Yo DJs – Another Cheesy SL10B Video

My Cheesy SL10B Video

Nouveau-Style Self Portrait.

Just ’cause I felt like it.

How to Kill a Community

• Don’t listen to your residents. Shuffle their requests along through “normal channels” until they either just sigh and deal with it, or pack and move somewhere else leaving you wondering why.
• Bait, and Switch. Sure, it was ocean-front when we showed it to you. But back then, you were a prospect. Now you’re a customer. And we’re filling in that ocean.
• Show special preference to people for no apparent reason. That guy gets free tier? Why? Because SCREW YOU that’s why.
• Don’t reward the enthusiastic and helpful. In fact, tell them off before they threaten your power structure. Or else just let them do all the work and take them for granted. A “thank you” is just so empty and meaningless and such a bother.
• Just don’t do anything. Events, get-togethers… they’re just so costly and such a hassle. Surely someone else can plan them. And will. Eventually.
• If you must organize something, be incompetent at it. Double-book, don’t show up the day of the event you planned, maybe get a third party to do most of the dirty work but don’t give them any abilities to do what you expect. Maybe be a stage manager, but know nothing about how streaming audio works.
• Don’t bother to promote; assume it’s someone else’s job.
• Remember that it’s all about YOU personally.
• You may screw up royally, but it’s not like it’s YOUR fault. So save the apology.
• Break your promises.
• Never leave the house/skybox/shop.
• Bitch, and moan, but then don’t do anything about it. After all, community is other people.
• Make these words your mantra: “Why bother?”

THERE she is!

look. It’s me, with mesh hair and clothes, taken today.

I may just be a convert to the CoolVL Viewer now.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.

Look who else can log in now.

Video of Lionheart’s St. Paddy’s Day Festivities

On Hero Worship

“Living in the Limelight, the universal dream
For those who wish to seem;
But those who wish to be…”
–Rush, Limelight.

Hero worship is a strange, curious thing.

You admire someone you don’t really know, for whatever reason, and you start to build a pedestal out of what you imagine about them. And then when you do meet them, you have all these expectations of how the meeting will go and, again, what the person must be like. Inevitably there’s a let-down.

Or at least, that’s what my experiences have been like, as a hero-worshipper.

It’s also really odd being the hero-worshippee. You think, “What does this person mean they’ve always wanted to meet me? I’m just, this, person, ya know? I do what I do and like what I like and whatever.” And you get a bit of “What if I don’t live up to this person’s expectations of me?” (spoiler: see the word “inevitably” above).

So why do we do it?

Last year, around SL9B, I started to get to know people whose names I had heard before, people I called “Somebodies.” Some, I was familiar with their work and really love what they do and was very excited to meet them. Some, I got the impression were jerk-faces who really turned out not to be. OK, one. And that one said something to me that really stuck: “There are no Somebodies. Anyone who isn’t himself is Nobody.” And of all the people I met last summer, that one “jerk-face” is the one I’d most likely call a friend.

So when someone came up to me and said, “OMG Mistletoe! THE Mistletoe!” my first thought was, “WTF did I do to earn a definite article?” But then I thought, whatever the reason, something I’ve done made an impression on him, a good one, and while he doesn’t really know ME, he does know my work and THAT is what he’s complimenting. So I just said, “Thank you.”

Then later I thought, “That was weird.”

7 Second Life Facts

You can thank Strawberry for this one. And it’s pretty simple, it’s a blog meme where I list 7 facts that are probably only interesting to me.

But since this blog is to hear myself talk anyway, I’m OK with that.

1. Stealing one of hers first: I hate notecards. Hate them. I hate them with a passion that burns with the fury of a thousand suns. It is a hate that endureth, and ceaseth not.
2. I’ve dealt with two stalkery people in SL. One finally figured out he was being creepy and backed off. The other… I don’t know. I’m still wary when I meet new people, and I look for similarities and “red flags” all the time.
3. I haven’t purchased Ls out of pocket since February of 2009. And counting.
4. I not only have had pixel sex, I once had an alt who was an escort. A male. It was short lived when I was reminded, oh yeah! We women don’t have to pay for sex or attention! I could have branched out and been a gay escort, but I was too insecure in my lack of knowledge of what happens when there isn’t a vagina in the room.
5. I hesitate to talk about SL in the meatworld with anybody but my closest friends.
6. I’d kill for the ability to have a sim on a stick on this computer.
7. I miss being able to stare at my avatar, when I was able to see her the way she looks in photos. Now, because of the viewer I have to use, she has a box on her head in place of gorgeous mesh hair.

…And all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

The good (and otherwise) folks of New Citizens International need not trouble themselves with my ban, as Chamonix will melt down to a pond before I choose to return.

I was invited today by one of the senior mentors to present my scale model to someone whose work I’ve long admired. I’d been getting quite hero-worshippy at the thought. So today the day came and I asked, “Should I just show it here, where it’s rezzed already?” Oh, no, my friend said, bring it on over and show it off here, it’ll be great!

So as I’m making a presentation, one young person decided to– oh how shall I say– engage me in a battle of wits. Or, as I prefer to call it, bring a knife to a gunfight. Well, I fired a couple shots across the bow. Shots so wounding as “Why are you being a grouchypants?” and “I just kind of feel sorry for him [the guy], really.”

I KNOW RIGHT?! You had no idea I was such a raging bitch.

And I was banned for this (and no, not by the person who invited me). AND RIGHTLY SO! Save the grid from viscious lunatics like Grouchy Old Elf.

I knew I shoulda showed at my own skybox.

“You had plenty of time to do that already.”

“You had plenty of time to do that already.”
Oh fuck you. And your privilege.

First thing first, I want to thank JubJub, who yesterday offered a solution so ridiculously simple that it embarrasses me. I just happened to have a friend visiting, she just happens to have the new viewer, she just happened to let me log on her computer and I just need to get shit switched over from the Marketplace via my browser now. So, to JubJub, and to my friend Maeva, thank you, both. You may have saved Clover’s Kitchen.

Second of all, I’d like to exctend my warmest middle finger to those who decided that this was the appropriate time to rub my face in the fact that outdated equipment is all I can afford. Thanks. Really.

I’m not asking for a god damn pity party or anything, I just wish people could get that I am poor. I don’t mean only buy new clothes at Walmart poor, I don’t even mean buy clothes at Goodwill poor; I mean, there’s no fucking buying clothes because we can’t fucking afford such a luxury poor. I mean, packing lunch because I can’t afford to buy it at an employee discount at work poor. I mean rolling up coins for gas money just so I can commute poor. I mean thermostat at 58 poor. I mean seriously fuck you for guilt-tripping me about it poor.

“So if you’re so poor how come you have a laptop?” Because, genius, I bought it in 2008, when we were somewhat near approaching middle class and my husband didn’t yet lose his job and we didn’t yet get reamed up the ass with a crowbar for tax debt. Not that I need to defend myself to your comfortable asses.

I’ve tried to keep up appearances, to suffer in silence and not complain because I know and I know WELL that there are people who have it fucktons worse than I do. But I’m tired. I’m beaten down by poverty and winter and being in East Cowfuck with no apparent end in sight.

So, guy, no, I’m not going to get a new computer. I’m not going to get a new disk drive for the one I’ve got. I’m not going to get an external disk drive. Those of you who are trying to find me solutions, thank you, sincerely, but I can’t afford to spend anymore money. I will run this thing on Imprudence until it’s bare nuts and bolts, and then, I can’t say. I can’t afford to do otherwise.

I can’t. Fucking. Afford. It.