The Long Awaited Pissy Post

OK, maybe you were not waiting for it. I know this was tougher to write than I expected. I spent much of this evening at Club An Sky in Eternal Life dancing to Christmas carrols. I did not get enough of those, and besides, the club brought back memories. I spent a lot of my first year or two in Second Life on the Eternal Creation archipleago. I was looking for a more conservative crowd, and Second Life's Jewish population and Judaica is the topic for another post. Problems I might be able to solve don't qualify as pissy. Problems that I partially solve by whatever means aren't pissy either, and this is the pissy post!

Since I am not Christian, I did not have to debate any one's theology. They did not proselytize me, and I often won at Bible trivia. Their tract walls and exhibits even made the Explore SL Spreadsheet They're not there any more. If you can't pay the rent, you're gone. The entire six island Eternal Creation archipleago vanished two years ago when the manager could not raise the rent money. The same thing happened to the Christian museums and libraries. That Club An-Sky survives and looks very much like the club on the old Eternal Creations is a testament to the fact that you can solve some problems.

It's the problems I can't solve that leave me pissy! Click on the thumbnail below.

I know this image does not look like much, unless you like cabins, but it is the well appointed and still quite pretty, sterile core on UAA Seawolves. They have gotten more than their share of links, albeit quite undeservedly. They don't deserve the links because visitors like me, can no longer veture beyond the central quad, due to banlines. The banlines are due to an ugly bunch of squatters, who griefed Iyoba with a BaaBaa Ball when she broke in on their drama club rehearsal. I informed on the squatters. J'accuse big time. I'm contemplating revenge. There's a lovely deep creek down the center of this quad. Iyoba needs a new drysuit. She all ready has a burkini. How do you say repurposing with subtlety and flare? Maybe then I won't be pissy any more, but don't count on it. There's too much good stuff gone.

And here is another site of great loss. This was once Stinky Stinky at Imperia Corps I. The original Stinky Stinky was on Utopia Portugal XVIII, which is now long gone, as is the entire Utopia Portugal Archipleago except for two educational islands that have nothing to offer. I still remember the day Imperia Corps I vanished. It did not vanish! Katya Dirval's (whose name lives in infamy on this blog!) property manager, returned all tenants' things in great balls. Walter, our direct landlord, for whom I worked at the time was no where to be found and hadn't paid his rent, so his remaining tenants suffered. It hurt. I went back to the island and photographed it. These days it is called Artina Here is Iyoba sitting on our old land. It's been fused with another parcel, and as you can see from the thumbnails below (CLICK THEM!), the 4096 is for not only for sale, it also no longer belongs to Katya Dirval or at least is one step removed from her.

So do I buy this land. I can't really buy it. I'd rent it. It would cost $24.00 per month. I currently pay $10.00 per month for my 2048 and would pay $20.00 a month from my present landlord. I may be pissy, but I hate getting ripped off, not that this land doesn't have sentimental value in a big way. Can you ever go home again?

Of course no tour of personal pissieness is complete without visiting Katya Dirval's headquarters (no link given for obvious reasons). Back when I worked for my favorite landlord, Walter, I used to love to go to his office and sit in his chair or sleep on his couch. Iyoba very carefully checked for a tack or used bubblegum on the boss' chair before she sat in the boss chair at Katya Dirval's big desk.

I guess the chair was OK, but I wouldn't trust that coffee. Something about it did not smell right. Iyoba was an intelligent avie and did not drink it. I won't say what I think is in the coffee. I'll leave that to your imaginations. And yes, it was more than a year ago that Katya seized Walter's lands for nonpayment, and as "Secretary" head dunner and chief cook and bottle washer, I had the joy of running interference with all the tenants. Some things you just never forget or forgive. Sorry Katya, I would not drink your coffee and I'll tell my bloggers not to either.

And then it was on to the Jordan. The place was all decked out in winter, though the bench had no room to sit, and the poor reindeer had to hold a street light up with his antlers. Reindeer are wild animals! Well, it was prettier than most winter sims, and the bare spots in the snow reminded moe of Ithaca, New York, and to tell the truth, people on this sim have been nothing but kind to Iyoba and me. I've even done business with them on a handshake.

The problem was that the business was an epic fail, and it wasn't because I had a product nobody wanted. I probably did, but you can't hit any balls if you don't get any at bats, and this was problem number one. The mall where I rented a kiosk for market rent, never had any visitors and was half built for most of the time I was there. I don't think the mall exists any more. I'm glad whoever owns this island put the failed mall out of its misery. The map indicates a new mall on the other end of the island. I might just check it out, but turtles don't like cold, and I don't know if I'm going to go back into the business of selling them again. I did enjoy setting up the info store, good and expensive learning experience. And yes, please do click the thumbnail below.

And some things about Jordan never change, including group Xyngo. This is sociable, multiplayer Xyngo. The problem is the hosue always wins. The other problem is they play it in Arabic. If I am going to lose money, I'll do so by renting stalls in no-traffic malls. I'll give them up when I get disgusted. Then of course, I'll remain pissy. Don't forget to stay pissy! Until it's a perfect world or pair of worlds, pissy is the way to be.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- the pissy duo -- December 30, 2012

Ser En Dip Ity

I was all set to write a very pissy blog entry, and I'll still write it, but not tonight. I all ready had some of the pictures, and went out to get more. Bushwhacking is a sure way to find disappointment. There are empty sims, underused sims, ban lines, security orbs, dead links... I could mix business and pleasure but...

Sometimes, the pleasure descends in torrents. That is what happened when Iyoba landed on Art Cafe. Next to the Orientation Center was a lovey, lag free, two story gallery, full of original work. There were some note card givers and a few posters, but the work was good enough to stand on its own!

There are several other art galleries in the island including in the sky. Like many academic sims, Art Cafe hides in plain site. The sponsoring university (the one that pays the rent is) Northern Illinois University that I visited with a friend in 1996. We went into the library. The friend had an art history course, and I showed him how to search Art Index (They had WilsonWeb!) and talked to the librarian. It was kind of a busperson's holiday.

Here is an image from a parody gallery. I grew up with a poster of American Gothic in my basement. It was a bit of my Silent Generation parents pretending to join the Boomers. Why Silents did this I never figured out and still don't know. They have their own culture, which includes some very weird pop music. Music is one place Boomers and Silents have a real generation gap. I always liked the farmer and his wife in the American Gothic poster. I still do, so parodies of this work always make me faintly sick, except this one. Maybe it's because the farmer and his wife are Tevya and Golda from Fiddler on the Roof. Now all this picture needs is the music.

More than four galleries and exhibitions on Art Cafe made the Explore SL Spread Sheet, and then it was on to Kamimo Island because it looked like it had a full sandbox. Kamimo Island indeed has a wonderful sandbox, and no it did not make the spread sheet, but sometimes very good academic builds don't make the sheet. They just lack the public exhibitions, libraries, or museums that earn a place on the spread sheet. Please click the image below. It is a thumb nail.

First, there is the ecologically harmonious, northern, temperate landscape. I will admit I have a soft spot for birches. The climate on Kamimo Island is such that my avie did not feel out of place in long sleeves, a long skirt, and thigh highs, but there is also no snow. Your avie can enjoy cool weather without freezing.

Then there are the pole barn lecture halls, break out spaces, and classrooms. The spaces are both outdoor and indoor. They are low lag, and just plain gorgeous.

Then there is the beach. It is a temperate beach. Maybe because I grew up in a temperate climate, I am very partial to temperate beaches, even if they are just grass and a swimming peer with ladders. I think they are often the most beautiful beaches in Second Life. And the beach at Kamimo Island had a very important ingredient: water. Iyoba was at a skinny dipping beach on an adult island and found lots of sand, but no where to swim. Here there was a good twenty meters of water, a long coastline and even entrance to rivers. This is a picture of Iyoba underwater where there are orcas, a shipwreack, and even a stoney bottom.

And no trip to Kamimo Island is complete without a stop at the sandbox, and of course Iyoba had a dress pattern at the ready. I've always wanted to make a cormorant dress, and yes, Iyoba now has two lime green, winter dresses, but celadon, lime green, teal, and orange are the new black. You'd better believe it. I remember seeing my first cormorants on a lake in Maine when I was six, and later learning that they were different because they were diving birds and birds of prey, unlike ducks.

And here Iyoba dances in the short version of her newest dress. And perhaps all is well with both Art Cafe and Kamimo Island, but there is a reason for pissy blogs, and pissy commentary. Art Cafe belongs to Northern Illinois University while Kamimo Island belongs to Central Missouri University and Mould University in Norway. That means that two universities pay for one sim, but I still wonder how many classes take advantage of the four or five class areas. None of the PowerPoint presenters showed anything left from an actual class. Likewise, Art Cafe featured many exhibits from two or three years ago. They are still up because no one has had to take them down to make way for new classes.

All of this is important, because the United States faces a fiscal cliff. This means cutbacks in government programs including, student financial aid, and direct aid to research and higher education. Some of the grant wells are going to run dry. That all this will happen a few months from now is cold comfort deep in the dead of winter. Colleges and universities rent their sims one year at a time, and if a sim doesn't pull its weight, an institution can and should pull the plug. So it goes. The real pissy stuff comes tomorrow.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- December 27, 2012

Escaping from Christmas

This is the first time you've seen the word "Christmas" on this blog in ages. I may have used it once before in passing, but there have been no "holiday hunts," no pictures of avatarim in tacky Santa hats which are bad enough in real life, no suggestions for holiday locales. There are two good reasons for all of this. First, I've stopped celebrating Christmas for religious reasons in real life. I'm a "bala tsuva," and take me faith seriously. I miss having a tree. I miss the big Christmas dinner. So what.

Second, I was alone this year for Christmas. This happens to me a lot, but I don't need salt rubbed in this particular wound, so my job the last few weeks has been to flee like hell from the so-called holiday. And...I want to share my secrets after the fact. First, there is always the sandbox. Make a new dress, that one you've been saving the extra special pattern for. Make it a bit experimental. See that huge peplum in the illustration above, and click the illustration to see it full size.

This is the short version of the dress. It uses a personal (no transfer) version of one of Es0 Torok's sculpty skirts. This one is not fully symmetrical. This is a ballon skirt. It takes nerve to wear. The background in the pattern is made from an image of split bamboo, and the blue sequins are pollia. Sometimes inspiration just strikes. Actually, it struck back in November. I tend to save dress textures for a long time.

And the long dress uses the Es0 Torok demo, sculptie skirt for a huge balloon peplum. It has only four panels and there is a fringe on the bottom. I can't get enough of pollia berries, and Iyoba could not get enough of the jumpy-jump gesture. It's amazing all those free gestures one never uses. Call them a Christmas gift.

Of course one can't stay in the LEA Art Sandbox (Remember membership is free!) forever. Soon it is time to go out and discover new libraries. When a patron at Info Island asked me for the library of congress. I went looking and found something called the Library of Birmingham. I'd never seen it before. I thought it might be some sort of a joke, but hey, why not give it a try...

Well there is an educational site there, and I even put it on the Explore SL Spreadsheet, but it's not really a library. It's a mockup of a public library that is going to open in England in 2013, which is only a week or so away. That makes it an exhibit of architecture.

This is the reference area, though the sign over the desk says "Reader Services." This is NOT a real library. The book shelves are just for decoration, though the photos used for them vary and are very realistic. The HUD that may have explained more about all of this only added to tremendous lag and did not seem to work. I removed it, but even with the HUD, nothing in the building was a functioning database link, a web link, a note card giver... the usual accoutrements for a Second Life library.

And here is the music area. There is something very old fashioned about this and it's not the golden yellow carpeting which works fine on the screen, but a screen is not real life. In real life, however, it might come with a pleasing texture. Just look at all those CD's and DVD's and yes, I think there are VHS recordings as well. Hmmm.... Where are the MP3's and streaming media for patrons to download? Where is the studio equipment enabling patrons to record and the other equipment enabling them to transfer old audio media to newer media, and keep old sounds alive?

And last but not least, Iyoba found this lovely red stool near the library door. It is probably mesh. It is beautifully made. She wanted to sit on it, but alas there was no where to sit. It was just for decoration.

The The Wounded Warrior Veteran's Center held a surprise of quite another kind. You can see the picture of it above. It looks like the kind of monumental military buildings you sometimes find on the Army One Source islands and Vader, only the military's architect builds in a more open and airy style. This huge structure was Stalinist Modern with a modern edition. Still, big can be impressive.

If you forget the purpose of this building, just look at what is parked in the parking lot. These HUMV's (not Hummers!) are retired but dont' mess with them! No, I don't think you can ride around in them. Most vehicles in Second Life are just for show or locked. Needless to say, Iyoba didn't try to start one.

And to make the building appear even bigger, there is this wonderful tower that brings in the PowerPoints and other information. Maybe there are other radio or radar signals it picks up in those white cups. This tower, by the way is over a hundred meters tall! It's a big one!

And yes, there is information here too. Above each little counseling table hangs a poster, and each poster leads to a web site that deals with veteran's affairs, veteran's advocacy, information about veterans' illnesses etc... Some of the groups may be political, but in Second Life he or she who owns the press, owns the right to choose the links. There is enough here, and enough that works (despite ongoing construction) to make this place a library and list it that way on the Explore SL Spread Sheet.

The real surprise at Wounded Warrior happened when I went to the third floor of the main building to view the PowerPoints. Perhaps teaching veterans to become DJ's can help heal post traumatic stress disorder, but there is a better explanation. Wounded Warrior is not built and perhaps not run by Wounded Warrior Project. The web site makes no mention of the island in Second Life. The folks who run Valkyrie Games probably built the Wounded Warrior island as a tribute to either themselves or their friends and their needs as fellow veterans. It's a lovely charitable gesture. I hope the good folks at Valkyrie don't get caught up in a trade mark dispute. Trade marks are expensive.

Of course sooner or later my avie and I both needed a break, so we headed over to the Energy Club for some dancing to house music. While there was a tree in the corner, greens over the DJ table, an Elf on the Shelf watching the dancers (Oh the stories that Elf could tell, but not really, Energy is a clean, well lighted place.), and snow outside that is going to kill the palm trees (Why do builders always forget ecology and good sense?), the holiday glitz was not oppressive and the music was laid back, and few if any avatarim wore tacky, Christmas hats. I could relax along with Iyoba, and besides... It was all ready December 26.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- December 26, 2012

Making a Break in the Middle of the Night

I passed out after shopping. My bed was nice and warm at five pm and when I woke up in "real life" it was 1:30am and my "real life" turtle was hungry. She got fed, and I went in world to give her time to eat. Fortunately, I had a project hanging fire that was a cut above traditional sandbox therapy. This project started with an apple. Actually, it started with something more, namely realizing that most food serving places in Second Life served nothing, and that most vending machines copied the worst of the "real world." This was at least true in the English speaking part of Second Life. The Japanese are shining exceptions with bars and cafes that serve food, complete with eating animations. No, avatarim really don't need to eat, but it is nice to see them do it. Remember mirror neurons are always hard at work.

One of my solutions of course is the Mourning Dove Soda machine. So far there are five great flavors:

Boysenberry
Carrot
Date Nut Bread
Etrog
Frosty Maple

These may not be your favorite flavors but at least they take life in Second Life beyond the least common denominator. I think etrog (which is similar to lemon), boysenberry (Hey blackberries!), and date nut bread (Dates are so sweet!) might be fantastic. Frosty maple and carrot are a bit more of a stretch, but there is creme (vanilla) soda out there and even chocolate soda (or there used to be.) The carrot soda would taste good if it tasted like V8-Splash or just had a bit of orange or lemon added with the sugar. The picture below is a thumbnail. Click it for a full size version.

Of course soda is fine, but it is nice to have solid snacks, snacks thare not copyrighted, snacks an avie can hold and eat. So far I am using only the drinking animation that is freely available. I haven't seen a one handed eating animation I like. I need to go shopping for one, and right now I've spent enough money inworld to arm a small navy or so it feels. In other words, I'm sticking wtih the default freebie, so avatarim who eat my apples will look like their chugging their food, but so what... The machine at least is professional or a play on words. It is also inspired by a poster I drew for a window mural when I was in sixth grade. I thought it was great art. The wheels and flowers were both designs made of hearts. Yes, it's cute, but not that cute. Look at the slogan. The font is Rockwell Bold, and two-toned letters are my specialty in GIMP. I also got some lovely wood textures out of the project. Most wood in Second Life is devoid of knots. This wood is knotty pine dyed red! I put my apple cart together in the LEA Art Sandbox. Any one can become a member there to create scripted objects, and this vending machine uses a free object giver script, and yes it is full perm etc... And yes, the illustration below is also a thumbnail. Click it to see the full size version.

The sculpties are builder box so I am free to transfer this item legally which made buying these things a year or so ago, one of my better purchases. The hearts inside the wheels are one of Cel Edman's bead and torus textures. The shafts come from a builder box of cylinders from LC Sculpties. Of course, the apple cart has a play on words in its name. It's meant to be just a little upset and sit on its shafts. The picture above shows me upsetting the apple cart. I thought I would show the interface as I built because you really don't understand building in Second Life unless you see it in action.

I really enjoy building because you can create something that really doesn't exist in world. Second Life may have over a million avatarim, but only a fraction of those are active, and only a fraction have ever really tried making their own stuff in the sandbox. All of this means that Second Life is really a very small space with loads of room for good new ideas. Now, maybe there is another apple machine out there. I haven't checked. I guess I should. Well, here are the search results, and you'll have to probably log in to see them. The only apple machines for sale are for Bloodlines. Nothing exists like the apple machine in Plant Science on the Ag Quad at Cornell until I upset the apple cart.

Unfortunately, the upset apple cart is seven prims, six of them just for decoration. Those of you who follow this blog must really think I have lost my marbles or am going stir crazy this holiday break. Neither is the case. I have a low prim version, a simple apple barrel, just one prim that still delivers the juicy fruit, perfectly suited for mere mortals. It's not fair when you think about it that vampires should have all the apples, and ordinary humans get stuck with plates of wax fruit, or is that fruit plastic!

And here are both apple machines together. Right now they are not rezzed any where, but I may make both versions available through the Hobo group or offer them to my clan. Yes, I have a clan where Iyoba can be herself, with the "smile of an angel" It comes from not wearing makeup and having a soft round face. This is as good as my adoption hopes and dreams are going to get, though I did like a few more avatarim at Never B Solo.

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Why I am Currently Close to Broke in Second Life

While I was busy observing Shabbos in "real life" and messing around in the mucky mire of adoptions, I let all my Lily Frogs die. I'm not sure there wasn't a glitch in the system. When I checked late last week, they still had twelve percent of their food left. I thought they would be fine until the end of the weekend. I did not get to them until late last night and... The food was gone and they were dead. After a couple of teleport failures and some anxious worrying, I bought both food and a couple of revival kits. I then revived one of my frogs, and hatched out one of the last eggs, Shalom laid. I also hatched out a few more eggs, including a Common Indian toad that Jeep Streeter gave me. It turned out to be a male, but I wanted a male because I needed two of them to keep the colony hopping. Right now all the frogs at the the Honey Hut are on a break of a few days, as they mature. Shalom's last offspring, a pickerel frog with beautiful coloring earned the name of Absalom. I revived Tzipporah so her line could continue, but the other three frogs, one male and two females, all of whom will breed actively in a few days, have no names. Frog names like zwicky names are something about which I love to agonize, and I guess it is fairly real agony this time.

I tell myself I will not be so careless. I was tempted to disengage. I wish there were a few days grace built into the system when Lily Frogs go hungry. I also wish they went on breeding forever. Small timers get attched to their critters, and we're never going to burn up the world even if we let them breed for a year or more. I don't even mind seeing the same colors that appear with endless variations, though this new batch of frogs is going to give Iyoba and me more variety.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni who doesn't mind working at all hours -- December 24, 2012

A Tale of Two Dollars

No spoilers today. I figure I owe the world a run down of what I have been doing even if no one reads this blog. First, I found a pretty amazing build on the ARCHI21 sims. Several locations on those sims even made the Explore SL spread sheet, but the best part of these sims was simply the walking courses and newbie mazes, that even an oldbie could enjoy. There are narrow walking courses with tricky spiral staircases, and steep narrow paths, off which an avie can fall. Fortunately, avatarot may complain, but they don't really get hurt.

The fragile build exhibit ARCHI21 World even includes a few soft spots for good measure. The open spaces under this build, however, contain no traps. Be preapred to have a soggy avie when you get done, and feel free to take your avie off the beaten path. And yes, I think that is a very pretty box.

Of course Iyoba and I still needed lots of sandbox therapy. Neither of us know what became of the Petable Turtle eggs we gave to Almost Adoptees daughter, Three Year Old. We met Almost Adoptee Thursday night, but I'll get to that. Meanwhile, we needed the sandbox therapy, and we made hair! Here you can see a hair piece in progress. All the prims (There were fifty-one of them, most of which were sculpties from a demo box of hair curls) were linked, but we didn't have the piece fitted or textured yet. This piece needed extra fitting because it is a new base made from a nice, thick, robust sculptie apple. Yes, an apple! It has just the right curves, shape, and solidity to embrace and avie's head. Trust me on this.

And here is the finished product. I made several copies in different shades. The silhouette is not symmetrical, but the outline is pretty and with the right texture of which I have way too many, it comes out just outrageous enough. It does take a certain kind of nerve to wear things like this, but Iyoba pulls it off just fine. She does not have the nerve or desire for spiked heals and she wants to be covered up and warm when it is snowy outside, but her hair... I guess there are days we all wish we could have hair wtih this much body.

Meanwhile, my zwickies have been accomplishing feats of reproductive glory. This teal and white baby, though not my favorite colors, is still out in Iyoba's and my garden at Stinky Stinky. She is not even officially named yet. Geronimo had no problem getting pregnant by Bishara. I'm pretty sure Bishara is the mother, and I'm usually right. I was glad Geronimo gave me no trouble. He is good for many more months of productive nookie.

And this baby zwicky is something special in more ways than one. I named her Chagit, which is a Hebrew name that means joy in English. Chagit is a flexus zwicky rather than a hybrid. Her father is Nimrod (picture below) and her mother is Subira, my scarlet starter zwicky who is a flexus. Nimrod is a hybrid. Subira is also his mother, but zwicky have no problems with inbreeding.

I realized on Thursday that Chagit was likely to be Nimrod's last offspring. He was not cycling back towards being 100% receptive. He was 421 days old (more than a year) out of a projected 841 day lifespan. This is despite having zelly flower freely available. The problem with zwicky-pause is that zwicky-pausal zwickies continue to eat as much as those that reproduce. Zwicky are high prim and have the most personality of any breedable. Though I have sons, nefews, and half brothers of Nimrod in stasis, I was too attached to him to retire him.

So I did something I swore I never would do. I bought a life extender. It cost 399L which is $1.60. Remember a dollar is worth 250 Lindens. I agonized about it, but then I went to work. Nimrod is cycling again. He'll be fine for two more months. Then I'll have to make this decision again or else learn how to tell if zelly flowers are past their prime. Immortal breedables that are eternally fecund make small timers happy. Selling food and consumables makes breedable developers happy. There has to be a happy medium somewhere, but don't expect me to find it. I'm not rational.

I could spend the $1.60 to keep Nimrod making baby zwickies because I renewed my panel at Never B Solo. Read that again if you like. I did it on impulse. I did it fast. It is probably the worst forty cents I ever spent. Forty cents is one hundred Lindens. It doesn't even get you on the MARTA bus. If I want to make excuses, I am going to the agency a lot less. I am pickier about whom I like.

The last time I was at Never B Solo, there were a bunch of kids (child avatarim with adult Ones but they were in character!) all talking about what they were getting for Christmas and who had been good and who was getting nothing. How do you say: "grabby brats." In real life, or in the real lif of my rosey, adult memories, I did not act like that and neither did most of my classmates. We bragged about the gifts we received mainly after the fact, and we talked about what we wanted fairly matter of factly away from parental ears.

I don't think we were unduly virtuous. I think it was more a case of there being a lot going on at the season, fancy art works to decorate the school, winter sports (I was learning to ski at age seven), and there was usually something assigned to read over Christmas break. My brother and I always had books among our presents. These and art supplies and a Spirograph were among the best gifts. When we got older we got vinyl records that we taped, but when we were kid age, it was a whole lot of talk about other things mixed in with the gifts because we were busy people with important lives.

I tell myself that maybe I just wanted to keep my options open. If I find the energy and like my eight year old self, I'm busy these days, I may go learn more about child avatarim. Maybe away from an adoption agency they have something going for them besides a classic freedom and/or imposition fantasy. I've heard many of them are master builders. Maybe that is a different crowd. Such a child avie would be great fun to know.

On the other hand, there is also bushwhacking, and this blog is due for a redesign as is another web page even more important. I want to work on my CSS layout skills. I want to make something ten times better than your average offering. I can dream. I can make dreams come true, even if I sometimes make some awfully, foolish choices.

Eileen H. Kramer -- December 21, 2012

Gonna Be Solo for a While

No, you will not see any pictures of the main event. That is because I respected my potential adoptee's privacy. I still respect it though I am not sure why. Monday on my lunch break, the unthinkable happened. I got a match through Never B. Solo. A near-adult adoptee liked me. I liked her. Suddenly, all too fast, we were both on trial!. A trial can last up to five days.

Our trial, however, lasted less than twenty-four hours. Sorry for the spoiler folks. The picture above shows Iyoba skiing under an archway in Munich City where they have forgotten to plough the streets. The adoptee had a child of her own. This was a real avie who played a three year old girl. Meeting three-year-old was edifying, and I don't care if she wasn't real. Yes, she is playing a different age than in real life. Iyoba is ten years younger than I am. It's just a matter of degree. Besides the person behind three-year-old is real.

I now have some ideas about who plays a three-year-old and why. This last always perplexed me. I'll get to that. We arranged a time to meet, and because I had a prior engagement, (I was helping to load boxes on the trucks for the Open Door Community. The boxes were destined for the prison at Jackson, most particularly the Death House where the condemned await their fate.) the meeting occured late on Monday night, and I've had all Tuesday to think about it.

I was on Arab Land, which is a very beautiful sim when I logged in. I immediately headed home to Stinky Stinky and gave Adoptee a teleport. She arrived. She had on a lovely rainbow, mesh sarong, and her shoulders were covered with enough vivid, rainbow tattoos to intimidate a member of the Yakuza.

We exchanged interests and then Three Year Old came to join us. Adoptee and Three-year-Old both liked to shop. Adoptee belonged to at least one private club, and lived in a sky box. I don't want to give too many other details about her. She seemed likeable enough. That she was different from me was to be expected. That we were different was good, since I am twenty years older than she is, inworld.

There is nothing like a good generation gap. True, Adoptee would never borrow my clothes and vice versa, but my mother in "real life" never liked me borrowing her things. Now she is too thin and lives too far away for me to contemplate borrowing anything, but back in the day, the five most irritating words in the English language for my mother were: "Mom, can I wear it?" with regard to something she had just bought for herself.

Adoptee also played someone of an age that had strong privacy requirements. At her age, and even younger (starting in middle school some time), my mother stopped opening my dresser or desk drawers. When she folded my laundry, she put it on top of the dresser for me to put away. In other words, I would have very little problem with Adoptee dressing differently, having different interests, private communications. In fact, I'd almost expect it.

All of that said, I would have liked to have seen more of what my potential adopted daughter was into. If she wanted to be a vampire, it was fine as long as she did not ask me to bite any one. That is really where I draw the line.

My experience with the female side of the Greek system at Cornell (and hence Iyoba's knowledge base on this) was less than pleasant, but Adoptee had founded a sorority which was secret and private, even though she wore a miniature paddle on her waist. Perhaps her sorority did not ask potential members if they went to football games.

They did have to wear a uniform though. Adoptee's word for me was "old fashioned and not materialistic." These are lovely nonjudgemental words. Translated into my vocabulary they mean "You don't shop enough and aren't into fashion and skin." I guess this could be make or break. Less euphemistically, these words also mean: "You're ugly and you don't care!" Three-Year-Old even begged me to "at least get a decent skin." I told her I liked my skin. I really do.

Three-year-old even said that my appearance gave her heart palpitations. Sorry Three-year-Old, you're not really three behind your mask. You're entitled to your motives, and you were the most edifying part of the whole experience, and I don't mean that in a bad way.

Three-Year-Old appeared wearing only a pair of androgynous panties. They had red trim and hearts on the white fabric, but they also had a pouch/fly. She wore nothing on top or on her feet. Maybe in some cultures this is fine for children this old, but three year olds when I was three wore clothes when they went to visit somebody's house.

Three year olds visiting public places were also not supposed to run around, but Second Life is not the real world of the New York metro area in 1965. Three-Year-Old was a brat. She existed free of the constraint to be polite. She also was able to run around less dressed than even the most scantilly clad adult avie, and no one could say a word. She was invulnerable. She also asked for stuff. She wanted turtle eggs. She wanted green ones. I picked out three nonconsanguinous specimens and gave them to her along with a HUD for her mother.

Then shortly after I gave Three-Year-Old the eggs, Adoptee announced that she did not want to continue the trial. Adventure over. I was "too old fashioned and not materialistic enough for it to work as parent and child," though she wanted us to continue being friends. She is currently my friend, but Three-Year-Old is not, more because she did not request it.

I was glad the whole business was over quickly. A few hours is enough time to dash expectations, but what comes up quickly, comes down just as fast. I only got angry the next morning. And yes, Adoptee, you were polite, but there are times when polite is not enough. Yes, I intimidated you because I "like nature" and "do a lot of charity work." I can see the origin for your polite expressions, but as I said before politeness is not enough.

It was what you did not do that has left me upset as well as the reasons you did it. I showed you my home and my pets, and some of what I love. You told me, but never got to reciporicating. You did not introduce me to your sorority sisters. Perhaps there was no where public to meet. We did not tour the malls you loved. Was I not good enough to see your world? If you are going to admit a stranger into your Second Life, you hold the door open just a bit more, and you keep an open mind. Three-Year-Old, this last is for you. The picture above is of the onsen (hot spring) complex at Beppu. Snow and steam make a great combination.

I'm angry because I lost an Adoptee because I did not wear the right clothes. That is so middle school! I am angry that I lost an Adoptee because I intimidated her with the fact that I am into education (I don't think of myself as a Second Life Educator, but that is one of my subcultures), builder, and explorer rather than a fashionista, and my devotion to charity work in real life is real. I am angry we did not both give it a few more days. I am angry that I was too proud to beg.

But none of this is the reason that I am no longer courting an adoptee through Never B. Solo, and Never B Solo was just where I had a panel. The agency name really doesn't matter. Three-Year- Old, you are the reason, and it is not because I think you were rude. You were, but you could be any one who plays an avie like yours or one that is worse. It is what you are, not what you did that is the biggest long term problem.

A junior fashionista who has a license to run around topless and who has an androgynous crotch and a come hither face (Yes, I looked at you quite intently.) and beautiful hair is.... maybe not playing true to herself about her own desires, but I know that babies are inherantly sexy. They call it neoteny and it is designed to be a very powerful force that bonds caregiver to infant.

And Three-year-Old you are playing your role as a baby rather than a child. In real life women let infants and toddlers run around nearly nude, take them to bed, sniff their hair, kiss them in many places you can not kiss an adult, and I don't mean genitals. I mean shoulder, stomach, feet... Mothers and care givers bathe small children's naked bodies. They change babies' diapers. You see where this is going. It's NOT age play by Second Life standards, but it's anything but work safe, and far less work safe than something with curse words written into it, an artistic nude statue, or an adult avie who left his/her clothes at home.

In short, Three-year-Old and those like her are walking work-safety issues. I'm not taking the risk. With luck, my panel hasn't renewed. With luck any one who plays a very young child has decided NOT to like me. With luck the whole thing will be over in the next twenty-four hours.

And how do an "old fashioned, nonmaterialistic" avie and One who Thinks She Knows assauge their sorrows in the face of rejection, because it did hurt. First, we make clothes. I finally made the Lobster Trap Dress in the sandbox at Anglia Ruskin University. Yes, I found a sandbox in my travels.

We also created two new flavors of Mourning Dove Soda, etrog (which is a citron) and frosty maple (flavored like maple sugar candy, but cold and refreshing.) A little creativity goes a long way in the world of soda. Our next project is an apple cart and some note card givers of great links, and then we have a house. It is Not a Handsome House. That is it's name. I figure Iyoba and I are both better off at the sandbox than trying to court a stranger avie whose issues could become our own in all the wrong way.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- December 19, 2012

Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work

Today I am going to name names. Today I am going to begin by introducing you to the organization that rents EduIsland 7. Normally, Second Life is your world your imagination, or more precisely, if you pay for it, you can do what you please with it. Village Virtual, however, is an online schooling firm, that contracts with school districts. That means EduIsland 7 is your tax dollars someone else' imagination.

And it is an imagination with an amazing aesthetic sensibility. This courtyard though a bit laggy is uncommonly beautiful. It is filled wtih small touches like barrels of mead or ale, several peacocks (no peahens) with fanning tails, including one albino specimen and these amazing lobelias.

Of course my favorite feature of the courtyard was this one prim kitty. Face it, every educational build needs a mascot and she was it. She doesn't really have a name, but just look into her sweet, golden eyes!

And the courtyard comes complete with a dance ball and four towers that lead into chambers with sofas and mullioned and slighlty yellowed glass windows. Outside vegitation grows thick and abstract in a kind of eternal spring except for the recently deployed gingerbread house. There is not one Powerpoint viewer, even an empty one, not one easel, not one image of students at work, and certainly not one link to anything educational to spoil the courtyard's beauty.

Moving inside, EduIsland 7's buildings are examples of the most elegant and refined interior design. This dining room cabinet and dream catcher are uncommonly detailed and both colorful and tasteful.

And if your avie feels the need to comb her hair, apply makeup, or adjust her clothes, there are at least two vanity tables like this one, complete wtih the appropriate animations.

This bed, however, does not come with the usual and somewhat embarassing pose balls. If you want to enjoy it to its fullest, supply your own animations or at least a HUD. Still with its plump pillows, wroght iron head board, and oodles of pillows this bed like the entire sim is a monument of beauty to behold.

So what is wrong with any of this?. The folks at Village Virtual and to be honest their predecssors were NOT hired to make a beautiful build to rent out as furnished houses or to enjoy for thesmelves. They were hired to make something that serves teachers, parents, and students over th e age of sixteen. Say that three times fast.

Now, to be honest, you can use at least one of the buildings on the sim to hold a meeting. You can even hold three meetings at once. You can have a get together in the wonderful, eclectic courtyard, but if that is all you want to do, you do not need to rent an entire island. A 4096 or even a 2048 square meter plot will work just fine. If you don't believe me visit SUNY StonyBrook to see it in action, or if you prefer visit SUNY Geneseo's corner of Monroe Community College's island.

If you are going to take up more than a 2048 or 4096 as a tax payer funded, educational presence in Second Life, then you need to start thinking of giving something back. This is what the builders on EduIsland 7 are not doing. Now how can an educational sim give back and to whom? It can give back to the general public through a museum or a public exhibition of student work. Those tired Bloom's Taxonomy cubes that form a rainbow stairway on several sims do just that. Images of Native Alaskans on Bristol Bay are another. Links to sites dealing with a variety of subjects are also a great way to give back. Scripts for note card and URL givers freely abound in Second Life, and so too do the links. There's always ERIC for educational information, and there's Project Gutenberg. For math we have Drexel's Math Forum and for health and wellness related information why not start with Medline Plus. Of course the builders of EduIsland Seven could meerly content themselves with an exhibition of student work such as the now defunct Senior Project on EduIsland 2, or the exhibits on social justice on ClevelandPlus VIII. Providing a sandbox (It does not even have to be public.) for sixteen and overs or a place to practice foreign language for students in this age group is yet a third way of giving back.

Village Virtual, however, does absolutely nothing to give back. Its builders and maybe some Second Life Savvy members of the board have great fun with a large piece of real estate and a collection of gorgeous prims, but tax payers are not funding them to have fun with prims. They're funding them to provide some sort of educational or educational-support use for the island. If they just want to hold meetings, they need to cut back and use the funds elsewhere or they need to think about their customers even if it's their money, their imagination, because it's not their money. If you are in a school district that has hired Village Virtual, you need to see EduIsland 7 for yourself and then take action. It's your tax dollars going for someone else' fun. It may not be a lot of money in the scheme of things, but it is not chump change either. It may also be legal. Whether it is moral, though, is completely another matter.

And yes, I wish I had this kind of land to play around with, and no I probably would not do the same things. In a year or two I definitely would not do them. As I learn to work smaller and smarter, I would have less and less temptation to build something beautiful and useless.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- December 16, 2012

Beauty, Brains, and Fallen Deities

Perhaps it is true that pictures speak a thousand words. Sometimes when I despair of getting my point across, I resort to pictures. Sometimes, I resort to pictures because other Second Life bloggers do it, and I am not above pressure to conform, but today, right now, please feast your eyes.

In Second Life content is king, and Iyoba and live surrounded by fantastic content, and yes you've seen Lily Frogs before, but they are always worth another look. They are four prims. They are attractively patterned. They hop. They eat. They reproduce. There is a lot of scripting controlling all of this.

And this tooth-bot that guards the portal to the Clinca de Quirugia at the Universidad deSaint Martin Dental School is in some ways a close relative of the Lily Frogs. They march around waving their Universidad de St. Martin de Pores flags. I found them creepy but I'm deathly afraid of dentists in "real life" Beyond the tooth-bots, lies a waiting room worthy of any dental office, and beyond that....

...lies a somewhat (not fully) interactive surgical suite and a recovery area. The beds are not scripted with appropriate animations.

This hospital bed at the partially complete Pirates Cove Hospital on Seton Hall University's island. Note: the hospital doors are locked, so use the cam and sit in a waiting room chair to gain entrance. You can also fly up to the roof and get in that way.

And there are always those little bits of content that add detail. I found this snake plant in a quiet corner of an X-ray room at the USMP Dental School, and I made the bottle of Mourning Dove Soda in the newest flavor, date nut bread. Now when have you last had a bottle of date nut bread soda? Iyoba and I display this bottle on the wall at the NOVA Biology Corner Sandbox. Thank you Nova Annandale.

Yes, I create content, and those who create content, especially content that looks real, does something, or was not there before are gods. We all know what gods can do. Some gods can be beautiful, though a few deities are grotesque or humorous. Gods are also at least partially all-knowing and all-powerful, and if they don't quite make it to a hundred percent in those departments, they are at least pretty smart. In fact they are brilliant and because I associate with content creators and see their work regularly, I am sure that everyone I meet in Second Life is utterly brilliant and accomplished.

Of course this is an illusion and when an illusion shatters, it hurts. Last night I made a fairly innocuous comment in the Never b Solo Adoption Agency group chat. Just because I may never find an older child avie, teen, or adult to adopt, does not mean I am not going to explore trying in any reasonable way. I want to do some amateur sociology at Never b Solo, but that is for another post. Let's just say you can learn a lot by counting beans.

Meanwhile, I made my innoccuous comment. I said that people must sign up for panels over the weekends because there were lots of empty ones on the kids' side. That was all I said, and it was utterly true, and not at all a complaint. Face it, not everyone renews their panel. Some kid avatarim find matches. Some leave in disgust. Some lose interest, as with any other business. This is still the busiest agency around, so when some leave others come back. I got a private instant message from the agency owners asking me not to mention empty panels in group.

She said it was "a deturrent (sic)" She also asked me for the location of "urbox". I thought this was a word for panel. She meant my inbox as in my ims. She did not write: "I sent you an instant message."

Suddenly, I felt the earth shift under me. I had noticed misspellings in the agency rules, but I am no great speller myself, and I noticed a couple of misspellings on the panels, but again. I hate when people bring up spelling mistakes, but there was something odd about the errors. They weren't predictable, substitutions like "too" for "two." Nor were they the kind of mistakes that people make when writing English as a second language. Usually these are stylistic, prose too formal, too much passive voice, not compensating for the lack of a formal "you."

The instant message back and forth, however, clinched my suspicions. The proprietor of the adoption agency had difficulty writing in a way that others could understand. One of the gods is probably dyslexic. Dyslexic does not mean stupid. This avie and her One run a successful business, no mean feat in Second Life. Dyslexic does not mean one can't move prims and police an agency. Dyslexic can still mean competent.

On a different level, being dyslexic in both "real life" and Second Life, might very well explain an interest in child avatarim. Reading for little kids is the killer app. Even a kid who can't tell her right from her left and can't tie a bow, will be a star if she can read and also if she can draw. The written word and I have been buddies since I was five, but what if the opposite had been true? I want to rewrite history in a couple of ways, but I'd have a lot more to rewrite if I had not been able to read easily.

And the proprietor makes me wonder about the child avatarim I see and the parent avatarim as well. We're all part of one big soup that spent a few too many days in the refridgerator before being reheated on the stove. Last night people at Never B. Solo discussed their childhood and the appropriateness of corporal punishment, and how much corporal punishment they received. I'm against corporal punishment for a whole host of reasons. The ones I state in public are that done right it is psychological torture. The kid waits for it. The parent humiliates her by making her lie down to receive the beating. The other siblings watch. The actual pain and injury is far less than one endures fighting physically with a sibling or oen's peers, but the wound is somehow greater due to set and setting. Done wrong of course, physical punishment quickly becomes child abuse as in breaking the skin and leaving welts. It's a lose lose proposition. New York State did not allow foster parents to administer corporal punishment. Schools do not allow teachers to do it. Why not obey the law if you are a parent? It seems like a no brainer.

There is of course more to why I detest corporal punishment, but I'm not writing it on this blog and I certainly wasn't going to disucss it with strangers in Second Life. If I'm going to be a parent to a child or teen (empathy factor!) or even young adult (more empathy factor!) avatar, I'm going to want to relive good times and leave out bad ones. I'm looking for a ski buddy.

Then the conversation turned to television and the Walking Dead. I felt disappointed. I don't watch these shows. If I watched anything it would be the news. I have been a news junky since I was six or seven years old. The news is what's worth watching. The Gods of Second Life disappointed me again. I had nothing I cared to discuss.

And yes, I realize that I don't know thing one about child avatarim. They have a separate culture. They differ from real life children, because as Iyoba would remind me, avatarim and Ones are different. One is short for One who Thinks She Knows, and this One knows nothing. I guess I should resign from the deities union and go back to the sandbox, or at least climb what learning curve I can find and have time to climb.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- wanna be deities -- December 14, 2012

A Crazy Decision

One of the things I set out to do when I started putting a lot of time, sweat, and interest into this blog was to write about Second Life in a way that outsiders could understand. I don't think I succeed it at. I don't think I'll succeed in doing anything other than making you feel I am crazy. I feel like wearing a t-shirt that says "My mirror neurons make me do it." and they do, but so what. I'm supposed to have free will. I'm supposed to approach a virtual world with detatchment and coolness. Sorry, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to. OK, so what is the turtle doing as the lead off picture. I want you to look at her. She is female. She lays eggs. Her name is Vashti. Look at her sweet face and bright colors. She moves. She eats. She nearly starved to death a year ago. She may be part of a virtual world, but I've spent real money on her. I photograph her. I named her. Maybe I gave her life as in existence, but she is real. She is also quite cute and endearing.

And look at this face. Maybe it's a face only a mother can love. Maybe the black markings give her a wonderful nose. This is a Lily Frog named Shalom. She was my Halloween special. You can feel her stare you down as she hops toward you. It's not hard to imagine her having a personality. If you zoom in on her inworld, you can watch her hop and cavort. Not bad for four prims! There is something about the way creatures move.

And the creatures that move like no others are Zwickies. Here Subira, my flame red starter female and Yocheved, my azure starter female cruise toward the feeder to pursue their favorite sport. Don't you wish you could fly like that or dance like that! I don't even mind when Zwickies ignore me. I like it better when they fly through Iyoba's face to give her a zwicky kiss. Yes, Zwickies exist. They may not be flesh and blood creatures. They may live in Second Life, but they are real! At least I believe they are.

Now, look at this face. It's a face like you may have had before you could remember your own face. Look at the handsome brown eyes, and soft curls. He is not dirty though his surroundings are filthy. This is Alex, a Zooby Baby who is currently sitting in what may be an unused or unfinished educational exhibit on Cleveland Plus VIII.

Here is more of the scuzzy house where Alex spends his days on a filthy mattress. I've thought about Alex a lot. Iyoba visits him and I go with her because I always go with Iyoba. I talked with a friend who has raised a prim baby about whether anything would come of contacting the Zooby Baby creator. Unlike the Twenty-First Century United States, most content in Second Life, especially scripted content, belongs to a small team of creators who are proud of their handiwork. If you want to think of breedables or virtual babies as intellectual property go for it. Artists care if their song becomes elevator music or their books become licensed for tacky merchandise. My friend who was a virtual mom said that the Zooby creator might well take an interest in Alex' plight.

I checked Alex' object profile. Like all objects he has one. I got the Zooby creator's name and ... I did not send a complaint. Like breedables, a Zooby baby is in part a commodity and just plain stuff. Alex has identical twins/clones all over the world. Some are languishing in inventory. That would probably be Alex' fate or worse if the Zooby creator came down on the Scuzzy House Builder (No I am not going to mention her name on this blog.) More likely, he'd be deleted.

And yes, there are bigger things in the world to care about, but my mirror neurons were hurting. Some of the "real" things in my life are unbloggable. Some are still in progress. Some are things about which I can do very little. I could do something for Alex. I wrote to the Scuzzy House Builder. I asked if the Scuzzy House was part of an educational exhibit and what kind of exhibit it was. I could live with Alex languishing if he were put to good use rather than wasted. A virtual baby may tug at my heartstrings, but he is not a real baby. He does not starve to death. He will not get sick. Iyoba thinks the ratties are his good friends. Iyoba sometimes thinks for herself and often has good ideas. Second Life does not quite run by the rules of the "real world."

I would like to know the fate of the Scuzzy House. If the builder ever completes it to make it interactive or provides an explanation sign, it would make a great addition to the Explore SL Spread Sheet. I would like to know the fate of the whole Cleveland Plus Archipelago. As much as its current condition irritates me and fills me with land jealousy, it is one of the grand old sites of Second Life. I want this site to survive. In that way, the Scuzzy House Builder and I are on the same side.

To take Alex' tale of woe to the Zooby Creator might mean that she would actually take it seriously, and then she would take action against the Scuzzy House Builder. The Scuzzy House Builder might laugh, but it would still be an ugly exchange of note cards and IM's. Neither side would understand the other side. And all I would have done is precipitate a clash of cultures. I'd probably earn Scuzzy House Creator's enmity which is not a great thing, since we are both in the same camp, even if I am a breedable fanatic. I'm also a librarian which makes me an educator. Scuzzy House Creator is probably an educator too.

All of this means I am going to have to have some patience. Most institutions of higher learning are tucking themselves in for a long winter break. If Scuzzy House Creator has students, she has papers to read and/or exams to grade. Then she is gone for better than a week, maybe longer. Iyoba and I are at the end of the line. Alex is off the map. Iyoba and I will keep visiting him. We'll take lots of pictures. This reminds me of when Iyoba and I would go look for Sad Brown Eyed Kitty, who is now in his owner's inventory. I made Goofy Kitty for Iyoba because she loved her kitty friends so much. Yes, they were all cat couches, but my avie gets good ideas every once in a while, because she thinks for herself some of the time. I'm only the One who thinks she Knows. Yes, Alex touched my heart. Maybe I am crazy, but to me, he is real, and I'm going to live with that.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni who remindes me that I only know some of the time. -- December 13, 2012

A World Made of Stone

I'm not really back to being a tourist again. True, I wasn't really bushwhacking and haven't yet put this and two other locations on the Explore SL Spread Sheet. Instead, in desperation, I was cruising the world map and clicking on any where that looked interesting and educational, more because those sites tend to be open if public. I really was not up for a home invasion. There is enough chaos in my "real life" as it is. I don't need a home invasion.

Second USMP and its archipleago seemed academic. Academic sites hide behind abbreviated names. After a while I can just semll them. I clicked to teleport and after flying around a bit I found Machu Pichu brought to you by the University of San Martin de Pores in Lima, Peru.

There are so many Central and South American Indian sims in Second Life I have lost track of them. Most are Maya or Aztec, but ziggurats are easy to make, but Machu Pichu is not your every day Inca/Aztec/Maya temple, and yes, I know these cultures are different, but in Second Life they usually blend together. Machu Pichu by University of San Martin de Pores, though, is different. It is big. This is an aerial view of the entire complex. The nountains and stairs are steep. The peeks are austere. Iyoba and I both felt slightly nauseous from altitude sickness. My mirror neurons were hard at work.

It is not an Indiana Jones adventure. The stone is bare. This is a realistic ruin. The stone work varies. In the parts of the city where the common people lived, it is rough and crude. Where the royalty or priests lived and worked, the stones are finely hewn. This window is an excellent example of stone work done for the upper castes of Inca society.

And yes, Machu Pichu is an academic sim. Iyoba is sitting in a lecture hall. Notice the lovely stone seating and the cushions in Native American design. And there are signs and illustrations to explain the exhibits. Below is part of a slide presentation explaining Inca construction and agricultural tequniques.

And here is a painting of one of the last Paramount Inca Chiefs. I'm using an English colonial title because I can not remember or spell the Quechua word for this title. He was one of the last because Conquistadors with their gunpowder and Western diseases destroyed Inca civiliztaion. That is not the story you will see at Machu Pichu. You will also see nothing of how the Inca's descendents live today.

Actually, you don't even need to stop by the signs, exhibits, or note card givers to get a lot out of Machu Pichu. I almost decided not to put it in the Spread Sheet because Iyoba and I were having so much fun walking around and exploring. Sometimes the labyrinths that are the most exciting are the ones with no clear exit. When a puzzle is solved it's over. Why not go on exploring forever?

---

And yes, you can say he is all prims and a few lines of code. Actually, he has a fairly extensive script. You can say he is an it. You can say I am crazy and Iyoba shares my insanity, but our hearts still go out to poor Alex. I can't adopt a baby like him. I'm not sure I can rescue him.

This last option by the way is not impossible. His creator is a bit particular about what happens to her products, and while the scuzzy house on Cleveland Plus VIII is well made, it is not an educational exhibit. There are no note card givers. There are no links, and face it, we all know people in "real life" can live like pigs. They don't need a Zooby baby to demonstrate that.

For right now, Iyoba agreed to spend some time with Alex. We have him landmarked so we can visit him. I do plan to get in touch with his creator. Just because you are a big time educational creator with four to five sims at your disposal does not mean that you can mistreat others' creations, even if you purchase them. Note: I'd feel differently if the scuzzy house on Cleveland Plus VIII were an educational exhibit open to the public. That would probably be enough reason to let a Zooby baby sit in a pit of filth, and yes, I'm jealous I can't afford a Zooby of my own because I would treat him or her (It's not an it!) a lot better than the builder of Cleveland Plus VIII treats Alex.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- December 11, 2012

It All Starts with Alex

It all began with a trip to Clevemand Plus VIII and the Cleveland Plus Archipelago in general to see if there were any updates on the big construction project, that is slowly repurposing this once proud group of sims.

Fortunately, there is some good news. The social justice exhibit is now up and working enough to make the the Explor SL Spreadsheet. There is also a huge, mega prim diagram of the Big Bang on Cleveland Plus II.

This photograph really does not do the Big Bang diagram justice. It is huge, readable, and colorful. All of this helps explain the normally dense subject of cosmology to me, and I'm one of those people who gets hives from any physics more complicated than mechanics or optics.

Bad news, however, outnumbers the positive developments on these sims. The construction is unfinished and messy. These are some half built offices or classrooms. The builders just leave them here. My guess is they have sat here uselessly for months if not a whole year.

And here is a roofless office with transparent walls, just sitting in the grass not far from Union Station on Cleveland Plus III. There are a lot more half finished buildings and scraps around all of the Cleveland Plus Islands excet VIII which seems currently to be in the best shape of the lot. I have pictures of them as well as unfinished presentations sitting blank and waiting for no one, but it hurts to much to post these, and there is no point.

Meanwhile, I found this wonderfully made scuzzy house on Cleveland Plus VIII. Scuzzy houses or labs are nothing new on Second Life, but this one is particlurlarly well made; for instead of having just a kitchen with not much to eat and a few pots in the sink, there is a full blown card game in progress, though who is playing cards and where the players have gone is unclear.

,p> Perhaps the rats have developed a taste for poker. Here is a fine little rattie taking a snack break near a garbage bag. Someone forgot to take out the trash, but then again, that bag is a bit big for rats to move, so they may as well enjoy the contents.

Of course the rats have one human companion. Here is Alex. He is a Zooby baby. He is interactive. He can grow and learn new skills if someone feeds and takes care of him. He is like a breedable except he doesn't just move around and reproduce. In fact, he doesn't reproduce, but he is active much as Iyoba's and my zwickies are, or he would be if his owner, whose name I will not mention here, or one of her group members or friends took proper care of him. Instead he languishes in neglect, as part of an exhibit on child abuse. He is expensive. He is being wasted.

He tortures my mirror neurons to pieces! All I have to do is look into that poor little face to take him up into my arms, and I can't. He's not mine. He's property. Life is cruel! I reasoned that if I could not help Alex, I would adopt a Zooby Baby of my own, but of course they require way too much equipment and I don't have the space. Also, I worry about the ongoing expense. Going to the Zooby store is quite an experience. The only customers are women who move about furtively. Outside the main store, where they sell more equipment rather than basic starter kits, mothers wheel their proud babies in strollers and carriages.

Yes, I wanted a baby in the worst way. I am too old to have one in "real life." I said to myself: "why not." I added up the primmage and realized that a Zooby was beyond my reach. I went over my other options. They all appear to be high prim. Also many places offer a virtual pregnancy plan. Yes, people go for this, but I think it is a bit extreme. I don't want the folks I work with at Info Island to know I am doing this or have a tummy talker shoved in their face, or have my avie show. If I want to carry around a baby on my own land or while bushwhacking, hey that's my business, but I want to keep my bit of craziness, semi-private.

So, I came up with a second option. Why not adopt another avie? This would give me an avie kid, and the money I spent on allowances posessions etc... might as well go to something other than a breedable company as ongoing expenses. And a real avie as opposed to an interactive bot, would be twenty times more interesting and many times more intelligent. So, on Thursday I plunged into the world of family role play and adoption at the Never Be Solo Adoption Agency. First though, I took a photo for my pannel at Niseko Annapuri. It was all grass the day I took my photo, though it looks like winter has finally arrived there. Since I said I liked skiing, I took a photo of myself on the slopes, grassy as they were, and yes, you can ski in a long dress, and good, thick thigh highs. Just ask Iyoba.

Of course, I had no idea what I was doing in soliciting an adoption. There are children, infants, teens and adults. All the Ones behind these avatarim are adults. Say that three times fast, but many are younger than I am or come from families that were less sportive. I'm not sure. I was the only adult who promised cross country and downhill skiing. To me, or atleast when my father wasn't home, families hit the slopes and the rink together. My real life mother taught me to skate when I was three. Strap on skates and double rudders are like training wheels for little kids taking to the ice.

I should have suspected trouble when I looked at the other adults, and even some of the older children's pictures. The adoption agency has no control over what goes on outside its doors. It's not a police state. It's just a sim owner and a service provider. It costs .40 (100L) to have a panel up for fourteen days. If it has lots of panels in use, it makes money. The adults, on the panels, however, look anything but parental. I realize the fashions in Second Life tend toward the racey, but for a parent, panel photo, isn't something matronly for the females de rigeur? Men can dress more casually. They always can.

It was cold at Never Be Solo. The floor even inside the building was covered in snow. Iyoba is sensitive to cold temperatures so she was wearing a gown and thick thigh highs. Panty hose don't work in Second Life. The panty layer has to be a pair of dance pants (shorts) under nearly all skirts. This made Iyoba stand out, and not in a good way. Her panel shows her dressed warmly for the slopes. It is conservative. She is funny looking, in a sweet way.

OK, I knew this would be a tough amateur sociology experiment. I knew rejection was coming. I set myself up for it, maybe... but maybe it's better that way. Think for a minute: What kind of adult plays a child in Second Life, especially a very young child. Teenagers are just very young adults as far as this kind of thing is concerned. But young children, are different. They are dependent. The boundaries of where and how one can touch them are different. They can beg. They are entitled to an allowance. They can be disciplined. Babies need their diapers changed. Discipline is often a whack across the behind. Children in Second Life (child avatarim. Remember every body is an adult), frequently speak baby talk and disturb adult events in English speaking areas. In Portuguese speaking sims, the children accompany their mothers and are well behaved, but the idea that a child can have special liberties and that one is reliving a dependent somewhat boundary free existence, well that is the stuff of fantasy. Maybe it is not overtly sexual fantasy, but the line between what is a normal set of adult desires and what is somewhat transgressive and what is outright unacceptible is a big grey area.

I don't want to go into why getting any where near this is a bad idea. It just is for a whole variety of reasons. An older child or a teen by the way might be fun as an adoptee, but Iyoba's pool of knowledge is a bit older than she is, and her child would have an oldschool parent who believes in fresh air and exercise, outings, and travel. I'm old enough that there is now a generation gap between me and someone who is twenty years old in real ife. I know this from writing role play with teens. Attitude toward physical activity is where my generation and the one after it part ways.

Iyoba would make a great grandmother or older aunt, but hey that role is not available through agencies. Meanwhile, neither of us thinks our panel at Nveer be Solo Adoption Agency will do us any harm. It will simply expire with no likes and few views. We can visit it and rub as much salt in our metaphorical wounds as we want. We can even like adoptees. We'll avoid the infants and any older child who sucks a pacifier. Since I want a ski buddy for Iyoba, our rule will be age four and over. We can treat such an offspring with the same boundaries and respect given an adult. There will be no ottles, no diapers, no need for me to bathe another individual, and I don't do corporal punishment. Niether does Iyoba.

Besides who needs a pacifier when you have Mourning Dove Soda now in two delicious flavors. Here Iyoba enjoys a bottle of boysenberry in the NTNU Sandbox. Of course she'd share this treat with any adopted offspring, not that we will be adopting any body.

And Mourning Dove Soda also comes in refreshing carrot. Those are rainbow carrots on the bottle. All carrots are orange when juiced, but the rainbow colored skin on the oustide just makes them more appealing. I guess you drink a rainbow when enjoying Mourning Dove Carrot.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- Not parents yet and not likely to be -- December 9, 2012

Sidetracked and Thoughts on Bait and Switch

Sorry, I don't have any soda or furniture images for you...yet. Instead of going to the sandbox or doing bushwhacking in an orderly kind of way, I got sidetracked. I can thank Thinkerer Melville and his blog for the diversion. You will need to scroll down to see both links. Thinkerer featured both The Tower and a piece on the Second Life Railroad. These links were too good to resist.

The Tower is the mother of all Second Life jails, and Second Life has quite a few of them. While Iyoba feels bad for Maria who is permanently ensconsed in the hoosegow on UT PanAmerican Three, the Tower is anything but your county lockup, not that those can't be utterly retched. My favorite example of this was the Jackson County Jail on the now defunct Catamount Island. The cells were well tucked away beyond the police locker room, and the toilet was full of little brown friends that had failed to flush. It's the little, gross things and the realistic grit that made the Catamount Island lockup fantastic.

The Tower takes a completely different approach. It's a dungeon. The artist may say it is symbolic of closed minds, but it is one very, realistic dungeon, one very realistic and very hard core dungeon. It's dark. There is just enough light to sometimes see where you are going. There is no furniture. The prisoners are kept naked. They have lots of space to walk around. Well most of them do. The prisoners on the stairs at the bottom of the exhibit, are kept in jars. This is nastier than the worst prison cell! Many are also chained!

On the upper levels the prisoners are larger and have plenty of space, but still no clothes or furniture. The blue orchids, flowers of the night, are teleport devices. This is clever and spooky. It rivals Hakata Shinrei Hospital for the shiver up your mirror neuron spine, but Hakata Shinrei Hospital, has a lot of verisimilitude and gravitas, albeit unintended. The other comparable exhibit is the Maya Pyramid on Uchida, which has a whole underground adventure in Japanese.

The Second Life Railroad rivals The Tower for engagement, but in a completely different way. It is hard to find a working line. I thought when I found it, that it would resemble a bus or trolley. I'd click sit or I'd teleport and I'd get to watch Iyoba in the train or watch the scenery through the window.

That's not how it worked. Iyoba had to buy a free train, rezz it, sit in it, and drive it! That was where our tour became interesting. It took Iyoba and me a long time to figure out how to turn our train. That the train worked and was easier to control than many other vehicles was positively wonderful. The lonely beach country and warehouses through which we drive was intriguing.

This was NOT the Bay City I remembered from the summer of 2008. In those days, my connection to Second Life was marginal, not enough RAM, a weak video card, plenty of crashes. Bay City was full of plenty of lag, no sandboxes, and an occasional softspot. Land there was too pricey, and I was land hungry. When I put down roots in Second Life, my home base was Wengens, in the snow country, and later my own land on the new continent of Gaeta. My urban landscape of choice was New Berlin. My dance spots became Portuguese or Brazilian.

Returning to Bay City and nearby Shermerville with a decent connection and senior eyes, made me sweetly nostalgic but with a bitter after taste. As you can see in this picture, Iyoba's train has vanished. All too soon, no matter where you go, the train hits the end of the line. You can flip it and return, but there is only so few places you can rezz anything in Second Life. I am thankful for sandboxes, but Bay City is an expensive enclave of pricey, private, property.

A newbie who imagines him or herself buying or creating something like this, needs to grab his or her wallet and think again. Second Life costs. It is not unduly expensive, but land and breedable maintenance are two ongoing expenses, and they add up, or for a big build, they are not just expensive. They are out of reach. Walking around the beautiful boardwalk and temperate beaches at Shermerville and Bay City, I thought about Neopets (no link for you!) and how when one logged in there, the feature item was either so rare or so expensive, it did not exist for ordinary users. That's land in Bay City or land for any big build.

LEA6 land is not just expensive, it is priceless. LEA6 is a full sim, and if you were to acquire one on which to build, you would pay between $100 (for a homestead) to $300 (a full sim from Linden Labs) per month. These are all somewhat cheaper on the secondary market, but none of them cost chump change. The artist who built the Tower, however, did not pay a dime. Linden lent her the land. This is called the gift economy and it is elitist and undemocratic. If you are a big name artist who knows a lot of people, or if you are a big name educator with plenty of pull, or part of a group with social capital, you get free land. If you are an ordinary builder, it is best to think of small houses, plants, clothing, low prim furniture, soda machines, spinning bottles, swings, and planters.

I would not even know how to build on a big sim, and would probably end up with something like what SUNY Monroe or Hamilton College did, with a sandbox full of PowerPoints or several scattered small dwellings, all devoid of furniture. Maybe I really will learn to make furniture some day, and yes, you need those soda bottles, and I need to bushwhack up in Cleveland Plus. I am also playing amateur sociologist and subjecting Iyoba and me to pressure far more ugly than social dancing. I guess we have a shared rejection complex.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- December 7, 2012

Making a Break for It

OK, you really needed this title, but I really needed some sandbox therapy. Iyoba and I needed more space on our land, ,Stinky Stinky, and Iyoba really misses having somewhere to sit or lie down. We have a ground cover, mega-prim, but it has nowhere to sit. I could fix that, but sitting on the ground, ineone place on a large prim is not fun.

Iyoba and I gave up nearly all our furniture when we rezzed Throckmorton, our newest zwicky. He's a beautiful, hot, orion zwicky. You've seen pictures of him on this blog. Besides, as lovely as our current house was, we don't need all this space. I've always been ambivalent about furniture in Second Life, a desk set, a radio, a few benches, and either a bed or sleeping mat is sufficient. A whole furnished house is beautiful but utterly useless. The solution of course was and is a smaller house.

With megaprims this is easy. This house which looks like a nice, puffy roll has a twelve foot diameter and is about five to six meters tall. That's a good size. It's a single room with a phantom door. It is similar to my first, functional house which was a yurt. This one was much easier to make. That's fine. Easy can work. Minimal furniture is the goal.

For that, one room is fine. Here you can see that the house is textured with one-way windows. Outside the texture has shutters that are closed. The door is also semi-transparent. I did test the house for lag. It is fine. Now all I need is furniture. I have pictures of a repaired bed. With what I know about pose-balls, I can build furniture without them which means eleven prims (The current house is fifteen prims. The Poppin' Fresh House is four prims counting the door.) can go a very long way. I'll show you the bed pictures soon.

Meanwhile, Iyoba has more pressing needs. Monday night when she went to work at Info Island Iyoba found snow! The reference hut is unheated. Fortunately, we had made the dress you see in the pictures. It is a roll neck. I wanted a turtle neck, but a roll neck will do. I like the bubblegum pink which is textured, and has a painted on pattern of prickly paer cactus fruit. How do you say "assertive pink"? Iyoba also had thigh-highs (Panty hose don't work out in Second Life) to keep her warm. I was glad Iyoba has two years worth of winter wardrobe. It does come in handy.

And here is a close-up of Iyoba's dress. It shows the roll neck. I used one of Es0 Torok's sculpties to make it. The roll neck makes the dress' bodice look bulky like a sweater. That Iyoba has plenty of flesh and muscle also helps. Call it poor avie's mesh substitute.

Of course Iyoba and I have big dreams. Food in Second Life is interesting, but soda is strictly limited to Coke and it's close imitation Okra Cola. Sometimes there is Red Bull, and I've seen Tab once or twice. That's retro, but it's a poor variety, and where it's "Your World Your Imagination" why not apply some imagination to soda. Enter Mourning Dove Soda. I created the brand for Diversity University, an old text-based MOO that is long gone. The slogan was "Mourning Dove Soda: Eight Ways Great!" There were eight flavors. This time around, there are only two so far, boysenberry and carrot.

This means I need a new slogan: "Drink and cry no more!" Why not? Soda makes you happy. Good soda should make you ecstatic, and I love mourning doves. I love their song each spring. It is beautiful and, Mourning Dove Soda is beautiful. You have to think outside the box sometimes, even if the machine is quite boxy. I found the script online and it worked on the first go. Way to go!

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni who loves Mourning Dove Soda -- Boysenberry -- December 4, 2012

Two and a Half Bouncers

I have never been a host at a club, and I have never been a bouncer. In Second Life the roles of owner, host, and bouncer, frequently overlap. I don't give much thought to club bouncers until I run afoul of them. Now, I think it a bit peculiar that the person who welcomes you into the club and begs you to spread the Linden Love (contribute tips), is also the enforcer of club rules, and a club in Second Life being private property, the rules can be as arbitrary as any one pleases. It's your world, your imagination, and your money your imagination.

Normally, none of this matters. I've been banned four times in my four and a half years in Second Life. I've been ejected and readmitted a few times. Usually the second sort of incident is more memorable. I remember it because it is thoroughly unpleasant. It is unpleasant because I have to pretend not to be angry while I type the words: "Please read my profile." into chat. The reason for most bans, is that my avie is 5'0" and she dresses like a small, cute, young woman. She is actually middle aged, but shorties stay cute longer. I'm 5'3" in real life, so I know a lot about being a shortie. Iyoba shares my knowledge. Iyoba's profile clearly states her age as forty. She is ten years my junior, in case you are curious. It is profoundly irritating when a bouncer is too careless to read what is on Iyoba's profile.

The usual advice to a One (short for One who thinks He or She Knows) who gets banned along with her avie is to go find another sim to play in. There are schools of fish in the sea. None of this makes the ban, the warning, the utlimatum etc... any the less arbitrary and ugly. There is one ban particularly that sticks in my craw. Iyoba and I have been banned from the Trenza Mall for most of this fall. In fact, we are banned from the whole Trenza archipleago (NO SLURL for obvious reasons). I'm not sure why we got banned. Iyoba's short height and pretty dresses may have been the reason. The ban happened on a Sunday morning while I took a shower in "real life."

Iyoba and I had been regulars at Trenza for some time, however, so maybe this wasn't a simple height-based ban. Iyoba and I had been hanging around with one or more avatarim from Estonia who begged money, said they were selling crowns and such for charity, and had a store at Trenza. I strongly suspected their merchandise was copybotted. There's a lot of junk out there that is copybotted. They had nothing I wanted to buy. I was curious about their store quite a bit, hung out there, and may have even taken pictures of the stuff. How do you say "guilt by association"?

I am bringing up all this past history because in the last week or so, I have had two run-ins with club bouncers. On Wednesday I had enjoyed some sandbox therapy at the LEA Arts Sandbox. I had just made a bottle from which I could drink, and I'd also made a vending machine that would sell several flavors of soda. I'm still short the textures to finish the project.

I went dancing at Energy Club after my trip to the Sandbox and checked my chat messages, most of which are pleas for me to teleport to other clubs to dance. I like Energy Club. It has an understated sandstone, sea, and mesh furniture or fancy sculpture furniture decore, and a very, pleasant, eclectic mix of house music and competent DJ's who don't hog the mike with too much talk or dumb voice-overs. There in my chat messages I noticed a strange name, Iozi was the first name I believe. I opened the message. It asked me to detatch a bright blue object. The club owner who was acting as bouncer worried that the object might give others a seizure because it was blinking.

I thought I had nothing like that attached to me, but Iyoba had gotten a bobba ball glued to her rear at UAA Seawolves a month ago, and someone in the LEA Sandbox could be playing a dirty trick on her. I said the only attachment I could be wearing besides my skirt and hair piece was a scarlet colored bottle. I wasn't wearing that. I also said my swimmer HUD was blue, but was stumped how any one could see my HUD. I went out on the porch, because at this point I really did worry about being griefed. I removed all my attachments.

Nothing changed. I turned on Highlight Transparent under my Advanced Options just in time to see a man in a lovely, emerald green, long sleeved t-shirt come out on the porch to catch me in my skivvies. That was how I saw the offending object. It was spinning around, outlined in red by highlight transparent, and it was in the man in the green t-shirt's hand or near it. I let Iozi knew. He listened. He apologized for warning the wrong person. I thanked him for being so kind and went to sit on a bench by the pool. I needed to logoff, but told Iozi I would be back a lot more, and I've tried to make the Energy Club a frequent stop in Iyoba's and my travels.

I was also trying to spend more time at Phat's (Yes, I'm not giving an SLURL! Keep reading to see why.) I wanted to go Phat's to conduct a little sociological research and work on my etiquette. Phat's has a lot of couple dancing. Couple dancing has always baffled me in Second Life. It's hard to ask. It's hard to coordinate. It's hard to get asked. Not getting asked is awkward. I wanted to learn to couple dance and maneuvre through a couple dancing atmosphere with confidence. Now, I'll have to learn that somewhere else.

Saturday night, I received a warning from the host/bouncer, named Rasa Sun Moon (Not spelled quite like that but I can't reproduce the special character she used for an s in her first name). I was told that Phat Cat's Jazz Club was a formal club, and I was dressed too casually. First, I was well within the club's dress code. You can see what I was wearing in the picture above and to the right. Second, I had worn similar outfits, one patterned with warthogs another, a winter dress, patterned with grasshoppers to the club on previous occasions and had no trouble. Third, the rules at Phat's state (and I have the not card to prove it) that acceptible attire for women is formal gowns or cocktail dresses. Well, there's no law against a maxi cocktail dress, or one can consider a maxi dress half way between a gown and a cocktail dress. Macy's Day to Night Collection includes at least one maxi dress. You'll have to use your imagination to dress it up, but ditch the hat and think of it on a real woman's body wtih a nice pair of black evening shoes and some lovely black jewelry and it will look very sharp.

An outfit called Totally Modest supplied me with the images in the composite. Here is my dress for Iyoba and some of their offerings with a similar cut. Formal dresses often look good with a tailored bodice and a-line skirt. These are bride's maid dresses but they would make smashing gowns. As for the pattern on Iyoba's dress, that's moqua squash. I love RJR Farmer's Market, and imitate them endlessly. Why not make a cotton or knit print formal dress. Calvin Klein all ready has done it. Picture that at a wedding or other dressy family event. The nice thing about a dress like this or the Totally Modest creations for that matter is that they are close enough to other clothes one has worn that you can judge whether they fit and look good. There is a very good reason Iyoba doesn't do crinolines, which is what those big, fluffy ball gowns are.

"I don't do crinolines," is what Iyoba told Rasa and then we both high-tailed it to Energy, where no one complained about the incriminating dress. Well, it looks like I'll need to find another oldies club for Sunday mornings and another place to learn the intracacies of partner dancing. Getting insulted about one's clothes is just so middle school, and yes bouncers have the power, and yes, I used to dun for my landlord, Walter last year, but and yes, a club is private property, but hey, there's always this blog for Iyoba and I to tell our story. Now, hopefully, our lives will quiet down, and we won't have to think about bouncers again for a while, and yes, we'll be going back to Energy a lot more often.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni, fashion plate -- December 2, 2012

Educational Builds -- What Matters

I am striving for a neutral title, beacuse this is not a neutral post. Second Life is home to some excellent educational builds, educational builds you wish were better, and educational builds that make you wince or shake your head. If you are the faculty member who supervised one of these builds or who ran (or runs) the program that sponsored this and you find my words harsh, and believe me they are going to be harsh, I have three additional words for youBefore you: "Fix the problem!"

Now before the rest ofy ou get ready to gaze in wonder at the blood on the tracks, let's look at an educational build done right. This is a heavy build and one that attempts to be realistic. It's Virtual Rosewood at Mouse Point. If you are unfamiliar with the story of Rosewood, you can read about it at the Virtual Rosewood web site. Suffice it to say, it has happened here and could happen again. On January 1, 1923 vigilantes and the Klu Klux Klan destroyed the mostly African American town of Rosewood Florida in a "race riot." I prefer to think of it as a massacre.

Let this horrifying though sink in. Now think: "How do you build an exhibit to teach about such an emotionally, red-hot topic?" The first part of the answer is: "Keep it low key." The Virtual Rosewood exhibit, looks like a historical replica on the outside, old farm houses, orange trees, forests, and on the inside it reminded me of a dusty, old museum or historical society. The quiet atmosphere encourages the curious to read the exhibits.

Second, and more importantly, Virtual Rosewood takes nothing for granted. It assumes you don't know anything and that you are also a bit skeptical. The displays go through pains to show how researchers learned about and documented the massacre. This "here is the evidence approach" lends credibility as it answers questions.

Third, Virtual Rosewood does not exagerate and also explains why the exhibit is still relevant today. The fact that vandals have attacked the Rosewood memorial marker in real life, rural Florida, speaks mouthfuls on why all of us still need to be vigilant for the demons driven underground and away from polite conversation. The image above is a thumbnail. Click it to get the full impact.

This is not to say, that emotions don't have a place at Virtual Rosewood. This angel, while not the most beautiful or well made sculpture, is sweetly touching. I think her ill-defined face, gunmental grey color, and the stand with no plaque and a lot of lichens growing on the stone among the hard scrabble grass, says more thanmost notecards. She sticks in my mind. My take away message from Virtual Rosewoods is "EXPLETIVE DELETED! It happened here and it's still out there."

Now let's visit the Museum of Virtual Media at the University of Washington's iSchool's sim. This is supposed to be a museum of communication technologies used to create alternate realities in the mind. That pretty much can include everything from cave paintings to computers and the internet, except this last part is under construction.

These are beautiful exhibits, but beauty is no substitute for facts or lack of the right materials. This cavemean is supposed to be an inhabitant of Lascaux or someone who made the paintings. He is not painting. His brow his low. His eyebrow ridges prominent, his face sticks out, and his chin recedes, to the extent he has a chin at all. He does not look like a member of our species! because he probably is not. The people who made the paintings at Lascaux were Cro-Magnon men and women, members in good standing of our own species, homo sapiens sapiens. Look at the picture on the web page in the link, and then compare it to the one I photographed. I think you can see the difference, though the faculty who awarded the virtual Lascaux caves a blue ribbon clearly could not.

Then there are always students who succumb to the lure of having fun with prims. I've seen groups that own islands do this. This image is supposed to be of the future in the year 3456 (give or take a few years). It's Steampunk! Steampunk is fiction! I guess fourteen hundred years from now is time enough to give an imagination free reign, but this particular part of the exhibit, really isn't about popular fiction. Also we have some idea where science is taking us. Fourteen hundred years from now, we may be living on other planets that we have terraformed or built. We probably will have an incedible knowledge of human development and the ability to modify genes of vegetable, animal, and microbial species to suit our needs and serve our purposes. Yes, this is scarey, but it's not going back to some mythical past rewritten with an alternate kind of modern technology.

Then there is the exhibit that for all its beauty and detail, just does not explain enough. Works and stories from another time and place, require added explanation, because we are not all one. Different cultures have different values and different ideas about human equality, freedom, autonomy, inner life, the value of women and poor people etc... They also have different levels of wealth and technology. The Virtual Rosewood sim which tells about a massacre in 1920's Florida is close enough to our own time and place, though just outside living memory, to not really have this problem. This exhibit of the Bhagavadgita and the nearby yoga mat does.

To put it simply, media has a target audience. Who was this work's original target and who is its target today in modern day India or other Hindu population centers. Clearly when the Bhgavadgita was written, more than a millenia ago, most people could not read the vernacular, let alone Sanskrit which was like Latin on the subcontinent. This meant the work inspired images and those who could read (Priests or the Hindu equivalent of a chazzan) chanted the text, but who was the audience? Did they read it on festival days when the ordinary working person could take time off to listen. Did when and children listen? Were the readings in the market place, town square, or the temple courtyard or in some inner sanctum? Was there a dumbed down version for the masses? I don't have any answers.

And with the advent of reasonable literacy rates and the printing press are translations into Indian languages readily available like Bibles in the United States, and when the reader chants the Sanskrit text do the listerners read along in their own copies in their own tongues? This is how one carries on a modern synaoguge service. The chant I listened to last night sounded very much like the chazzan at a Shabbos service, but in the United States this kind of performance is not particularly familiar to those who don't attend traditional Jewish, Catholic, or Greek Orthodox religious services. Uh, how do you say: "needs explanation?"

Finally, what do people in the twenty-first century (both Hindus and educated English speakers in the United States) make of a story that does not involve the common person? Where does the common person fit in to a tale of gods, demigods, kings, and generals? Again, this exhibit offers no answers.

If the students at the Museum of Virtual Media have created exhibits with issues, the faculty who built the Virtual Biodome -- Maya Island exhibit, also leave too many questions unanswered and cultural gaps yawning when they try to teach about the myth of the Hero Twins. Put succinctly, the hero twins whose names are too long and complicated to pronounce are the sons of one of the first two male human beings created. They are ball game champions. They are exteremely clever. They can perform feets of magic. They are immortal, capable of raising the dead, capable of transformations, and reincarnation etc... They are in short, demigods, and their mission when they are not playing ball is to defeat the gods of death who live in the underworld called Xibalba (pronounced Shabalba).

There is lots of death and dismemeberment in the story. Plenty of trickerly, lots of talking to animals who listen, rebirths, human sacrifices, reincarnations, resurrections etc... In the end the two top death gods, 1 Death, and 7 Death are slain or defeated. In the image above, Iyoba watches a cartoon story of the Hero Twins myth. Wikipedia filled in a bit more of the plot line.

Unfortunately, I came away with more questions than answers. First: what's the point? Death and disease are still present in the world even if ordinary Maya or their descendents no longer make offerings to the Gods of Death. Obviously, they are still hard at work and powerful. Second, what difference does it make whether one worships an arrogant tucan god with jeweled false teeth (Thank you Wikipedia), tries to appease a Lord of the Underworls, or worships the sun or the moon which is what the Hero Twins became when they ascended to Heavens? Fourth, where is the one God at the top of the pantheon, the one that is all powerful and of whom all the other gods are aspects or the one who simply rules? Why isn't he making order? Does He/She/It even care? Fifth, what kind of people give their children names and titles with numbers in them (Take a number means go wait in line and sounds very impersonal and ugly to me.) and tell tales where life and death really mean so little, and demigods can trick bigger gods, but in the end life goes on? Sixth, where do ordinary Mayans fit into this tale? Could they even play ball? Did they have time to go watch the games? Were the Hero Twins the home team for which they should root? Were there cults that rooted for the opposing team? I don't have the answers, but knowing how the Maya lived prior to European contact or at the time of contact, or how their descendents live today, could begin to answer a lot of these questions.

Worse yet, the faculty who designed the Hero Twins exhibit, created Xibalba (pronounced Shabalba. Pronouncing Maya names is hard and makes understanding even harder.) to resemble the Judeo-Christian version of Hell or Gehenna. The Wikipdia version of the Hero Twins myth, makes Xibalba look like an underground city complete with gardens, heat, cold, a ball court, statues, cooking stones etc... so the fire and brimstone is probably innacurate. In addition, Hell has become the subject of way too much parody. Iyoba's first thought when she descended to the firey realm was that it was nice and warm. Then she wanted to take a swim in the lake of fire. Unfortunately, the lake of fire was solid. It is not every day that your avie is disappointed to walk on water. Xibalba also reminded Iyoba of her favorite dance club which had fire coming up through the dance floor, so Iyoba went dancing. Talk about repurposing.

I guess it is easy to judge others' works when one has none of one's own, but of course having work like this takes prims and space. I could set up for a week at LEA Art Gallery, so maybe I will try my hand. Now if I can just find the time.... Yes, I am judgemental of how others use their prims and space since I have so little myself, but with space, primage, and the badge of being an educational "good guy" comes a kind of responsibility, and with public displays everyone is a critic.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba Bat Oni -- November 30, 2012