Yes, welcome to my lair of evil thoughts and incorrect speech where I don't let go and move on and I talk about whatever I please. On a blog no one ever tells you to shut up. If you don't like what I say, just go elsewhere.

This blog now has a new background and a new theme. It is also using a remotely loaded style sheet. That is a first. It is lush, heavy, and uses a background that has a theme I have never used here before, though I have used it for pressies. Let the show go on! It always does anyway. And yes, we are powered by Blogger.

I am putting a temporary illustration here until I have a logo for this design. Watch this space.

LET'S ROLL THOSE OTHER SITES

The Backfile: this blog's archives.

Ajayu, home of my story, The Sneezeweed Chronicles. Yes, I do fiction.

It will have Oneiro, my own little role play.

Unfettered Soul, my flagship site.

The Silk Purse, my play pretend Brainstorms.

Failed Messiah Religious news never sounded so good.

New York Times. Read the news and be smart.

The Pantry Corner -- I

This blog is getting a new feature. I figure if those folks at the Atlantic can write about food, and if a friend of mine can do it, well I can try my hand too. Besides, the world needs one more food column. Actually, it doesn't, but it is stuck with one anyway.

Part of cooking and stocking your kitchen is knowing when to splurge and when to srimp. Sometimes that extra money goes a long way and sometimes it is best to stay in the bargain basement. A lot of what I have been cooking since I recovered from my stomach virus and came down with an ugly cold has been a combination of top shelf and bargain basement. The results have been fantastic. Now, if you have ever had a cold, followed by a stomach virus, and then another cold with no time spent being healthy in between, you get sick of "sick food" very fast, so I haven't made soup in over a week. Soup in this house means "red soup" with a tomato based stock. I'll write a "red soup" column some time, but I'm sick of the stuff for now.

What I wanted was the food that the stomach virus had diverted. I had planned to make curried pasta salad. Curried pasta salad is an odd dish, because most restaurants don't serve it and most delis don't make it. In fact, one of the few places you are likely to encounter a curried salad is either an old school cookbook, someone's home, or a college cafeteria which is how I learned about curried bean salad in the now defunct Sage House. I also learned about curried tuna salad when I took home ec in middle school, and made curried eggs when I was in college. Yay Settlement Cookbook.

Well I wanted curried pasta salad with green peas. The peas were in the freezer. They were a bargain basement item, a two pound bag of Kroger's For Value green peas. The pasta, however, was top shelf, Whole Foods 365 whole wheat shells. These really weren't so expensive. They in fact cost less than Kroger's Private Label.

Spending a bit extra for pasta makes sense. You get a better choice of shapes. The really cheap pasta is not made with 100% semolina and you also get access to flavors like spinach and whole wheat. Also, if you buy at Whole Foods, thhe flavored pasta is very reasonably priced.

The other ingredients in this salad included: blanched carrots and white turnips, scallion tops, and roast peppers and of course mayonaise and spices. If you make salad dressing from mayonaise, it makes sense to buy the cheap stuff. My mayonaise is Kroger's For Value. It's actually very good.

OK here is the recipe.

Curried Green Pea and Pasta Salad

Ingredients:

4 monster size carrots (Six ordinarily large carrots)
2 good size turnips (Three smaller turnips)
1 lb frozen green peas
The green part of a bunch of scallions (Save the white part for cooked dishes unless you want dragon's breath.)
1/3 of a jar roast pepper strips
8 oz of your favorite pasta (small shapes)
Salt to taste (a bit more than you think.)
Ginger powder to taste (a bit more than you think)
Curry powder to taste(a bit more than you think)
3oz unpasteurized cider vinegar (Get this at your healthfood store.)
3oz mayonaise
Water for blaching and cooking.

Peel your carrots and turnips. Cut them into small pieces. Set a blanch kettle (a great big stew pot) half full of water on the stove at high heat. When the water reaches a crazy boil, dump in the carrots and turnips. Cover and let boil for three to four minutes. Do not leave the kitchen. You need to grab these vegetables fast. The object with blanching is to lightly cook the vegetables to get them to absorb more dressing and become milder and easier to chew. Dump the boiling vegetables in a colander and run some cold water over them. Put the colander on top of a small bowl and get it out of the sink. Veggies can cool on the table or in the fridge.

Dump your vegetables in a big salad bowl when they have cooled a bit to free up the colander. The colander gets a work out. Heat a pot of water and cook your pasta until al dente and then dump it in the colander. Rinse it and let it cool a bit and add it to the salad bowl.

Cook the peas in the pasta pot. Dump in the colander when done. Cool and add to the salad bowl.

Cut up the green parts of the scallions and add them along with the roast peppers to the salad bowl.

In a graduated measuring cup, line the bottom with salt. Add the curry powder and ginger powder. Aadd the vinegar. Stir. Taste. Adjust seasonings. Add the mayonaise. Stir. Taste. Adjust seasonings. Dress your salad and put it away.

Yes, you wash your blanch kettle once and your big pot twice. Purpose making dishes that are often made with leftovers just means many trips with pot and colander but this salad tastes great and won't bust your budget and you won't find it in any restaurant, so in a way this dish saves you money and in another it is priceless.

And yes, I'm still pondering words of advice on when to go top shelf and when to head for the bargain basement in the supermarket or Farmer's Market. I guess my rule of thumb is do I still get good value? Some vegetables and other products taste better, look different, are higher quality, and cost more and the cost is worth it. Good pasta is a necessity. I eat a lot of pasta salad, and the right shape or a new flavor improves the dish for only some silver.

Likewise, there are gourmet vegetables and fruits that are in season that also add a special flavor. Fingerling potatoes, yellow beets, and black radishes come to mind. Blood oranges, Mandarin oranges, and heritage apples of all sorts are worth the extra cash. Fresh herbs do not break the bank and give a big return on flavor.

What I consider rip offs are pasta sold in less than one pound packages, ready made items, and out of season items. Kroger's whole wheat pasta falls into this category as do strawberries and peaches. It's February here in Atlanta and not strawberry season. Ready made, preflavored pasta or noodles, is also a foolish expense. Learn to create and flavor your own dishes, and if you want to spend a bit extra on quality ingredients, go for it.

Second Life -- Land and Space Blues

I wish I had images to go with this column, but I don't. I am writing on the fly tonight when I could be inworld. I read on a famous Second Life blog how much everyone has a craving for space which is one of the reason that Second Life population density is like that of Wyoming. It's not that simple.

What brought this on was a visit to a sim called Arab Land. Breathtaking is the word for this build, but what is wonderful about it is the absence of walls. There are plenty of stupid boxes that look wonderful, photo real, but in the end, they are just boxes. In Arab Land, there are endless open courtyards, no ban lines, and the whole place is walkable with ramps, stairways, and beach front with bridges. There are no malls, but the place is designed for group use and socialization. Space in Arab Land is utterly social and completely noncommercial.

In Japanese sims by contrast, space is tighter. Japanese rent 512, 256, and 778 prim plots and can live on those contentedly in a way that Americans never could. My experience with a 2048, which I have for two and a half more weeks, has taught me that I have the American propensity to sprawl even if I build prim-enomically. In fact, my careful use of prims makes the 2048 a bad buy which is why I need to give it up. I will miss it, but that is another subject.

In Japanese sims the gathering place is called a Cafe. The Arare Cafe in Akiba is a good choice but you have to go there late at night if you are on the East Coast in the United States. Japan is fourteen hours ahead of Georgia. The Japanese sit together without mass teleports or the need for loud music. They talk business, much of which involves group building projects. Sometimes they talk work. Even with machine translation, I won't understand everything.

Then there is the Dutch sim (I'll post its name). It's an elegant urban build with attention to walkability missing from most American sims. There are no banlines and there are bridges over the canals. The climate is temperate. It's a sweet place though not always the friendliest. The Dutch have clubs for dancing but they usually run in the middle of the afternoon which makes them hard to visit, but if you walk through the residential part of a Dutch sim, what amazes is how close packed the houses are. The Dutch clearly enjoy having neighbors and being close to business. The Dutch sims are as close to new urbanist as most of Second Life gets with the exception of the mainland. The mainland is a subject for another post.

A Proposal to Linden Labs

If you look at the statisics from First Opinion which I don't have at hand but which you can find, a surprisingly high percentage of premium members probably build. One statistic that stood out was that a third of high use members code HTML. That means you have a fairly computer savvy bunch, the kind who are willing to put in some sandbox time if not mess with LSL. I would guess that about one in five Premium Users are builders. Even if this is a bit lower, it is still a sizeable percentage of a big group.

And the new Linden Home plan does nothing for budding builders. Maybe the Lindens figure that these folks will eventually buy a 512 on mainland, outgrow it, keep it, whatever. That is sad because it is more than possible to offer budding builders the same community as those who find a Linden Home attractive.

Here is how it might work: There is an abandoned sim near where I live in Hartley called Oddi Freddi. Why not carve out a dozen 512 plots leaving the rest as road to facilitate walkability and then give away those plots (much like Linden Homes) to premiums who have never bought land but who want to build with the stipulation that they "improve" the land by putting up a shelter or platform and/or landscaping. This would make for neighborhoods of builders and eliminate the nuiscence of a budding builder who boards over his/her Linden Home, though hopefully such a person would know that Linden Homes weren't for him/her. I would have known. I was building my first quonset hut on the steps of NMC in the first week. One can always dream.

Why I've Been Gone?

The main reasons I've been gone are Korê in New York and Second Life. These are good reasons as far as they go. I've been reading Designing Your Second Life by Rebecca Tapley though more skimming and skipping around. I have criticism to address to her and to most Second Life writers/promoters.

Korê is in the Caribbean at an American Plan resort that has about four thousand rooms so it is huge. It's doughnut shaped and completely walkable from one end back to the beginning.

Korê in the Islands

It took a lot of work to get Kor&ecric; to the Turks and Caicos. First, I did not know those islands. I thought they were part of the Bahamas. They are not and in a way that is great. I found where to put the resort and how large to make it. I have never stayed at a luxury resort in the Caribbean. I've stayed European plan. I have stayed at an American plan fishing camp and at a conference center in Lake George New York. I have never been to the Borsht Belt. I have been to Cornell Adult Univeristy/Cornell Alumni University to which Rialitee, my fictional resort, bears a weird resemblance. The food is just so good!

Besides eating, Korê is dodging a kind of staticky, low grade, social persecution and she is effectively locked out of all elite ECBAS activity. She makes no attempt to get in where she is not welcome. That is fine. She has become a bystander to frustration and heartache. At the same time if she gets talking, she may do some self discovery. I'm heading into spoiler territory.

The strange thing about writing these episodes besides the fact that they are really compelling (I want to write a third episode instead of this blog, but I need to get back in touch and document someof what I am doing.) is that the ECBAS characters, both adults and kids, render themselves gently and articulately. Now the Sidlow girls are just nasty because they've got it made and Hannah thinks Korê positively expletive deleteds as a roommmate and vice versa, but away from the villa something magical happens.

I'm not sure what happens next. Korê's service to Young Achievers plays a very different role than the not so benighted Klarissa's service to ECBAS, or for that matter Jean and Jared's. Support against adults is usually not an issue for Young Achievers. Most parents like having hard working kids even if the kid's nose is a bit too stuck in a book. There may be places in rural areas where kids have to be bused or provided with transportation or helped to get used to a boarding school, but in the larger cities, that just doesn't happen. Again, I am writing just a bit ahead of myself and musing.

There is also the possiblity that Marcus Sidlow and associates could tighten the screws on Korê or Korê could meet some very sympathetic adults. Remember Rialitee needs engineers to keep its world famous dsalinization plant, designed by Samuel Bihar, going.

Punishing Korê, however, seems very unrealistic. She is playing by the rules and has only come above the radar once. If someone wants to come down on Korê for studying, one of the Sidlow girls might do that or Kayla might break down out of pity, weirdly misplaced, but not exactly false. All the fun ends in a few days of course when Korê returns to the New York and....That's my secret.

Second Life -- Telling Only Half the Story

I haven't finished Designing Your Second Life but I am finding Rebecca Tapley's advice and coverage weird. There is nothing wrong and only a few things that are factually incorrect about what Ms. Tapley says and those can't be helped because Second Life now has an adult area that wasn't there when Designing Your Second Life went to press.

The problem is that Ms. Tapley (and for that matter Mark Meadows thugh less so) places a huge emphasis on doing things right, being the best, being the kind of avie whom others will look up to. She even suggests buying fine things like houses and prefabs and big chunks of land. Of course you will outgrow your 512.

Let's hold everything right here Ms. Tapley and you too Mr. Meadows. I don't believe Second Life is addictive though if you don't have a problem with the interface your mirror neurons will fire like crazy and your brain will believe what it sees on the screen is real. That makes Second Life exceedingly enticing. I want to spend as much time in world as I can. I'll admit that. Desire to be inworld and dreaming in prims and thinking of building projects and wondering what I would do if I was ever denied access all comes with the territory. I love Second Life, but even with all my desire, there is still only twenty-four hours in the day.

Say that three times fast. I have a job. I have other online committments. I can't spend nine hours a day inworld. Also I want to spend some of my time in world just exploring or having fun. I can't predict when I'll be in world consistently without a fair amount of advanced planning either. Here I am writing about Second Life instead of having fun there. What does that tell you.

Well, what it tells me is that I'm not cut out to be the avie to which other avies look up for help or leadership. What good is a leader who can't be counted on to be inworld or who is not inworld enough hours for significant responsiblities.

Third, just as I can limit the time I spend inworld, limiting the money I spend inworld is also possible. In fact, it is important. It's taken me a few weeks of a new semester at work to realize (Work got busier) that I do not have the inclination or energy to promote a freebie or paid retail business. I hate ratailing. if I can not promote a store and don't want to move my home, I need to return my 2048 that I am renting and dump the retail stall and consolidate everything on a 512. If you are a good builder, I don't think you ever outgrow a 512. You are just a prudent person who knows how much money he/she wants to spend on a hobby.

By the way a hobby is exactly what Second Life is going to be for most people and hobbies don't make money and rarely if ever turn into paying jobs. Hobbies cost but they should cost within reason.

My second set of criticism for both my Second Life authors is what they leave out about Second Life culture in their books. Both Tapley and Meadhows have an utter fascination with Gor. Meadows is partial to furries and Tapley seems to like certain kinds of Medieval role play. Neither of them talk much about neko or mermaids but fur comes close enough. What is missing from either of these authors' books is discussion of tinies, child avies, or quad avies.

Also missing is any mention of Christians. Christians are important, not because there are that many Evangelical Christians who play Second Life or trolling at Christian groups is not an ugly sort of sport as is heavy handed evangelizing too when you think about it. Christians are simply a stand in for more conservative life styles whose members are of any religion.

Face it, to a lot of people Gor is a freak show, and they also have no desire to be half animal, bite people, or engage in either prostitution or sadomasochism. They probably also prefer not to play act. Such people need to know there are areas where they will be welcome and like minded souls. I don't care if people on the SL Forums call such souls Disney clones, this is not an issue of censorship but rather letting folks know how and where they'll fit in.

Finally, telling people they'll outgrow their land and have to spend money or scrounge around for all kinds of items is a very sour note in any how to guide for Second Life. You don't ever need to spend money unless there is an item or animation you want that you can't make. You may need to spend to upload textures if you build. They don't ahve to be photorealistic or custom. There is also always the paint bucket. Time in the sandbox is a good use of time and it doesn't rquire a fixed schedule either.

I'm not sure how I'd write my own SL guide. I think I'd talk a lot about exploration and movement. I would try to include strategies that require neither shopping nor an outlay of Lindens as alterantives. Make a shape with sliders. Mix and match for clothes. Create clothes with weird textures from the library etc... for a first pass. I think it is more important for newbies to get what I call MU** sense. That feel for going walking. I'd suggest good walking sims to do this with an absence of ban lines nad soft spots. Falling through the ground is just plain demoralizing.

After that I'd have the long paragraphs about time and money and keeping a handle on both. I'd also deal with the fact that Second Life is a public place. Even if the fashion is revealing and those around you believe anything goes, it doesn't. Look like a whore and....

I'm not sure where I'd go next. I think talking about what to do when you're bored and lonely or worse on the nights when you're antisocial and have just logged in for some escape. I'd write a lot on when to cut a lot of slack and what to do when you see something offensive or feel it. One of the most painful experiences I had as a newbie was getting bopped on the head by a big bottle carried by another dancer on a crowded dance floor. The other painful experience was getting my head stuck in a different dance floor. Both of these were glitches and no one meant any harm. I felt really out of sorts from both of these incidents though.

One last word tonight and unrelated, I've been walking around the Japanese sims and seeing a lot of empty spaces or unrented buildings. The same recession that hit the United States also hit Japan, but Japanese are far more conservative in the Second Life spending. They are NOT taking a currency hit by the way. I checked this. They just reign in their spending in bad times instead of saying "it's cheap entertainmnent."

Thadea Lives II

Thadea got accepted to two boards on Yuku. That means she is headed toward a conventional social life if she wants it. Most conventional social lives on the net are patently unsatisfactory. That is why replacing Brainstorms was an insurmountable task in the short run. In the long run I really don't miss it the way I did two or three years ago. Busy, well lit, spots where people aren't afflicted with... use your imagination.... are just not all that common.

So far one board has a self-clensing kick out mechanism. I love these because they really work with no hard feelings. Thadea discovered one of these somewhere in 2005 or so. It was a board run by lovely cordial ladies in California. All they talked was California and Thadea who lives in Iowa felt locked out. When the board changed design to make it hard to navigate, Thadea who struggled to stay relevant, gave up struggling, drifted away, and was purged for inactivity. This new board has English roots. If you bore the folks who don't fit in, they leave painlessly. It's that simple.

Board number two is political and Thadea may or may not be a good fit. She is normal, but only to a point since her roots are in me. As I am learning in Second Life, most normals and I don't think the same way. I have an interest in building and find its geometry irresistable. A normal wants to dress up like a gangster, rock star, supermodel and loves shopping. The whole, visceral, moth to a flame thing that symmetry and circular or radial arrangements of prims are for me, is a foreign language to most folks. The same pointless email jokes or pass it ons leave me cold. On Facebook I have to bite my tongue not to point out to the person asking everyone to change their profile to a message in honor of NAME YOUR DISEASE awareness because I've known someone who died of that disease that health and disease are private issues unless you are dealing with a contagious scourge or insurance, and that the people I know generally want their illness, loss, and grief kept to themselves. Not everyone shares the concept of "disease awareness." I don't think my family was fully normal either. I make a piss poor normal and so too does Thadea.

I have a right to wonder if throwing Thadea into Yuku boards is worth the work or the risk should either of us become attached. I remember Haldis getting psychoed in the fall of 2003. Stuff like that does happen. PLAY PRETEND can be a very safe alternative.

Meanwhile, I created my own profile on Yuku, a first step to setting up a board for Thadea and family, or maybe just for Thadea and me, and I made the style sheet for the board. It resides on a flash drive. It's a preliminary style sheet, cream background, black borders, unadorned black text. The irony is that the board has no name. This is where it gets hard. Off hand Pretend PSP Playhouse would be a perfect name, except Thadea and I are GIMP users. I don't have any business naming something PSP when there is no PSP involved. GIMP Playhouse or Public GIMP Playhouse all sound pretty good, but Gimp-a-torium or Gimp-a-teria sound better. The world needs more GIMP graphics boards. GIMP has poor penetration.

Then again, if I am going to choose a fresh name for this board, why not really make it my choice. This is all going to take some thought. The board also really lacks a grpahic theme. It has a blank slate style sheet and nothing else.

More Fiction(?)

I wanted to fool around with Invisionfree.com boards but didn't want to deal with dying role plays (They always die) and board bosses. I also wasn't sure I wanted to skin my own board for fiction. I went hunting for a board and came up with The Burbs which I am going to rename something better at least for the village where the story takes place. I plopped down a character. I suddenly had a setting that was so vivid I could taste it and a plot.

The setting is a railroad suburb that is sort of magically enhanced. Actually, it is magically realistically enhanced. There are buses, trains, plenty of old fashioned architecture. There might be a river walk. There is good shopping, a private air field, an amusement park, a livery stable and riding school, peacocks and possibly elephants and ghost deer which are not supernatural. They just have white coats.

Into this lovely environment come the characters, orphanned characters from roll plays and stories all over the web but particularly at Neopets. They are kids without a past who would like a future. Some come from other places besides Neopets and Invisionfree.com role play boards too which makes for a better mix. They get a check each month directly deposited from the Department of Character Welfare which occupies a lovely, historical building in downtown. The citizens of this suburban town don't much care for the character kids but let them live in six or so houses.

The kids go to school and think of the future and try to build lives, but all is not well in the little magically enhanced burb. Remember those heavy handed enemies of intellectual freedom on a certain virtual pet world. Well, they're coming to shut down the town and the story. Now the character kids and their suburban neighbors must fight to preserve their town the way they like it because it's their home. I don't have time to write this story, but this story wants to write itself.

Kore is Blocked

Kore is blocked because I want to send her to the Caribbean but I'm not sure how to create the social experiment resort without making it ugly or too easy or too boring or I'm not sure what. I see images of the place in my head. It looks more like Asbury Park, New Jersey rather than the images I've seen advertised in the Wall Street Journal. I have a hard time writing about places that I can not picture and Korê in New York has always been a very visual story.

It is a story painted in a pallette of greys and blues and blacks. The Caribbean in my mind is gold and tan. This makes the story even harder to write. I need some quiet space and I need to try to get the story back on the rails again.

In addition, and you're not getting a spoiler, I have to drop a plot bomb while Korê is in the Caribbean. That is going to make writing even harder. I've known this was coming for a long time. It's time to test all my characters' courage.

Thadea Returns

This is not trouble. This is also one of the reasons I could not give an absolute "NO" to the people at Brainstorms that my then much more active family of avatarim would not spawn. They were starting to spawn Ithamar and Jacob and I just did not have the energy to handle five avatarim. Times have changed. I want Orelle off stage and inactive. I have room and....the world needs site fighters.

That is not a nonsequitur. Haldis needs to revise her team and upgrade its graphics, but her own site is several years out of date. Thadea's web site is also a mess, and best of all on March 17, 2010, Caltha Xantipe Myers-Bechstien, Thadea's oldest daughter turns thirteen, the age at which she may legally site fight. COPPA effectively knocked all the twelve and unders from competition. I'll spare you my COPPA rant.

I'm looking at four web sites, but my pride has been deeply pricked. Haldis recently accepted a new fighter on to her team. I think the recipes are copyrighted besides mostly not being very good and we both loathe those cheesey Toll graphics. What makes matters worse, this fighter is a staff member. She's taken a bunch of her pages and filled out the ranks. Well, if she can do it, Haldis has a family on which she can call!

Then Haldis has teammate. I can do it so much better. I should do it so much better. True, site fighting is dying, but it is not going down without a fight. I want the pages left in the wayback machine to be sublime or at least the ones I create. I owe it that much.

I've checked my access to Hopefulviper.us and my hands are healing from eczema, so I can draw again. I have a sketch diary and plenty of colored pencils. I am going to need a lot of images for this project.

It would be as easy as falling off a log if a lot of images were all I needed to bring Thadea more or less back to life, Haldis up to date, and give Caltha and the rest of her generation a running start. Caltha will present her own challenges. I have a pretty good idea what a thirteen year old is doing out on Web 1.0. Many of the options for kids her age pose serious intellectual freedom challenges and safety issues in terms of drama. The coding bench, sketch pad, and scanner are simply better alternatives suggested by well meaning and right thinking adults.

Haldis is the simplest job of all. She is working. She's been through a big bout of unemployment and she is switching careers and in graduate school. She is a bit too busy to administer site fighting, but none of the avatarot are going to engage in vote exchange. I'm not sure she's with her boyfriend. People at her age (She's twenty-four) outgrow their college and high school boyfriends.

Thadea is the biggest challenge. She left site fighting to help Haldis admin and then faded away. Her daughters grew. Her husband became more rooted in the university and community. Thadea's page grew out of date. Facebook must not have been her thing, though she could have pleaded being just too busy.

I know a bit more about what Thadea's life might be like at present than I would have known in Columbus. Weekly eating at families' Shabbos tables have given me a window into the lives of married people with children. It's not my life. It's a whole different world and Thadea has a whole different raft of concerns. We share politics and have similar undergraduate backgrounds and artistic tastes. We are members of the same religion, but Thadea never experimented with Christianity. We also both work full time which gives us some commonality, but there is still a whole world which society says Thadea is free to use to take precedence over everything else. This makes Thadea hard to write and her skin a bit of an alien place.

Second Thadea, like most people, has never reinvented herself. She also was not thrown off of Brainstorms in 2004 or QC-L in 1995. She never experimented with Christianity in college and high school before embracing her religious faith and feels no need to carry that faith like a knife in her teeth. Thadea is not a bala tshuva. This means that Thadea lacks many of the tools and weapons for which I can easily reach when things go badly.

I watched poor, normal, happy Thadea go helpless and unhappy today on Yuku. Thadea ended up on Yuku when she, Haldis, and I saw a fighter who used to be on Haldis' team with a resurrected version of her old MSN Group. I thought it might be fun to have Thadea join that group. This meant Thadea joined Yuku. This meant she got to skin a profile. The group apparently wants nothing to do with Thadea. She has a membership pending that will probably pend forever. It's a graphic group so it would be good for both the avatarot and me. In addition, Thadea tried to join three more groups. She now has three memberships pending. A fourth group told her point blank that she wasn't wanted because she had no posting experience in any group. Yuku's social control through group admission might make a great study.

I know what my own reaction to Thadea's Yuku problem would be. No, I would not badger my friends to join Yuku. None of my friends like "that social stuff on the net." It's a shame because Yuku looks like a refined and clean version of MySpace crossed with the best of Invisionfree.com. I could always PLAY PRETEND that I was on Angelika's board. I'd make a PLAY PRETEND version and post and post to my heart's content. I'd show off my graphics. I'd discuss graphics and by having that discussion, perhaps with the avatarot, I'd clarify my thoughts and improve my product.

I would get to know Thadea, Haldis, and to some extent Caltha again by writing through their voices and reading their posts. This is important since none of them have created anything major in over a year. Also, Caltha at thirteen is not Caltha at eight.

Also the discussion would be rather pleasant. Sometimes talking to made up friends is a lot better than talking to random people you barely know or to people you know who are too busy and just obliging you. That there are times when real life friends, or sincere, close virtual friends are the best, is well known, but those times are by no means a hundred percent.

Thadea won't build her own PLAY PRETEND Parents PSP Playhouse. She is horrified at the idea. She thinks it's crazy for all the conventional reasons. I can't convince her otherwise. She's not me. She's way too normal. Now, I can build a PLAY PRETEND Parents PSP Playhouse and invite Thadea to join it. We can also do the entire exercise offline with just Wordpad and a double screen, the login as close as we can get, and then the Wordpad screen if we want to go that route. I would rather have a pretend board. That means I have two other jobs skinning. That's where all of this gets fun.

I tell myself that the work is going to be good for all four of us in so many ways. It's time to get back into web creation and be an owner or maybe a multiple group of owners. I just wish Thadea shared my resourcefulness and resilence. I wonder what she has that I lack.

Second Life is Weird

Well it's true, but sometimes it takes a real "ahah moment" to drive it home. One of my friends bought a new shape and a new skin. She bought them for her avie, but a friend and a friend's avie can sometimes be one and the same. I don't have to tell you that in the real world we don't buy shapes or skins. There is plastic surgery and Spanks girdles, but that's not a shape or skin, it's reparative work.

Well my poor friend's shape featured breasts that looked like either watermellons or balloons. Now in real life would you care about your friend's breasts' shape? Well, in Second Life where one creates breasts using either the sliders that modify your shape or a store bought shape and sometimes prims which of course are store bought too. If breasts can be bought, they can be changed. If breasts can be bought or changed, they are objects. So too are eyebals, skin, bellies, and yes, penises. Men in Second Life do not have penises unless they are engaging in sex in which case they take a penis that they have bought or made and attach it to themselves. Usually the penis is store bought because the best ones include scripts.

Thinking of body parts as objects is just plain weird, yet Second Life residents do it quite frequently. They flock to Hair Fair, and stores sell skins and eyeballs. It's easy to think of all of this as normal if you are walking around Second Life. It's easy to forget the real world doesn't work like this.

Ironically, I don't feel any pressure to "look good" in Second Life. I can't picture myself or Iyoba in slut-wear. I do feel some pressure to be tall or feel that my avie is invisible. Outright height discrimination, however, makes me angry and determined to keep Iyoba short. Being thin and glamorous holds no allure fo me.

There are a number of reasons for this. I'm 5'3" in real life. I don't want to be a giantess. It took me a long time to get used to my height and shape. Let's just say I slew my body images issues and want them to say dead.

I entered Second Life with a healthy fear of harassment. There is such a thing as asking for it.

Third is something I call Screw Tape issues. Quite simply if everyone is beautiful as they would be in Screw Tape Hell, beauty means nothing because it is no longer remarkable.

There is also something more. About three months after Iyoba rezzed in Second Life, we found our way to a club where a dancer did her thing in the middle of a dance floor covered with mounds of soap suds. The dancer was tall, had wonderfully well oiled skin, and wore a lovely red costume that revealed more than it concealed. Her hair was flowing and red. In a land of beauties, she stood out as well made and gorgeous.

I examined her profile. Remember, folks, this is Second Life. It was dated 2006! I recoiled in horror. It was one thing to make oneself beautiful and be admired, but what happened next? Didn't being "hot" eventually get old? I mean we all graduated from middle school and after that we graduated from high school. Don't grownups want more and/or something else? I felt sorry for the beautiful avie in red. How much appetite for admiration do some people have?

That Second Life Questions

Actually I have two questions. The first one is the obvious one: "Who are all those people behind the masks?" Avies are after all sometimes only masks. Actually they are more than masks. Mark Meadows is right, but under the mask there is still a real person. The person dancing in the Club XxesS on Sunday afternoon is there in the office at eight or nine am Monday morning. Maybe there's a baby sleeping in the next room, and it's easier to go to a virtual club than to arrange for a sitter and go out with a husband.

Sometimes there's no way to get that mask off of the real person underneath. I'm still left wondering. Unlike talking about how to create realistically shaped breasts or the best color for eyes, it's another to ask: "Why, is this your mask? Why did you choose it?"

I've occasionally heard answers to this question: "Don't you want to be tall and slim?" as if everybody wanted that thing, or Antonus Jacobus' famous quote: "People want things to be better than they are in real life." Otherwise, "why" reamains a forbidden topic. Maybe it comes across as way too much of a challenge. "Why" after all comes with way too much disapproval at least when parents say it, even though I am not a parent, I'd be the one dumb enough to ask.

And this "why" leads to the second question: "Are some fantasies better than others?" Of course this is a judgemental question. Who am I to judge someone else' fantasy? I can judge the fantasy in the form of a mask when it is out in public, and clearly some masks are more original, more interesting, better made than others. Any Second Lifer who has cammed in to see the seams and collar work on an avie's clothes, knows what I mean, so we can judge fantasies.

Wanting to be slim, beautiful and twenty years old again may seem like a great fantasy until I get hold of it. Face it, it's fine for a month or so, or maybe a year, but how much admiration do you need, three years worth. Isn't it time to move on and learn something and invest something in yourself.

Also, no one can make the clock go backwards. It's fine to wish you were twenty. I was dumb as a box of rocks at twenty, but maybe some people weren't, but what does constantly playing twenty in a world that lets you be any age you want, say about your attitude toward your present age that is only going to get older? What does your attitude say about other women of a certain age? This is especially important because we live in a society where older women are devalued.

What about vampires? The vampire role comes with a nice dose of alienation like fries with a burger. Yes, vampires are sexy outlaws, but they are also outsiders. Does playing a vampire help build community in Second Life beyond one's clan or beyond other vampires?

Iyoba's fantasy is part nostalgia and also a yearning for power. The nostalgia comes with Iyoba's proper dresses. There are days when I imagine her boarding a Metro North train for a theater party in New York City. There are other days when she smells of the drawers under the bins of the underware department at Alexanders where they called bras bandeaux. I loved that word. I recognized it from my high school French. In some ways Iyoba is a creature of pre 1970 Westchester County.

In other ways, Iyoba reminds me of my former colleague-supervisor, Erma Banks. Iyoba is a mature, African American female. Like Erma she always dresses to impress in formal clothes and no slutware. Iyoba is small. Iyoba never carries weapons, but a night or two ago, a fellow librarian treated Iyoba like a supervisor even though she was not even wearing a group tag or on duty. One part of Iyoba's fantasy is being the boss. What, after all, could be sweeter?

Stage Door Johnnie II

Iyoba and I have yet to find Pighed Stonecutter, Yadni Monde, or the Dezier's from I Avatar. Shivar exists as does Yadni's Junkyard and land museum which is in the heart of the Old Continent which is a beautiful place. It is prime land and nearly roadside. I bet poor Yadni has to beat the land barons off with a stick.

Yadni's property includes a sandbox. I have it landmarked. I made four hair pieces there and lost one of them in a crash. Someone in the sandbox used absolutely the most disrespectful language I have heard in a long time. I did not notice because I was busy working, but then I saw it in chat log. I don't know if it was some programmed device or the person actually saying it. Actually, now that I think of it, the color of the text indicated the avie was saying that disgusting stuff.

I don't know what the attraction is. I was glad I was at home when I saw those words. Also there is a difference from a pile of expletives spouted in anger or in realistic prose or even a few in the bedroom, but this speech went way beyond that and it was not IM. Iyoba and I "heard" every stinking word of it.

Iyoba and I also met an avie with an attitude in Shivar. I won't publish her name. We are the same age. She complained about how she is harassed and caged all the time. It took fourteen months for Iyoba to get caged and at the time it was funny. It was funny because it was in the Berkman Sandbox which is run by Harvard University's Law School (sort of. The Berkman Institute is affilaited with Harvard Law.).

Normally, the Berkman sandobx is amongst the most lawful places in Second Life. There are deputies who police the place. Still the script kiddies showed up one day and caged poor Iyoba. We both had a good laugh. The cage was made of bronze and very Steam Punk. It was a classy cage. Iyoba was not caged long enough for the experience to grow old fast.

As for being harassed, I take the insults Iyoba receives very personally. I think she dislikes them, but we can go a whole week without hearing an insult. Yes, I'm thinking the ladies who get harassed are either looking for trouble or taking things personally. Alternatively, it could only take one creep to spoil a month's worth of experience.

I've been robbed and insulted, but never harassed. The closest I've been to really harassed occured over the break at a club on Hedonism Island. Iyoba suffered height discrimination there so for a while she was avoiding the place. Also the music was a peculiarly depressing Caucasian brand of oldies some of the time. It has improved, but after it improved, Iyoba dealt with the height discrimination. We've both been trying to give the place a second chance.

They played parodies of Christmas carols. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to religion, even when it is not my own religion, so I high tailed it out of there. Humorous carols have all the weight of lead ballons. Yes, there are folks who buy classic carols on CD. That's me.

I went back a third time and the DJ called out: "There's a short person out there." I heard it because I had the volume up and was not in the bathroom in real life. I thought: "Oh s*t! Iyoba's about to get proofed." I also wondered why the hostess wasn't handling this with some semblence of discretion.?

OK, I cold handle getting proofed in public. Iyoba shouted out: "I'm an adult! Please read my profile!" This is all anyone had to do in the first place. As a short avie, Iyoba carries the requisite statement of her adulthood and my own in her profile. This should end matters. In fact, they should never get started.

The DJ, however, was just opening up. He is not just the DJ by the way, he is the club owner. He called Iyoba "vertically challenged," and then he said she was a fashion disaster. Now Iyoba doesn't run around dressed like a slut. That is intentional. She had on a long sleeved knee length dress that I had just made. The dress was painted with a pattern of kunquats on it. I love fruit and vegetable designs. Think novelty prints. A lot of Second Life was still under snow, and Iyoba gets cold. When she gets cold, I get cold. I felt profoundly insulted.

Now, fool that we both are, Iyoba and I made one more visit back to this club. It was a regular party scene, no insults, and then I heard the music. Some hip hop with off color language is funny. Some is clever. This was neither. The "singer" kept repeating how he wanted to....I'm not going to sully the blog with it, but it was crude and then he hammered on the expletive a dozen times in a way that would have done any fourth grader proud.

Iyoba ran. I did not have to compel her to run and she did not complain as she sometimes does if I catch her dancing disrespectfully. She has decent dances in her inventory, so in that case it is simply a case of getting her disconnected from the dance ball. I wasn't shocked. I was disgusted. I thought adults got all of this out of their systems before they reached high school. Live and learn.

Yet, none of this is harassment. We didn't like the music. We met a rude DJ. Iyoba has only been caged once. The rude DJ by the way is what baffles me the most. This club does not have a huge number of customers. It is not because it is a bad club. It's not. It is simply that the competition is fierce. Shouldn't every customer, tall, short, dumpy, or gorgeous be valued?

Pighed/Meadows to the Rescue

Mark Meadows of course would have a great explanation of the whole "vertically challenged" incident at the club on Hedonism Island. He says that "avatar wars" take place at the edges of norms and help define community. Iyoba is squarely a human avie. Iyoba however is not a classically, Barbie style, beauty. She has a sweet face, but she is very short and needs to shed a few pounds though she's fine just as she is. She's also African American and wears no makeup, dresses conservatively. She fits in with the Brazen Shapes females; the old, balding man; the avie in the wheelchair etc... as an atypical human. She fits in but she doesn't. She is therefore a threat. Go figure on all of this given what I wrote above. Then again, I guess club owners have to decide what grade they want their virtual selves to be in.

Actually, why make war against one avie who is a customer. There are going to be different ways to interpret, for want of a better word, traditions. I remember exploring a Gorean sim. No, the rules have changed since 1997. Any one can explore most Gorean worlds or at least their shopping malls. Yes, they have such things. Does that tell you something? The rules usually say though that you have to wear an "out of character" badge. In this case, NOT dressing the part is helpful if you don't want to be in the role play.

I remember having to go back and get Iyoba an "out of character" badge and pin it on her and then she was free to wander. The gorean sim had a huge and elegant fortress with rooms with bear skin rugs and leather pillows and huge roaring fires in them. Iyoba sat herself down and then she turned on the music.

MoTown is not a popular genre in most of Second Life, but there in the fortress where everyone who was visiting had to wear a special badge, and where the ramparts were two meters tall with stockade fencing; for the Goreans meant business, MoTown blared away. Apparently, the Goreans liked to listen to Aretha Franklin, the Jackson Five, and the Supremes as they lolled about on bearskin rugs waiting for the next attack.

I suppose that somewhere more "authentic" Goreans might have resented the MoTown crowd, but why fight? Each side pays for its own sims and runs them. I know the Christians nitpick at eachother's dogma. I have a document from the now defunct Yesha jerks which states all the heresies they rejects most of which are variations on the theme of Christianity. Maybe avatar wars work that way.

Stinky Stinky

I got the inspiration for this when I handed a rafflesia flower to my boss in the Suspect Group and realized this had to be the name for my new freebie store on Utopia Portugal XVIII. When life is stinky, modest clothing, well made texture plants, and low prim housing can make it better! It really is that simple. Sometimes, I think I am a marketing genius. Most days, I am a legend in my own mind. I know it but being a legend in one's own mind is better than being a piece of garbage in one's own mind. It's time for the photos.

This is an aerial shot of Stinky Stinky. To the right you see a double mega prim on which there is a painted landscape of flamboyant trees. The landscape blocks out an "eyesore" which is a box with water in it. Someobdy could not afford to be near the sea so he created a bit of it. The long structure is a house of sorts. The round structure is the store.

This is a ground level view looking into the store. You can see the store is quite spacious and has three multivendors set up at angles of sixty degrees to form an equilateral right triangle. Each multi-vendor "sells" sixteen items, so I have forty-eight items. I put a landmark giver in my old store.

The new store is an airy, outdoor shopping experience, much nicer than most big barns or a typical mall stall. As I said I am a marketing genius or a legend in my own mind, but at least I am a legend.

Here is a side view of my property through the trees. This was flat green land on a "rat tail" parcel. Did I feel sorry for this land or up for a challenge. The "rat tail" is now an arbor. Good landscaping does a lot for land. This is a bit of my Active Worlds experience shining through.

I made Iyoba a bed during the week. It is a twin bed made with two sculpties for sides. This makes it decorative. It has a pose pillow on it so she can lie down. Twin beds are rare in Second Life, but for a house as skinny as the one at Stinky Stinky, they are a practical and handsome solution.

Stage Door Johnnie

That was me last night and will probably be me again in a few hours, or according to Pighed Stonecutter or Mark Stephen Meadows, it is Iyoba. I want to find Pighed Stonecutter or one of the higher ups on Shivar, their private island. I know I won't find Sparrowhawk Perhaps (aka Carmen) because she is dead. She killed herself by skipping her meds.

I'm not sure what I'm going to accomplish by meeting Mark Meadows. He probably has given up on Second Life and moved on to better things. I'd like to ask him about all the stuff he left out of his book. He had a way of finding Second Life's most disrespectful cultures and showing them off.

I'd like to argue that it is the person behind the avatar that counts. Too many avatarim like too many Neopets are throw away. People aren't throw away. They have the money. They have the reputations. They can get sued or sent to jail. They are the ones who decide what music plays, what content gets created (sorry for the passive voice), and wheher islands continue to exist, because in a week to week rental economy, car repairs and medical bills come first, and avatarim don't have those!

I'd like to tell Mark that an avatar is a mask that dares you to rip it off. I remember chasing down the folks who rented Yesha both before and after they threw me off their island for trespassing (Ever hear of security orbs or door locks? They really were a bunch of jerks. I am glad their island is no more either that or they took it utterly private, a very good idea.) I assumed that since islands in Second Life cost big bucks and they really weren't renting out much of theirs, that a very rich organization had to be sponsoring them, and if the organization was rich, well... it had to have a real world footprint and a page on the open web. Let's just say it existed in Second Life only. The Yesha couple were the first legends in our own minds that I met.

In my first weeks on Second Life, I also tried to chase down Indra Bekker. I also vowed to do her one better which now eighteen months or so on, I think I have. Indra Bekker was also a creature only of Second Life. Mark S. Meadows is both a real world authority and a Second Life legend. Hey, that intrigues me. How do I get his autograph? I'm half serious here.

But there is more. There is always more. I want to see how Pighed reacts to Iyboa. This is not Be Cruel to Your Avatara week. Pighed more than once talks about hot female avatarot. He has no problem with women walking around in slutware. In fact, he adores it, but Pighed Stonecutter is no boy toy. In other words, he does not return the favor. How do you say double standard? Iyoba dresses smartly but modestly. She is little, dumpy, and middle aged. She is an avie of color who often uses Koolade on her hair. I wonder what Pighed will make of her. I wonder what he would make of her building. I wonder if he would have any advice for her other than that she somehow change herself.

You know neither of us are ever going to find Pighed or Mark. They've both moved on. Being a legend in the real world is much more important than being a legend in your own mind. And I need to build my Second Life in a social way in the worst way.