00420401 (Mr. Price)
“I-I don’t need someone t-to… guard it with his life, j-just… be around.”
“We’ll be waiting in the shadows,” his new client assured the owner of the bar. “Ready to strike when they make the wrong move. We’ll keep it clean here.”
“I like that. And if they *don’t* — they gotta pay the price.”
“Now you got it Dragon.” Points at Dragon. “Now you got it.”
—–
“So what is this magazine you brought with you today, Baker Bloch? SecuroServ? Who’s that?”
“Let’s call it a… bleed-through from another reality. One important to know about, Wheeler.”
“He’ll probably be showing up soon,” he added. “To secure… and soive — just a warning.” He picks up the magazine from the counter and hands it directly to her. “Being the manager of this here bar, I’d recommend studying up.”
00420402
A canoe tucked away in a small wooded area in Bear Lake, Pennsylvania. Nothing really that odd going on here on the surface, but what’s that black and white circular figure in the tree above it? Reminds me of a yin and yang symbol a bit.
And in the next Street View photo of the place moving west: why the blurred out part next to what is our best view of this canoe? This blurring effect is usually reserved in Street View for people encountered along the way, hmm.
Across the road, we get our first good gander at some queer looking objects offered for sale. Homemade art it seems.
And then, perhaps most mysteriously, what appears to be *figures* in the trees next to the canoe (and the blur) in the same panoramic shot. Let’s take a closer look…
Left to right, we have some kind of amorphous gray figure poking above the plants with a mouth and two eyes…
… then a cartoonish black and white figure (again!) with what could also be described as a mouth and 2 eyes, along with a prominent nose as I’m seeing it…
… then 3rdly a bird figure, it appears, holding something that looks like a bell (?) in its beak.
These 3 figures line up with each other across the bush from this angle and are evenly spaced along it as well.
With the exception of the bird, all are looking toward the canoe, which would be about 15 feet away from them here.
Better view of that handmade art.
(to be continued)
00420403
Why was I here poking around Bear Lake, PA? Because it happens to pop up as the only listing under the name Happy Town in our government’s Geographic Name Information System (GNIS) database. I came across an article here explaining the variant name’s history.
Ernest Miller’s Place Names in Warren County also refers to a “Happy Town” that was “a former small settlement located half in the borough of Bear Lake and half in Freehold Township; it is three-quarters of a mile east of the center of the village of Bear Lake.
“In earlier years, there were nine houses, a blacksmith shop, and an out-of-doors dance platform where Saturday-night dances were held. It is thought the location was named when a reveler remarked, ‘Oh, it’s a happy town on Saturday nights!’ A dirt road, known and marked as Happy Town Road, turns from the village location south where it meets Route 957.”
And the reason I was looking up Happy Town in this way in the first place is because it’s the name of a prominent location in Osamu Sato’s LSD Dream Emulator video game from 1998, basically forgotten shortly after its release in Japan but now an internet hit thanks to a Youtube fueled revival. Good ol’ Youtube — serving me well lately for uncovering gems of creativity. Happy Town is the most colorful of the 14 locations of the game, and one of the largest and most frequently visited and recalled. With its cheerful, vibrant nature, Happy Town presents the opposite of gloomy, perpetually dark and gray Violence District with its odd appearances of bloodied bodies and headless or hanged women. Then at some point I guess we should talk about the Gray Man, the most famous element of Sato’s game. According to the LSD Dream Emulator’s fandom wiki, Gray Man appears most often in Happy Town amongst the game’s locations. He’s been seen as the main antagonist of LSD, but some also put forth the theory that he’s instead its hero.
Happy Town description from the wiki:
https://dreamemulator.fandom.com/wiki/Happy_Town
Gray Man from the same:
https://dreamemulator.fandom.com/wiki/Gray_Man
Gray Man in Happy Town
(to be continued)
00420404 (Mr Price Too)
So to bring all this together:
“The two processes across the road from each other are one. It all broils down to a chicken situation. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This represents the art on the two sides of Grant Price Hill Rd. in Bear Lake PA, human-made and who-knows. Why does the chicken cross the road? Because he’s already on the other side. Add in Happy Town and we have the full explanation. The blurred out figure beside the canoe is Gray Man. And… he’s probably Grant Price too.”
“Or Grant Hill,” Baker tries to quip.
“Has he shown up yet at the bar? Grant Price I mean?”
“No,” answers Baker to Hucka D. “But I believe he might be in the alleyway outside.”
“Guarding the place already?”
“Maybe (!).”
00420405
I remember seeing you at the other Jack’s, the one you modeled your new bar on. I’ve been taking care of you for a loong time, Wheeler. Watching over you; waiting in the shadows, as I like to say. Ready to pounce when trouble comes up. And it will.
00420406 (LSD (strutt’n Struthers (only 2 of ’em)))
“Sato is from the North.”
“From the North.”
—–
“She’s pretty good — ‘Classical Gas’ I believe. But her yellow-ish skin doesn’t show up well against the yellow background. NEXT!”
“What’s this electro-crap?” spoke Martha Lamb/Wheeler to Baker Bloch, who was helping out again. Wonder what happened to former helper Newt? Anyway, he answered: “It’s Osamu Sato, a very important figure now in the blog, or at least the current photo-novel. 42. Remember? We were suppose to answer everything in this one?”
“How’s that going?” said Wheeler to this. Very predictable. And right on the mark.
“And it’s played by Kangarootown’s very own Okama Majo. Very close. Maybe the same.”
“Alright,” Martha Lamb/Wheeler relented. “If you insist.”
“Arkansaw hog calling by a Fayetteville boy named Don — insisted on standing in front of the stage to what he called, ‘have more impact on the audience'”
“Absolutely,” judged Martha Lamb/Wheeler, not needing to hear more than a couple of ‘SUUUUUUEEEEEY!’s.
And then, ahem, Shelley Johnston Struthers to end. Had to be.”
“Always hogging the spotlight,” Martha Lamb/Wheeler started the complaints. “‘Strawberry Fields’ again from the sound of it.”
“Actually it’s ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’… to go along with the Osamu Sato stuff.” The chorus started.
“Ah yes, I see. Comes with Osamu? I mean, Okama? From Kangarootown? Golden Jim?”
“Yes,” answered Baker Bloch plainly.
“Okay, let’s see them all together now. Even the one I rejected. I’ve changed my mind.”
“There’s one more figure we need to fit in make it all work,” said Baker, who didn’t elaborate but perhaps didn’t need to. Linen. So close to Lennon as Okama is to Osamu. Shelley wasn’t actually singing anymore. Just channeling.
00420407
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO7XOKpE7nM
Linen sees the front of a train coming out of a tunnel into Happy Town and recognizes himself. “My face!”
Then as he continues to watch, the train surprisingly flies off its tracks around a bend and leaves the location over the word LOVE.
Not the first time someone of that name or very similar has emphasized the spelled out word.
00420408
“Oh no! Look out Linen!”
“Behind you!”
They gave Okama Majo a cheap high-rise apartment in town so that he could rehearsed with his new band easier. Name still pending. Don wants to call it “Sueeey!” — totally predictable, still being a kid at heart and mind and all and not thinking of others that much while living in his own self-centric universe. Classically trained guitarist No Lag V is leaning toward “Gas Solid Liquid Plasma,”, with her as Gas and, as she said, the others will figure out their own state of matter over time. And then Shelley inserted her own name into the discussion: “The Dream Emulators”. Okama? Let’s actually give Okama “The Dream Emulators” suggestion and leave Shelley’s for later. Currently she’s off in her own dream world over on the western part of the Jeogeot continent, spending time with imaginary boyfriend Eddy D’Aigle instead of hubby Arthur, who may be out of town himself acting again. Shakespeare never sleeps.
He knew he shouldn’t do it but Okama is searching old tenant Mr. Babyface’s Internet history for clues about his nature. What led him to take that small boat so close to that Korean Channel funnel, obviously marked on the map, and get sucked in, never, it seems, to return to the land of the living? Soon — too soon probably — he comes across Babyface’s theories about an alphabet hidden in a column of sims on the eastern side of the continent, the opposite part from where Shelley currently is; she’s just that off-base. Okama is the one we should stay with…
—–
“Orgamast?!” he shouted, spotting the name of the “O” sim in the Korean Channel and realizing it was so close to Orgasm (‘nother one!). Let’s back up…
00420409 (from the old blog)
To introduce: All 7 sims beginning with YEO in Our Second Lyfe are found on the Jeogeot continent. So let’s start the quote…
The highest and lowest of the YEO sims are directly north and south of each other. This would be Yeolmae (north) and Yeongheungdo (south). Yeolmae almost touches northern coast of Jeogeot, just missing by less than 100 meters. Yeongheungdo *just* touches the southern coast of same, with its southeast corner barely extending into the ocean a couple of meters total.
On the below map [see former post], positions of these two north-south YEO sims are marked by an A scrabble tile (Yeolmae) and Z scrabble tile (Yeongheungdo). In-between we are able to exactly position the remaining 24 letter tiles of the English alphabet in order, since the two sims in question lie exactly 26 sims apart. In other words, 1 scrabble tile here fills the same space as 1 SL sim. To me, this relationship is meaningful, and equates the whole of Jeogeot (remember these two YEO sims basically mark the exact height of the continent along this vertical line) with our alphabet….
So finding this Jeogeot-alphabet relationship, I started playing around with inserting tiles in other places around the continent. My first thoughts were that perhaps the 5 remaining YEO sims (of 7 total) represent the 5 letters that only have 1 scrabble tile assigned to them due to their relative lack of use in writing in comparison with the others (j, k, q, x, and z). However, in experimenting further I fairly soon discovered what must be the most interesting additional relationship: the fact that the names of the 30 sims of the Korean Channel begin with all but *4* of the alphabet letters, these being c, t, v, and y. If we subtract the two sims lying outside the main 14×2 column making up this channel — the very similarly named Darcy’s Cove and Darcy’s Harbor — the weirdness is even tightened a bit more, since the same 22 letters appear out of *28* chances now.
I’ve simply listed out these 28 sims in alphabetic order at the end of this post to further illustrate the oddity [see former post again]….
And so we’re caught up a bit with the back story. To the present once more…
00420410
Miraculously, we have somehow reached the end of LSD Dream Emulator — day 365 — and its final cutscene video. A translucent, black and white Linen appears in front of a volcano and starts jiggling and vibrating (oscillating) as a red ball goes round and round…
… until the thing explodes.
Then the letter “I” forms over the top of the erupted mountain to emphasize that the Korean Channel is once again involved.
Because this is the I sim of Ichelus, also with an active volcano. Catty-corner to Orgamast, which we’ve already talked about. Can’t be chance in my opinion. End of LSD. Climax of thing.
Korean Channel with catty-corner Ichelus and Orgamast
Ichelus on the Big E
The clincher is here for me.
https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/11/osamu-sato-interview
… the first thing I made when I decided to do a personal project was Alphabetical Orgasm, in which I designed an entire alphabet from A to Z, I created a series of images and then held a solo exhibition. Various parts of the media picked up on the project, and I did some more shows, so I found myself busy again, but the main thing for me was that I found my color. The biggest influence there goes back to the mixing of colors, the colors of Kyoto, that I learned while studying with the kimono designer that I spoke of before, as well as that techno feel, Constructivism and images are put together. All of that swirled together into Alphabet to produce something new and great in my mind. You can see it all on my homepage.
1998’s LSD Dream Emulator is a macrocosm of 1991’s Alphabetical Orgasm.
00420411
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-OYPicGH_E
Happy Town train flying over LOVE again and outta there.
Half of the Tower Bridge (*not* London Bridge (!)), which was the same percentage I encountered next door on my neighbor’s plot when setting up Aisle of Palms back in the first of January.
Googly eyes on the Our Second Lyfe version…
… which is the same effect most LSD characters have when viewed in a certain set of textures (one of 4 in the game) called Distortion or Downer.
Interestingly these type of googly eyes will not appear on Tower Bridge — which also happens to be found in the LSD game — because it doesn’t have a face. Here we almost seem to have a sort of crossover effect between LSD and Our Second Lyfe going on.
LSD’s Tower Bridge with normal (Static) textures
Btw, even though the bridge next door was deleted in full soon after I arrived in the area…
… the dead parrot statue still remains underneath the Parrots for Pirates Pet Shop in my town, a lasting aftereffect.
00420412
“Meet me by the big foot in Kyoto. Oracle’s orders.” He hung up the phone.
—–
“Where *is* she?” Was he firm enough in his tone of voice?
He started wandering around. Bad idea.
Soon, too soon, he’d forgotten EVERYTHING.
00420413
“Bridges, Wheeler. Tonight’s theme is bridges.” (*click*)
—–
“How about this. The last thing you see before a 30 day dream ends are bridges. What do you say to that?”
“I say we’re about to see Linen again.”
“The man in charge,” agrees Baker.
“But,” corrects Wheeler, “that wasn’t the actual end of the dream. Instead: ship. Sunken.
“Natural World is next. Horses!”
“Vast,” agrees Baker. “Most important. Connector,” he elaborates.
“Map to end,” says Wheeler.
00420414
“AARRRGH. I’m so tired of crashing into walls in this stoopid game. That’s IT. I’m going to invent my own game where crashing into walls is COOOL. It’s how you win actually. Enough of this, PHOO.”
Marsha “Pink” Krakow stumbled out of her crashed yellow WV and into a convenience store, conveniently placed near the wreck. Don’t worry, she’s okay. A tiny concussion is all; smelling salts from day manager Eddy Jeffrings fixed her right up.
Never, she vowed after getting her feet under her again, *never* will I drive in a “Damage/Not Safe” sim again. *Never*.
Marsha and Okama become linked through the matched events. Obviously a pink one. Like a tulip. Or a train.
00420415
“Is that a fin over there? Or just another mirage, like with the camels?”
“One way to find out.”
—–
“Yup, it’s a fin. Must be in Finland, ha.”
“The North, right,” spoke Wheeler back, not laughing or grinning atall about the notion.
—-
But it took them 14 more dream days to finally follow a fin home. Things had changed in the meantime, new set of textures kicking in.
00420416 (Natural World/ Rainbow Falls)
“So I think we can make a home here, Sepisexton. Get away from it all, talk about the tomorrows and yesterdays to no end. Dreams we’re talking about here my love. And no Gray Man around to erase the memories. He doesn’t come into The Natural World.”
“So I’ve heard.” She takes another bite of her ant beignet and mulls over possibilities. Amos T. Sandman points in the distance, over the waterfall.
“See those fish floating over there. Plenty more where they came from. I tested it yesterday. You can just go up to them and grab them with your bare hands and then another one spawns. Fish spawns — get it? I was running back here to tell you no tackle was needed. This isn’t football or even angling — no sport to it atall. Free food!”
Wheeler, currently playing the role of Sepisexton to Baker’s Sandman, took the inept humor in stride. Yesterday they had found the North, this place where Okama Majo came from, at least in comparison to St. Dennis (more on that soon). He said he sucked at a video racing game while living there and thus made his own where the walls don’t matter and there’s no shooting allowed, no target whatsoever to the game. A game about nothing. But at the same time: everything. Here we have the answers we needed. We’ll continue photo-novel 42 into its section 05 while keeping this in mind.
“Let’s go up beyond the waterfall to the sunken ship to end again,” requests Wheeler, last piece of beignet in her mouth, somewhat muffling the request. Ants, thinks Sandman to this. Sepisexton got rid of the last to save him from becoming fused superhero Santman forever and ever, a walking talking copyright violation. She’ll always be golden in his book for this.
Time for the dreamer to awaken.
Sunklands 