even stranger than mothra

i wake up early, even on weekends.  blessing. curse. however, this should never imply that i am particularly "productive".  yesterday, i was up by 6.30, my class was meeting at 1pm est in second life.  for what?  at that moment i was unclear on.  but since i have not touched second life since my first attempt on 6.september i figured i needed to pick a new avatar (i gave up trying to make my avatar over in my idealized imagined self) and learn how to get around second life with enough time to meet my classmates.  the second time, was easier than the first, i picked my avatar, clothed her and was ready to go in about 45 mins.  after completing the tutorial for second life i moved over to orientation island.  this place was characterized by a collection of metamorphosing avatars as their rl ego's changed some thing about them.  as i was standing there people would sudden become nude or sprout wings or. . .i experienced my first case of avatar envy when a big beefy (thing staten island gym rat) walked past me. now normally this would not move me in any way; however, the fact that the avatar had an incredibly well defined body, flashy clothing, a gun and some bling (big diamond stud earrings, complete with strobe light glowing effect) lead me to believe that they had spent as much time as i had in my previous attempt to craft an impressive avatar, only they were successful.  as i contemplated asking the avatar if they could share the secret to their hotness, anuses started flying.  no. literally.  from the second life horizon pictures of a man, bent over with butt checks spread fingers clutching an obviously stretched anus for inspection of a very intimate kind (think as wide as a coke can, and as deep as the back of your throat).  there were hundreds of them, and they would replenish themselves.  i thought it was me!  i took it personally.  as if some malevolent soul had decided to attack the newbies, the vulnerable, those who could not figure out how to find the objects name (i assure you they did not call it ass hole) in some mysterious dialog box, and then put it and its owner on an ignore list. second life was at a stand still.  the experienced tried to get the in experienced to perform code magic to get themselves going.  people could not walk. the could not fly.  we could barely type (the spam opened a gaziliion dialog boxes that interfered with typing, or other commands).  people went to rouse papa linden (i assume he was asleep somewhere on the west coast, in my mind the pervasive fantasy of secondlife could only be a californian invention).  i was annoyed at first, would log on and off trying to clear up the situation, teleport to another location; nothing was successful.  then i started to see how other people responded and i just observed.  i was amazed at the calm that existed in sl, as if this was a common enough occurrence people that people knew just to wait it out (did i mention that this was at 8.30 on a saturday; who wakes up that mischievous and mean?).  this was my first "social" interaction with sl, before i even had a chance to go and find free clothing (cause my outfit was a wreck).  i have pictures of the attack (and the accompanying verbal rhetoric), click them to enlarge.

the rest of the day was uneventful.  even meeting up with my class and seeing what other avatars my classmates had chosen was ultimately eclipsed by the excitement of flying anuses.  but if you insist upon knowing, we spent almost 2 hours gathering, trying to figure out how to speak with each other ( sl is not only text based, it offers my über baritone voice an opportunity to animate my über feminine japanese girl aesthetic avatar. . .not the illusion i was going for).  for another hour we teleported to places of interest.  in the real world i am not a fan of group outings, and had my fill of them this summer in brazil, in a virtual point of connection this did not change.  the highlight of the day was visiting an art gallery (again something i do not do in groups in rl) which was fascinating not because of the art itself, but more so for the idea that the proprietor seemed to have a genuine desire to be a second life activist,  i will repeat: a. second. life. activist.  with a real world in such dire need of people of conviction and action, it was peculiar for me to see a virtual world, where people wanted to "make a difference."  and i will concede that some of what they were interested in addressing were rl dynamics in sl, which would beg the question of where, in their minds, does sl cross over to the rl, and what is the potential impact on the rl.  overall i had a hard time grasping the concept of a sl activist.


please note:  my entries for this blog are still quite personal.  i am hoping to move beyond my own biases (not get rid of them per se) and begin to have interactions with other sl'rs and have that "data" be the premises for future entries.  but that would mean i had to remember to log on and engage sl.

ps.  for those those who do not know: mothra (don't be shamed, a date told me about it, thought it was so cute: grown folk and their eccentricities)