Aldo Zond

Written 29 March, 2007

Aldo Zond

Time and past time to blog about Aldo Zond, a friend since my earliest days in Second Life.

I met Aldo at the Wingo Trivia Lounge, where we would dominate the play and Aldo would complain bitterly about the U.S. bias of the questions. He’s from the U.K, which means, I think, Ukraine.

No?

Oopsie! Sweetie just told me it means United Kingdom. That’s in the Middle East.

No?

No, that the United Arab Emirates. The U.K. is, it turns out, what’s left of the British Empire. It consists of about 500 old Lee-Enfield Rifles and the Falkland Islands.

Ok, ok, enough fun. Aldo lives in England.

Aldo was a big help when I first moved to Pele. He came out and gave me a parcel radio changer and showed me how to work the video on the land.

And I went out once or twice and visited him at his Sky High Club.

Then we sort of lost touch with one another.

But that changed about a month ago, and we’ve been talking a lot and laughing together. He says, having read my blog front to back, that I’m mad, which I take as the finest sort of compliment.

Aldo’s a bang-up scripter and a generous soul. He has helped me out on numerous occasions, giving me a script to make doors for the Xubi house, a play dead script which lets me lie “sacrificed” in the lava, and a ball called “suicide switch” which allows me to cast myself into the lava, screaming all the while. He’s also given me a nice loop sound for the Pele eruption and the class notes and objects from a class in water effects and a high-low gambling machine I put up in the Dragon Skybar.

Most recently, Aldo gave me a dress he made in a clothing class. It’s an absolutely gorgeous prim outfit I wore all day day-before-yesterday. An astounding first effort!

And he’s teaching me to curse in British.

I love learning foreign languages.

Aldo is a lot of fun to hang with, but I fear I keep him up far too late at night.

My brother Mordecai Scaggs, steam-punk aficianado that he is, has been working on a steam-powered gyrocopter. This poses a bit of a scripting challenge, since there is a motor-driven propeller at the rear and a free-wheeling rotor overhead—not to mention the steam. Aldo has fixed Mordecai’s gyrocopter up; he’s that good.

I really like Aldo, although it bugs me a little he said he doesn’t consider me a girly girl. Maybe that’s because I build volcanoes and curse like a sailor, but I always have a dab of perfume behind my ear and the most gossamer underthings. Ever since he said that I’ve tried to be a model of femininity, even to the point of wearing a tutu once.

It seems silly to wear a tutu once

Much better to wear a tutu two times.

Maybe it’s the swearing. Aldo says he’s going to fine me $25L every time I do it.

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Also.

I mean Aldo.

He hates it when I do that.

OMG! Promoted!

Written 29 March, 2007

OMG! Promoted!

Dakota here with fabulous news!

I’ve been promoted!!!!

Cheyenne just told me she’s making me manager of the Dragon, effective immediately!

I’m still expected to do a shift on the dance table, but I’ll be in charge!

Woo hoo!

She’s giving me my own tip jar so people can pay it rather than me directly!

Chey told me she’s proud of me and considers me important to the success of the club. She says people are drawn to me and to just keep on doing what I’m doing and to not answer ALL the trivia questions.

I’ve never managed a bar before.

Of course the Dragon really isn’t in business, as it’s not advertised, meaning my twin positions as dancer and manager are sort of make-believe, but with luck they’ll turn into real jobs when the bar moves to the private island Chey and Mordecai Scaggs have on reserve and becomes a reality.

In the meantime, I’m pleased as punch!

Dakota

Written 29 March, 2007

Dakota

Cheyenne here.

Strange to have to say that in my own blog.

Just now I’m wondering whether Dakota is my alt or I’m hers. Sometimes I feel as if I’m her foil, rather than she mine.

Dakota is slowly making a place for herself in Second Life.

I suppose it was inevitable from the time she was first rezzed. I made her as a pure convenience, since I was unable to log on. From the start, she hasd a forceful personality, and people seem to like being around her. Still, her growth as a person and her widening circle of friends has concerned me, for I’ll let nothing or no one—even Dakota—stand between me and my Sweetie.

Fortunately, Sweetie finds the whole Chey/Datota thing funny and entertaining, a bit of Second Life improvisational theater. As do I.

Believe me, we’ve talked about it. I’m prepared to rein Dakota in if and when she makes Sweetie uncomfortable. To date, she hasn’t. And I hope she never does.

And so, I’ve decided to make Dakota manager of the Dragon Skybar. She’s a natural, as she tends to hang out there and enjoys dancing on the table and on the dance floor.

I hope she doesn’t dip into the till.

The Chaperone III: Wind Down

Written 29 March, 2007

Chaperone

III. The Wind Down

Dakota speaking.

Now that the Dragon has become a real club, Cheyenne has tasked me with buying some gambling machines and, just to provide a nice environment for lovers, a set or two or poseballs.

So late last night I went poseball shopping.

I went to Bits and Bobs, where a couple was trying out a horizontal, but clothes-on poseball.

I heard a bit of their chat, which made me smile.

“I won’t go to hookers,” he said. “I’m not like that.”

“I can show you where you can go to meet some nice girls,” she told him.

“I like you,” he said, and I knew a romance had been born.

I decided nothing would do but that the Dragon have Devotion, which would be my mos def favorite poseball if I did poseballs.

Okay, I did do Devotion.

I saw it on the stage at Chey’s place.

I jumped on the pink ball.

Nothing happened.

I jumped on the blue ball.

Nothing happened.

The sign at Bits and Bobs explained it; there have to be avs on both balls.

I was standing there wondering if an alt can have an alt (and preferably a hunky one) when I got IMed by a guy who had just come into the store.

I explained I was looking at poseballs for a friend’s night club.

I don’t remember just how we got on the topic, but before long I was explaining that I didn’t do sex in Second Life.

At first he didn’t believe me, but finally he did. He was incredulous.

“Why not?” he asked. “You’re beautiful.”

One of my friends once told Chey I was pretty, but that was the first time anyone called me beautiful. Sigh. Smile. Maybe I am.

And so I told him the whole story, how I was Cheyenne’s alt and Cheyenne was in love and I wouldn’t cheat, even in another identity. “Am I temped?” I said. “Yes, of course.” “Will I cross the line?” “No I won’t.”

I told him I was a strong-willed person and there was no damn chance of me ever having to tell someone “It just happened.”

“It just happened is for self-deluding cheats.” It’s bullshit for “I wanted to and I did it and I’m sorry, but only sorry you found out. I’m not sorry I did it at all. I would do it again if I had the chance, and I probably will have the chance, so most likely we will be having this conversation again soon.” That’s what “It just happened” means.

And if it costs me $25L for having said bullshit, it was well worth it.

The guy I was in IM with was getting pretty bewildered, first because I am chaste, and second because Cheyenne is monogamous, and third because Cheyenne and Sweetie are in love and yet neither sees themselves as lesbian. They’re just in love and in lust.

“This is messing up my head,” he said. And then, “What do you want?”

“I just told you,” I said.

“No,” he said, “You! What does Dakota want?”

That gave me pause, and I thanked him for asking the question.

“I want fun,” I said. “And romance would be okay. I don’t want sex. And I’m not going to have any.”

Finally, he understood.

“I admire you for that,” he said.

It was a satisfying end to a satisfying evening.

The Chaperone II: The Concert

Written 29 March, 2007

The Chaperone

II. The Concert

Kody again.

I should chaperone more often.

Why?

Not because it’s any great joy.

No, it’s a pain in the ...

I can’t say it, because Chey’s friend Aldo has instituted a $25L cursing fee. Anyone who uses profanity has to pay a quarter at the Dragon, where I’m writing this as I wait for my shift to start.

To whom?

Good question. I don’t think that’s been determined.

I do know I need a tip jar. Aldo tipped me yesterday and the money went to Chey. When he told me, I asked him the amount and he said 4.3 trillion Lindens.

And not a word about it from Cheyenne.

But I’m off topic. That happens when I don’t take my Ritalin.

And I must confess, I’m putting just the weensiest bit of vodka in the orange juice.

There are bennies when you work in a bar.

Soooo, I get all dressed up—blonde hair and all—and go with Milky and Roy to their concert. It was a torch singer with a bass player and the mic was so overblown I immediately turned off the sound, but the ambiance was so nice that I was soon enjoying myself.

And now to complete the thought which I started, and from which I seem to have become separated, I was happy to chaperone because there was a poseball.

Did I say poseball? I mean ‘Sploder. I must have poseballs on the brain.

It was a nasty ‘Sploder. It kicked me off time and again, usually just before it popped. Even when I hung in front of it and paid it five seconds before it detonated, I got kicked out a lot.

I blame lag.

Still, I won more than $1200 lindens, for no more than $150 paid.

So even though I bought three pairs of expensive shoes, I ended the evening with more money than I started with.

Woo hoo!

Chaperoning usually isn’t all that hard. You get to put on nice clothes and listen to okay music and let guys buy you drinks and eat all the hors d’ouvres.

But I earned my pay last night.

Not that I WAS paid.

Hmm. Dakota’s chaperoning service. $150L/hour. $200/hour hazard surcharge if you use dangerous poseballs that might go off near me.

So anyway, things started out just fine. They were slow dancing and chatting and seemed to be having a good time.

Then Roy crashed, and after he came back he was on one end of the room and Milky was on the other.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said

“She was dancing by herself,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. Will you dance with me?”

She was probably still in the same dance pose he had fallen off of, but I didn’t think of that until later. I said, “No, I won’t dance with you. Be the man and go ask her to dance.” And he did.

They both thanked me.

-----

The concert was really long—two hours—and it started late, like 7 pm Linden time. Milky is on UK time, and she stayed until four am her time, which tells me the date was a success, since she had to get up two hours later. I expect her ass is dragging today. But I expect there’s a smile on her face, too.

Darn it! I said a bad word. Now I have to dig into my tip money for $25L! A girl could end up in the hole this way!

The Chaperone I: The Warmup

Dakota Burns, Girl Chaperone, Looking Stern

Written 29 March, 2007

Chaperone

Part I: The Warmup

Dakota here.

I was rezzed for the longest time in my life last night. I wasn’t just acting as a foil for Cheyenne, either; she didn’t even log on until midnight, when her Sweetie got home from a business trip and I was ready to call it a night anyway.

I had planned to sign on for a while, just long enough so I could say I worked my shift at the Dragon and not be lying.

Then my friend Milky Choche IMed me and asked me for help. She was nervous because she was going to a concert with a man she had met at the Sphynx Jazz Club. I suspect she hasn’t hung out with men much on computer.

I mean who has? But I’m more experienced than she, I guess, if only vicariously, through Cheyenne.

Because I was on duty, I TPed her to the dragon and we talked. And then she left and IMed me again to ask me to take her shopping to get away from a guy who was hitting on her. So I took her boost and jumped to her and told her white-haired gentleman admirer I was taking his girl shopping.

He didn’t get that white hair without learning that a man can’t stand between a woman and her charge card, and so he graciously bowed out, asking me to not let her buy too many shoes.

I told him a girl can’t have too many shoes.

We went to Sylfie’s which is my new favorite shoe store and I bought three pair, building my shoe wardrobe to seven pairs. I think Milky bought a pair, too.

And no, it wasn’t all tip money. I bought $10 US worth of lindens.

Woo hoo!

While we were there a couple TPed in. The woman wandered off, looking at shoes, while the man stood where he was, not three meters from where Milky and I was standing.

He was hot, hot, hot!

He had long, thick back hair to the middle of his back and way broad shoulders and major tats, and a really good AO which made him look like he was just reveling in himself.

Which he probably was.

And so I walked even closer and looked him up and down and said, “Pretty boy,” and walked away—but not far enough to be out of Chat range.

Milky said, for his benefit, something like “Dakota, I can’t take you anywhere! You’ll embarrass him.”I said, “He knows he’s pretty. He likes it!” and then “What time do you have to have me back to the Home?”

I should have asked her if she would rather have been back where she had been succumbing to white-haired guy’s advances.

We went back to the Dragon so she could psych herself up for what I have been instructed to call not a date, and I climbed back up on the dance table.

After a while her male friend logged on and she teleported him in from wherever he had been and they danced and we all answered trivia questions.

Milky threatened to tell Chey I was monopolizing the trivia.

Now, that’s gratitude!

-----

As the start time for the concert drew near, I declared I was on break and went out on the patio and started a game of Mahjong, being careful to stay juuuust inside Chat range in case there was some juicy sex talk.

There wasn’t.

Darn it!

It was because I was in chat range that I heard them speculating that I had gone to change clothes in preparation for the live jazz concert they were planning to attend.

Jazz? Dakota? You have GOT to be kidding!

I yelled back that I hadn’t planned on going. And really! I didn’t want to be a vicarious participant in their concert-gonig experience . I wanted them to go have a good time. But they both asked me to go and so I went as their, I suppose, chaperone.

And it’s good I did.

Dakota Gets a Job

Is This Just Totally Morgan Fairchild, or What? 

The Real Me Dressed for a Hard Night of Work with Sucky Tips

Written 27 March, 2007

Dakota Gets a Job

So, I show at the Dragon and they had put in a dance table, ya know? And of course nothing would do but I check it out. I mean, who wouldn’t? So I jumped right up on it and immediately got an audience. I got tips, too, woo hoo!

I wasn’t so sure about the music at first, as it was really old stuff, all the way from the ‘80s, but it was quite romantic and after I danced for a while—not only on the table, but on the way cool dance floor with a boy who I think likes me—it was sounding pretty good. The smoke and mist were romantic, too, and I liked all the avatars at the club that night, except I was prepared to dislike Doug Streeter, as he was hogging the dance table and I was afraid he was about to do me out of a job dancing, and then Doug gave me a cool evil halo and I decided I liked him, too.

Once I start dancing I kind of can’t stop. And they played Cindi Lauper, too! She’s one of my idols (Madonna is another. I mean, those women were THE pioneers in over-the-top bad grrl looks! I know I’m supposed to like Blue and Britney and that bunch, but they’re just copycats to me. Cindi is my particular personal favorite, and to some extent I model myself after her, and when they played Time after Time while I was in a particularly fine tango I was just overcome. The music at the Dragon has been fine by me ever since.

A bunch of us left the Dragon to go to a concert by Bill and Pam Havercamp. That music was REALLY old, like Paul-McCartney-back-even-before-he-was-in-Wings-old, but Bill and Pam were so funny and Pam is such a good singer and Bill such a talented guitarist that I just rocked out. And who could dislike the Beatles, anyway? I grew up listening to them on the 8-track in my dad’s ancient El Camino.

I was so overcome with emotion that I even let my hair go back to its natural blonde color and traded my worn-and-torn leggings for a beautiful peach bridesmaid’s gown.

And I might we wearing it still, except I happened to walk by a mirror and thought, “What is Morgan Fairchild doing here?” And a young Morgan Fairchild at that!

Except of course it wasn’t Morgan Fairchild. It was me. Scared the shit out of me. And so I’m back to blue and pink hairdos and Madonna’s cast-offs, at least for now.

It will be a lot harder to maintain my professional virgin status if I stop being a blue-haired freak of nature (I got called that once) and go around looking like Morgan Fairchild now, won’t it?

And I am absolutely resolved to retain my status as a virgin.

Am I tempted?

Yes I am. Sometimes

Will I yield?

Absolutely not.

Pele depends on me.

-----

The closest I came to not being a virgin happened in Bisbee, near the Mexican border, when I went on a tequila run with a boy from my h.s. He was driving his dad’s Mercedes sedan, a big old honker of a car. Some time during the night he talked me into the back seat and wouldn’t stop when I told him to.

I mean REALLY told him to. Not like “Don’t! Stop!” “Don’t stop!”

So I climbed over the seat into the front and when I did I knocked the transmission out of Park and into Neutral. Masher boy was trying to get over the seat too, but he was sort of fat and having a time of it.

Knocking the transmission out of gear was an accident, but I deliberately took off the parking brake and jumped out of the car.

Masher boy had parked at the back of the Super Wal-Mart lot and you know how Arizona is. It’s either flat or straight up and down—and they had for some reason (who knows why they do such things) put the Wal-Mart on a hill. That Mercedes rolled right out of its slot and down the row of cars and smashed into a brick retaining wall.

The damage, or so I’m told, was $3500, but it didn’t look so bad to me.

Maybe it was those cars it clipped before it hit the wall.

I went straight home and told my dad what had happened and only JUST managed to talk him out of getting his shotgun.

The next day the boy’s daddy came over and was giving my dad a hard time until my dad looked at him and said, “And just what was your son doing with my daughter in the back seat of your car?” That brought matters to a swift conclusion. I never saw that boy again, although I still see that banged-up Mercedes about town from time to time.

As fate would have it, it wasn’t a week later that I forgot to set the parking brake on my Camry (1981 model, 285,000 miles and runs like a top, thank you) at that very same Super Wal-Mart and it wound up against the fence in the garden department. I had to get a new fender. It’s still primer gray because I’ve not had enough money to get it painted.

I should have the money now, though, ‘cause I’ve got a job!

Woo hoo!

Chey gave me a job working the dance table. She left me with strict instructions to keep at least some of my clothes on and not to run the trivia. I’ve had no problem keeping my pants on, but it’s darn difficult not to type in “Tallahassee” when the machine wants to know the capital of Florida.

Chey isn’t actually paying me, but she says I can keep 100% of my tips and she’s allowing me to put up a little tent I bought and so have an actual home. That’s good enough for this girl. I can’t wait until my Camry is maroon-colored all over once again.

So my life is picking up! I have a job and a place to stay and friends.

And I swear on the name of Cindi Lauper that I am going to live up to the Virgin Sacrifice group title Chey created for me.

The Dragon Awakes

The Dragon After Hour, Dakota Pole Dancing

Written 27 March, 2007

The Dragon Awakes

The minute I saw the Kumikorp P20 skybox, I knew I had have it.

The P20 is a 20 x 20 cube with glazed windows and wooden walls and floor—a big, empty box, inexpensive at about $250L And primficient, too, weighing in at less than 25 prims.

I thought it would make a swell nightclub.

And it has.

When I moved to Pele, I went shopping and filled the skybar, putting in a dance floor and spotlights, an oak bar stocked with every kind of alcohol (and fruit juices for nondrinkers), a piano, a jukebox (for changing radio stations), a big-ass rotating video array which no one ever notices because they don’t look up, and some couches for conversation. Outside, I made a marble platform (my second build in Second Life) that wrapped around two sides of the building. I put up a Dance sign and stuck in a dance ball and, in honor of the dragons which sometimes come to bathe in the lava at Pele, I named it the Dragon Skybar.

And the P20 had become a night club.

The Dragon sat empty for a while—in fact, I even took it down for a month or so when prims got tight.

Then I put it up again.

For Axel.

Axel had been spending his time at the trivia hut at East Beach, playing trivia. It’s a pleasant place, but the sound of the waterfall I made just next to it was distracting and the problems with camera control in a tight space made the hut less than ideal for trivia.

I left the trivia machine in the hut, but I stuck another in the Dragon, which I refurbished as Axel watched-- I hope in amazement, for it took only about twenty minutes to turn an empty cube into a fully functioning club.

And the Dragon was open for business at 550 meters.

Hooray!

For a long while nobody went there but Axel. Every once in a while I would pop up to say hi and kick his ass at trivia, and Sweetie would come by when she logged on.

And then for some reason the Dragon became a real night club.

I’ve thought about it, and there are a number of possible reasons for it.

Perhaps it was the table dance.

As I’ve noted in the Sweetie Gets XCite!d entry in this blog, my girlfriend and I went shopping and I came home with a table dance which I promptly installed in the Dragon. And of course just to test it, you understand, we gave the thing a tryout.

It worked just fine. Sweetie tipped me a thousand dollars.

-----

What made things change at the Dragon? I’m not really sure.

Perhaps it was the multicolored smoke and mist effects I installed on the dance floor. (I used Outy Banjo’s Fog Scripts).

Perhaps it was the dance poses (slow, salsa, tango).

Perhaps it was getting rid of the four-prim sofas and installing comfortable chairs (including one in which the sitter is forever falling asleep and shaking herself awake).

Perhaps it was because Axel killed the classical music and reggae and tuned the radio to a romantic 80s station (and let us pray to the heavens that internet radio doesn’t go away).

Perhaps it was because of the game machines (there’s now, in addition to trivia, tic-tac-toe, hangman, and a high-low gambling machine Aldo made and gave to me. I’ll be moving the Mahjong table from the Pele Gardens to the Skybar, too, and maybe buying a couple of poker machines).

Perhaps it was because Axel’s love for the place was infectious.

And perhaps it was because Dakota and Breath of God started dropping by.

Dakota, of course, promptly jumped on the dance table. She’s a boy magnet, so I hired her to do a shift on the table from time to time. It won’t even cost me any money, for she agreed to work for tips and free rent.

Sunday night at the Dragon was especially wonderful. It started with myself and Sweetie and Axel sitting around talking and ended up with a full bar and lots of dancing. I even had to go down to East Beach and borrow a dance so there would be enough for everybody.

At one point that night the Dragon held me, Sweetie, Axel, Dakota, Aldo Zond, the dragon Breath of God, my friends Dean and Davidnc, my new friend Milky Choche [isn't that a great name?!], Melissa Yeuxdoux, and Doug Streeter (Doug became a man who on the dance table once he realized he could make more money there than in camping chairs. Soon he was down to his tighty whities. Perhaps the funniest moment of the night was when Axel paid him for putting his clothes back on. I’m still laughing about that).

Dakota was having such a good time that she forgot her attitude and put on conventional hair and clothing. She is a strikingly beautiful woman when she wants to be, but I don’t think she fully comprehends that fact.

It’s funny how in Second Life you can throw up a building, stick some things in it, and it becomes a place. It becomes real.

The Dragon has, after months, suddenly become a real place.

And so I’ve been tweaking it. I dragged the piano out on the patio (Sweetie’s suggestion), pulled a dance floor out of inventory for the piano bar (a beautiful reef, with moving water and swimming fish), put in more smoke and mist effects, and dragged Aldo and Axel around as I shopped for dance pose balls. (I bought enough not only for the new dance floor, but for the East Beach platform as well).

I love the Dragon Skybar!

The Breakup (No, Not Me and Sweetie!)

Written 27 March, 2007

The Breakup (No, Not Me and Sweetie!)

Two of my oldest friends in Second Life, who have been a couple forever, it seems, have broken up.

I’m sad for both of them.

Breakups are so difficult.

They’re both going their own way, he with plans to participate in community in Second Life, and she with personal explorations.

I’m a friend to both of them and a sister to one, and I wish them best of luck in their post-romance second lives.

XCite! The Xequel

Is This Woman XCited? Only the Alt Key Knows

Written 20 March, 2007

XCite! The Xequel

I think it says a lot that Sweetie and I didn’t come home with XCite!able toys to stick up our a** or diddle one another with across sims, or cages for one another. No, we just got straight up lips. And human ones, at that! No animal parts for these girls!

Although I wonder...

Hehe.

Came the moment. Sweetie and I were fully XCite! compatible!

We did not have our left nipples on.

Because we had not bought left nipples.

We did not have our right nipples on.

Because we had not bought right nipples.

We didn’t have our asses on, because we hadn’t bought hem—but if we had, they wouldn’t have made us look fat.

And we didn’t of course, have our Classic Clits, because they were still at the XCite! store.

But we did have our XCite!able lips on. And we could see them on each other when we turned on Highlight Invisible (the Alt key on the PC)

We didn’t have the XCite! HUD, which, Dodgeguy told me, polled and added various XCite! parts. If we had, we could have added each other to our respective access lists, told our HUDs our genders, and installed vocal packs. I would have been Amber. Sweetie would have been Jana.

And so we began to XCite! one another.

To the XCite! virgin, this consists of touching your partner’s (or even a stranger’s) XCite!able body part.

This causes a line of green text to appear in Chat.

“Sweetie’s lips squeal with delight as Cheyenne Palisades kisses them.”

Yep. So now you know what all that green chat has been about.

If you are wearing the HUD, DG says, being touched causes the gas gauge of your arousal level, and the person you are XCite!ing to climb.

And if you get it to climb all the way.

Righto!

Bingo!

So all you have to do is touch, lick, suck, twist, pinch, spank, finger, thrust, insert, kiss, or pat your partner's body parts until her gas gauge climbs all the way to the right and she, in ecstatic green chat, has a multiple orgasm.

Never a single orgasm.

No, the XCite! corporation has its reputation to uphold.

A multiple orgasm, complete with vocalizations and spastic body movements and the sort of expression someone gets on her face when she realizes it’s April 16 and she forgot to file her taxes.

Then the gas gauge goes back to empty and you do it all again.

Sweetie and I couldn’t monitor our arousal levels without the HUD, but we were able to her how our XCite!able lips felt as we kissed one another.

Now clearly my av was enjoying it, but all I was getting out of it was the chance to choose items from a menu, over and over again.

Hmmm. Do I want to touch, trace, kiss, deep kiss, lick, suck, bite, twist, pat, or ignore Sweetie’s lips? Oh, touch.

Drat! Here’s the menu all over again! It’s making me miss not only my chat, but Sweetie’s! Much better to do my own typing. At least I can look at the screen while I do.

In short, XCite! was a Xnore!

I would just as soon put it away and never use it again, but of course I will put on my XCite! lips if Sweetie wants me to.

And I’ll admit, last night I lay in bed and thought about going out in public with the XCite! Classic Clit and ass and nipples on and being publicly stimulated to orgasm by strange avatars

It gave me a certain frisson.

Not that I would actually do that.

Or I hope I wouldn’t.

Hehe.

Sweetie Gets XCited!

Xcite! Intergalactic Headquarters

Written 20 March, 2007

Sweetie Gets XCited!

Sweetie and I had been hearing the occasional allusion to something called XCite! We weren’t sure just what it was but as we thought it had something to do with sex, we were all for it.

And so last weekend we took ourselves to the XCite! store. This after a trip to several sleazy sex emporia in search of a dance pole.

Why did we need a dance pole?

We just did.

It was in fact because the sign for the dance pole Sweetie most liked claimed that it worked with XCite! that we wound up going to the XCite! store.

I IMed my friend Dodgeguy to ask what XCite! was—and didn’t he get a laugh out of that! “I’m an XCite! whore,” he said, and told me.

Aha!

And so we wended our way—teleported, actually— to the XCite! store.

It was, as Dodge had warned me, laggy—this because of the high number of XCite!able avatars hanging out. One such avatar, in fact, chatted me up, and I chatted back until a) he offered to help me test any new XCite! body parts I might buy and b) I noticed that his John Henry was poking big time out of his pants. End of chat.

Just the night before I had had to watch avs screwing at the Bits and Bobs pose ball store, (i.e, “trying out” some very explicit pose balls), this just to pick up a couple of dance balls for the Dragon Skybar.

“Sheesh! Get a room!” I said to one couple.

“The world is my room,” the male replied.

Good retort, I have to admit.

The XCite! store was even more of a challenge.

First, there were all sorts of moans and gasps of pleasures and “Do me now” vocalizations coming from a display of XCite! audio packs as prospective buyers decided whether they wanted to sound like Betty Boop or Lauren Bacall. And there were the dick-hanging-out guys (one guy was a dick, in fact, just a phallus and two legs. But the products themselves were a challenge even to my less-than-conservative sensibilities.

“Do we want human parts or animal parts?” I asked Sweetie, reading the signs over a pair of portals.

She gave me a dirty look—amazing how an av can accomplish that—and I turned into the human parts vestibule, where we looked at the XCite! Classic Clit—a name that sent Sweetie, with whom I was Skyping, into a paroxysm of giggles.

“What, you don’t think a clit can be classic?” I asked.

More giggling.

We wound up buying only XCite! lips, passing up the XCite! Starter Kit, which included the left nipple, the right nipple (just to be complete), the XCite! ass, and the aforementioned Classic Clit, as well as a HUD controller designed to coordinate the various XCite!able parts. I had already bought a pair of XCite! nipples before we decided on lips only, so I passed them on to Dakota, even though she will have absolutely no use for them. I hope. Sometimes I wonder about that girl. She gets a little giddy around Sweetie, and I’ve even caught her looking at me funny. It has occurred to me that if we were to have a menage a trois, I would be two-thirds of the ensemble!

Heaven forbid!

Speculations on the Future of Second Life

22 March, 2007

Speculations on the Future of Second Life

It’s full-on springtime in Atlanta, meaning the tulip trees and redbuds and fruit trees are in full bloom and the azaleas are getting ready to pop. The highs are climbing toward the eighties and the nights are cool and the pollen count is passing 1300. Pine pollen coats the cars and houses.

So naturally a girl’s thoughts tend to gravitate toward Second Life.

I am by nature a late going-to-bedder and subsequently a late riser, and my report-to-work time of noon (11 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays) serves to reinforce this. Today, however, I woke at seven a.m. and was ready to begin my day.

I jumped on the grid and found my friend from Down Under, Boofhead Oh, online, and I teleported him over for some assorted and sundry fun (bouncing on a trampoline, riding a flying carpet, spinning around in circles on a prim, shooting myself out of a cannon). As we played, we talked.

Boof is new to Second Life and astounded by it. We talked about that, and about SL’s limitations, and about its future. It was a nice early-morning exercise, much nicer than trying to lay rail track that won’t derail my little steam engine.

Our conversation, and my subsequent ride to work, has led me to put into print some predictions about the future of Second Life, to wit:

-----

June, 2007. Speech makes its debut in Second Life and there is a system-wide crash. Speech disappears. A lot of people are happy. Local water is still disappearing.

November, 2007. After several abortive introductions, SL speech finally works, after a fashion. The Second Life stock market takes a beating as SL escort stocks plummet. Seventeen avatars commit suicide, but of course in SL suicide only teleports you home. Local water is still disappearing.

July, 2008. Linden Lab becomes a publicly-held company. An assassination attempt is made on Philip Linden’s avatar. Local water is still disappearing.

December, 2008. The new Class 19 simulators have a land size of 2048 x 2048 square meters. Local water is still disappearing. As a result of a real-world media campaign to entice females, or at least males who can sound like females, onto the grid, escort stocks have slowly climbed to pre-crash levels. Non-speaking out-of-work escorts still claim loudly (by typing in Capitals) that they are NOT male. Did I mention local water is disappearing?

April, 2009. As a result of increased processor size, prim limits are for all practical purposes abolished. Rioting breaks out in Dreamland when Ansche Chung keeps prim limits on her land at original limits and begins selling “prim rights.” Linden Lab announces that the problem with local water is fixed. It isn’t.

June, 2009. A poll of Second Life residents reveals that ninety percent take SL portable on the iPod and other media players. “Now I can script even in the loo,” opines one avatar. Almost forty percent reveal they are sometimes on the grid even while driving. Local water? Disappearing.

March, 2010. Citizens online surpasses 250,000. Local water is still disappearing.

July, 2010. Members of the group Furever reveal they are not humans playing animals, but animals playing animals. In response several human avs claim they are animals playing human.

December, 2011. At a town hall meeting, new citizens express disbelief that there was once a limit on the number of prims.

October, 2012. In a surprise coup, Second Life citizens take over the grid. They are jubilant until someone points out that they neglected to take control of the actual simulators. Linden Lab re-establishes control with a rolling reboot.

August, 2014. The American Psychiatric Association announces the new diagnostic term SLychosis to describe those who have retreated entirely onto the grid. Curiously, APA chooses to make its announcement on-world rather than off, on Fixation, its private island.

July, 2015. Second Life is renamed The Matrix. Seven billion people climb into umbilical pods filled with goo and switch off their first lives.

Second Life Yuppies

Written 20 March, 2007

Second Life Yuppies

I’m a firm believer in personal freedom, which means I approve of people being free to do what they want even if I disapprove of it, and even if I don’t understand it.

I’ve written about something of which I don’t approve—child avatars—and I’m working on a piece about the Goreans.

Now I’m writing about something I don’t understand.

And that is Second Life yuppies.

In this blog I’ve related an incident about a woman I met at Wingo; she was extraordinarily proud of having a three-car garage in Second Life, complete with Mercedes, and, I suppose, a house to match.

Now, many of us don’t own everything we would like, and SL is a great place in which to have it all (I do not, sadly, yet own a volcano in the Greater Metropolitan Atlanta area), but I really don’t understand why people live totally yup lifestyles in SL.

A lot of people in SL take fantasy to the extreme, which is why there are so many elves, fairies, vampires, dragons, furries, dominatrixes, Gorean motherfuckers and sex workers on the grid. It’s not to my taste, but I understand why they do it way more than a person who chooses to strike sparks stumping up an elegant-appearing staircase when they could teleport or who is proud of owning a Mercedes when roads are rudimentary and they can fly or teleport besides.

This isn’t a slam at car and aviation buffs. I totally understand why they build 1965 Mustang convertibles or Harley Fat Bobs and F114s. What it is is a statement of incomprehension as to why someone would be impressed for themselves for owning a three-car garage when they could live in a palace in the air or a hobbit house or an undersea garden or a replica of Vlad the Impaler’s castle or a giant Rubik’s cube.

I don’t get Second Life’s yuppies. But then I don’t get yuppies in real life, either.

More power to them and their unimaginative, shallow, self-centered lifestyle, though.

Chey Hears from the Eco-Angel

[14:35] Joey Morrison: HI shuggah. I was out here on Forsaken today and ummm well, I couldnt help but notice your Umm build on one of your parcels. One its ummm kinda run down and ugly ( im sorry) Second its rather commercial looking for a residnential themed Sim shuggah. Will be much appreciated if you could find something a lil more suitable for the Area. Thanks :0)

Written 20 March, 2007

Chey Hears from the Eco-Angel


When I logged onto Second Life last night I found myself in receipt of a polite but firm note from one of Dreamland’s Eco-Angels.

It seems he didn’t think my water tower was in-theme for a residential area.

Now, every residential area I know of in RL has one or more water towers. We are blessed, or cursed, with them, and with telephone poles, radio and microwave towers, power stations, and other manifestations of the infrastructure which keeps us with water, power, and gas.

Still, I got her point.

After all, my water tower, which is labeled “Pele Municipal,” is some 30 meters tall, with a really bad case or iron oxidation.

All right, rust.

In fact, the thing is so rusty it has sprung a leak.

Sometimes ugly things can be beautiful, and I like to think this is the case with the water tower. My friend Axel said he likes it, and I didn’t even prompt him. Sweetie has been keeping her peace about it, though, which means she hates it.

Just the night before, I had added red neon rings to the tower, four of them, to make it even more appealing—or, perhaps, less unappealing.

It was of course, akin to painting a turd, but then I remember (with no particular fondness) the turd birds that were once sold in truck stops throughout North America—so painting a turd can actually work.

Not in this case, though.

The water tower and the WKRP radio tower which stood beside it are now in my inventory. In their absence, we’re having to boil water from the Forsaken River and listen to our old LPs, since there’s no longer a radio station.

Hmmm. Maybe I can build a big-ass satellite dish and pull in MTV.

Say thirty meters in diameter. Yeah, thirty meters!

In fact, I think I will.

Just don’t tell the eco-angel.

Photos: Chey briefly and surreptitiously rezzed the Pele Municipal water tower and WKRP radio tower to take these photos.

Zero Point

Written 15 March, 2007

Zero Point

Another of Sweetie’s destinations was Zero Point, the creation of Sabine Stonebender.

The entry point featured a superb prim statue of a dragon and another of an eagle—and Ms. Stonebender, who welcomed us. We promptly teleported to the higher level.

Where the psychedelia started.

OMG!

There were seemingly miles of fluorescently-lit swirling tunnels, all in neon blue and red and orange and yellow and purple, patterns dancing, engaging the peripheral vision and overwhelming the brain.

Well, just look at the photos.

At the top was the Vomit Comet, a carnival-type ride that took Axel and myself through a smorgasbord of color reminiscent of a LSD flashback. Sweetie, alas, couldn’t ride, as her Mac keyboard wouldn’t allow it.

Again, I’m amazed by the ingenuity of Second Life’s inhabitants.

Virtual Views

Written 15 March, 2007

Virtual Views

My Sweetie’s frame per second rate is abysmal (as low as 1.3) and her throughput is low, which makes her, most of the time virtually blind, deaf, and spastic in Second Life. I have to admire her perseverance, though, for she loves to explore.

Lately, she’s been taking me to some great places.

One of the more interesting was Virtual Views (Solarian, 211, 165, 431). This is a series of huge hollow boxes of various sizes onto which are projected wide-angle photographs from the real world. They wrap virtually 360 degrees, which makes for stimulating and disorienting view of natural and man-made features.

The boxes are for sale, the most expensive (i.e., largest) being about $L5000, as I recall, and the smallest only a little more than $L1200. For sale too are packets of photos.

It’s a clever idea, and it’s an interesting experience to find yourself in the midst of a real-world scene.

Check it out!

Land Aquisition

Written 20 March, 2007

Land Acquisition

Damian Marseille came online the other night. I couldn’t see him as online in my friends list, which probably means he had set busy, but my Mystitool showed him as present within 96 meters.

So I IMed him, asking permission to lay rail track across one of his parcels, and asking if he would be interested in selling it.

He would, in fact, he said, and for a price that was more than fair.

And so I find myself in possession of another 3072 parcel, and with another 700 free prims. I now own more than a quarter of a sim.

Woo hoo!

I’m working now on a plan for the route of the Pele Light Rail system.

Thanks, Damian!

Outrageous

Written 20 March, 2007

Outrageous

Well, I managed to make my neighbor angry at me by writing in this blog that he was asking an outrageous price for his land

Of course, he WAS asking a preposterous amount for his land. In fact, I noticed (after he IMed me while I was offline) to complain, that he has reduced the sale price by $60,000 Lindens. So yes, he was asking a preposterous price.

As I’m asking a preposterous price for Pele.

I sent him a notecard to tell him that he wasn’t preposterous, or I, but the prices we were asking. I’m not sure he makes the distinction.

I’ve left the blog entry up, but have disguised his name. If he chooses to be remain angry, so be it. I’m entitled to my opinion.

As outrageous as it might be.

More Bliss

Written 15 March, 2007

More Bliss

Two more Photos of Biss Gardens

Gardens of Bliss

Written 15 March, 2007

Gardens of Bliss

Some consider Luna Bliss’ plants the best in Second Life. I personally favor those of Julia Hathor, but Luna is hands down the winner for tropicals, of which she has many varieties. Pele is covered with Lilith’s palms and other exotics, and sprinkled liberally with Julia's flowers, which are beautiful, scalable, copyable, and affordable. I sure wish she would make a tropical sim!

Shopping at Julia's Creative Fantasies is a joy, for one simply wanders through the gardens and purchases whatever strikes her fancy. Julia and her partner have two beautifully landscaped and decorated sims with dozens of varieties of trees and hundreds of types of flowers, animals, houses, and furniture. The entire region is the shop.

Luna’s shop is much more formal. One can buy directly by walking down aisles lined with plants or buy packages of a dozen or so if any one likes from billboards which are conveniently separated by type (Trees, Marshland, Tropical).

But underneath! Oh, underneath!

Below the store, which hangs high in the air, is a wonderful wilderness that just has to be four full regions, full of high peaks, waterfalls, and lush vegetation. A few houses are artfully worked into the hillsides.

At the teleport entry to the Bliss Gardens is a hot air balloon rezzer. Visitors can ride a balloon (each seats four avatars), choosing from two different guided tours.

I took tour one, which I think of as the high tour, on Tuesday night. Sweetie had gone to bed, and I was at loose ends. (My work schedule has recently changed, and I don’t have to rise until 10 am, so I’m currently a night owl).

And so I took myself to Luna’s shop to buy some water lilies for Pele (I thought I bought them, but apparently I didn't, for I arrived home without them and had to go back for them). While there, I teleported to the gardens below and took the balloon ride.

It was breathtaking!

When, after twenty or so minutes the balloon arrived at its starting point and derezzed, I set out along the wooden track I had been seeing all over the sim, determined to walk the full length.

The path immediately climbed, and I spent most of time walking along ridge lines. The views were astonishing.

I fell through the track a couple of times (guess someone set those sections to phantom by accident, or maybe as a joke), but I otherwise had no trouble staying on the path. I walked for what HAD to be a half hour in real-time (a full days’ hike in Second Life) before the path abruptly terminated in mid-air, high above a gorge.

I went back the next night with my friend Axel, and we took the other leg of the tour.

I neglected to take any photos of the lower leg of the tour, but here are some photos of the upper leg.

Bliss Gardens are not to be missed!

What We Do in SL

Written 12 March 2007

What We Do in Second Life

I’m endlessly amused, irritated, and fascinated by the mini-worlds Second Life’s citizens make for themselves.

I’m amused because of the humor and cleverness used in the choice of names and the little jokes that appear in chat and the visual gags I’m always seeing in created objects and on the various sims.

Last night I saw an avatar with the first name OnoOnoOnoBadKitty.

Last night I saw an avatar caged in a Spam can.

Last week I saw the altar at the Church of Elvis. It was a golden throne.

The kind of throne he died on.

Yep.

I’m irritated by the bad manners shown by some SL residents. Last week a newbie ignored my greetings and walked past me and tried to enter my house. I banned her.

And I’m irritated by the lack of creativity shown by some residents, or, rather by what some citizens consider creative. I’m talking about the lowest of low humor, performed in a way calculated to annoy.

Here’s a hint, guys and girls: Repetitively sound spamming curse words is not creative. Making farting noises is not impressing anyone. Making wolf calls at concerts is not creative. Setting yourself on fire in public (more than once, anyway) is just fucking stupid.

I’m not talking about a little experimentation to check out the parameters of Second Life. I’m talking about doing the same idiotic things over and over and over again because what passes for a brain refuses to engage.

I mean, if it pleases you, go to a frigging sandbox and do it until your Social Security kicks in. But please don’t subject me and other citizens to it in public areas.

Boy, when I get irritated, I really get irritated!

And I’m fascinated by the love and detail Second Life’s citizens pour into their properties and creations. So here’s to you, all of you who are making SL the wonderfully textured place that it is.

You know who you are, dahlings.

An Icarus Night

 Doug

Dougette

Written 15 March, 2007

An Icarus Night

Sweetie likes to build high up, where the frames-per-second rate is higher and the air smells sweet.

To this end, she often rezzes a Mystitool platform at 600 meters or so.

Sometimes she forgets to take them down. But who’s counting prims?

I often join her, and we build quietly side-by-side—but sometimes it just turns into an Icarus night.

This happened recently, when we began experimenting with a trampoline script.

Sweetie, you see, has an idea of building a trampoline stairway that will bounce one all the way to Second Life heaven.

nb; I wonder if there IS a Second Life heaven.

To that end, we began playing with the effects of the trampoline scripts, seeing if the effect was directional, depending upon the rotation of the trampoline prim (it was; I was able, by rezzing two trampolines, placing one ten meters above the other, and rotating it so the bounce surface pointed downward, to ricochet myself half to death), if we could lower the force (we could, and were soon bouncing only ten meters or so high instead of 100M meters plus), and if the size and direction of the bounce were always the same (as yet undetermined). We also determined that you didn’t have to actually jump onto the trampoline; simply walking into it would launch you.

All of this let me to drag out a human cannon I had bought that morning.

It was a big sucker, capable of launching an av over any number of sims.

And wouldn’t you know it, the air of craziness we were fostering somehow let to a visit by the appearance of an acquaintance named Doug, someone Sweetie had met at a gathering place for dragons. Why she was there, I don't know; perhaps she is in need of dragon companionship.

At any rate, Doug showed up and we launched him out of the cannon, sending him to the boundary of the next sim.

I was trying to rotate the cannon so it would launch Doug directly toward Lion Sands when I made an oopsie and sent it (the cannon) to 135 meters.

No problem, though, for by then Sweetie was asking, “Doug, would you like to go high? Would you like to go really, really high?”

I knew what was coming, so I switched off “No Push” and she orbited him.

Then the night got really bizarre.

When Doug came back he was a woman.

I had no idea extreme height could do that! How could I? Sweetie and I were women before we flew, so the effect was nullified. But with Doug, it was different.

At first he thought it funny, but he was soon fascinated with the idea of being a woman, even lamenting his choice of first name.

Sweetie and I suggested she be called Douge (Doo-Jay; my PC can’t make an acute accent) and began giving her free outfits and telling her she needed to get some prim hair. And she ate it up.

We even devised a code phrase in case Doug ever shows up as a female alt.

I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s NOT “My ass is as big as a double-wide trailer.”

It was all great fun, especially when Doug started gender blending (male alt, female clothes).

Until another friend showed up and Doug immediately reverted to guy mode and made a crude comment about her physical appearance.

I was THIS close to banning him.

I think it would do Doug good to play a female alt for a while and see how the other half lives.

I mean, the female side of Doug was insecure about his breast size.

The male side was making sexist comments about my friend’s breast size.

Yep, it would do him good.

Map of Pele

Written 15 March, 2007

Map of Pele

Here’s a map of Pele I made last night; it can be found at the entry point of Pele on the Forsaken sim, at the temple to Pele.

I saved a snapshot of the Northwestern quadrant of Forsaken to my hard drive, imported it into Quark XPress (a page layout program) and added the labels. Then (since my early version of Quark doesn’t have file conversion abilities) I printed it into Adobe Acrobat as PDF, then cropped it and extracted the page as a BMP. This I imported into Second Life, pasted it onto a prim, and there it was, perfect.

Except I made an oopsie. The arrow actually points west.

Oops, as they say, sie. Oopsie.

I’ve fixed the XPress file and will convert it and import it into SL tonight. Until then, don’t get lost, for the version I’ve placed on this blog has no directional arrow.

Sweetie Smiles

Written 15 March, 2007

Sweetie Smiles

While we're on the subject of Sweetie, I gave her an excess smiling gadget the other day. Here are some rare Sweetie smiles and one photo, for comparison, showing her not smiling.

Sweetie

Sweetie in Everyday Makeup

Sweetie in a Sari from the International House of Style. Blue is Definitely Her Color!

Sweetie in Evening Makeup. Vive la Difference!

Written 15 March, 2007

Sweetie's New Look

Sweetie recently went on a shopping spree-- which is hilarious, since she claims Chey is a shopaholic and swears she has only six pairs of shoes-- seven now, since the shopping trip. Mabe that's true, since half the time she forgets to put shoes on. I've taken to calling her barefoot girl. I especially like it when she has her shoe forms on without her shoes.

Sweetie is a dear person, and I'm so glad she took herself out for a treat.

One of the things she bought was a new set of skins with a more dramatic makeup (same skin, just different makeup. I have to say, she looks fabulous when she decides to paint!