He was getting sucked down into the 3 sim region. Typical; can’t help himself.
Something about ghosts and busting them. Busts! He recalls now. He’s about to get busted for the drug ring he supposedly runs. But it’s really just wrestling on the side, until the money starts rolling in with the art and all. Sepisexton awaits atop the Monolith of Paper-Soap with more pills for thrills. Let’s go there now.
She stares at the crying lady again, another lone, dark figure in the distance. She begins.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0507, Hana Lei^^, Paper, Paper Soap
He visited an art gallery to see how much he could sell his works for in Our Second Lyfe. He was encouraged(!).
Hmm…
… sensing another pattern.
The owner requested, “no photos,” on a sign at the entrance but I figured that was of individual pieces. A mere boy tries to “fish” paintings illegally through the upstairs ceiling, probably being short on cash or perhaps for black market purposes. Greg Ogden makes a note that things like this can happen but doesn’t report the young fellow. He’s potentially doing something illegal as well snapping these photos. Let hot water stand.
He looked and looked but couldn’t find the art work that a fiend of a friend indicated was here: a copy of Ansel Adams’ famous black and white photograph from the 20’s called “Monolith…”. He knew that people — some people — stupid ones — would think that he was piggybacking on the fame of an established artist, despite the fact that Adams worked in a different discipline. Plus this was another Whippe sim, like the one he’d just left in Section 04 back there with its Black Lake, etc. How’d *that* occur? Must be yet another indicator that he was on the right track to come here, check out prices, capture (on film) the red dressed lady and the fox, see the boy fishing for valuable paintings through the ceiling, and lastly, lastly, Adams. Where was he? The photograph could hold the answers to everything.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0506, Hana Lei^^
“I’m as high as you (*wheeze*) now. Let’s trade.” He hands him the chips, he passes him the bong. The cycle begins again.
Having finished chopping the wood for tonight, Greg Ogden plays on his roundabout, also going in circles but in a different way. He’s getting in the mood to paint.
In a darker perspective, rogue clown Sepisexton sits down by the small beach of the same rental unit and ponders a cry, thinking back to when she was just Sepi and Sexton all separated out. She wonders if she should split, depressing party over except for the really serious heads like Even and Steven smushed together over there on the bench behind that painted Martin rock. She decides it should be between sections 6 and 7 of this here photo-novel, 30 in a series of, dare I say it, 31? Because there will be a 7 born from 6 the way things are progressing, fer sure. Just like the last one (but unlike 28, 27, 26 before it).
Let’s see, what else here? There’s Ted, another head, on the swings that won’t swing. He doesn’t care at this point, tripping the light fantastic.
And then of course the Monolith itself towering above it all, which Greg will paint a bit later for the umpteenth time. Call it his new Treasure Hill. He plans to make bookoos of money from the art soon. Very soon, he contemplates. As soon as Agents 23 and 47 phone him back with some figures. But in truth they were just investigating his drug ring, being police and not business agents. They’d have enough evidence for a bust soon. Let’s call them Crack and Whack.
Oh, I forgot about Marilyn back at one of the teepees beside Keith B.’s cabin on the other side of the Monolith from Greg’s rental unit, just across the long and dusty road. ‘Nother one, pheh: currently plucking feathers from a hen for a new batch of arrows while Sylvester the Stallion looks on…
… make that chipping an arrowhead with a chisel and ballhammer. Um…
She turns her back on peeing Keith B. while carving an arrow shaft with a chore knife, the final tableau, wondering why he doesn’t do his business in the woods like all the other animals. The place still stinks but she doesn’t mind — she’s not the neighbor who complained (Suzzy Q, the teepee dweller across the way who up and moved day before yesterday’s tomorrow). Probably infected with the virus as well, wouldn’t you think, perhaps catching it from him. Because they were an item, maybe still are. She reminds him so much of his sister, which is probably not a good thing. She feels safe around him — her Safe Zone here — because she knows he would kill to protect her. He blacks out and another stuffed animal is set up in the woods just over there next to a cave, or perhaps just over here beside a camping tent. Like Mother.
Done (both of them). “Head’s up!” she calls. An arrow whizzes by, just missing his now forward facing abdomen and landing at his feet.
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0505, Paper, Paper Soap
“You must love me exactly as I love you!”
And so we’ve returned to Black Lake in a very unexpected way through Misty and her partially submerged beau, soon to be husband (??); circled back around. We have similar choices that we did before here, then. Return to Paper Soap from Paperweight using the resonant keyword Paper? A painter paints, a complainer complains. I’m no painter and I’m no complainer. I can go with the flow, even if it doesn’t involve oiling it up and applying to canvas. Joey Avatar knows how comfortable canvas feels now (!). I don’t need to break a couple of nails to understand, but I do need to hammer a couple. In our fence. I’m looking out our Real Life window now. So many people outside, though. If only they would go away for at least that one special day of the year. Hmm.
And I still have a foothold in Paper-Soap, with transfigured Moes’ pink welcome mat seen here back in the sewer tunnels behind sitting old Keith B. I always seem to have to brighten up the place considerably with “Phototools – Lo Gun Light” sky to snap a proper enough picture. But the dark, conjoined sims seems very important still — moving down the road. Photo-novel 31 should start just after Christmas or around the New Year. Omicron’s moving in from the north west east south too. Soon we’ll be surrounded on all sides, blocked in. I need to keep my options open. I’ve had a good run at my job. I’m saying goodbye to the school as a whole, wrapping things up. I know where my mentors are, the painterly ones, the ones that draw as well, were able to bridge the gap between the two disciplines, like Paul Clay. I was relaying to a student I was working with the other day about not liking clay, as in pottery. Foundation classes were cool, but when I moved on to the specialty courses, like pottery, like *weaving* — not a weaver — I lost interest. I dropped out. I returned 6 years later under the good graces of the college, completed my art degree. But, as stated, I’m not a painter, even thought that was my declared emphasis. Never was. I’m not a Warren. I’m not a Dennis.
But what do I have instead? A canvas true, if a map can be considered as such. It’s the world as a whole but it’s very focused in on our US of A. And within that US of A: Iowa. Ringgold County, even — just one county. And at the center of that county: a hypercube; there can be no doubt. You look inside the translucent layers, like paper, and see the bottom writing on the walls. Everywhere.
We continue…
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0030, 0416, Crisp Sea, Iowa, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Paper Soap, Soap, Wild West
She woke up with her mission. Go through the SOS flea market toward the plane. Find the hole in the fence and turn left. Therein lies the answer to everything, or at least 42. What’s within will not be what it seems.
—–
The plane, check. But not the flea market before her. The cat on a nearby plank of wood meowed an answer but it was not 42. Something about dinner time being only 2 hours or so away now. Useless for her, although encouraging for the cat. She moves right, since left is…
… hold on.
In the secret basement lair of the large house to her left, biggest in town:
Only 2 hours till dinner time, thinks Greg Ogden with exactly the right number of G’s in his name. Better change.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0613, Paper Soap, Soap
The Paper Kings dropped a Big Baby behind enemy lines and Claude Sit-on got sat-on. His son Claude Jr. carried on the family name, obviously. In retaliation he tried to wire the school so that it would blow up at 4:20 o’clock on [pick any day], but the kids foresaw this and blew up Claude Jr. instead. With their minds of course, no primitive physics needed. End of mechanoid aspect of our story, but later the Claudes, jr. and sr. now conjoined and united as one Claude in the minds of people who couldn’t remember the originals, became martyrs to the cause. It was here that Dr. Mouse entered our story again. “He died for *our* sins,” the fanatic was telling him back in their secret basement lair underneath the mayor’s house, now run by Jim Turbine the plastic surgeon. He surged, he won. Former mayor Longnose went back to Yayaland where he came from and started wearing a different face (at times) and leading the resistance to his own cause, which eventually recruited Guy Benjamin from Kowloon who eventually was able to steal the little yellow fellow, the Rael McCoy, from the other 3 while they had their backs turned. And this is where Dr. Mouse enters our story once more (!), for he was asked to perform a special operation to straighten out the racist lad. *Not* remove the color this time, which should remain glinty gold or close, they insist, just like Claude down in Sittontown (Meatside renamed). “What, then?” demanded Mouse, afraid he would see a rat in such a remote place and eager to get outta here. “Turn him into an *I*,” they said, and left it with him.
Dr. Mouse went back to his basement lair, told the others what had happened. A plane crashed outside in front of the cave that sheltered Sheldon the Initiated, Fern Stalin in disguise once again — I believe this was 42 by this point. On the other side of Paper, Swamp Lake had been drained by the resistance *here* in an attempt to stifle the efforts of the kids. The Asylum was filled with those who weren’t really loonies but were deemed so nevertheless. And Dr. Mouse was the stamp-maker. He wore many hats, but there was only 1 he wanted to live under. Hatti’s.
“What do you think? First attempt, mind you.”
Greg Ogden was stymied. “Is that a… banana?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0515, Kowloon^^, Paper Soap, Soap, Yaya Land
They had finished their burgers — vegetarian for the doctor; basically raw red meat for Wheeler, er, I mean, Wendy — and were sitting outside in what they called the kid’s area. Greg Ogden was riding a coin operated horsie across the way; no food for him, just play. The 2 “grown ups” took the opportunity to talk, core to core. Mouse was asking a lot of questions, so Wendy plopped out her laptop for some quick google searches when needed. Or so she said.
“Claude,” he spat out. “Friend or foe?”
“Friend,” replied Wendy quickly. “But a mechanoid so basically useless. And he indirectly blew up our director so we’ll have to mark down for that.”
“Kids?”
Wendy stared at him. They weren’t suppose to talk about the children. He remembered that with her prompting and moved to the next.
“How about the swamp? How about the bars?”
“Bar None?”
“Um… not sure.”
“Both have black mold thanks to the you-know-who. Both lack bathrooms, hence Stu Umbriel in jail for the urination and such. But he just likes peeing in public, don’t get him wrong. He’d do it anyway. That’s just what his lawyers are going to say.”
“Kolya… seems to be missing.”
Wendy stared over at Greg Ogden still jiggling on his horsie. “Did you give him 2 quarters or 3? Because this could take a while.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0513, Paper Soap, Soap
“Who do you think that is over there, Greg Ogden with an extra G?”
“Just in the last name,” he modified. He lowered his voice, leaned forward. “And stop pointing over there.”
“Oh she knows we’re here,” said Dr. Mouse in reply. “She knows what we’re talking about; she *knows* what we’re thinking.”
Hatti the witch still didn’t look over, trying to ignore them. She was thinking back to when she left Valgate (= V-gate), her old beloved house that was her castle, left the NE corner of Nautilus continent behind. Got tired of the devilry. The boars! Booor-ing (in the end). She looked at her cyan blue nails — anywhere but over *there*. When’s our, *my* expresso going to arrive? she thinks. I’m about tired of *this* place as well, this Paper-Soap, amalgamated from 2 former school districts. The kids control all now! Thoughts can flow freely between subconscious and conscious: dream becomes reality. The burning of the Biker Bar and Grilling that killed our beloved director Penn Mann (etc.) — could have been their doing (easily enough). But personally I know it’s Claude.
Weary, she stares over at Mouse. “Looks like they’re actually closed. Wanna grab a burger you 2?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0512, Paper Soap, Soap
A rat scurried across the floor in front of red clad Greg Odgen. Mouse tried to ignore it but couldn’t. Anything bigger than himself, if only in name, spooked him. But it was safe here; that was the point. No one came down to this place beneath what they called the mayor’s house.
Norris spoke up. “You promised me information about the Red Room, and a “Return”. I haven’t seen the Red Room yet, not hair nor hide. The Red Room,” he insisted in his deadpan way. Face bleached out to disguise who he really was (mayor?), this man had observed a lot in his day from this couch and that couch; seen dancers come and go; seen prison schematics but couldn’t talk about them; observed maps of strange, unknown places — other ones — and memorized them as well. He had *information*. But the Red Room remained off limits. He wanted to know why. Casey One Hole was still tracking him down. He figured he’d go to the end of the galaxy to do so if needed, the far corners of space itself. This means even Muff wouldn’t hide him forever, disattached to Bermingham as it were. “I have the WIS map; I’ll trade you the Red Room for WIS.”
Mouse knew this wouldn’t fly, as a bat ran into the back of his chair and became like a rat, scurrying around once more with radar momentarily lost. He pondered again the palindrome nature of that word: radar. He thought of Norris hiding on Muff. Wouldn’t fly.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0511, Paper Soap, Soap
Always look for the spaces between things. There lies art.
I am not a painter in this life. I am a collagist. Moving on…
“What does the future hold for me Esmerelda?”
“A cave? A *landscape*?”
Very faint from across the table again: “Enter the cave.”
He paid Ms. Wells handsomely and was on his way again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0501, collages 2d, Crisp Sea, Lower Austra^, Nautilus, Paper Soap, Soap, Wild West, Yaya Land
Sunklands 