousel could stop. We have to get off.
“‘Nautilus,’ she said to me (he relayed later on to the proper authorities). ‘I have to get back to Nautilus.'”
“And you just let her *go*?”
“I didn’t… have any choice.”
“Dot dot dot,” the authority figure chided. “It’s always dot dot dot for you lot. You’re as bad as her,” he finalized, spiked helmet secured on zombie head with a dead leather strap. Or so they say.
01-
On a tip from someone in Squared Root City, she decided to confront them, this bigoted “Annaberg” audience, in a private public post. “Who are you!?” they cried from their respective positions after she had assumed not quite front and center stage but a viewing nonetheless. “A witch?! What bedevilment is this??!!” They studied her from their angles in the half darkness. Since red was involved, some of them wondered if this was the ancient hagg Morgan returned to them, who also goes by Morgaine and other similar words. They shuddered at the thought. They’d all read the legends, good and bad.
She realized they wouldn’t recognize her — in the present — without her beret on. She changed/she turned. The light on her face increased, emphasizing it over the rest. “You!!??” they cried even louder, seeing before them now the white woman associated with raspberries who loves black. “What *is* this??!!” they demanded.
“I am presenting myself to you as I am. One who has been tested for alien powers and abilities. One who is indeed part alien, as witnessed by my pink-ish skin, at least in comparison to you lot. One who has a vertical and a horizontal line up top. One who has a cylinder at the bottom, several in fact. One who has the colorful markings of a modern, because I am also that. I have fish, I have butterflies, I have hearts, I have writing, I have rings and stars, I have designs of odd origin. I am… me.”
This *is* Morgan, some had determined, since the red remained in the lone shoe on her feet, the left and not the right. And they were not wrong.
One also being tested dared to approach her through the mistletoed entrance with luckily a Julia and not a Julian, or else all would be too upset to continue watching and return home to view current black and white reruns of “I Love Lucifer” and such. They danced in complete sync as if on a granite hilltop between two sims. Then the N was regained and all went to hell. The bell was back.
“Let’s meet at your place instead,” past Hucka Doobie determined.
PHOTO-NOVEL 31
Redd star
“I know this is only our second date,” Jeffrie Phillips began again. Eraserhead Man had decided to move the location of the shoot to nearby Antares Isles, just northwest of Fio Fum. The Giant For A Day post title can wait. Or can it? “But I’m a marrying type, I’ll warn ya. I want to marry you. I think, I *know*… I love you.” He turned toward her, Redd For A Day. She of course wasn’t expecting this. Blue script; in the white one she would have slapped him, knowing what he did on that filthy yacht just yesterday while she was with Thomas getting her tattoo. He promised to stick to the clean one from now on. And that’s where they got married. Just back there, in the background. And then they lived in the submarine home a little closer, on the largest and most northern of the 3 or 4 isles in the chain, right near the yacht, pointing toward it like a time bomb. Julius was born a little while later — well I guess it would have to be at least 9 months later. Jeffrey named him while she was busy reading her current furniture and fashion magazine on the far isle again, just where they are now, in the present. A black child for a white couple but that was just part of the magic.
They set a date. March 1, 2022. The day the music died.
Ironic that while perusing black and white photos in that fashion and furniture magazine during Julius’ illicit naming event back there she was thinking about Newt. And Annaberg — why did she ever leave that Sunklands burg in the first place?
PHOTO-NOVEL 32
00320216
Baker Bloch (and Baker Blinker) rescued Joey “The Venusian” Avatar from that Swamp Tree thingie over on Long Island and gave her a new assignment. Go back to Annaberg on the Jeogeot continent at the lip of famed Sunklands (yes, *that* Sunklands) and find Blue and Yellow and ask him some questions or just check in with him, see how he’s doing and what he’s been up to since we last saw him in part 1 of novel 30. We left him at the time of the rising sun, which, to us, the blog reader, mysteriously appeared as the word YELLOO with the YELL part being yellow and the OO part colored blue instead. The same image Marty saw, apparently for real this time (?), at another rooftop location in novel 26.
Now, in the present, Joey finds that he has something else blue and yellow to stare at from his caravan rooftop, still reading his Annaberg paper and catching up with the latest news. Ukraine, pheh. Bad juju over there…
… with a bunch of people involved for certain.
Perhaps that explains the no. 7 car running off the road and turning over just behind him here the other day, he thinks, maybe the day the war started.
The red and green balloon looms in the skies, visible to all residents at all times and reminding them of their loyalty to the 7 and the 6, not the 8 and the 5.
But the wise man with the blue eyes to match his overalls ponders the boys in the battlegrounds, growing up fast. But then growing young just as fast, 13 to 10 to 13 in an ever spinning wheel. Only 4 makes a complete and whole circle, he knows. The governments from all 4 corners of our world will have to understand that soon enough. For now, we remained perpetually trapped, as if in an Escher print.
In a related scenario, The Moon closely follows The Sun at this Annaberg carousel tucked in its nw corner, glad it’s no. 2 instead of no. 1. Best to hide in the shadows until this thing is over and not foolishly plummet down a falls and get directly involved. Right Joey?
And then, to end, Joey understands she must visit the Cave or the Cavern to catch up with the latest on Newt too. More soon, as I like to say.
more black and white 02
https://bakerbloch.com/2021/11/10/00300110/
https://bakerbloch.com/2022/03/22/00320212/
“Who are you?”
PHOTO-NOVEL 38
Duke
“No ma’am, we don’t have that in stock. We *can’t* have that in stock. Laws of the land.”
“Okay, but what if I do… *this*?”
“No ma’am. However many *seductive* poses you try it won’t get you that drug.”
“Okay, but how about *this*?” She remained undaunted. She had to have that soda!
—–
Mike (and, later, Pat) met with Newt and Wheeler on this very issue just across the road in a cavern. *The* Cavern, in fact; sitting around telltale mica. America was slowly but surely being poisoned. Mike had an idea for a new campaign.
“Just *shut* up and *listen*, Moms and Pops.”
00380201
Another ghostly Knight was showing them around. You can never completely escape the energy of The Father, the Dark Lord some call him. Red Devil in Xian terms. At his urging, they fed the function-o-meter in front of them with small copper coins — no change there — to watch TV. The ever-present ectoplasm did the work it was paid for.
“Very popular group in the 21st Century,” he rattled about the fuzzy figures on the non-machine, off by one century but only a fraction off the truth in present time, this 8008.
“Name?” tested Baker Bloch, moonburned from the larger space between the flowers. At 6’8″ he was taller than the trees. And even though bigger than birds, the bees offered minimal shade because of their speed. The present Knight again wrongly assumed he was embarrassed because of his lack of knowledge about, well, *everything*. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was just from the far far past. Like we talked about before. We apparently are still in Osse, motor dropped long ago. Like we’ve been driving around a car with no engine for forever.
Knight finally answered Beethoven, with Roll Over dropped early on from the name — even produced an early poster to prove his point. He should be the one to turn red, Baker thought.
early poster, according to Knight
Then while rolling back up the poster to put it away again, ghostly Knight, one of many in the clone hive, said he was joking and that their actual name was SODA. Another joke? Turns out: not. As Baker Bloch checked around, this SODA group seemed to manifest everything here, including the mica table (perhaps ground 00), the chairs around it, the Cavern itself, the *town* itself. Taking up the whole of a sim called Newt. Like the man, the father (of Shelley Struthers). This is, in effect, where he was born, or at least the name. And certainly the group name gives us an important clue about what happened to our society as a whole, the flip flopping of animals and plants and probably minerals as well (we’ll check the rounded mica table for more tips on that later). And the bearded and mustachioed Moon above it all. The Dark Lord. Without any possibility of escape via a satellite of its own, a Moon for a Moon. Bendy knows. He may be more than just a cameo figure in this here photo-novel, 38 in a series of a lot.
“We successfully,” continued Knight, “made the name illegal, *forbidden*, beyond any even seductive poser could get to. Even the pharmacists had the hoods pulled over their eyes, duck-like.”
(to be continued)
brightening the load (be like Mike)
“What now, boss? End of the road.”
She paused, then said to the foreman with shovel in hand and questions in head: “We go back. We make sure we’ve got everything correct and well rounded up to this point. We refine within.” The non-foreman beside them turned over his blueprint, looking for “within”. No luck.
—–
“Start with mica,” she clarified a bit later as they all walked back inside together. “Mike.”
Helpful! foreman and non-foreman alike thought. They both knew the guy. From a kid’s television show of all places.
—–
Fruit headed Mike at the center of it all stood up, removed the lemon and lime respectively from the mother’s and father’s mouths. “Speak,” he commanded. “Speaaaaakkkkk!!!”
going round the bend
Under a spell, a parade of words began to flow from their now unblocked mouths. Newt first. How he got his name. “Right *here*,” he said. Wheeler’s turn. She was Queen to Baker’s Prime Minister but this was not Baker; Baker was not the father of Shelley. “Unacceptable!!!” shrilled the fruit headed Mike, still at the center of it all, holding the lemon and lime in each hand, ready to stuff them back in if needed. And he did. He could get information through other means. He sent in Pat. They high foured each other while passing. Pat would get to the bottom of this, Mike thought. Female influence. Darker origins. Almost Knight but not quite. Getting there, though. He went out of the Cavern to have a smoke under the starless, moon filled sky. Or was it skies? A skiier pair of skis rider-less bike whizzed by, expertly weaving through the tall flowers and small trees despite no apparent guider. A man walked up as it faded in the distance: glasses, professor looking. “I let it go. I let *everything* go. And yet, as you see, it still knows the way home.”
The bike rode into the rising sun. Mike’s lemon head went away. They were talking man to man, human to human. Knight was over.
(to be continued)
continuation
Early morning; just before the crack of dawn. Alvin Green unloads his greens and other groceries from the truck into the mart. Phyllis walks Baby Chuck in order to try to get him to shut the f- up and not wake Papa. Poor Papa, she thinks. Needs his beauty sleep for the big interview today where he goes up against Tom Finger for sub vice chief manager of roads and agriculture for the town. Of course he had to join the SODA group and correspondingly drop a letter or 2 or syllable or 2 or something from his name to rez his notes for the meeting, big privilege by itself. Honored to get even a nod in his direct from the uppity highers who also happen to be hirers. But the baby must shush. The baby must go elsewhere if not. Thus Phyllis out in the relative cold with a hopefully bundled up enough toddler, fearing that it might catch a cold. Suppress the negative! she thinks while wheeling Chuck around, reviewing in her mind the positive oriented channeling literature she read before bed. But the cold, the *colds*. Baby Chuck sneezes, making it even worse. Alvin notices, invites her to sit in the truck with the child and turn on the heat while he continues to unload. You shouldn’t be out here, he thinks but doesn’t speak. He’s polite that way; likes to stay out of other people’s business. He may know about the interview too, has put 2 and 2 together to make a mother wheeling a baby around in a stroller at 6:15 on a rather cold morning in later April or early May make sense. Can’t believe it’s May or almost May already, he thinks, trying to remember the exact date while shivering. Obliging, thankful Phyllis crawls into the truck with Chuck. “Chuck truck,” the baby says rhythmically, seeming to make him happy. It worked, thinks Phyllis. It worked, thinks Alvin. Finished with the rest of the groceries, he takes his time with the greens, letting them warm up together. And it will be warm for him when he starts again — added bonus.
But Phyllis was desperate. Seeing the keys dangling from the ignition, she must have gone into some kind of trance, put her lead foot down after taking it out of neutral, and just FLEW. She even let go of the wheel, crazily trusting that the truck would have guidance on it own.
She saw a rider-less bike ahead while zooming into the just rising sun, the ultimate warmth as it were. Who would reach it first?
Knight returns
She opened the red doors. She came down the stairs to face him. He looked at the different hair.
“I– I thought you went… away,” he rasped.
“No.”
“But–”
“It’s the future, right? *I’m* from the future. Not the present. I’m not a present to be opened any longer.”
“Buut–”
She knew he wanted to see. So she showed him. His “boys”. “Do you understand? Now?”
He wilted at the sight. “Y-yes.”
“I’m DJ-ing at Kedas Klub tonight. I want you to come. I want you to *see*.”
“Kedas?” he mimicked.
“Yeah. Another one owned by the Horns. The Nightsity location shut down.”
“I–.”
“Just *come*.”
—–
“And bring Pat if you wish,” she thought to add while walking back up the stairs to go outside again.
Thomas too
She was getting old quickly and she knew it. She sat up all night in her rickety swivel chair in her hovel of an office, pondering possibilities. Eureka!! she thought after sipping the last of the SODA before her at 6:10 while the sun was trying to crack on her dawned face. I’ll form a group. Better: I’ll form a whole *sim* that the group will control. You can’t manifest anything there unless you join. And it will all be set in the future, she continued to brainstorm with herself. People — certain people especially (she was thinking about) — would have a hard time finding it that way, a very hard time. “They’d have to take a special train, plane or automobile. One made of ectoplasm and not real matter, yess,” she hissed aloud, bringing back her snake aspect. She was on top of the mountain, a fulfilled pyramid, tip included. Pink Peak. Grant Hill had nothing on her. Because he was she.
“6′ 5″,” she revised later in the Amazon. Close enough.
I buried Paul.
And Ringo. And John. Especially John, though. Can’t be dug out. Will always remain in the Cavern where I first learned of them. SODA.
German
He finally thinks to go inside somewhere and tell someone about the accident, the terrain shift. Paul is dead! it appeared. And Ringo. And John. Especially John, it seemed, deeper in the dirt than the others. He’ll remain in the Cavern now, trapped in the past forever and ever… And the future, as it turns out.
“Can I speak to the manager in charge?” Newt said to Sue Anne the counter attendant of the moment.
“How about the owner?” She indicated Evelyn Hart (“Rag Doll”) to her right, his left.
She was already pondering possibilities, seeing his own name above his head. Newt, she thinks. Odd — peculiar. Like the sim I — I mean, everyone here in town… controls. SODA. “Order something,” she decided to request, staring straight into his eyes over 01 02 03 04 gullies. “Some kind of drink. A soda perhaps.” Would he? Did he know the ultimate secret?
—–
Afterwards, he tried to isolate everything associated with the mysterious crash she talked about. 309 prims total in the linked objects, including this wagon that just happened to have formerly appeared in Squared Root City over in Nautilus, a town now defunct as we know from the last photo-novel (37). He recalled he use to be able to sit on these steps. Here:
https://bakerbloch.com/2021/11/21/00300301/
Whatever happened to the younger guy with the pure white hair? he wonders, thinking back. And then remembers the truth, the transformation.
(to be continued)
00380314 (German too)
Newt was now exploring another mystery in the same general Jeogeot/Sunklands area: a new-ish and obviously unfinished city called Moon that strongly reminded him of a former one, again from the same continent, named Gold. Hot from running about the pretty big place — almost a sim in size itself — he took off his Axis Duster Coat and aired out his armpits on a handy bench, eyeballing the scene from this fresh perspective.
Hmm, a car covered in pink diamonds. Seems to be a clue.
—–
And another one just up there! he spots remotely, peering all around.
Kou > Newt
Heading back inside.
—–
mistletoe doorway (heater presents again (6578 (Xmas mugs)))
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Bernice_Raspberry
Bernice Raspberry, also called Ed Lively, was a 23-year old African-American man who was murdered in Leakesville, Mississippi, on May 25, 1927.[1] Raspberry was arrested for an infraction in Leakesville, but then the sheriff was told he was wanted in nearby Bothwell for “alleged improper conduct with a white woman”. Raspberry was taken to Bothwell but then taken back to Leakesville, for safe keeping. A group of some 100 masked man took him from the jail, strung him to a tree, and shot him many times.[2]
https://bakerbloch.com/2021/12/29/00300701/
“You!!??” they cried even louder, seeing before them now the white woman associated with raspberries who loves black. “What *is* this??!!” they demanded.
—-
Returning to the scene of the crime:
“Blue and yellow are overrated, Arthur. Red and green have redeeming qualities too, despite not being quite as perfect together.”
“Like us!” Arthur Kill emitted with this, and leaned over to take a drink.
“Which one is darker, which one is lighter?” said Shelley, also partaking of her own drink. “6 and 7. Very close indeed.”
“Soo… this is about TILE?”
“No, silly. It’s about a *kiss*.”
(to be continued)
the future is *now*
Grant! she calls, jumping up and down on the grapes (?), pulverizing them. Grant!!!
They heard the yelps all the way over at the Annaberg central plaza. “Decatur Lively” reader Jimmy Dieselengine tried to ignore them so as not to alarm the youth with him, his charge for the day, or at least the morning. If only morning would be quiet around here like it use to be, he lamented in his older age, closing in on 64. Retired over a year back and loving it. More time with the grandkids. Like Pete here. Peter Pistle. But that girl, that *witch*, needs to *shut* the *f-* *up*. He rattles the paper to release his irritation, clears his throat. She’s done finally, he thinks, hearing the end of it, fruit kaput.
She produces purple stained feet to prove where she’d been, what she’d been doing. The same colored glass of wine sat at their tip, ready for consumption. Different dimension; didn’t work. He knew there hadn’t been a proper vineyard in town for a number of months, just some leftover, stray vines surviving here and there, not enough to mask the issue. Rose/Eyela/Leila was accomplishing something else. Like raspberry, something the townspeople wouldn’t swallow.
Mike requested she put the feet away and face the consequences, which had actually already happened. Banishment. Burial even. Like Paul and Ringo and especially John before her. Only the wine was left to prove she ever existed at all.
“Buh bye,” he whispered. “Buh bye now.” And threw it into the earth as well.
scenes
Some call them Clear Lake and Black Lake, although the 1st wasn’t quite clear and the 2nd wasn’t quite black. Separated by only a small dam, they were closer in color than many wanted to admit. And it is here our Annaberg story must continue, kind of a new development since my first visit to the place back in late ’21, just after I learned I could retire the following March. Which, I suppose, sort of makes *my* story the same as Jimmy Dieselengine, formerly of Ossemotor, keeper, at least for the morning, of grandson Pete Pistle, who may be the same as Pete Piper from other places. His African mansion was raized because of his political beliefs. Here:
square of misery
—–
It was 3:18 in the afternoon when he walked into the bank and took out 499,000, a whole Reno’s worth of money as they say in Sunklands speak. Cory Piper, father to Pete (perhaps), still looking for his maw, still banking on the state of affairs to improve and that the wall between Nevada and California would finally be ripped down. Fat chance, I say. Will free the tree people inside for one thing, who some, perhaps many, fear as green monsters. The ones who don’t want east and west merged will block it, I predict. Wally will live.
—-
10 months later and just below, a dog named Spider floats into the Cavern bar from the sky and orders 24 drinks, all with the same 4 numbers just rearranged a bit. All the bits, in fact — every possible permutation. Current bartender Edwin doesn’t know how to handle it and goes overload, which brings a small manager named Bach from the back for aid and assistance. Veiled, mysterious Alessandra looks on very interested, pretending not to be somebody else. But Bach notices before turning his back on the resolved bar situation and going back inside again. Whores of Babylon, he thinks, seeing a bit of black projecting from the white gown’s back, just enough to be tell-tale. What is *she* doing black, I mean, back?
00380405
Hmm, no answer, she thinks. But *someone’s* gotta feed all these animals. She tries again (knock knock knock).
No luck once more. Annabell seemed not to be at this residence any longer. Her old shop next door is empty and being repainted and remodeled in general. What gives? What happened to her only friend in town, its namesake, some say? One of the few that were understanding to her and her beau back in the day.
Yes, she could ask the workers; she hadn’t thought of that for some reason. Would they even put down their paint brushes and rollers and tools long enough to talk to her? One way to find out.
The first to be spoken to was shocked to find her back in town. Because of the recognition there was no way in hell he was going to give her any useful information. Whore of Babylon, he thought rightly. Or wrongly.
“Excuse me, sir?” Nothing. Word had quickly gotten around. Too quickly. Must be the work of a local chapter of The Gossipers.
The ones outside pretended to be involved in their blueprints and drilling their holes, but obviously blanking her too.
Well screw the whole lot of ’em, she thought. I’ll go talk to the horse’s mouth. Jimmy. She eyes the cafe across the way where he’s now sitting with his pal Artung, his stint as babysitter to little Pete over, father Cory returned from the bank (see, it *is* all falling into place!).
Annaberg Annabell
He barely looked up from the paper to acknowledge her presence. Artung with him ignored her completely, pretending to be absorbed in his own words. He was instead thinking. Back in the day this girl was *poison*. Yet she stood her ground before them defiantly, daring them to speak or act in some way. Jimmy Dieselengine finally rattled his paper loudly, which we know now is a sign of agitation and/or disapproval, and then rolled his eyes upward over the top, cooly meeting hers. “If we have to speak let’s do it in the cemetery where no one else can see us. 3:19 this afternoon.” And then he was back to reading, or at least pretend reading. Because he too was spacing out about the past now. The dancing. The playing of cards. Or so they heard.
—–
She had to pay 250 just to get him to sit down with her. He knew she had lots of cash because of the wall between the states. The tree beings she allied herself with back in the former era horded away beaucoup green within their narrow, dark confines, ready to burst forth at the Freeing Day, as they called it, and spend it hither and thither on overpriced trinkets and baubles, the opposition said of the impulse. The same considered her one of those trinkets or baubles, depending on what faction you asked. She was capitalism embodied, em*boldened*.
—–
She was a weed to be removed, she remembered a senior councilmember saying about her as she stared down at one of her kind, according to them, growing from a crack in the pavement. The meeting with Dieselengine was over. Someone was approaching with a ho. Better amscray before I am recognized again, she thought, and moved back into the shadows of the place.
—-
“The Monolith,” he summarized earlier at the bench in the far part of the cemetery, giving her what she wanted, what she could handle. The cold breath kept flowing out of her body like an expulsion of good from evil. “They had to push you out,” he said, watching it.
—–
put some quotes around it, move on
She expelled the black from herself in another thought to be safe zone underneath the old council chambers, a ratskeller they named it. Weed caller outer Heidi (?) use to sit right over there in the place, she recalls, her spot like Sheldon. Where was councilman Sheldon Leonard these days, the big ol’ fern? Anyway, back to the bathing suit beauty across from her. Shelley Stuthers, object of desire for Albert Douglas, Biff Carter, and maybe a bunch of others. Vying for her hand. It wasn’t open for business. She continually held the 5 fingers that represented a stop sign up. “Have you seen my latest portrait?” she says to the up and down white clad double opposite her. “Just a hand; combo of 2 hands, really — hanging in the gallery upstairs, we could say. Let’s go; I’ll throw on a robe to protect us.” And so they go up to stare. Stairs work, actually, ratskeller just around the turn.
“Do you see it?” she said. “10 fingers reduced to 8 if that helps.”
White gowned Alessandra saw Toy, Play, Mine, Thing. And that became its title, attributed to Barry De Boy again since it naturally fit into his “Does this look square to you?” series, being exactly 814 x 814 pixels in size. But he didn’t like to explain the work in any detail. Later, comparisons with Dali’s last painting called “The Swallow’s Tail” would come about.
https://rosiehelendale.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/dali-art-my-personal-favourites/
(to be continued?)
00380411 (turning)
“I don’t know why they renamed this part of the lake Clear. ‘Bout as black as the other part as far as my eye can tell.” Eighty knew Forty couldn’t see with the other one so no need to correct the singular. Another victim of the war, let’s say.
“Meddling, pure meddling,” she replied. “Boredom maybe. The more things change the more they stay the same.”
“Amen to that.”
They kept staring at the still pretty murky water, despite the acquired name. Eighty spotted the octopus again, reminding her she had to meet her counterpart Eight at the town ratskeller. She excused herself from this wonderful but ultimately fruitless conversation. Her last uttered sentence here says it all. Black split up with a dam to make Black and Clear but it doesn’t matter. Everyone can *see* what’s happening, even half-sighted Forty here, Eighty’s wannabe boyfriend but only part of the way there so far. And, spoiler alert, it doesn’t get better for him moving forward. Because she’s got an extra 8 on top of the one she already has. Sometimes they forget which is which.
—–
“I forgot you were coming,” Eight admits. “Sometimes I…”
“… forget which is which yeah yeah yeah.”
“You too?”
“Me too,” Eighty reciprocates. She has to ask why to a lot of things to help remember the y, the letter that makes all the difference. Why split Black Lake with a dam that was formerly just a footpath bridge to create Black and Clear? Stuff like that. She stays outside most of the time because of it. Eight: usually here… in the relative dark. Sometimes sitting with Rag Doll instead of “sister” Eighty. Which is how turning Alessandra remembers the scene, finished studying the newest work of boy-like genius Barry De Boy. Men, she thinks. So full of themselves. She’ll stick with bathing suit clad Shelley, however imaginary she is… no one else can see; black instead of clear.
“Welcome back Miss Aless,” Edvin the matre d spoke up to her, like a page to a queen. Table for one as usual?”
She wanted to say, “make it two tonight,” but knew she couldn’t. Busboy Peterson had starting clearing her regular spot as soon as she showed up on the stairs, studying that painting from the future. Almost done.
(to be continued)
observation point
Important SODA representative Christopher “Sound of Music” Piper knew Eighty and Eight could get to the bottom of this Black vs. Clear, sight vs. sightless thing. If they could keep straight which is which and who equals ten and who equals one. They keep multiplying on top of each other, passing through each other in effect. Odd if it wasn’t even. It represented his top priority about the village: keeping these guys on the straight and narrow, up and up.
And, oh yeah, bringing all the old war zombies back to life. They have wrongs to right too!
—–
00380413
“My card, sir.” And then he took his leave. When the matre d asked who to say left it while he was walking away, he just shot back: “Someone very smart; say it was from Albert EINSTEIN.” “Very well, sir,” Edvin replied. The stranger made a turn up the stairs past the site of the future Barry De Boy painting and was out of sight if not out of mind. Even though Edvin thought he might be. Odd, he kept thinking, staring at it. How can odds be evens? And was there an s cut off at the end? But Osse-Motor. That spelt trouble. Christopher’s more visible brother Jimmy lost a mansion because of it. Perhaps several. Forty lost an eye.
One hour later, Eight was with town gossip and bigot Rag Doll instead of counterpart Eighty, wasting time instead of making hay. Deadly time. Edvin moved toward them with the redeeming card. “Someone left this for you,” he said, extending it. Eight took, read. “Albert Einstein?” she questioned, looking top left. “Throw it away,” Rag Doll opposite her suggested after quickly grabbing and reading it herself, knowing the name. “Worthless. Nonsensical.” She knew what Osse-Motor meant better than anyone in town. Dang, she could lose her *own* house if Eight (or Eighty) took this seriously. An eye!
(to be continued)
00380414
Good fishing in Black Lake, she’d always heard. At least before the Big Split, as some people ’round these parts call it.
Why was Ruby here? I thought she was heading to Wally in Wallytown, I can hear the reader express. Confusing enough! But we decided to place her here in Newt, in Annaberg taking up the whole sim of Newt, because the wall had been sort of torn down in Wallytown, formerly interior trees exposed to the harsh light of reality, spirits within perhaps removed to some more spiritual plane of existence. The Wall has been demystified, and the town had changed along with it. No more California over there, Nevada over here. No more Green Monsters to worry about, stashed away in a dark inside ready to pounce on unsuspected passerbys. All that was in the past. Capitalism, the worrying about bits and baubles, was front and center now. So Ruby felt the place worthless to her and her own peculiar dilemmas and issues and moved on. Black vs. Clear represented a more updated version of all that. So we slotted her into the Newt history, which is kind of overlapped with Osse-motor’s history now, thanks to Jimmy Dieselengine, or so she understood. Help me! I heard Ruby cry. Help us! I cried in turn. Bring your ice cream outfit and ice cream eyes over here! Set yourself down at a convenient place, use your observing eyes to *see*.
Fisher Island’s Wallytown with now exposed trees
PHOTO-NOVEL 47
00470402
Driving Norris and riding Pietmond arrive in town, running over Germans right and left with their ramming, bamming van, bam bam bam! (ram ram ram!) But they were all zombies, they justified the killings, kill or be killed being their current team motto. Something was afoul here, they quickly and correctly deduced by sniffing in the air once inside the city gate. Denmark? Close!
“I figured it out,” said Pietmond to Norris, not worrying so much about the driving and ramming and thus with more time on his hands to think and ponder and study. “The ones with the old fashion helmets are zombies, and the ones with the newer headwear are actual people. I can tell it by their eyes. Better avoid those ones from here on out.”
“Right!” But a newer headgeared one was right in front of him when he said this and was run over anyway, oops. “Starting… NOW,” Norris said just afterwards, perhaps even with a smile as he keeps driving forward at a still pretty high rate of speed into the heart of the situation. The rest of the teams should be arriving soon.
(to be continued)
00470403 (benchmurk)
Rules freak Alfred Hitcher looked over at Fisherman Jim with fire in his eyes and boiling blood in his body. *No* fishing, he seethed, and was about to move toward him and tell him so in person, right up in front of his face, maybe yanking the rod right out of his hands and throwing it in the pond, then dumping whatever fish he’s already caught into the water right behind it.
Prompted by on again off again hubby Newt already at the scene, she landed right between the two, noted the similar color. Both murky now, she said to herself. Murk Lake, she quickly decided on a new joined name for the former two. Not Clear to the left, Black to the right any more. One lake, one pond. Different (!). She looked around for Newt. There you are!
Noticing her on the bridge now, Alfred’s attention suddenly shifted from Jim to Wheeler. Where’d *she* come from? He tried to think of a rule she was breaking by just manifesting out of thin air on a walking board between the 2 once differently hued bodies of water but couldn’t come up with one, despite sensing that at least one indeed was being violated here somehow. The rules he loved to separate black and clear had also turned murky in this particular case. Hmm again.
00470404 (another manifestation)
She had to take Ice Cube’s and, by default, Eraser’s spot in the contest since she effectively eliminated both at once in that scene with the crusher from several posts back (“Apple!, Orange!, Banana!,” SPLATT). But it took some time for her to wake up from this comfy red white and blue US of A tinted picnic blanket and remember all this, YAWN. The prepared Playboy magazine with the girl representing naked truth about to be revealed from beneath another blanket helped. Pure glinty, ruby red it was now. Like her (Ruby Gem). All she had to do was fully wake up and take a gander inside. Because this was actually her new paired teammate Bookie, here for the cause.
“WOW-za. That’s ME??” she says to him after opening to his Center. Then she unfolds to see even more….
Wheeler and Newt soon join them in the gawking, Alfred and Jim too after the latter stops fishing and fulfills the requirement for no rules breaking from a teammate. Our teams are forming. What other characters will be paired together in this here Town of Newt to continue the Battle, this Newt-Town: Newtown? Like New York except different, since that was Section 02 and this is Section 04. Harmonized none-the-less, I feel. Not planned, though. Just happened. I won’t say hmm again but it is implied.
(to be continued)
00470405
“What’s your name, handsome? I’m Madge.”
Was she talking to me? I thought she was looking at the pharmacist. But now the pharmacist is looking at me with raised eyebrows, triangle complete. She’s talking to you! he prompted. Because of course she’d already probably know the pharmacist’s name, both being residents of this here Newtown in all likelihood.
I thought quick. I didn’t want to say my name was Newt because that was the same as the sim, and then I’d have to go down that rabbit hole why they were the same and how I got my name from the sim, yada yada yada. So I made up one on the spot. Looking at the cash register in front of me, it all came together.
“Mark,” I said. “Mark, er, Pfennig.” Born January 1st, 1963 but I left that part out for her. The pharmacist eyed me suspiciously but said nothing. I think he might have even winked at me; yeah, let’s go with that.
“Mark. What a beautiful name,” she cooed, striking yet another provocative pose. The pharmacist rolled his eyes a bit here, let’s say.
“Madge is nice too,” I thought to reply back, not wanting to seem *too* rude. But of course I had no interest of that type in this woman. I have to be 5 years younger than you! (he thought vainly). And look 15 years younger (he kept going down that road).
“Why thank you, sweetie.” She then held out an arched hand palm down, apparently for me to either hold or maybe even kiss. Is this some kind of German custom I wasn’t aware of? I took the hand and shook it. Her face expressed disappointment, insult even. “Humph,” she uttered, her whole arm going limp, hand sliding out of my grasp.
Co-pharmacist or perhaps pharmacist assistant Gerald (Geralt?) comes to the counter with a prepared bag. Stephan (pharmacist at the counter) slid it toward Madge. “Here’s your, um, *soda*, dear.”
“Soda, yes,” she said, grabbing it with the same hand I tried to shake and then giving me a look that told me this wasn’t in any way soda. “Owl’s beaks,” she whispered to me while pivoting from the counter. “For the nighttimesss,” she hissed, then locked onto my eyes for a second while tilting her head before moving toward the door, old yet still effective hips in full swing. I couldn’t help marvel at the scene.
“So what can I do you for?” asked Stephan. “The same?”
“Yeah,” I admitted when finally turning around.
(to be continued)
00470406 (3:19)
SHORTLY…
Hmm, another owl’s beak along with a whole, attached owl, or a rendition thereof, he thinks. I wonder if Madge lives here? Maybe that’s why I involuntarily walked here after leaving the pharmacy. Those owl beaks sure have power (!). Couldn’t *wait* to nibble on one.
—–
But there was only ruins within. Madge, nor anyone else, dwelled in this spot in Newtown in the sim of Newt on the continent of Jeogeot, also the location of Newt’s “other” home of Nawt Vaya, the one he doesn’t hang around as much lately. He’s on too many trails here. But this one: dead end. Better get to the park and meet Wheeler, he thinks while looking around at the barren stone walls surrounding barren stone and grassy floors. Where one trail ends….
At the same time in space, Alfred Hitcher leaving the downtown grocer with actual soda also suddenly has the urge to visit the park. We know the soda will be gone by the time he gets there. Perhaps he drank it along the way; might explain the subsequent hallucinations. Teaming up with no good lie-about Fisherman Jim to fight for the right to own an imaginary island, humph. In his wildest dream! But that’s what the fold out part did to them, additional drug enhancement present or not. Power enough on its own. Remarkable.
(to be continued)
00470407 (Mine, man)
She’d finished her shooting. She’d put back on her finest cashmere robe. This was the result, proudly hung in the hallway leading down to Newtown’s Ratskeller. Barry De Boy’s self proclaimed magnum opus “Toy Play Thing Mine”, part of his “Does This Look Square to You?” series, being exactly 814 x 814 pixels in resolution. And directly kin in this series to the similarly square foldup of the “Foxtrot” album cover by Genesis from ’73 we’ve just seen back in post 01 of this section, also associated with Shelley and the request by new SC librarian Miss Ouri for her to come out from under the lamp and “get big” before them, which she refused to do as was appropriate and logical and decent. ’73: a good year for progressive rock albums indeed. Magical. Spread out centerfold in that case here:
The corresponding folded out version of “Toy Play Thing Mine” has been lost to time, which is in all likelihood for the best as well. But we do have this from “Foxtrot” again, specifically the long and epic “Supper’s Ready” track from side 2, as a kind of indication to what is going on. Green-Gray perpetual war results here again…
We now know that that “Foxtrot” described location of a plateau full of green grass and green trees with Narcissus gazing lovingly at his reflection circles back to this:
And its slowly but surely increasing number of *toys*.
Careful with it. Carefull. Very precious it is. And perhaps fragile. One long gust of wind from the real world all around could eradicate the magic and the spell. Make sure the colors are out of sight as best as possible, white here included. Hide the growing toy avatar village of Flathardt on the edge of this green plateau well. Do not put stuff like blue roses more toward the makeshift path than runs through it all as a possible tipoff to its presence. This is enough of a blue rose case already without such a physical marking. Flatness like this at the head of a hill does not occur naturally. Keep that always in mind during visits and updates.
Now if only the daily mountain rains would stop, UUGH.
(to be continued)
00470408
She turns away from it and looks down into the Ratskeller. One of the Eighty-eights and town manager Rag Doll, also known as Evelyn Hart, are waiting. Dare she go sit with them? She could still run away. They seem to have not spotted her yet at the top of the stairs. But she’d been studying that painting with cashmere robed Shelley for a while. They could have looked up here when she didn’t notice. Can’t take a chance, she realized. That’s how town rumors and gossip get started. And she’d had enough of that already in this place full of time and space.
But it wasn’t just one of the Eighty-eights down there. It was 2 of them, Eight and Eighty together. She’d imagined seeing Rag Doll aka Evelyn Hart all along, all this time while both glancing down there and simultaneously studying De Boy’s painting up here with Shelley. What gives?
—–
“I’m here to see the manager,” he said to Sue Anne the counter attendant of the moment. She waves her arm in the direction of the only other person in the diner while saying, “How about the owner?”
Promotion, ahh. Rag Doll aka Evelyn Hart was not in the same position Alessandra (= white-clad Wheeler) assumed she would be in this town of New.
She dug right into him. “You were suppose to turn right at the can. What *happened*?”
(to be continued)
00470409 (Miss Ouri)
“Done in by (the Nautilus continent region known as) the Wild West,” thought Can, drinking from a bottle inside the dresser that was his Dream while glancing left at the dangly orange legs that match her eyes. “*Not* a witch,” she begged just before the ironic crushing. Of *course* she was a witch. Just like…
… oh no, he thought in a panic, position suddenly reversed from before. NOT a witch. A decent person overall. Just…..
….. separate.
What has he *done*???
00470411
—–
He went straight to orange like his mama told him to.
“How much, Dimmy?” asked Marilyn M. the shop attendant eyeing him from the front desk while cutting cloth for an order.
Dimmy fished around in his pockets and pulled out the two bills he’d brought with him and held them up for Marilyn to see.
“No, Dimmy,” Marilyn replied patiently, use to such dimness from the now not-so-young boy. Boy in mind, man in body. The former will probably never grow up. “I mean, how much thread do you want — string, as you put it? 5 meters? 10?” She had 10 meters of cloth in her own hands now. Time to cut again, SNIP.
2 football fields, he remembered. Mama told him 2 football field’s worth. So he asked Marilyn how much that was.
“Well, that’ll be 200 yards worth of thread. That’s a lot. Are you sure you want that much? That’ll take more than 20 bucks but, tell you what, I’ll give you 200 feet for exactly that price.” Wanda needed to get home to feed the young’n’s. She wanted to wrap this up with the dimwitted man-boy, as in wrap the needed thread up and send him back home himself. She figured his mama told him feet instead of yards for that particular number since that would be priced around the 20 dollars she gave him. He just got the terms confused when converting them to football measurements in his head on the walk over. Dimmy — kind of knows his football but not much else. 2nd string fullback for the Newtown Fighting Newts. With his physical talent he could have been a star. But, you know, the mind…
Without more words, he handed over the bills.
His mother watched him walk through the front door without the needed bag and became furious. “TOYS,” she barked. “You forgot the TOYS. Or did you misplace them on the way home? Did you even get the string?” Dimmy, use to such outbursts but still hurt by the stinging words, pulled out the wrapped thread from his back pocket. “Well, at least you did THAT much. I can make my line across 1 2 3 4 gullies but I can’t position toys along the way. What am I going to DO with you, Dimmy Gene? Your father, God rest his soul, would be SO disappointed in you now.”
(to be continued?)
00470414
“I’m having a little trouble playing the ‘Pathétique’, Shelley. A little help here, hmm?”
“On your own,” she said, busy with her own activity (limbering/warming up for her shooting). And so it goes.
—–
“Okay, where’s the body, Zeigler, Zoomer?” asks Chef-Inspector Petty, freshly arrived on the scene. The Z’s, he thinks here. Appropriate… always asleep at the wheel. “I mean, there’s an outline here. That means….” Then he spies the blood coming from under the toilet door. “O-kay, what’s going on over *there*?”
“W-we didn’t know what to do Inspector,” Zeigler the male officer of the two tries to explain.
“*Chef*-Inspector,” says Petty to this, being petty about his official title as is appropriate here. “Don’t forget the day job. I certainly can’t.”
“Hands, sir,” takes over Zoomer the female one. “We don’t…. know how that much blood can come–”
“Open the door,” commands Petty. “I want to see.”
“You won’t like it,” says Zeigler.
“Open — it,” he metes out. “And for God’s sake arrest or at least fine that man — I think — taking a piss against that wall! No public urination, nevermind the circumstances!”
“Yes sir.” But neither move.
“Wellll?”
“Which — one,” stutters Zoomer, “would you like us to do first?”
Petty sighs deeply. “Just open the door.”
After it’s opened remotely, he watches all the toilet related objects thrown out of the blackness — toilet paper rolls, toilet brush, urinal deodorizer — then settle on the floor and subsequently disappear. Finally, after all the clanking and skidding and rolling is over: “Hands, huh?”
“Yes sir,” said Zoomer. “We shown a flashlight in there.”
“Hands doing everything — all the throwing,” emphasized Zeigler. “We don’t know how much blood–”
“Stop,” he said. “Go,” he points. And they put on their police-issued galoshes and went inside. Other wannabe pissers and otherwise quickly followed in their footsteps. Only public toilet within a 1/2 mile radius, you see. Messy, haunted bathroom or not, they had to go too.
(to be continued)
00470415
Almost as soon as they entered the toilet haunted by a pair of hands and who knows else, Zoomer’s police-issued light went out. “At least our galoshes are holding up,” Petty tried to shine another bright spot on their investigation, figurative this time, the most important kind some say. But Zoomer and Ziegler suddenly were nowhere to be found. In the darkness, Petty must have stumbled into a commode and fallen down into the sewer itself, the source of it all. As soon as this happened all the bathroom lights came back on by themselves and all the pissers and otherwise who had followed the police trio in easily found their own way to commodes and urinals and, if needed due to limited space, sinks and even waste bins and wall corners by this point.
Light also eventually found Petty again as he bumbled and stumbled down that pretty if stinky sewage cascade seen in the below snapshot to a confluence of flows in a more open area. Rattling sounds behind him. He turns.
“*There* you are you little devils,” he said, but the spotted hands kept to their task, fiddling with a bike chassis, almost as if they were trying to repair it in their inept way while actually just scuffling it about aimlessly on the concrete floor. “You know, that bike is lacking wheels,” Petty tried to help, understanding the hands probably couldn’t see and were working on limited feel alone. “Or a seat for that matter. You’ll never be able to get it to work if that’s what you’re trying to do.” No “answer” from the hands; did they even *hear* him? he thinks. No ears too after all. That must be it, he determined. He decides to go over and gently rattle the chassis himself, make the hands aware that he’s here too.
But as he bends down and grasps the bike part…
… he’s suddenly leaning against the wall on the other side with his feet in it instead, his hands grasping something else. Inside he sees the center which is also the end. He unfolds, revealing the full truth. “WOW-za,” were the last words he speaks in this post. We can proceed.
(to be continued)
00470416
Newtown policepeople Michelle Roundup and Bill Mustardgas also formed a legitimate and formidable team but they were currently investigating the Blue Moon static murders over on the old continent of Our Second Lyfe and thus unavailable.
Nor were Ted and Cruise of the potential When Push Comes to Shovel team, still on the clock down at the motor shop and unable to get off.
Which left the following, assembled in the sewer room underneath the entrance to also absent Alfred’s grocer store (sick with pill), the heart of the matter. Starting back row to the right, we have Norris and Pietmond, 2 gypsies (don’t call them hippies!) who rammed and bammed into town from the South Gate in a most dramatic fashion back at the beginning of this here section, killing a number of Germans but defending their actions by saying they were zombies and not real people. Were they right? Let’s move on down the row and we might see.
Next are Eight and Eighty last seen in the ratskeller beneath town hall, waiting for Alessandra who is the same as a white-clad Wheeler. Wheeler mistakened one of them for town *owner* Rag Doll, but she got her position wrong in town. The owner herself will be arriving shortly to correct all that.
Moving on to the second row from the back — and also the front — we have Osborne Well and, next to him, his daughter Lou, taking the place of Ruby and Bookie who also couldn’t make it for various reasons. Next is Wheeler likewise subbing for Alessandra, but, unlike the others, not directly sitting with her partner, who would be next up in our review front row right: Newt. Then to finish our teams off we have Dimmy and Marilyn M. from the cloth shop scene a couple of posts ago.
Time for dancing around the main subject matter is over. Red clad Shelley and now black clad mate Eddy unclasp themselves from each other and leave the stage. Rag Doll takes control….
(to be continued)
00470417
“Dimmy, I am the mama you answer to from now on. Understand?”
Dimmy nods, suddenly not remembering how his mother actually looks. Maybe this *is* his mother. Yes, only several seconds later, he’s convinced. “I *will* find your toys, Mama!” he exclaims aloud.
“Good, good,” Rag Doll says to this. “At least you got the string. And *you* Newt,” she turns her attention to the other male sitting in the front row. “Newt of Newtown. What are you doing flirting with a woman 5 years older than you looking 15 years older? Does *Wheeler* know about this?”
“Well…” Newt glances over at second row Wheeler, who doesn’t glare back as might be expected but seems kind of indifferent to the situation. She’s seen worse. She *is* worse.
“Never mind. You met her in the mall today by the way. Do you think he was really there?”
“I–”
“Moving on,” Rag Doll quickly said. “To Osborne. Osborne, look up from your book and pay attention.”
Daughter Lou beside him nudges his ribs with her elbow. “Da-ddy. She’s talking to *you* now.”
“Oh, ahem. Um. What?”
“The town owner,” Lou tries to whisper but everyone in the room hears anyway. “Up there… on the stage. The dancers are gone. The main show is on.”
“Oh, erm, yes. Yes!” he speaks up, a little too loud he realizes. “I’m here, town ruler,” he softens a bit.
“And you’ve found MOA?” this ruler asks.
“Why yes, I believe I have. It’s in the basement…” Osborne looks around as if seeing the sewer room for the first time. Suddenly he doesn’t know where the library is, its basement, anything. He recalls… walking through a soda machine.
“Good enough,” says Rag Doll. “We’ll talk more soon in private about that. Let’s see, that leaves Eight and Eighty and then Pietmond and Norris. Let’s start with the girls. Eight, we’ve talk a lot down at the ratskeller together while Eighty was away, shared a lot of town gossip and rumors in our giggly, girlish ways. I wonder if you’ve thought about the note.”
“Eighty looks at Eight as if also betrayed, more than Wheeler perhaps surprisingly. Eight seeing Rag Doll behind Eighty’s back? When did her position in town change?
“I took the note from you 2 years ago and yet you didn’t protest. I called it worthless and you didn’t question my questionable assessment. Of course it’s not worthless. I’ve manifested it in your pocket — just look! EINSTEIN; ‘To; Tu/E.”
Pulling the note out and unfolding it, Eight saw, Eighty next to her too. More to talk about later.
“And then the boys, Norris and Pietmond. Clearly Nazis are bad and deserved to be mowed down, ancient headgear or not. So by, let’s say, moral default you have won the contest. Now think carefully: What do you wish your dream island to be?”
After high-fiving each other about the victory, the boys talked amongst themselves and then spoke up. They jointly described a post-Nazi (is)land full of decent Germans in a more modern setting, adding central yellow to an already present red and black in the national flag for increased light and illumination. Given enough time if not space, these people may even be able to make light/find levity in a dark dark past, they theorized. “Our ancestors, PHEH,” said one or the other. “What *were* they thinking about, and so on.” This would obviously take a while, though, the boys furthered. In the meantime, they could go about their daily business in the light of God-day without accumulated sin from their country’s history weighing them down. They’d be free. “This is what we wish,” they finished.
And so it came to be. The burg of Newtown with the sim of Newt at its core was born retroactively from that moment, hurrah! END OF SECTION.
00470505
It was so dark he couldn’t see his hands but it didn’t matter. Baker Bloch knew he couldn’t play a lick, much less Beethoven. Tickling the ivories was more (female half) Baker Blinker’s thing. And his vampire alter ego Pitch Darkly’s come to think of it. He could change over, actually. But he decides to instead recede into shadow again, letting Newt be his new self once more. Question, then: could *Newt* play the piano? Let’s give him a minute and then turn on the lights to see.
—–
*click*
Kind of! Certainly not Liszt but is that an ineptly played Spongeberg Invention, perhaps No. 3? It turns out to be No. 4 but, point made I suppose. He can play *some*. He has hands of sorts, a bit mangled but they’re what they are at this stage of his finely aged life. Good enough for what he needs. Besides, he has other talents to practice…. ineptly, ha. Writing I’m talking about here. We better get back to it…..
00470602
He’d fallen off the ladder 5x now trying to reach his new Newtown apartment. And that girl in the window giggling at him all along. That’s *it*, he said to himself while landing on the ground again then dusting himself off while rising — unharmed of course, because no fall will ever hurt you in Our Second Lyfe, no matter from what height. At least the way it *should* be designed, with everyone always playing in God Mode. Let’s hope that doesn’t change too. But he’s fed up with the situation. He decides then and there that he can’t stay in Newtown, no matter how cheap Rag Doll’s provided rental unit is. It just doesn’t fit. He has to go… home.
He teleports one last time into the sparse white 3rd story apartment, doors to a small bathroom and bedroom on the left. Unfurnished except for a dresser and that old couch over there, and heck if he’s gonna try to lug Wheeler’s 16 prim canopy bed up that gall blasted ladder, pheh. Maybe they can rent a crane; that would take care of the piano too. But — NO. He’s decided.
He moves toward the window, watches a grocer finish unloading his truck of supplies while a similarly colored woman beside him tends to her crying baby. Nice view from here, he admits. Hmm.
He settles back on the pretty comfy couch, choosing to read a bit of daughter Shelley’s newly published novel called “The Hmm” he just received today in the, er, mail before making a *final* final decision. He’s glad he did. Because he’s in it… making that final final decision.
(to be continued)
PHOTO-NOVEL 48
00480111 (Rodentia!)
I don’t think there’s any mixing of words here. This place represents anti-establishment and anti-authority to the hilt! Witness this statue of a beheaded king straddling the corners of 4 sims, a centerpoint of focus. We must begin here to understand all else in the pretty huge metropolis which not only includes most of these 4 sims but spreads over a lot of 2 more as well. Much much larger than The Burg featured in section 03 from photo-novel 45; much larger than Nawt Vaya’s Juho, or Sunklands bordering Newtown, or even west coast NWES City probably, which I’ve considered the largest city of the Jeogeot continent until this point. We the Baker Family have our work cut out exploring this place and resolving its internal story. Might take a large part of a whole photo-novel this time instead of just a section. Maybe a whole one? Several? One way to find out — leap in again!
How did they know I was a stranger? thinks Wheeler.
(to be continued)
PHOTO-NOVEL 51
00510116
There’s no doubt in my mind that Jeogeot, the 3rd and largest continent of Our Second Lyfe and where my virtual home is located along its largest inland sea I call Nawt Vaya, will continue to play a pivotal role in this here blog and attached photo-novels, now almost one section into 51. From the Zanyzen RR system up north to the similarly vast Rodentia urban burg down south (just to give two examples), there’s a lot to unpack here still, even 17 years after starting to explore it back in Spring 2009 and 2 1/2 years after reestablishing it as my home at the beginning of 2024.
The next created continent of Maebaelia (also called Satori) is great too, and queerly basically the same length north and south as well as east and west, almost like they’re twins to each other. And maybe this is what creator Linden Labs had in mind with the pair. But Jeogeot is still a bigger landmass, about a 7:6 ratio between the two, and that 7th bit might set it apart in more ways than one. It reminds me of the 6 sinks of Sunklands taking up 77 sims in the southwest central part of its green landmass as I’ve identified it through the below map. This is the site of my first virtual village called Pietmond, and where my blog got its name, a name now lent to the title of successive photo-novels as they continue to manifest one by one by one in a more or less unbroken line.
It’s almost as if I’ve “lifted” that part out of the continent to start something new. I have no doubt that Pietmond is still alive within, projecting energy past to future. The sinks, although seemingly deactivated and unlinked from each other, still have power we can use in the present.
And, after all, an inland sea like Nawt Vaya is just a filled in sink. Onward and upward we go!
