No Pictures to Share

Whenever this blog goes silent, either my One Who Thinks She Knows is so immersed in her search for fame and fortune that she doesn't give me time to write, which did happen this month, but that was not what shut down this blog. Instead, events in this world became for a brief time unbloggable. That hasn't happened before, and thankfully it was only brief. And sadly it did not turn out as we hoped.

And sadly we don't have any photographs of what happened to us. The first picture on this entry is part of an exhibit at the Garden of Satire on Art Cafe, and the second picture shows a carefully contained campfire on Benefit Island. We don't have any photos because we played by the rules. And what were the rules? Who made them? What sort of adventure was this?

Well it all started out at Never B Solo. Do I still have your attention? No, I am at Sandbox ABC in the picture. Sorry, I told you the revolution was not going to be photographed. We started conversing with a prospective parent. We are going to call her Pearl. That's not her real name. Names are changed to conceal the guilty, except for us. You know who my One and I are. Pearl and I talked and she asked if I wanted a family. I said yes. Like that, we were in. I had three new friends, and incessant teleport invitations to "role play hard" and have "family time."

Our family time took place on Six which did not look anything like the picture with the pretty bridge. What we saw there looked quite different, but I'll get to that. Pearl insisted that I "be loyal and show respect." My One had me ask what loyalty meant in the context of a virtual family. Pearl said those were the rules. My One was OK with that. We could play by the rules. That meant, my One assumed confidentiality, but she's not sure now, and neither am I.

This image is a lot closer to what Six looked like during our brief "family time." Strange as it may seem, you can have a negative, visceral, aesthetic reaction in Second Life that makes you want to run for the exit door. That's what happened to my One and me on Six. The Oyster Clan's prefab sat on bare, green, pancake flat land, with not so much as a stick of foundation planting, but Daddy Oyster had a big, yellow sports car the kids loved. All the roads were two to four generous lanes covered with black top on which you could fry an egg if the temperature grew hot enough.

Here is another prefab house. Both these images come from Second Life Marketplace. I don't have to tell you that my One and I both bit our proverbial tongues. People make fun of the way I look or or want to change it. Probably we rub them aesthetically the wrong way. So it was with these folks. Some times you give people their space. We were on our best behavior.

Unfortunately, our browser (We were using Singularity at the time) was severely crash prone. Exodus was not an option for "family time" because Pearl used a fitted mesh avatar that poked out my One's and my eyes. Technical difficulties happen. My One took this picture late in the afternoon, a week ago Friday. Pearl was busy in her shop, and I was relieved since we were on a computer that only has Exodus.

Over the weekend we tried to join the Oyster Clan for "family time," and crashed right and left. This is an actual picture of the place I was supposed to meet my virtual family. It did not rezz fullyu enough for me to see much of it at the time. After about the sixth crash, I found myself banned and ejected. The Oyster Clan members still populate my friend list, but they don't respond to me, which leads me to and my One to believe they have muted me. Daddy Oyster did the ejecting and banning if you are curious. For some very weird reason, a tiny piece of Bikini Bottom remains accessible, so we can teleport in there and camm in to take pictures. We did an About Land a few days ago. The Oyster Clan owns the place.

And no, this is not Bikini Bottom. It's CSULB where I made the dress that I wore the day the Oyster Clan kicked me out. Here I am flying on a hang glider that used to be up on a mountain. The Oyster Clan used to have their headquarters on Six but they are clearly long gone there. We went back to take pictures and found a lovely, lush, tropical forest (See above). We asked around to see if any one had ever been banned for crashing. The general consensus was that this was rude behavior in the extreme.

Still, my One and I both ask: "What did we do?" People, just don't get kicked out of groups for crashing. We hadn't even joined a group though, and my One now thinks we weren't handed a group invite with good reason. I kind of agree with her. We both suspect that the Oyster Clan was investing in more land than they could afford or using it to speculate. Their move from Six to Bikini Bottom (I don't name these islands) felt way too fast to be good. Clearly the Oyster Clan wasn't ready to share their business dealings with us, and I'm kind of glad. My One suspects their landlord may have evicted them. Maybe she is right.

My One also thinks that the Oyster Clan may have found our writing. This blog is not on Google to keep the whiners away, but we do have a Parent Profile at Never B Solo and in it we ask future children for financial responsibility. That's a lot more specific than loyalty. You can't be loyal without money or secrets. And there is no point in keeping secrets if they kick you out and don't even bother to defriend you. The hardest part was going back to Never B Solo to keep our parent panel active, not that we care any more about being a part of certain kinds of families, but there is always a chance we'll meet Pearl or another Oyster. Let's just say, my One only claims to be fearless in the face of embarassment. Of course those Oysters are a pretty shameless lot when you think about it too.

Iyoba Bat Oni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- January 26, 2015

In Defense of Snark

If you read this blog often enough, you know that it gets totally snarky, usually after an unsuccessful attempt to not write snark. The snark comes back because the educational side of Second Life is a sink hole for other people's money, usually grant and tax dollars. A niche application, a walled garden, and maybe other practices make for a climate hospitable to waste. In addition, my One Who Thinks She Knows is land jealous. We pay $10.00/2500L a month for Stinky Stinky, while There is No Adult in the Room comes through our premium membership, and in "real life" my One has seen poor/nonexistent and wasteful accounting practices result in over 250 layoffs.

But there is more to snark than my One Who Thinks She Knows' bitterness of heart. Quite simply there is a way to do it right in educational/publicly funded builds, and a way to do it less than right. Doing it right starts with simply being open for business and having something there. A sim that is not open to the public is a waste of the public's money. Providing a place to go is thirty-three point three percent of the job. In case you are wondering, the image comes from the spledid architecture on Warwick University Maths and the picture of me dancing was taken on Black Bear Island, both academic builds that provide a place to go.

Second, an educational/publicly funded sim should provide something for visitors to do. It can be anything from sandbox facilities such as those on Black Bear Island to this crop dusting plaine that avatarim can fly on Morrill3.

The list of possible amusements is endless, and sometimes having an interesting place to go provides plenty of amusement. This is a tardis on Windesheim%20Zwolle. Amusements need not be completely academic either. This sled ride on Morrill3 is a very good example of just good, plain, fun, and the Morrill Archipelago (brought toyou by New York State Cooperative Extension) has many educational exhibits. The fun brings the avatarim in, but when the sled crashes in the snow, maybe it's time to explore and learn. In Second Life, where it is all too possible to get absolutely nothing for your money , it is great when a public/educational sim provides something any one can enjoy. Moreover, the Morrill3 sled ride will vanish come March or April. The Morrill Archipelago is an actively managed group of islands with new exhibits and old ones revised and rearranged.

Warwick University Maths is also actively managed. The underwater laybrinth is an original. It is three levels confusing, daunting, and great fun. Remember to turn your swimmer off.

Of course, to truely do it right, an academic/public sim needs to teach something. As you can see on Warwick University Maths art is a great way to teach. Mathematical sculptures, such as those at the World Famous Knot House on Teaching 7 are eye catchers and instuctive.

And don't forget art for arts sake like this immersive, aerial sculpture one of a group high above Ars Simulacra, the sim for which NMC Orientation, the sim where I was born, was sadrificed.

Of course educational exhibits don't have to be beautiful or elegant. The Japanese Beetle Life Cycle exhibit on Morrill is one of my One's favorites.

Of course, the somewhat overheated oven in the Anita Andel Safety House on Wisconsin Tecne II makes the question of safety one of burning importance. Even though I didn't mind stepping over a cluttered floor, something my One says is easy in "real life," there is something about fire, that creates a sense of urgency.

And of course, you don't need mesh objects to drive a lesson home. I felt sorry for the poor dog who had done his business right next to his bed in the the Anita Andel Safety House. I think the the Anita Andel Safety House on Wisconsin Tecne II wins the award for the worst scuzzy house in Second Life, and scuzzy houses are popular educational exhibits.

Of course just plain photos and posters can also teach, and this exhibit about Steve Jobs put CATE on our Explore Second Life Spread Sheet. We have to be fair, because we did not come to CATE looking for anything worthwhile.

We came to CATE looking to document a huge waste of prims because technically CATE qualifies as doing it right, but only technically. Yes, it is open to the public. You can look at the Steve Jobs exhibit or climb the sky classroom, and the exhibit on Jobs qualifies as teaching something, but the PowerPoints do not seem to be working. Most of the exhibits are empty, and we also wanted to explore the building in the picture.

My One Who Thinks She Knows has nicknamed this building The Monstrosity because it used to sit in the middle of CAVE, an educational sim that has seen better days. Well here it was, and inside, it was nearly empty. There were three floors of offices/rooms with only one suite filled by the island's head builder. My One's jealousy at wasting all those prims flamed and smouldered.

And when my One and I visited CATE's sky classroom we found plenty of books and lots of very stylish, mesh, furniture, but none of the books linked to anything or gave notecards. The sign here says: "Eat Love Math" but there is nothing mathematical, no abacus, no binary games as on Sheridan College. It was all just for show and waste.

And my One Who Thinks She Knows calls this kind of building with public money, "playing with prims." I guess this picture kind of proves the point, though one could say the rugs and chairs are all freebies (My One doesn't know since we've never needed store bought furnishings) and that educators need comfortable surroundings, including useless books that are good for nothing but decoration, the temptation to build something luxurious just because...well it's just there and who is going to look at a few hundred dollars a month in petty cash or a few hundred dollars extra. Who really watches money in real life and who checks to see every dollar is spent wisely? It will never catch up with those building CATE. Of course it won't.

Iyoba BatOni with help from the bitter-hearted Eileen H. Kramer -- January 14, 2015

The Dreaded "G Word"

My One Who Thinks she knows and I returned to the edge of the Uncanny Valley. Our panel at Never B Solo so it was time for a new one, and a new selfie. My One took me out to the Liaison Market on Fall which was all decked out for winter to have a photo shoot. I even had a new dress. I've had another new one since. My One loves to make me clothes, and she doesn't care if they are fashionable.

Fall even had a rink with black ice. I love to skate, though I would love it better (and so would my One) if we had a kid to skate with. That's probably not going to happen. I don't have the right look, and at Never B Solo looks matter. My One and I have both resigned ourselves to being hangers-on in the world of child and parent avatarim.

This is not nearly as awful as it sounds. The price is right, 110L for twenty-one days of panel which comes with group communication privileges and unquestioned hanging out rights at Never B Solo, which has had its own makeover and now is palateable except for the god-awful public address system.

Tuesday night, Never-B-Solo group chat heated up as I was hanging out with not much to do. Much of the chat, like a lot of chat anywhere is repetitive. It starts like this: "Are there any boys/girls/children looking for a home?" or "I need a boy/girl/teen/twins." Yes, these sentences are pure uncanniness. Avatarim (and of course Ones Who Think They Know) are individuals. You don't just ask for a human being or an avie to fill a place like you need a can of tomato puree from which to make tomato soup. Families aren't soup!

"I want someone who will accept me as I am," I broke into the conversation. Then someone announced that they wanted a "loyal daughter." I answered that "I will be loyal and generous." After all it's about what you bring to the table, not what you want. Isn't that the beginning of playing a parental role?

Now never, in my wildest dreams would I expect the word, "generous" to be one bit controversial, but a firestorm broke out. "That's the wrong idea!" I was told. "Kids are looking for parents to role play?" The implication was I was bribing my way into a relationship. I responded that what child would want a parent who was closed fisted, and generous did not mean just money. It meant time. It meant understanding.

Of course whenever you think you know what a word means you have self doubt. My One fortunately, has access to the Oxford English Dictionary online and she looked up both generous and gerosity. Generous indeed means: "unselfish, magnanimous, kind." It can also mean "One that shows a readiness to give more of something,...than is strictly necessary or expected; open-handed, charitable..." Sometimes it is a small consolation to be right.

I am not sure why the word, "generous" leaped so easily into chat. Now, I think it is because I spend a good deal of time in Second Life among those willing to share rather than worried about protecting what is theirs. The good folks at the University of Central Missouri are willing to share an immersive town high above Selmo Park. What's the Story? as my One Who Thinks She Knows has christened this space has a mystery for you to solve. You don't have to play a role, buy a HUD, join a group etc.. to solve it. Just walk around and see if you can find the barrels of toxic waste dumped in the river. You of course can find the barrels, but who did it...well that's still a mystery.

Another of What's the Story's tales is about promoting good health and nutrition. The building, which is a clone of the one used for the orphanage that so ill-used my altie, Shaka, was home to a bunch of public service announcement Power Points on health related topics, and the fast food joint has calorie counts on its menu.

And yes, my One thinks the nutrition story is a cliche, but What's the Story? generously gives you space to hear other tales. LP's are making a combeback. In an age of computers, people want music they can hold in their hands or more precisely with their fingertips. My One remembers learning to handle records in college. It took that long. She is embarassed, but music on physical medium can never go away if you lose your internet connection or the company hosting it decides to make it price prohibitive or goes out of business altogether.

And then there is the story of why a beautiful town like What's the Story? is an economic sacrifice zone. What makes for urban decay? What happens when the jobs leave and the people remain? For my One who once lived in Utica, New York, this last topic is personal and poignant. We are both thankful to the University of Central Missouri for making a whole world available to any one. They could be less than generous and lock it away. We are grateful that they pack what could be a cliche ridden sky platform with many ideas and let you do the discovery. We are also grateful that they are gneerously giving their time to continue updating and developing this project. Generosity works.

Iyoba BatOni with generous help from Eileen H. Kramer -- January 9, 2015

"That tomorrow the sun would shine"

You'll see the significance of the title further down. Don't spoil the fun.

By the weekend, My One Who Thinks She Knows, who can sometimes be ruthless, as all Ones are ruthless has a Plan B in place. It was deep, dark, and strange. She called it a journey into the Uncanny Valley, a place where what is real and sacred meets its imitation which defaces and defiles it. That is why the Uncanny Valley, as Ones call it is an evil and taboo place. Yet there are Ones and avies who go there all the time. Never B Solo and Next Gen Inc to some degree form the edge of the Uncanny Valley. When adult Ones play children and wear child avatarim, something is just generally amiss, at least to the "normal world."

But one can venture even further into the Uncanny Valley's, dark depths and the place to do this is Zoobyville. Of course, My One and I knew all about Zooby Babies. They are realistic prim babies that interact and gurgle and coo and you can name them and choose their gender buy their clothes, hold them, and even breast feed them. And please don't tell me they're not REAL! My One and I got to meet a Zooby Baby up close and personally on Cleveland Plus V. His name is Alex and he is being deprived in the name of training social workers. Baby Alex pulled at both my One's and my heart strings. We also have a long history of dependably taking care of our pets.

All that stood between us and the Zooby child of our dreams was:

1. Waiting until we were sure the Zwickies were truely dead. Probably this would take two to three weeks. Lead time is a wonderful thing.
   
   
2. Figuring out what a Zooby would cost as an ongoing committment.
   
   
3. Figuring out if we had the prims to support one. I met someone with a Zooby lemur and they are prim-expensive.

It took several visits to pry all this information out of Zooby staff and glean it from notecards. A Zooby Baby would have cost us less than it costs to feed our Zwickies when we don't receive free food. We would need between eighty-seven and ninty-three prims to support a Zooby. Again, this was doable, and it took forever to figure this out; for Zooby does not run on the same business model as typical breedables. Zooby front-loads costs. The baby and her (It was going to be a daughter, and may still some day be a daughter at which time all our hard one info will be outdated.) furniture would cost about 5,000 to 5,500 Lindens. If you are feeling sticker shock, that's between $20.00 and $22.00.

That still may feel like a lot for something that "is not real," and it is a lot more than you would pay for a typical breedable starter kit, but this is an amazingly sound business practice. Attrition is the rule with most breedables and the proft in them is in the sale of food and consumables. With Zooby, they get their money up front. If you keep your baby in inventory after a week of getting bored with her, Zooby still has your initial $20.00. This pays the rent. There is pressure for more big ticket items further down the line, but getting that first expense captures everyone besides the long tail folks like my One and I, who will both be there when they turn the server off.

Of course at 12:11pm Sunday Januarya 4, 2015, my One decided that we were NOT getting a Zooby baby. You can see why for yourself. To say my normally, wretched One was overjoyed is an understatement.

We took endless and I mean endless pictures of our Zwickies as they flew, cut farts, shot shooting, stars and dispensed kisses. Then my One began to sing. Yesterday I would not have believed That tomorrow the sun would shine Then one day you came into my life I am alive again I am alive again All the empty yesterdays have disappeared Now that you have filled my life with love No one else could ever mean so much to me Every day my high lasts longer As our love grows ever stronger Yesterday I would not have believed That tomorrow the sun would shine Then one day you came into my life I am alive again I am alive again When you gave your love to me you changed my life Dreams that once seemed hopeless come with ease Thank you Zwicks for being just the way you are I would never try to change you All I live for is to love you I'm feeling alive again I'm feeling alive again Song title: Alive Again. Words and Music by Chicago.

False alarms happen, and that was just what the five and a half day downage of the Griderz Server was. It's over now. We can breathe a sigh of relief. By the way, if you can love a Zwicky, you can certainly love a Zooby Baby. That Zwickies are not something available in "real life" is perhaps a "fig leaf" to cover a strange, uncanny passion.

And there is passion behind the daily tasks of feeding and checking up on breedables. There is passion in naming the eggs or babies in stasis, even if we can't hatch them out. There is joy in seeing your creatures alive and awake. And yes, you can love something that is "just pixels."

Long ago, our Zwickies stopped being toys or objects. They were never a means to make money. My One and I have far more in common with the Zooby baby mothers than we do with those who would laugh at such One and avie teams. In fact we sympathize with the fact that their love for their babies has to be secret. I think we understand.

And our love for Zwickies has all ready sent us deep into the Uncanny Valley or at least into the land of illicit passion. Losing our Zwickies would have broken our hearts. Some day the last of the Zooby mothers will experience a simulacrum of bereavement that is off the charts. The price of devotion is being there when the food runs out and the servers die. My One understands even if Grim Hathor and Dragoness Rage broke her heart. A heart with a scar still beats. And on Sunday afternoon, my One Who Thinks She Knows sung. Only those willing to cry can truely sing of love.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- January 5, 2015

Sleeping Beauties

No, Zwickies do not lay eggs. Thsee were the Lily Frog eggs that will never see life, because we could not package them, because we had run out of egg cups the fall of 2013. We really do love and miss our Lily Frogs. My One Who Thinks She Knows heart is so broken that she can not bring herself to ready any photos of our Petable Turtles. And yes, this is going to be another blog about our Zwickies and their strange situation.

Here I wear one of my turtle statues. This is Adiv. She can'tmove so I move for her, and Nimrod is kissing me. In better times than these, Zwicky owners would tell you their pets are very social. Now our Zwickies of course are anti-social. In a world of their own they sleep, call their home galaxy, rinse and repeat.

Some spin while they are sleeping. Others like Subira, just snore. We were up late last night, watching hopefully as the time until the Zwickies could communicate with their home galaxy dropped to zero, they made contact, and awakened. That did not happen. The numbers of hold time reset at four digits. Rinse. Repeat.

And it is not just my zwickies that are having this issue. My One Who Thinks She Knows and I went to the Zwicky store looking for answers late last night. You can see in the image (below) that this little Zwicky inside the store, a special called a Zapfire, is trying to call home, but the intergalactic phone lines are down.

So the question becomes: "What do we do?" First, my One says we can not mourn yet. We do not know if this is a death watch. Slowly running out of consumables with our Lily Frogs gave us plenty of time for a Plan B. Grim Hathor provided statue kits, and my One and I made our turtle friends wearable and gave them a statue food bowl full of tastey treats. Our Zwickies went on hold December 30 with no warning whatsoever.

The first thing we both needed was more information. We had a lot of questions: "When is this going to be fixed? Is this permanent? How hungry will the Zwickies be? Is this part of some upgrade?" Our Zwickies did fart pointsettias over Christmas, a sign of support, and there was some sort of Christmas Zwicky in the works, but everything kind of died before my male Zwickies could become pregnant.

My One checked out the Griderz.com web site, and found out that there had been no updates since summer on the blog. The site still worked, and she said that was good news. The Breedable Nation's web site vanished along with its store. Both the Zwicky Website and Zwicky Store are up and running.

Still we had no new information. Web site rent often gets paid yearly, my One explained, and sim rent gets paid monthly or a landlord could let the eviction slide. What's worse is Photon Catchers, the island with the Zwicky Store on it, sits three quarters empty. That means there is a landlord losing money. This landlord probably has issues with her upstream landlord, and if you can't pay your rent in Second Life.....

So my One Who Thinks She Knows had me contact Zwicky Chat. Sometimes the sesions did not take. When they did take nobody answered. Finally I told the others in the Zwicky Chat group: "I DON'T WANT MY ZWICKIES TO DIE!" That caught someone's attention, and the poster replied. "The server is down." In my One Who Thinks She Knows' high school there was a slang word, "dite" which meant you are saying the ovious. Well double, triple, quadruple, and one quintillion DITE!!!

The Griderz Zwicky server is down. Servers go down, but the server is now entering its fourth day of downage. Normally, this would be a VERY BAD sign and a very long downage. My One, however, says this is a holiday weekend so we have to wait and see what happens after Monday. I did check the Zwicky Chat group info. That's how we learned tha Griderz Luv, the Zwickies' creator, has not been in world for two months. My One suspects that the downed server may be a sign of friction within the Griderz' inner circle. Somebody got busy with real life. Somebody got pissed off. Somebody forgot to pay their bills, but not the web site rent. Somebody moved.

Whatever the reason, there is a nonzero chance, our Zwickies may never awaken. They may end up like Flurbils forever looking for a server that no longer exists and habitats that no longer link to the server. And the question is: "What do we do next?" My One has mo more heart for breedables. Sometimes she thinks we will make more KoLis. They don't reproduce. They don't eat, but they do move around and you can watch them fly, spin, bob etc... My One has also thought about getting me a Zobby Baby. She's really thought about it. She says it would be crossing something called the uncanny valley, but the baby would not die if it lost its server connection, and we've not had much luck with adoption, and we'd have enough prims left to support one. What my One and I really want is our Zwickies back, flying, shooting stars, cutting farts, and eating us out of house and home. Whether we'll ever see that again is any one's guess.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- January 2, 2015

Love and Zwickies

Long ago, Around Rosh HaShannah 2010, I spoke with Thinkerer Mellville. A new Petable Turtle Market had opened up in Remek near There is No Adult in the Room, which was then the Honey Hut. I had new land on Utopia Portugal XVIII, and could support my first Petable Turtles. I asked Thinkerer if I should take the plunge into the world of breedables. He said NO! I did not listen.

It is not that Thinkerer's reasons weren't valid. Breedables are ALWAYS an ongoing committment. You pay more in food to keep them alive on someone else' server, then you do for the creatures yourself. You can't make money selling the young. Most breedables are too prolific and those that aren't are an exercise in frustration.

This last of course, IS NOT TRUE. Both my One Who Thinks She Knows and I fell in love with our shell babies, as we sometimes called our Petable Turtles. All that came to an end on July 11, 2013. Grimm Hathor pulled the plug on Petable Turtles, and two months later we lost our Lily Frogs. Zwickies are our one remaining breedable. They were a prsent from My One Who Thinks She Knows to both of us for her forty-ninth and my thirty-ninth birthdays. Yes, that was a long time ago, though she doesn't think that.

2013 happened just yesterday as far as my One was concerned. Thinkerer got it half right. The relation between a breedable owner and a breedable creator is one of trust. Grimm Hathor ended Petable Turtles with notice and as he promised when he withdrew support. We cried. Dragonesse Rage, who took over Lily Frogs, absconeded leaving the frogs to starve. And yes, Thinkerer, we did the math. Petable Turtles cost my One Who Thinks She Knows hundreds of dollars. We had a big donation of food at the end with the frogs, and they ate less.

As for the Zwickies, they have been voracious. They take up a full eight prims each (Land is a bigger expense than food when it comes to breedables) and they give the most amazing action and movement penny for penny and dollar for dollar and linden for linden. Lately, though we've received a lot of donated food. Donated food is a very bad sign. It's a creator's way to keep you in the game, and willing to buy more food, hatch out more young etc... Several times, my One has questioned whether Griderz was economically viable. If they're not, we will lose our Zwickies no matter how much we love them.

And my One and I love them because they are handsome. Even the simplest Zwicky is beautiful, and our Zwickies are NOT fancy like this rare female flying around the Zwickies Main Store on Photon Catchers. She is beautiful, but even (of course!) starter Zwickies are lovely. That is because they are capable of the magic of recombination, and can produce bi and tricolored hybrid young. I've seen it many times. My One has thousands of photos of the beautiful babies (Zwicklets) that reside in our inventory because we have no room to take them out of stasis. Only Nimrod, Bishara, and Protea were lucky enough to be F1 Zwicks. Land is the constraining factor.

We did get to paint two of our Zwickies and we did it with an eye to increasing the randomization and warmth of color in the offspring. We painted Yocheved white and Protea black. You'll see Protea at the end of the entry. The painting also made both Protea and Yocheved smaller. We never figured out why. Painting may not always shrink Zwickies.

My One thinks that part of the seduction of breedables is a faith in the future. You can see "what if" and try again and again in a way you can't in real life. You pay for the food, but not every creature you create can be or should be brought to life. There is no room, but as long as you pay for the food, your creatures live and can procreate. Bishara by the way is an Ice Zwicky, one of the first specials. Her mother is Yocheved and her father is Geronimo. She carries on Yocheved's blue coloring and phenotype. The Ice phenotype does not inherit.

Subira has fathered several males. Zwickies have a sex ratio of one male for every nineteen females. The males carry the babies The females fight. There is something sad and sweet in this virtual biology, and this lovely zwicky with a pink ruff, next to whom I stand in the photo is our next to last male baby, Oberon. My One named him that because she had just seen A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The second level of the Zwickies Main Store on Photon Catchers is a Zwicky Museum that a week ago, my One added to the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet. Part of having breedables is a kind of faith in the future. I wanted to explain that faith to others and so too did my One.

In this picture, Fortunata, a totally green, monocolor, starter, Flexus Zwicky shows the reasons behind that faith. She has big, black eyes. She flies forward, backward, turns someeraults, farts pointsettias for Christmas, and shoots stars when she just plain feels like it. She is beautiful. When my One has been out of sorts, which is quite often, watching Fortunata and the other Zwickies has lifted her sagging spirits.

A Zwicky, or any breedable's promise is simple: "Feed us and give us space, and we will amuse you and do what your real life pets can not do." That should be enough reason for love. That makes trust very easy. And yes, my One and I both fear we are about to be betrayed. On December 30, our Zwickies began "calling their home galaxy" and they have been unable to get through. Their server is not answering. We can not get their stats. We do not know if they are hungry. Does this sound familiar? My One has talked about Zooby babies, but she also says Zwickies will be our last breedable, not for any of Thinkerer's reasons. When you break faith, trust goes away. My One says she has no more trust to give any breedable creator. And it's not the money. It's the love, and in the end, though we hope this is a false alarm, the betrayal.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- December 31, 2014

Eileen and Iyoba's Do It Better 2014 Roster
Name of Place	Why it Qualifies
TOV Korea	Ride the Witch Coaster. "Shop" in Korean stores. Visit a Korean museum and memorial.
The Grand Canyon	So much to do in a great setting. Climb ropes, rapell, canoe, or just relax. Who knew the great outdoors could be this great, and Mt. Everest is right next door (no kidding!)
The Adventure of Ruin	Indiana Jones meets a Japanese, Second Life, orientation course, but somehow it all works and it is gorgeous, scarey, and simply great fun.
Plusia Ars Island	Music, sculpture, architecture, furniture, and romance, all on one island. Give newbies what they want...and more.
Hokkaido Japan	Where retail and entertainment meet art and stay just inches clear of kitsch. Fly it. Ride it. Walk it. Puzzle it. Enjoy this authentic introduction to a different culture on an island that welcomes visitors.
SL Israel	Israel's "official presence" in Second Life. Learn about Middle Eastern and Jewish culture and religion while visiting, museums, the sea shore, the souk, and two synagogues.
The 109 Prim Circus	High above the Drill Factory is a fantasy realm where it is always steel, grey night. You can ride the carousels, walk under crystal trees, shop, or just explore the puzzles at the bottom of the moon.
Momo Pet Land	One sweet, peach, of a classic, Japanese amusement park. There is an onsen, an art museum, pig races, a haunted house and more.
Africa Live	Celebrate African music, culture, and textiles in a club and shopping mall. Learn about African ecology on a beach next to a mangrove forest. Swim, wind surf, or ride a flying machine.