the day after

Holidays on the gird can be entertaining. Aside from the rampant redecoration of various locations this Yule tide has been pretty entertaining. Events and parties with a holiday theme and impromptu events which are just as entertaining have kept us all busy it seems. The downside (for those who sped more time on the grid than is good for them) is when the bulk of your SL mates have RL family gatherings to attend. Talk about a ghost town. Things were super quiet last night. I spent several hours away from the key board myself while cooking and serving a turkey dinner. The ‘ol avatar hung out at Deadly Dreams wearing a set of black silks and holding a tray of coffee and tea. Did I mention the lighted antlers or the honking Rudolf nose? I hope someone took a snapshot because I forgot.

What do you get for people in SL? I mean it is a season of gift giving (although I tend to buy gifts for people all the time) but still in a world where you can have all that you want at fairly little cost, what do you get for people? I mean it isn’t like RL where I can stalk my g/f through the stores and see which items she fingers the most. My best friends on the grid roam pretty wide following them would be a fulltime hobby.

Hung out a bit here and there yesterday, said a hello to most of my pals. Did zero work although the Viking long house is almost done and I will post pics here when I put it up in my store. I’m thinking of doing 3 or 4 variations of the basic house, packing them up together and selling them that way. I mean it is a pretty simple build. I did not take a crack at creating a skirt so I will try that sometime in the next few days.

My friend Ryyley changed her look and she came by to show me we got to talking a bit. I sort of got her hooked on Gor and to be fair the Gor SIMS do offer some of the best, most immersive RP on the grid. Sidenote: I am thinking of offering a set of articles to help tutor people who want to RP but feel they are not very good at it. So Ryyley heads off to meet her master and I say “hey, I’d like to hang out with you guys sometime but not as a regular gorean guy, do you know anyone who wants a male slave hanging around?” She totally did and despite my proclivities it is strictly an RP set up so I can hang out in that area and not fear molestation or be expected to be the standard swaggering testosterone filled Gorean male. I think Ella may dig on it as well as she has spent some time in Gor too. I don’t plan on spending a ton of time there as things are going to get busy on the grid for this little brown duck.

I got word yesterday that Dancer and I are going to be rebuilding an entire sim to be a sort of Femdom Rome. Makes me grin and cringe at the same time. The owner wants to provide Roman Villa to the renters, include a small arena and training area and of course the mall and the club and the temple. I am really looking forward to this project but we are talking about a fairly quick transformation. I am curious what the people who have Japanese style homes are going to think.

Because i am an asshole too sometimes.

Are we guilty of those sins we most despise?  A recent thread regarding pranks (the one which spawned my post on the topic) settled into a brief and slightly vicious flame war.  More like fiery close quarter combat I s’pose.  As usual, no one truly wins an argument and the person with the “moral high ground” is usually the one in the wrong.  In this case I acted in an inappropriate manner and lashed out at someone who did not deserve it.  For that I apologize as it was pointed out to me that I was guilty of committing some of my own accusations.  I painted a poor picture of myself as a high handed stanchion of social responsibility while in fact being the exact opposite.  I am sorry Doodle, you are right I was over the top.  Not only was I not being overly charitable I was acting without a significant amount of knowledge and responding without thinking thing through.

oO

http://dedricmauriac.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/the-1-million-linden-idea/

prank or no?

Pranks and practical jokes, what is acceptable on the grid among friends and what is a thinly veiled excuse for griefing?

When I was in high school I wasn’t exactly Mr. Popularity. I was known because I photographed 70% of the home sporting events for three years and because I was involved in the drama program. My junior year a group of my “friends” toilet papered my home. Now I don’t know about you but I never TP’d the home of a friend. If I gave someone the Charmin treatment it was someone I despised to such a degree that I would be willing to commit a vandalism that was potentially costly to the victim. My dad (step-dad number 6) had been cleaning it up since 5am. I get to school and am greeted with hefty guffaws from Marianne Goinzer. (Often referred to as the dreaded Goinzer Beast) Didn’t I think it was so funny, ha ha, wasn’t that a riot that a crowd of fucking social rejects without a clue got plowed and toilet papered my house? Needless to say I cut loose with a stream of invective that would have blistered paint at ten paces. Each one of those people was on my shit list for all time.

It’s not like I lived in a big town either. Everyone knew/knows everyone else there. Needless to say my folks found out and I had to explain that my peers had got a wild hair up their ass and tried to play and endearing prank that was full of cheeky good nature. Yeah, they didn’t buy it either.

So imagine that you are in SL, you have just logged in and are about to engage in some form of interaction. You sit down on a chair and find yourself teleported across the SIM or straight up 400m or into the middle of club. A booby trap, malicious in nature, funny in intent. A silly prank no harm no foul right? What if you are wearing a child avatar and are suddenly in the middle of an adult setting. Not only can you get reamed by the Powers That Be, but the owner/operator of the location can get in trouble too. Not cool. The list of what ifs can go on for an age. Pull a prank on the wrong person and they are going to respond in kind and with less humor and you suddenly have a case of griefing in truth. It is one thing to be in an environment where you know something might happen to you. A combat SIM, a capture RP SIM or like the Wasteland you see a bloody big sign telling you that you can die if you pass a certain point. But anywhere else a prank is just malicious and the sign of a mind too small to engage in more mature and good nature humor. The thing is that many of things we (humans) find funny stem from cruelty. You don’t think so? What about those home video shows that depict dad getting hit in the nads by a kid with a t-ball bat. I can guarantee you that “dad” didn’t find it all that funny at the time and it may have caused him serious injury. What about the one where the guy tips over the dump truck? Yeah you don’t see the EM crew on the scene helping him out of the cab of the truck because he broke his leg in two places. I just don’t find that funny.

Now saying that, I will present my own little level of hypocrisy. I love the three stooges, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Prat fall comedy and dick and fart jokes have a place in this world. Stupid pranks left lying around by chuckle heads are just annoying.

why pull a post?

If you post a “statement of fact” to a public forum and someone repudiates your statement would you then retract the statement? Point in fact should you simply remove your post rather than support your point with fact and coherent argument? Someone said SL is sick and maybe dying. To which I responded with my standard and often repeated observation that no it is not dying in fact it is doing just fine and if a couple of large companies leave the grid it won’t make any difference as SL was doing just fine before those companies showed up. The response to my commentary was that they had data which showed otherwise, implying that LL was in fact in trouble and SL may not survive much longer. When asked to present that data, the post suddenly goes poof with no response from the writer.

WTF? If you have info that I don’t and I ask to see it that means I really want to see it! I am as full of shit as the next guy and I form opinions and base my statements from my observations. I fancy that I stay pretty well informed about this particular addiction. But look at this, why is everyone one worried about SL falling apart when Blizzard, makers of the hugely popular World of Warcraft just got picked up by Vivendi Universal which is infamous for rotten support for their products? How come no one blogged a river of tears about that? Jesus Cloony Frog! I hate when people just poof out of a discussion when you ask them to support their arguments.

If I am totally wrong about something I want to be told, enlightened, informed and if the other person makes me look like a chump in the process oh well. I still wouldn’t pull the post. That is like saying “I am going to take my ball and go home.” Isn’t that part of the point in journaling in a public forum?

Asgard

Yes, I know I am blonde in this picture.  For those of you who have wandered through my Flickr snapshots this is a total departure for me.  I was at the Yule celebration in Asgard and someone commented that there were a plethora of red heads about.  It is a nordic SIM so where are the blondes?  Being the shape changer I am, I reached into my vast wardrobe and pulled out my “standard” hair style only in blonde.  I highly reccomend that anyone who is interested in a truly artistic build visit Freya’s Desire.  It is one of the most esthetically pleasing SIMs I have ever seen.

Tempus Fugit?

 So, as I mentioned before there is a new greco roman temple on the grid in the SIM Deadly.  Also home of the club Deadly Dreams.  I built the textures for the temple and although I found the small model to be quite striking it simply did not compare to the view of the big version.

 See that tiny dark speck at the top of the stairs?  Yeah, that’s my roughly 6ft tall avatar.

why fly?

So what is the deal with people who fly in no fly zones? Are they clueless or they just enjoying breaking the rules for the sake of breaking the rules? The perfect example happened last night. I was wandering around the Roman arena and this dude in centurion armor swoops right down out of the air, looks around and swoops away. I did a quick check and he wasn’t an admin. When someone turns on the no fly as a means to suspending disbelief for a pseudo historical SIM only to have some rat bastard totally ignore that and use some gadget to fly really blows. Not only is chump flagrantly breaking the local rules but they are also demolishing the vibe for people around them.

I am the first to admit that sometimes it takes me some time to get into an RP groove. Moving into Asgard has put me in an archaic setting 80% of the time so I am altering my interaction accordingly. More often than not I am in more archaic dress and my avatar does not sport spectacles nearly as often. Why bother? Because I don’t want to be the wet blanket that causes someone else to have a less than stellar time.

Once again I must comment on the many doomsayers out there. Honestly, if you guys have such a negative view of SL, then go somewhere else. Rather than spend your time posting massive blog entries about the decay of this virtual world and comparing it to others and making obscure references to economic philosophies no one but you and a handful of your elite indie virtual world buddies give a shit about, go play world of warcraft or SWG or something. Be miserable somewhere else and stop taking up memory on someone’s server with your pseudo intellectual critique of the grid. Hell just relax and enjoy the experience once in a while.

“One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself” – Mark Twain

heh

I love it when people post five paragraphs on why SL is doomed to fail.  So how long has it been running now?  HA!

Oh and the whole ESC shutting down thing. . . yeah it happens especially with marketing firms.  Keep in mind that SL is like living in dog years, right?  So the lifespan of certain business models is greatly reduced.  The only thing that lives and dies faster than an internet marketing firm is a Hollywood production company.  Doomsayers abound!  Get thee behind me!

I think I will just keep creating content.  If SL suddenly disapears I am sure the people in the know will blog about it.

i am a posting fiend.

Ok the week and weekend was an intriguing one, to say the least.  I don’t think I have brought it up much or at least I hadn’t made a big deal about it but the SIM I was renting in is a Femdom, clothing optional, weapon toting sort of place.  This is both true and false in actual application.  It is also the home of a groovy little club.  There was a schism recently, about this time last month the SIM owner and her partner had a falling out. Lots of drama and name calling.  If you look back at earlier posts and note where I was talking about rebuilding a club it was because of this schism.

 

The major-domo and I spent a lot of time on the project.  Some of the powers that be apparently feel that the club attendance has gone down because the interior design of the building doesn’t mesh.  One of those powers apparently played up her involvement in the project even though she essentially had zero say in anything.  This caused a minor snafu this weekend as said person poorly worded a request to me to consider retexturing the interior of the club.  Wow do I ever mean poorly.  I took some offense (it was a lot of work and the issue honestly is in the décor not the texture) she bails.  I mean just totally walks out on the conversation.  Childish much?  Big time.  I wouldn’t have really become pissed if she hadn’t pulled that.  I find out later she not only has zero say in the process, but is also only 19.  Yes I know someone can have a lot of experience at age 19 but this explains so much of her behavior pattern it isn’t even funny.  The long and short of it is that the club lacks promotion and needs to be decorated with an eye toward esthetic continuity.  Ok, it also needs dancers who show up on a regular schedule, it needs a promoter to drop notes on the major SL blog sites and advert boards and some in world promo events to generate increased traffic.

 

Add to this the fact that several of the women in the SIM seem to regard it as a personal challenge to seduce and collar me.  I mentioned before that it is a Femdom oriented sim.  Cool.  But I should clarify that the environment is mostly concerned with the trappings of Femdom.  Not to speak poorly of anyone there as they are all relatively nice people but this is a crowd that really isn’t in the know.  It’s the “girls rule, boys drool” sort of affair with little or none of the D/s philosophy.  (I had to explain what D/s meant to someone recently)  So, I moved my main residence to Asgard, where I have been spending a great deal of time.  As things went, the SIM owner really doesn’t want me to leave the SIM.  Which I never intended to totally bail I just needed to be somewhere I wasn’t being hit on all the time.  So as payment for the work I have done on the club and on the temple they gave me a months rent on the parcel.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I am going to turn that parcel into a pony park for anyone in the SIM to use.  Speaking of the temple, it is a damned impressive structure.  Based on a first century Roman temple, it was pretty when it was a small model but at actual size it is pretty awe inspiring.  Check it out, search Deadly Dreams and when you land just turn a bit to your right.  You cannot miss the huge fluted columns.

 

As for Asgard, what can I say?  I rented a small skybox (which is much more budget friendly) put up some decoration and furniture and saved myself some prims for small builds.  It will be a good time to work on furniture and possibly weapons.  Goddess Angel offered to layout a platform for larger builds and I can do small buildings right on top of my sky box.  Sunday was the Asgard Yule celebration.  It was much fun.  These folks spare little expense for their virtual party and the gift exchange was a bit off kilter but worked out alright.  The music was odd and frankly I wouldn’t have paid the DJ.  He had zero personality, zero speaking skills and no charisma what so ever.  He also played consistently late 70’s groove for two hours straight.  I am not a fan of disco and my choice of late 70’s music is not funk/disco.  Oh well.  It was still fun.  Lots of good conversation and did I mention that the SIM is populated mostly by female avatars?  Talk about eye candy.

 

Got some more pony play in and learned the basics of dressage last night.  I will have to write the notes down and start getting friends to help me practice that bit.  My slalom time is still consistently a touch over 19 seconds.  I don’t know how others get lower times with out cheating but I think I am going to spend some more time and AK this week.  They have a better jumping course and slalom.  Nothing against the set up at the Forum, I like it and I love their stable, but the steeple doesn’t register a full run it only does one lap at a time and the slalom doesn’t post scores it just flashes them for a moment.

 

In RL, we went to see the Golden Compass this weekend.  It was really although the depiction of death was slightly disturbing.  If you don’t want a spoiler don’t keep reading.  The basic premise is that in this alt universe a person’s soul is their daemon, an animal spirit companion.  If you are hurt your daemon is hurt and vice versa.  Same if you die or they die.  Now most films with any violence you see someone get shot they bleed they die, the end.  In some cases they get stomped, eviscerated, decapitated, or generally mangled and they die, the end.  This does not illustrate the condition of the human soul.  When people die in the Golden Compass, you see their daemon, their soul discorporate into nothingness.  A simple thing and very disturbing to depict the death of a soul as well as a person.  The bad guys want to separate the children from their daemons (souls) also a disturbing thing.  The film was visually stunning though.  It is a truly original imagining of an alternate universe and the ice bear fight is fucking awesome.

 

We also did some holiday shopping and agree that the garland we put up looks nice enough to leave up most of the time but we will need a tub to start holding other decorations.  For those of you who dig the BBC version of the Chronicles of Narnia, you can buy them at FYE (formerly the warehouse) for 5$ each.  They only made for of the books into stories but they are still good fun and at the time they were shot everyone was fairly certain this was the only way you were going to see Narnia on TV.