Eight Things About Me

Written 6 December, 2007

Eight Things About Me

Let me be clear: I detest chain letters. I throw them away when I see them and don’t pass them on. And if the sender is a person of my acquaintance, I put a tick by their name.

But when my Second Life brother Peter flagged me—twice— to write eight facts about myself on this blog, I couldn’t disappoint him.

So fact one, Peter—I dislike chain letters.

Fact two?

Hmmmm. My typist is a support system for my avatar

I have considerable land holdings, and Cheyenne, although talented and industrious, has never been able to meet her own expenses. That’s okay. Chey is living a life of unrestrained splendor in Second Life, and it’s worth every RL penny I’m spending.

Fact three:
SL has helped me lose weight.

I would rather be in world than cooking elaborate meals. Consequently, I keep my fridge stocked with low-carb foods and grab them when I’m hungry. On the negative side, my TiVo has been full to overflowing these past six months. I don’t watch television any more.

Fact four:

I seem to have a built-in inhibition about playing music in SL.

Friends who are RL and SL musicians told me about Second Life, and I came on the grid intending to perform. So far it’s not happened, although I’ve sung and played guitar in voice. I’ve purchased a very nice condenser microphone, so I’m technically ready to go, but it’s not yet happened. I think one reason is I fear people might like me and I would find myself committed to frequent performances. And the other reason of course, is I fear people might NOT like me.

Fact five:

I wear too many attachments.

At any given time, I’m likely to have on, in addition to my avatar clothing, prim hair, shoes, nails, and skirt; earrings, necklace, and bracelets; a HUD compass, animation override, Outy Banjo’s Auto-Emote, a personal hugger, sexy walk, and my Mystitool and Mystitool Implant. I am, as my Sweetie says, a pixilated Bond Girl.

Consequently, I often wind up at my teleport destinations with my shoes and hair up my butt and my HUD items stuffed goddess-knows-where. This requires me to either suffer baldness (if only in my own viewer and not others), relog, or suffer the indignity of dragging my Cheyenne-of-the-Day folder onto my avatar, reattaching everything but rendering me bald for a time. I hate all three options.

Curiously, this avatar scrambling is less likely in the mornings (my time) than in the evenings. It doesn’t seem to be related to the number of people on the grid, and I’ve not been able to pinpoint a single attachment or group of attachments that cause it. It’s the one thing I would fix in SL, if I could.

Fact six: 

I hate liver.

Chicken liver. Beef liver. Hate it. In fact, I detest all organ meat. Gizzards. Brains.

But I will tell you my menudo story.

When I was in graduate school, I had a friend of Hispanic descent. Although my friend’s mother had emigrated from Mexico and was culturally Mexican (his father was second or third generation American and was thoroughly LosAngelesified), my friend and his sisters spoke no Spanish. They continually beat one another up about not being sufficiently faithful to their heritage.

When I visited my friend in Los Angeles, he went on one of his I-must-become-more-Mexican crusades. His mother served us bacon and eggs on the first morning of my visit, but after that, he wanted menudo. I was offered bacon and eggs, but said no, I would prefer menudo myself. And so for six days, it was menudo every morning.

Menudo is tripe (pigs’ intestine) in chili sauce. It wasn’t half bad, but it was certainly hot. My friend would tear up and get red in the face from the spices, but I was unaffected and in fact usually asked for seconds. It pissed him off that he couldn’t handle the peppers. He was of Mexican descent, wasn’t he? I was an Anglo, wasn’t I? What was up with me being able to handle his mom’s cooking when he couldn’t?

I still like menudo.

But I hate liver.

Fact seven:

I like open cars.

When I turned sixteen and got my drivers’ license, I expected my parents to turn over the keys of the family car.

It didn’t happen.

Thank goodness.

I talked my mother into getting me a Honda Cub 50 motorcycle in baby blue, brand new. I rode it, and, later, other Hondas, for the next two or three years, until I got my first car.

I’ve never owned a new car, or even an expensive used one. The most I’ve ever spent on an automobile is $2300 US—and for my entire adult live I’ve driven in safety and comfort, and for the most part, with no fears of breaking down.

I could swing a new car, I’m sure, but I’d have to sacrifice other things to make the payments. I’m have to give up things that are more important to me than a new car smell—my property in Forsaken being among them. And so I drive vehicles that, while not beaters, are decidedly pre-owned. And I’m happy.

Although occasionally I want to take a chain saw and just zip off the roofs.

When I was in college, I was lucky enough to pick up, for the princely sum of $450 a beautiful 1963 Fiat Cabriolet 1500. It was a convertible, designed by Peninfarina, with a 1500cc (big in those days!) engine, rack-and-pinion steering, front disk brakes, radial tires, and a big two-barrel Weber carburetor. It had only 33,000 miles when I bought it, and its unique design and immaculate condition made people think it was a vehicle expensive and new.

I loved that car—not because it looked like a status symbol, but because I loved feeling the wind in my hair and seeing the moonlight on my skin as I drove on twisty country

My rule for the top was 30-100. If it was below 30 degrees Fahrenheit, the top went up. If the mercury marched past 100, the top went up. Otherwise, it was down, even in light rains, for I quickly discovered that so long as I kept moving, rain was swept over my head and into the night by the windshield.

I wore that little Fiat out, finally selling it for what I had paid for it I can’t tell you how much I miss it.

Fact eight: 

I am a bastard.

Can females be bastards? I don’t know, but if so, then I’m one.

I’m not talking about my behavior. I’m talking about the fact that my father wasn’t the sperm donor.

I found this out when I was in the eighth grade. We were studying genetics in school and I went home and told my mother brown eyes were a dominant trait and so it was not possible for two blue-eyed people like Mom and Dad to produce a brown-eyed child. I was about to speculate that perhaps hazel-colored eyes like mine constituted a different case when she broke down in tears and told me the story of my bastardness. She met and married my dad when I was two, and they had held the secret for more than a decade.

Mom’s revelation didn’t affect me much, psychologically. I didn’t really care for myself, but I was horrified at the feelings she had kept pent up inside her for so many years.

I have the sperm donor’s name, but I’ve never been driven to find out more about him. He was never my father. My father, God rest his soul, was my father.

And so, Peter, eight facts.

I will not be tagging anyone else. My branch of the chain ends here.

Photos: Fiat ads, my Fiat and classy digs.