A Second Life

This area belongs to Iyoba, my favorite avie from Second Life and me. We share our thoughts here and discuss our adventures in the metaverse. To return to the main blog page, just click here.

Sad, Vulnerable, and Scaird Again

I ought to give you one more photo shoot before the end of the month. Iyoba and I have Zwickies now in addition to our Petable Turtles. We have our house and garden on Eddesign Island rent free thanks to Walter, and probably Edde who is the coowner. This sounds great, but you know that land can turn dark and ugly. Land dealings are the source of most bellyaching in Second Life, and right now Iyoba and I are both sick with disgust.

First, Walter damaged his reputation last winter due to the crash in November and his credit card SNAFU two months later. I fielded complaints as his empire collapsed. I ended up with free land for my brave service, but that was January. Now it's nearly June. Walter was no longer a "good landlord" to a lot of folks. He could no longer attract good tenants. We've had about one eviction a month, and now I'm down to two tenants over whom I watch. That's not much of a job for a landlord's manager, which means Iyoba is under employed. One tenant pays regularly. The second tenant is a land baroness who has put up ban lines that hem me in on three sides, asked me not to dun her for unpaid rent, and encourached. I sent back the encroaching prims. The ban lines are her perogative. She is good friends with the island's co-owner. I call her Quarrelsome Thing. She is a day late on rent on one of her parcels. I fear she is over extended. I asked her to pay what she owes. I'm sure she won't be happy when she logs in and finds that instant message.

Then today I logged in and discovered my formerly nice, green land was all sand. The island was all sand. I suspect Edde, who is Quarrelsome Thing's friend, changed the texture. He knows I take pride in my garden and have a green house at ground level and a 2048 which means I can't spend a lot of primage on ground cover. As my mother said, when someone urinates on you, it is not warm rain. I no longer really have work to do for Walter. I am living rent free due to his largesse. I'm sure Quarrelsome Thing does not want me as a neighbor. I'm not sure where Edde stands.

It's in Iyoba's and my economic interest to stay put because we are not paying rent, but Second Life is lawless. I'm depending on Edde's better nature and Walter's sense of business propriety to give Iyoba and me reasonable notice if they'd like me to move. Waking up and finding all Iyoba's stuff in a ball is probably the more likely outcome. I'd like to talk to both Walter and Edde and simply know where I stand. Walter of course is never online when I am. I can say the same for Edde.

I've been sending Walter a lot of whiney instant messages about the sand issue, but realized in the end that I'd have to suck it up. I put a few more plants in inventory, enlarged some top soil and moved some plants around. I also put a top soil floor in the temperate house. No one is going to push me out by playing with the land textures. I just know Iyoba's time on EDDEsign Island is limited, and that she is going to have to go somewhere next. The only question is where. We are probably going to end up with a 4096 because 2048's are fairly rare things. I'm thinking of taking a few spare prims and making a garden path or some dry adapted vegetation because the center of my property looks pretty barren. It would be a good place for Zwicky fights, but I'll be suprized if Iyoba, the Zwickies, and the turtles will still be living there at the end of the summer.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- May 27, 2011

The Places We've Been

Iyoba and I get around a lot when we go bushwhacking or when we decide it's time to blow off steam. I took these pictures back in April but I haven't had time to post them until now. This is a sad picture. Iyoba and I found the table in a replica of a town on the University of Texas Pan American sim. We entered the police station and the lockup and there was poor Erendina. Too bad she was only made of prims. Iyoba's heart broke. She promised to visit the poor prisoner regularly. Iyoba has a fair amount of experience in lockups. I told Iyoba that Erendina was made only of prims. Iyoba told me about how we both missed Kitty Friend and SBE Kitty who is imprisoned in a secret apartment. I don't have to tell you that Iyoba won the argument.

When we visited University of Texas Pan American, we also stopped by the pharmacy in the hospital. This picture does not show the spilled pills on the counter. I guess this is part of a role play or the pills are there for a conversation piece. Anyway, Iyoba got to be in charge of the pharmacy for a bit. She says she wished she had a stool. Height discrimination in Second Life runs rampant and is often where you least expect it. Here is poor Iyoba peeking out over the counter.

Iyoba got to go dancing in late April. I forget where this was. Brazilian shopping malls with dance floors at one end of the complex spring up like toadstools after a rain and disappear just as quickly. This one was all done up for an easter celebration, but it also had a whole bunch of children's amusements. Iyoba can be a kid at heart and she vaulted over the tires. This is an animation. Still it is nice to see an avie have a good time. I found Iyoba's dress by accident. It is easy to forget what you have in inventory. I was kind of glad to put Iyoba in a mangosteen dress. It was a cold day in "real life" and sometimes you need longsleeves even in the spring.

Iyoba and I found the island and the sandbox quite by accident. That happens sometimes. We were bushwhacking for the Collection of Libraries, Museums, and Educational sites, that I keep for CVL. I noticed a sim called WISE at CAU. I thought of Cornell Alumni University. CAU in Second Life stands for Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college. The sim features a huge African American history museum, a museum of historically black colleges and universities, and a creepy replica of a slave ship moored at an African vlllage. Iyoba toured the slave ship and then came out into the sandbox. I made her this dress.

After roaming such places as Texas Antiquitities where Iyoba felt frightened and where I felt angry that she was basically invisible, it was a wonderful sensation for both of us to see the history of those who share her color and ethnicity in real life so alive and so real. Iyoba may or may not be smiling in the picture, but yes, she appears very happy.

Eileen H. Kramer with help from Iyoba BatOni -- May 11, 2011