Pink, Green, Red, Brown, Burgundy, and Oh So Wrong

How can a One Who Thinks She Knows work hard in both the right and wrong directions at the same time? That's what she's doing. You can see in this picture, I am jumping for joy, which is totally at odds with how conflicted I feel right now. My One is actually sticking with the school project. Here I am helping her take care of a major problem on our platform. Our trees were dying. My One got a free solid heart shape sculptie and a heart shaped container sculptie so we could make these cute heart shaped planters. In case you wonder about the weird texture on the planters, this is a test texture. Building and texturing rarely conicide.

Although this time, we could build and texture simultaneously. Here is the planter wearing its gourd and coin texture. My One fell in love with dipper gourds and had to include one. I think we may be getting some gourds on a trellis soon. What is a platform without plants, as long as they have either soil or planters full of soil to keep them alive. Plants in Second Life might be able to live without soil, but that would violate ECOLGICAL INTEGRITY and realism.

My One also made sure we had working HUD and notecard givers. Our HUD uses the bwb (Bob's Web Browser) script and a notecard that a user can configure for any educational or entertaining sites he choooses. By wearing the HUD he or she will have access on most sims as long as users can run scripts. In the unlabled barrel are note cards with educational links. Ludo Merritt's notecard script offers a menu of notecards. It would be nice to have a suggestion box where users could deposit links. It would also be nice to have some textures. Yes, the texture on the HUD dispenser says Mourning Dove Date Nut Bread Soda. The soda is quite good, and the texture is good for testing labels. As I said above, texturing and building usually don't occur together.

With dresses this is especially true. My One gets textures ready and has a backlog, and we build when she needs Sandbox Therapy. Those are her words for it. Here I am wearing a dress with a pattern of tropolaeum on it. Tropolaeum are supposed to be impatients but they clearly DON'T look anything like what Ones Who Think They Know find in their run-of-the-mill garden nurseries. My One has asked me not to reveal where she obtained the image. A One deserves to keep her secrets.

And here I am in another fairly new creation, the one shoulder safflower dress. And no this is not the platform. We actually went bushwhacking, and my One took this picture on OC Onestop. We have more to say about this sim, and I'm saving it for another post.

And in this picture, I was relaxing after a long trip through the sewers. The bench is on Paris Couture in case you are curious. Now what is a picture from Paris Couture doing here? Well, just as it appears that I have made a wrong turn in this blog, my One made a VERY WRONG TURN in her thinking. She said. "Iyoba, after we get everything on the Platform textured, we are going to be able to advertise our Free Academy. I wish I knew who would be interested, but I know where they sell a lot of advertising that young avies and their parents and friends can see...." I thought: "Oh no!" My One replied: "Right now we can't even talk in the Never B Solo group, but I can fix that, and then we'll get the advertising going..."

I hope you can see what is wrong with this picture, and I don't mean the scuzzy taxi on OC Onestop. First, the daugher of a potential adoptee said ugly things to me when she and her mother visited Stinky Stinky, our home. Second, our two other trials (We've had three over a year)never resulted in meeting the potential adoptee. One completely no-showed (He was later banned from the agency), and the other ended the trial in less than twenty-four hours with meeting me. Second Never B Solo creates a very hostile environment for potential parents. We are charged more than twice what they charge children. The agency is full of kiddie furniture, and an obnoxious, public address system constantly announces that we should wear appropriate clothing and not curse or swear. Excuse me!

Of course, I couldn't stop my One. We sat together on the grass on Jacks SDState and filled out the Parent Application for Never B Solo. Then it was off to Marriott Library 2 for a lot of images from which to get a selfie for my profile picture, and yes Obnoxious Public Address System, I was dressed very appropriately.

This is probably the selfie we are going to use for the profile picture. Do I have to tell you how dirty I feel. My One is such a feckless hypocrite it isn't even funny. She's the one who got Shaka to stop paying her tuition/dues for Richmond Elementary School because she said that you shouldn't have to pay to belong to a group. Well what is the difference from paying to belong to a group and paying to speak in one. It's the same idea. My One says this is to promote a free school. That's a higher purpose than just chatting. I say we're putting money in the wrong people's pockets and subjecting ourselves to ten kinds of ugly, but my One, she doesn't know where else to advertise. Right now I hope our beautiful platform ends up back in inventory soon. Never let a One Who Thinks She Knows follow through on ideas.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- June 29, 2014

Wish You Were Here in the Sewers

No, this does not look like progress, but behind the scenes, my One Who Thinks She Knows is actually working on note cards for the EFILAS/Free Academy HUD that lets avatarim read/study alone or in small groups whenver and wherever they please, including on our wonderful Study Platform. And yes, the platform also made a lovely atelier for this one shoulder dress.

Actually, I have my altie, Shaka, to thank for getting my One to bushwhack again. In her travels she discovered or rather rediscovered two art galleries on the Paris 1900 Archipelago. My One also wants me to go back to Arab World. If you forget about Jeddah (No link and you know why!) Arab World is a tutorial/library sim with loads of note cards, all different (not placeholders. I can tell that much.) and all in Arabic. Foreign language learning any one? I can see my One's point as long as she warns about Jeddah.

Actually Shaka had retraced my own footsteps on Paris 1900. I remembered some kind of art museum near the Moulin Rouge. Sure enough I found it. It was definitely worth a second look, but first I wanted to take a long walk to Paris Couture where Shaka had seen amazing artworks by India Vaher.

Ms. Vaher's exhibit is long gone, but there was another in it's place. I made it to La Museé de Metro eventually and saw the new exhibit and added it to the Explore SL spread sheet, but not before I wandered laggingly around the square down by the Moulin Rouge on Paris 1900.

Then I saw the entrance to a subway. I remembered the subways on Muenchen and Nippori and was sure this subway would be a dead end. It wasn't. It was also surprisingly low lag.

I had found a short cut, one that dead ended at Les Catacombes, where water led to a tunnel, and you could rez a boat for a tour. Why not! Shaka had taken a horse and buggy from Le Tour Eiffel all the way to Paris Couture. The boat would be the lazy avie's way to travel. I stretched out on the deck and relaxed. The photos of sewers were an educational bonus. I told my One that we might have found another place to bushwhack.

Then my boat ground to a halt. When I stood I was up on a bridge, in a land of arches, and pictures. I could walk along wide sidewalks. I could look at the posters. The sim radio played songs that my One remembered her own mother signing, songs that were hits before my One's mother was born. That means before 1934. Memory for music can be a wonderful thing. These songs are now outside most people's living memory but not my One's. She sang along while I looked at the walls, posters, scattered bones.

Les Catacombes de Paris are a lot older than the early 20th Century music skipping along on the sound track behind us. They date from Roman times or maybe before. Paris is a city many times more ancient than White Plains or New York City, which are now between three and four hundred years old. Paris is probably ten times as old. So it is no surprise there are artificial caves full of bones under the earth, and when the tombs became full, cemetary staff or families of the deceased put the bones of previous occupants in a charnel house or ossuary and often used them for decoration like this cross or made walls out of them.

If you don't like catacombs there are also sewers. My One liked that those building the exhibit did not leave out the Christian history. Early Christians prayed in the catacombs of Rome, and may have done so in Paris. Christians no doubt buried their dead in the Parisian Catacombs as well. There are Biblical scenes on the wall. There are pictures of angels and skeletons, but no vampires! The music is old but not creepy. It reminds one that life leaks in from above, and how far away both memory and the surface are when you are deep underground or concentrating on the present. It's hard to be spooky. Most traditional houses of horror fail. It's fine that they fail, but Les Catacombes succeeds.

Les Catacombes also succeeds without mesh! I realized it was a low-mesh or no-mesh exhibit when I boarded the boat which would look different if the creators had been mesh crazy. I noticed that nearly all of the skeletons were sculpties and that the exhibit often used simple photographic textures to get its point across. They were the right kind of photos and artwork. They did the job. You don't always have to use mesh. I hardly noticed that Les Catacombes dates from 2011. In Second Life terms that is ancient, but somehow these caves have aged well. The sim is stable. All I can say is "Wish you were here." And even my One is in good spirits for a change.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- June 25, 2014

An Inspired Ladder

We have not been bushwhacking at all because we have been building. We have been building because my One Who Thinks She Knows is perpetually out of sorts and it makes her feel better, and Shaka... don't I always blame the poor altie, but seriously she needs a lot of stuff. A young avie is far more needy than a mature one, and one of the things she needs is some kind of school, one where she can study what she needs and wants, and one that doesn't freeze her connection with mesh-induced lag, and one that doesn't charge 250L a month. Sorry, this is too much for one or two classes a week in a laggy building and membership in a group. Usually one drags avatarim kicking and screaming to join groups and nobody even thinks of charging.

Of course we don't entirely give up travel when we build. My One says she needs inspiration and Arab sims are where she goes to feel good. Now before you accuse my One of being "politically incorrect" there really is such thing as Arab architecture in Second Life. It is big, graceful, includes a lot of public space, treasures water, and contains fire. Sorry if those sound like national characteristics. Sometimes there really is such a thing.

A fountain like this in a landscape of browns and beige with graceful lines and a lack of stuff for sale is unusual even on Arab sims, but there it was gurgling away on Arabian Gulf. My One jokes that if you don't like Zyngo and games of chance, there is always photography on a sim like this.

There is also walking and sitting. One of the pleasures of Arabian Gulf is that the plants don't just come out of a landscape box and get stuck in as a decoration. Someone really cared about this garden, and you can even sit on the walls. And best of all, there's no menu.

And this of course is my One's favorite image of Arabian Gulf. This big pavillion isn't a square. It's not a box. It's not even a circle. It's an octagon with a square outside it and a circle inside it. My One loved geometry in high school and it still influences her when she builds. This kind of geometric work along with curves and radial designs is one reason she loves Arab sims and I like them too...

The reason I don't love Arab sims with my One's unbridled enthusiasm is I am an avie, and an avie and a One see the world differently because we play different roles. My One said this kind of mosaic and style of build is very traditional. Most Arab sims are more modern than Arab World.

And neither Arabian Gulf nor Arab World have much fire. That is why there are no pictures of it. When there is fire on most Arab sims, it is sturdily walled in, often in a metal container or on Iraq extinguished entirely. Interestingly, the water on Arabian Gulf particularly is not for swimming. My Swimmer HUD won't work because the land does not have scripts enabled.

And this wonderful couch which is in light blue, a color one commonly does not see on Arab sims (You just don't. You also don't see much black furniture unless the owner used a prefab. Most Arab furniture is red, brown, pink, or rust.) The turquoise rug is also a rarity. My One thought it was a shame that the rug covered up the wonderful mosaic underneath.

And here is the mosaic in its entirety. Just look down. Is that not ornate and goregous! Yes, I can get excited about patterns in stone, and my One would like to paint out that a mosaic floor or path is far more friendly to an avie's feet than the hot asphalt of streets or parking lots. By the way, Arab World is an orientation sim with lots of note card givers, but this couch needs no instructions. The place invites walking and sitting. Even I can see that.

My One thinks that Arab World is more traditional in architecture because it is an orientation sim and the teaching role kind of makes for tents, old school mosaics, scrolls etc... The sim wants to say Second Life is friendly to Arabs.

Unfortunately, Arab World fails totally and miserably when it comes to being friendly. While Arab World is alright, the minute a newbie crosses the bridge he or she is in Jeddah and he or she sees these. The little, hot pink cubes look harmless enough until you walk past them. Then they multiply and follow you, overtake you, and pile on top of you. Though the sim is a sandbox, you can't build anything because the little pink boxes, quite literally hundreds of them, choke everything.

Of course my One Who Thinks She Knows said that I could outrun the cubes if I threw in a few leaps for good measure. I nearly got choked by the cubes a few times. Sitting down and then standing up, got them off me. And then it was run, run, run again! There is a reason Jeddah does not have a link, and I am down on Arab sims. If you want a sandbox, clean it up!

Somehow of course I made it safely across Jeddah (No link for you!) to Jeddah City and found this couch to relax on in a pocket park. Arabs are hospitable when they remember to take care of their land. As I relaxed, I thought about the school planned for Shaka. Actually, it is all our school. Second Life needs a school without tuition. Now if only my One Who Thinks She Knows would follow through.

Of course she says, she has just started the project. The Arab sims we have been visiting of course inspired this three story platform. Note the shape. It's not square. It's not a box. Does this look at all familiar? Look at the architecture on Arabian Gulf and then look back at this platform.

Now think of those Arab moasics. Ours include insects and an asymetrical design, but you can still see this is not parking lot! No avie will feel dwarfed by machines that belch exhaust fumes, have a huge carbon footprint, and roar all over your platform.

And likely no avie will ever come to this platform at all except Shaka and me. It is great to be an inspired One. It is great to make a platform, but chances are very good if I know my One that this platform will go the way of the Little Hotel in the Sky, right back to inventory. We need to put out notecard and link givers, more and better furnituyre, a couple of PowerPoint machines, and oh yes...we have to advertise the place. That is too much work for a One whose interests change weekly and who has a "real life." I'm just a realist about all this. I'm not sure you can build a ladder out of our big leaky bucket or out of our very deep hole.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- June 22, 2014

What Drops in Our Bucket

My One Who Thinks She Knows calls a list of unknown sims to explore a bucket list, and it is now secret. We've been out to fill my bucket of places I visit for leisure with new, valid landmarks. I've given up counting the sims that have disappeared or been closed to us. Hanako Land is gone. Sense is closed, and so too is the Knot House on Teaching 7. Colorado Tech locked its sim down a while ago. Jordan First was locked down before we could consider renting any of it. My One gets very sentimental at times, and she also misses LeQaa Al3rb.

Usually, it's Shaka with the empty bucket, but she is both easier to work with and less cooperative. She doesn't always want to go exploring. I am eager to explore, but as an older avie am jaded and worn out from bushwhacking. Still my One went looking for Arab sims. These are often hospitable and open to the public. She also loves the big, builds, where we can roll around like two marbles in the bottom of a bathtub.

KSA Falla looked promising. "KSA" means island in transliterated Arabic. I don't know what "Falla" means. The sim looked well built from the map and it did not disappoint. The architecture is way off human scale. It is also a symphony in copper and granite. You can see some of the features including these huge stairs!

Like most Arab sims, KSA Falla features a lot of gaming, Zyngo, Parchese, Poker, Risk. There is also what looks like a dance floor. The weird thing about my One is that she has forgotten how to play parchese, and it is a group game. My One and I just like to walk around. There are stairs to climb, beaches to comb, piers, docks, bridges. Despite the big architecture, KSA Falla like many Arab sims is a pedestrian paradise, and sometimes taking me for a walk is all my One Who Thinks She Knows is good for.

My One does notice the absence of plants on many Arab sims. Some are outright deserts. Most are large stone builds with the ground paved, but not for cars. Wifi and Arab Land are exceptions to this rule. Arab Land has a mesa with trees and gardens for sitting. Wifi is a city street with hot pavement and vehicles.

Of course my One Who Thinks She Knows had to lick her wounds (Her words for it!) as she prepared to send me to fill our bucket. She put Q8 Royal Q8 on the list. Last fall, the powers that be banned us when we didn't immediately speak when spoken too. No one ever gets banned for a good reason. My One was thoroughly in love with the architecture too. We looked it up on the map, hit teleport, and expected nothing to happen. When I arrived on Q8 Royal Q8 I shouted out: "There is justice!" but I'll tell you that was pro forma.

Maybe you can't shout "There is justice!" more than a few times in your life. Maybe my One and I remember the sim as better than it is. We weren't old timers there who got thrown out and then received numerous invitations that rubbed salt in our wound. Q8 Royal Q8 forgot about us. We remembered them only faintly, and the place felt cold and austere when we got there again.

Maybe after the copper and cream of KSA Falla and the browns of the last build on LeQaa Al3rb, we had a point of comparison. Maybe just one more empty sim is one more empty sim. Yes, the rocks are an illusion but the view from the pier on Q8 Royal Q8 is pretty.

There was also a dance club on the second level above the fake disco with bright lights. The elevator to the club was tricky, but I enjoy a challenge. The walls are unusual because I think the photos on them come from "real life." Arab pop music is always worth a listen. And this time...we did not get banned.

Of course my One Who Thinks She Knows always reads the new sim list on Grid Survey and in the middle of the week she noticed a sim called. 4 U. "Wow!" she told me. "I think I know what we've found." My One remembered the 4 U Mall a short walk from Stinky Stinky fromw when it was still in Hartley. "Well maybe they tried again and now they have a whole island. Let's go!" I love seeing my One enthusiastic, but of course, 4 U looked nothing like the mall my One and I remembered.

First it was all modern, weathered stone, and white sand. And in the center of the island was a city with empty stores, and lots of mesh. It was a wonder the place did not lag. You can see examples of the style of the place in the photos. If 4 U was a mall, it was one without merchants or merchandise, which suited me just fine. I don't really like shopping.

I do like finding a place to sit. This chair had no menu. The bench above had one. Seats with menues are the new standard, but sometimes I don't want to have to decide how to sit. I just want to sit down. By the way the parchese games and other games (No Zyngo!) in the town square as well as the large and very public nature of the build told us that 4 U was Arab and not Korean. The old mall was still long gone.

Though beautifully laid out, 4 U is a prefab build. My One and I both notice things like that because we have a building project ahead of us. Shaka is stuck paying 250L just to be in a group. She can't get to classes due to both scheduling and lag at her school, and the school has no interest in providing her with eighth grade in the fall. My One says Shaka has to stop paying something for nothing. Groups are free for adult avatarim. That said, I think we are going to build a school for Shaka. That means we start another group.

Meanwhile, I checked my chat announcements, and for the third or fourth time this week, there was an announcement for Iraq and Iraq Woods. Then last night Iraq opened. We went. Here was the first thing we saw. Yes, this does look like downtown in some Arab speaking city.

To say my One loved the place, does not say how much. The cobblestone passages between the buildings are narrow, and there is a loving, appropriately scaled attention to detail. See for yourself. My One even had me join the sim's group. She said the tag would look great in clubs filled with dumb Americans. My One is American but not dumb, though there are times when she has more nerve than brains.

Still Iraq is a gala production, and my One thinks that maybe "the show must go on," or perhaps the Ones who build this place, need it, the way we need the drops in our bucket so my One and I can be refreshed. My One always tells stories. She says things in "real life" Iraq are NOT GOOD right now. The country is descending into civil war, and when there is a war, the civilians always lose.

My One reminded me of Zizo. I am still a member of his group, though she does not think he has been in world for months. Zizo was from Egypt that sprung from kleptocracy to military dictatorship in the space of about a year. My One worried that Zizo's One was in the protests and possibly hurt. She now thinks he is an expat safe in England, except he's not really safe. My One also says she knew an Lebanese expat in graduate school. The young woman tortured herself with survivor guilt and feared for her loved ones back in Beiruit. My One can still see the haunted look in the young woman's eyes. Lebanon in the mid 1980's had its own civil war. Civil wars do not seem particularly civil if you ask me, but no one asks. My One still wonders about the Ones behind Second Life's Iraq. She is probably going to keep wondering forever, because you can not ask "How's your war going?" when you are safe and sound in your portion of the "real world." Try it some time, or better yet, don't.

Iyoba BatOni with lots of help from the One Who Thinks She Knows -- June 13, 2014

Finding Krystali Rabeni but Needing More

This story begins with Shaka, even though she has not been much inworld this week. She did sort of get the customized bike she always wanted. It fits but it needs textures. She rode it all over LEA 5 which was great fun since she could jump or knock down sculptures.

Of course she was riding her fine wheels on LEA5 and NOT the GIANO Archipelago for good reason. Last week on May 30, Shaka severed her ties with GIANO and St. Joseph's Orphanage. She is not banned from the archipelago's public streets, but she is not sure she is welcome as a visitor on a bike. After all the cars there belong to the roads.

Where Shaka really wanted to ride her bike was at Cyber Orthodox Ballyhoo on LEA6 but the sim only had green grass and while it was fun for a while, Shaka decided she'd rather go swimming. She did notice the sim was now called A Maze in Grace by an artist named Krystali Rabeni.

I don't have to tell you that for Shaka's Caseworker and my One Who Thinks She Knows, and for me Krystali Rabeni is an icon, a household name, a God. And she was going to have a whole sim to design! I coldn't wait. You can see some of her work at the top of the paragraph.

And if this arch looks familiar, it is because it once stood as part of a three quarter finished build on the now defunct sim LeQaa Al3rb. "Wow!" was all my One Who Thinks She Knows could cry.

Actually A Maze in Grace is in some ways a very sad sim. Krystali Rabeni does not know that when the Utopia Portugal Archipelago was dying, the remaining landlord flooded the abandoned parcels by lowering the land. I don't mind the shallow water on Slow, but lowered water with hummocks of land, reminded me of sloshing through Utopia Portugal XVIII, after we had moved Stinky Stinky for the first of several times.

And Krystali may be aware of the element of tragedy that needs a bit of comic relief. Some avatarim may love to get their feet wet. Others enjoy swimming, but I think a lot of them would rather keep dry. And the grass is so soft and inviting too... Some rules are made to be broken.

Certainly Krystali is good to her bots. These two appear to be enjoying themselves just dipping their toes in the water and sitting...on the grass. I just prefer to run through the wet if you ask me. It's great for walking especially with the swans and gold finches. It is not cycling territory. Sorry, Shaka. We'll find you a spot.

These water lilies won't be worth jumping over, and will hardly make a satisfying bump when you ride over them on oversize tires. They stand out because there are not very many like them in Second Life. One rarely finds wetlands with cat tails. One almost never finds rich clumps of grass or water lilies.

And Shaka, this sculpture is probably phantom, or there is a good chance you could crush the Tower of Hanoi or Inuit Memorial. I'm not sure what it is, but it was defintely worth a snapshot.

And if you love plants, but not the stiff roses or the funerary flowers or junk out of a prefab box that passes for them (Yes, my One knows her plants!), A Maze in Grace is your kind of place. Although the picture does not show it very well, the arch is all covered in ivy.

And in the center of A Maze in Grace is the labyrinth. I just had to walk it. My One said it was easy. She adores laybrinths in real life and they all pretty much follow the same path. You just stay on the path and you reach the prize at the center, often a cross because these things are in front of churches. Click the image for a full size One's eye view.

And this is just a weird camera angle. The labyrinth walls are so low, you can step right over them and onto the forbidden grass if you want. When my One walks a labyrinth in real life, she often sings. She suggested we turn on the music, but the sim music was this atmospheric stuff. My One said it was ALL WRONG for a laybrinth song. She had her song.

You May Be Right Friday night I crashed your party Saturday I said I'm sorry Sunday came and trashed me out again I was only having fun Wasn't hurting anyone And we all enjoyed the weekend for a change I've been stranded in the combat zone I walked through Bedford Stuy alone Even rode my motorcycle in the rain And you told me not to drive But I made it home alive So you said that only proves that I'm insane You may be right I may be crazy But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for Turn out the light Don't try to save me You may be wrong for all I know But you may be right etc.... Billy Joel

Of course before we visited A Maze in Grace yesterday, my One saw there was someone there. "Could it be?" she wondered aloud. That is how we met Krystali Rabeni. Let's just say my One is still in awe. We have more of her work to visit. We even said we were sorry about her getting stiffed by the owners of LeQaa Al3rb. It feels wonderful to be writing this whole blog entry because we never thought we'd see any of Ms. Rabeni's work on any sim again. And to make the whole meeting even more amazing, Krystali Rabeni admired my new dress. My One checked inventory and made sure it was full perm and gave her a copy. We had just been lucky enough to use materials to which we had transfer rights. I am the queen of demos so this is fantastic luck!

Unfortunately, meeting one of our Second Life idols, does not clear up a whole host of problems that Shaka and I both have. My problems become Shaka's because they take time away from her. My One also has another set of problems she does not want to discuss on this blog, but I'll let all of you know my troubles. Some of my favorite sims are vanishing. Sense, an Axxo Erin creation is off limits. Jordan First is now a homestead for rent. Wifi is not what it used to be. We've been banned from Berkman for no good reason for over a year. My list of places to go to cool off, is shrinking, so my One pulled together a bucket list for me, and we're off to explore. You can see how this cuts into Shaka's time, and she has a bike to texture. Poor Shaka. Poor One, and even meeting Krystali Rabeni can not help any of us.

Iyoba BatOni with help from the One Who Thinks She Knows -- June 6, 2014

One Step Ahead of Vanished Places

There are many ways for an attraction or even a whole sim to vanish. The vanishing nearly always takes me by surprise. Some useless sims or nearly useless ones circle the proverbial drain for years like UAA Seawolves, and some that are reasonably well-tenanted vanish by closing off to the public as in Teaching 7. Teaching 3 circles the drain with the speed of a kabuki dance. This is the office at the University of West Florida's parcel. It is an empty room with a nice, old school, bright red couch and nothing more to recommend it. The PowerPoint at the Computer Science building no longer works. The climate change exhibit and link libraries that we both remember are long gone. Further along the coast, St. Edwards University and their ill-maintained link library has also decamped, though Plato's Cave turned up again on Teaching 2.

Meanwhile, I did an About Land on the rough ground where St. Edward's University once stood and found.... nearly two hundred objects in use. "There's a build in the sky," My One Who Thinks She Knows said. I had a feeling I knew what that meant. I was all ready wearing my easy-lift anklet, which I use in lieu of a flight feather, so off I went. My One expanded my visibility, and it was not long before we found this rather solid but half finished building. There is a small chance it could be an academic office or even a gym. It does have a pool on the roof, but sadly, no one has put any water in the pool. The builder has a blank profile, no connection to St. Edward's apparent, and he belongs mainly to Spanish speaking groups. As they say, "Draw your own conclusion."

My One Who Thinks She Knows sighed at all of this. She is right now two disgusted to mention the new athletic building to the two caretakers of the old St. Edward's parcel. She says it is a tough call. It is possible that either the care takers, someone at NMC, or St. Edwards called in a Spanish speaking hired gun to build an academic building with a pool on the roof, and they don't want an unfinished structure on the ground, but the empty shopping bags left in front of the quad tell a different story. In addition, my One thinks that Media Monsoo and Stella Costello, are slow as molasses in winter when it comes to evicting squatters. She suspects there are squatters still alive and well 1900 meters over Teaching 16.

Meanwhile, some joy greeted us on Teaching 2. The University of New Mexico had taken down its beeautiful but useless adobe structure and gotten rid of the red hot air balloon. In its place there was an exhibit on cacti and desert ecology, complete with a mahjong game and this. I walked around three walls to find an entrance and there it was.

We entered a simple square structure featuring an exhibit about a run of Conan comics printed in Mexico (probably in Spanish) back in the late 1950's/early 1960's. Unlike the typical Conan Series La Reina de Costa Negra featured the Pirate Queen of the Black Coast as the heroine, and the poor barbarian in a supporting role. The comics were lost until zealous collectors unearthed them. My One is not a fan of comics, but she could see this exhibit was content-rich. On to the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet it went.

Unfortunately, it did not get to stay on the Spread Sheet long. In fact, La Reina probably holds the record for the shortest stay on that sheet, because after a brutal cache cleaning in the wee hours of this morning, I took a walk on Teaching 2 and found a huge plywood structure and an uncommunicative rabbit named Harvey who was a hired builder for the University of New Mexico. La Reina was gone and the University was rebuilding. In a way that was good. Parcels where builders tear down and rebuild are parcels about which somebody cares most of the time. Parcels that receive care also receive rent, and in Second Life if you can't pay your rent.... By now you should know the rest.

By contrast, the Dancing Molecules on Teaching (This Teaching sim does not have a number. It was probably the original of sixteen of them) are an example of a half built, permanently stalled exhibit. The molecules still wear their labels proudly and dance. My One thinks the assortment of them is growing. She just wishes someone would connect their house to the ground and texture it, but then again my One loves to make textures. That's just my One. Still, someone bothered to texture and measure the molecules. Free house textures are available all over the metaverse. How about it? I do hope someone still pays the rent for this parcel.

Then this weekend a two-part incident occured that inspired all of this blog entry. On Friday, we regained entry to LeQaa Al3rb (This link is a spoiler!). "Justice is here!" I cried, and that as you know is a wonderful thing to exclaim. Try it some time. We set about taking pictures. The sim, as you can see had a new build. It was not quite finished. There was not enough furniture. There were few plants or statues, but there was lovely, monumental, Arab architecture, and everything this time was a symphony in browns. Even the lights on the dance floor were chocolate and amber.

And the new builder, the sim's fourth or fifth, paid wonderful attention to shape as well as color. If you look carefully at the spherical sculpture, it is not only a wonderful shade of grey-brown but also cracked and crazed. Behind it is a stately planter of cocoanut palms that somehow have more gravitas than those usually sprinkled over Second Life's sands like low grade, black pepper on fried eggs.

And this gate is an example of stark and shapeley beauty. My One just had to photograph it. My One loves gates, and that is no exageration. I remember the gates we built for the erstwhile Honey Hut, now called There is No Adult in the Room. Those were the days when we had prims to spare, and Saturday was the day we hoped that we would get back to LeQaa Al3rb to take more photos. I don't have to tell you that on May 31, 2014, my One Who Think's She Know's fifty second birthday, LeQaa Al3rb vanished.

And I am not the only avie with a vanished place problem. Shaka wanted to return to Cotton Candy Kisses and Carousel Dreams in Yora and found blank ground and ban lines. Yes, you are looking at a nonexistent ride called the Thunderbolt. Cotton Candy Kisses and Carousel Dreams was home of the most stomach wrenching rides, enough to give my One vicarious motion sickness and to make my altie forget she is a responsible, rising eighth grader who needs to take time to do her studies. Oh my poor needie altie!

And no, this time around, I don't feel all that sorry for my One Who Thinks She Knows. She puts up with the motion sickness. Shaka's land lady, Maria, treated her like dirt. It all evens out, but losing a sim where she can go and have fun is worse for Shaka than it is for me, and for the One, well she gets to go everywhere. And it is no comfort to remember that for the owners of Cotten Candy Kisses, the same rule applies as it does for any one else who puts money into Second Life: If you can't pay your rent, you're gone.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- June 1, 2014

Eileen and Iyoba's Do It Better 2013 Roster
Name of Place	Why it Qualifies
The State Fair at Morrill	It has great rides; fun games; a huge, educational, archipelago nearby and also the Avatar Fitness Club near by with hard, house music and a crowd.
Hanako Land	Interesting architecture, amusement park rides that are kinetic sculpture, a four story castle, and a house of horrors that is sure to have your nightmare waiting for you. This sim vanished May of 2014.
Shinrei Ueno Hospital	This is a unique build with shadows, darkness, urban exploration, and ghosts. It also is an abandoned mental hospital with all the assocations this brings.
Fiteiro Cultural	Two clubs, art exhibits, innovative builds and architecture, sculpture, an old Dutch village and more!
Towson Innovation Lab	Art that comes alive and is always updated plus a well run, public, sandbox.
Soho New York	Home of the Cyclone and gateway to a variety of museums and galleries, temperate nature walks, the largest train on estate land, and the second longest ski run in Second Life. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Portugal Porto	Enter the Old City to see a Southern European fishing port as old as the Roman Empire. Visit four clubs. Shop in the stores, or just go for a walk. Unlike most of Second Life, this sim is populated but almost never crowded enough to crash or lag.
Virtual Rosewood	It can happen here and it did. A monument to and museum about the Rosewood Massacre that happened in January 1923 in Florida.
Electrobit City	Gaming meets kinetic, flat work and hard edged art for an immersive and exciting experience that never grows stale.