Sweetie Gets a Skin

Written 25 May, 2009

Sweetie Gets a Skin

It was a peaceful holiday evening. We were lying in a sleeping bag on top of the bed (don't ask) in our House of 1000 Pleasures, being silly in Skype.

Sweetie, being Sweetie, was also busily scouring the internet for signs of adoration-- and she found this photo.

Oh, what's that? She said to tell you she was looking for super secret clues left for her on webpages, and if she happened to find adoration along the way, who is she to spurn it?

The photo-- she found it on the front page of the Society of  North American Goldsmiths-- sent her into a rage.


"How DARE they steal my idea!" she fumed. "My design! My inspiration!"

"How is that, hon?" I asked sleepily.

They stole the design of the Whimsy Sungate!

Patented Sweetie Shape

"They did?"

"Yes! My hollowed and dimpled spherical shape with gold interior!"

"The one that's perfectly proportioned and exquisitvely textured?" I asked.

"That's the one! Can't you see what they've done?" Sweetie jumped up from the sleeping bag and began pacing around the room, dropping 8-meter stone orbs all about. I made a dash for the door lest one crush me.

"See? These are the prototypes!"

How we got from there to a new skin for Sweetie, I'm not quite sure-- what's that? Oh, she decided her virtual sense of style was becoming too famous and so she needed to change her appearance.

We spent the next two days making mad dashes from one skin store to another. Sweetie would buy all the demos, try them on, and then cast them onto the floor for the freebie camping janitorial crews to pick up, and we would be off to the next location.

Adam 'N Eve. Body Politik. Sin Skins. Redgrave. Fleur. Tete a Pied. Sensible Skins. Skin Within. Canimal.
"Too dark! Too goth! Ewwww, too oily! Too slutty! The nipples are the wrong color. OMG, did they paint this skin with a 4-inch brush? This skin seems to have been designed to look its best under nuclear face light!"

Longtime readers of this blog may remember Sweetie's former misadventures when skin shopping. There was the time she resolved to buy new makeups for her original skin; We jumped to the store and there was only a hole in the ground (it had been there just the night before). Another time we were in a store and she actually had the buy box open when the store and everything in it disappeared and we fell three floors to the ground.

This time, however, nothing went wrong. She found a skin at-- what's that?

Oh, Sweetie said I can't tell you, as then you would be able to recognize her, and if you recognized her, she would have to kill you. Let's just say we found a lovely alabaster skin that will work well with the most deadly shades of exploding lipstick in her inventory-- and she has a lot of them.

I can't show you a photo of Sweetie, of course (her being undercover and all), but I assure you she looks lovely.

Except for the prim eyelashes, which she got tired of adjusting, leaving one floating a meter or so out from her face.

Oops! I just gave you a clue to Sweetie's appearance. I'm in trouble now!

We can't actually show you Sweetie, but we CAN show you her skin!


She of course looks nothing like the avatar in the photo.

Wheat

Written 30 January, 2010

Wheat

Although someone might have at one time or other created a wheat plant, it was AM Radio's The Far Away that really and truly made wheatfields possible in Second Life.

I won't say which high-energy, rambunctious, exploding lipstick carrying avatar it was that smuggled out the wheat seeds, but now the damn stuff is everywhere!


And it has mutated! Into sculpties! OMG!


It's that damn evil Monsanto, bioengineering our prim wheat!


By the way, we at Whimsy categorically deny having transacted any business whatsoever with Monsanto at our robot sanitorium.


If you look closely at this tank of liquid nitrogen at the Whimsy Kaboom Robot Sanitorium, you will NOT see a Monsanto logo. Repeat after me, children... there is NO Monsanto logo. There is NO Monsanto logo. Great. Now take this FrankenApple and go away.

Intervention!

Written 9 February, 2009

Intervention

Chey: Sweetie, we know you’re wondering why we asked you here.

Sweetie: Yes! And while you’re at it, please explain why it couldn’t wait! I was conducting a critical experiment on the failure of a third-level manila folder. I think I’m close to a fix for the famous 23-sublevel malfunction problem.

Chey: It’ll have to wait. We have something to say to you.

Sweetie: It’s another interview, isn’t it? My adoring public!

Starblazer Gazer: Sweetie, we’re your friends, and we want you to get better.

Sweetie: OMG! This is… this …

Pas Reglon: Yes, Sweetie. It is.

Chey: Welcome to your intervention.

Sweetie: Let me out of here!

Jan Viveck: Sorry, Sweetie. You know we can’t do that.

Sweetie: Let me out of here, I say!

Sggaks Caidemor: We were all once like you.

Pas Reglon: Yes. My inventory count was past 40,000. And all poseballs.

Starblazer Gazer: With me, it was eyes. I just couldn’t have too many pairs.

Sggaks Caidemor: I was obsessed with all things Victorian. I spent hundreds of hours adding “Ye olde” to the name of each of the 13,500 items in my inventory. Non-mod items made me just nuts.

Jan Viveck: I suffered a devastating inventory loss—all my clothing disappeared! When I submitted a support ticket, the Lindens just laughed. Thank goodness for the psychbot at your robot sanitorium! He diagnosed me with post traumatic inventory loss stress disorder and gave me some robot medication that keeps me stoned out of my gourd.

Desi Kaypre: And I—I never realized you could save photos to the hard drive. I had snapshots stashed in every folder and subfolder in my inventory. The 10-Linden upcharges were killing me. And believe me, I learned the hard way about the 23 subfolder problem!

Chey: And you know my problem—obsession with textures. I was spending hours making and uploading them, and then I couldn’t get them out of my inventory and into my texture organizers fast enough.

Sweetie (batting eyes): But what does this have to do with me?

Chey: We all had a consultation with the psychbot. He’s convinced the root of your problem is an unresolved object relations complex.

Dryden Cillius: You seem to be stuck in the cubal stage.

Desi Kaypre: And you have a problem with transference.

Sweetie: That quack, with his roboFreudian bullshit? That’s soooo hackneyed! I wonder he didn’t tell you I have penis envy!

Chey: Er, prim envy, actually. It has to do with all those .5x.5x.5 plywood cubes in your Objects folder.

Sweetie: It’s perfectly NATURAL to have objects named object in your Objects folder!

Chey: Not 1400 of them!

Sweetie! But I’ve been religiously following Sweetie’s object-cleansing diet! And it’s working! I know it is!

Jan Viveck: Sweetie, we’re here because we love you. We want you to get help for your inventory problem.

Sweetie: Help? I don’t need help!

Starblazer Gazer: You’re in denial, Sweetie. It’s normal.

Sweetie: You’ll have to pry my manila folders from my cold, dead virtual hands!

Chey: Sweetie, please be reasonable!

Sweetie: Don’t you realize, you fools, those exploding lipsticks are dangerous! Do you have any idea what my collection of nytrocosmetics could do to the servers? It could crash Second Life! Permanently! What a color-mismatched catastrophe THAT would be!

Pas Reglon: Sweetie, aren’t you being a little dramatic?

Sweetie: I live for drama! How about if I let you have my Revlon Red 542! It explodes, but it’s the weakest of the lot. And, and, I have a torus I could let you have!

Starblazer Gazer: Sweetie, you’re bargaining.

Sweetie: Why are you all looking at me that way? You’ve been planning this! You’re all ganging up on me!

Starblazer Gazer: Now you’re paranoid.

Chey: Sweetie, be reasonable!

Sweetie: Reasonable? Don’t you understand, I’m SWEETIE! I have no reason to be reasonable. I have flunkies to be reasonable in my place.

Chey: Ouch!

Sweetie: I’ll get you all for this! I will! This has to be against the Terms of Service! I know a Linden! He adores me and will do anything I tell him to!

Starblazer Gazer: Now you’re in the threatening phase, Sweetie!

Sweetie: I’m going! I’m leaving! You can’t stop me! Hey! Why can’t I move?

Chey: I turned off physics for the entire sim. You can’t go anywhere.

Sweetie: Noooooooo!

Chey: Will you come along quietly?

Sweetie: MAC Fuchsia 17! Cover Girl Hot Pink 101! L’Oreal B19 Purple. Because I’m worth it! Get your hands off me! Revlon Dramatic Black 03! Maybeline Peach Gloss! Leave me alone! Clarins Red L’Amour! Merle Norman Bombs Away! Arrrrgh!

Sggaks Caidemor: She’s completely flipped out!

Pas Reglon: She's reverted to lipstick language! Where are we going to put her?

Chey: I just happen to have an entire facility for this. We’ll put her in a padded cell in the HAL 9000 Memorial Secure Unit for the Robotically Criminally Insane-- up at the robot sanitorium!

Sweetie: If I can work my way down to folder level 32 you’ll ALL be sorry!

Chey: That’s where she keeps her most powerful lipsticks! To be safe, I’m turning off scripts. And turning off build. Let’s go! There’s not a moment to lose!

Starblazer Gazer: Chey, I hate to say this, but with physics off none of us can move.

Chey: Crap!

And that’s where the intervention went horribly, horribly wrong.