Self-image is a funny thing. I'm often viewed as being very positive, altho to me—myself—I sometimes see myself as quite negative. It's always important to be honest with one's self. Lately, I've been feeling pressured in that, I wonder if I should comment on everything important that I see about SL. But then, I remember how this blog began, and how it eventually went from "techno music" to "Second Life" as my hyperacusis emerged, blessing from a curse, and I changed.

It never ceases to amaze me how many steps have to be right for good things to happen. And yet they do, in abundance. And even with all the wrong in the world, as Forrest Gump might say:

"Is it 'destiny,' or merely events 'just floating around accidental-like?' Or perhaps it is a little of both."

My blog has been quieter than I've cared for, but I've been very busy. Feels needy to me, like a pet that constantly needs to latch to the bellybutton and/or be hugged. I'd like to explore more visual art. Something I haven't done enough of on my blog. I was inspired by my brother drawing his interpretations of the dreams I saw, dreams which are extrapolations of what I've experienced in Second Life. I've been doing more.

It's been very fastpaced lately, and I want to pause and look around.

In going through phasechanges, I can look back and say, "Ahhh… that's where I was" at a certain episode of my life. And I think that I had a time where I compulsively updated every day, but now I can spread it out some more.

Shortly ago, I blogged about SL anthros "exporting" themselves in the fur. Loriana Fox let me know she keeps a journal including info about how she made her offline avatar. Chatting with her for awhile, she emphasized how she did some of the trademark SL motions like the "waddle walk" and the distinct sequence of gesturing whilst editing an object. Sadly, she has no videos, but the pictures are foxy indeed. There's been more talk about bringing what's in SL to something you can touch beyond a computer screen, known to some as "the real world".

Alexis Enfield aka Thomas Rice has a fun site called Sexy Sprite or Fugly Fright?! (gotta love punctuation like that). Think of it like a MMO HOT or NOT? Featuring avatars from a collection of online games—Second Life is well-represented! He set it up very recently, and it's well on a roll.

I recently attended a Community Roundtable Meeting—my first being on the Community Team! It was very orderly and polite. Tateru Nino sez this is in contrast to previous ones, which I've missed (yeah, me and my wack sleeping hours—this'll make me commit). Highlight capper at the end was checking off another item on my list: seeing an ancient dinosaur bird thing… which I can't spell. But it's all good, 'cuz Psyra Extraordinaire made it, and it's called an "archaeopteryx"!

Jumpoff to a mature site—first of its kind I've seen—Second Life Escort Ratings, which has serious writeups and star-ratings of Resident escorts inworld. If you took away the mention of Second Life and recontextualized the obvious chat snippets and references to mixed realities, maybe you couldn't tell. Maybe. There's the cliche that "there's already too much sex in SL" (like what, too much music? Too many prims?) but I have a very serious angle I'm eyeing here: therapeutic sexual healing for the physically disabled who would be able to find new methods of pleasure in SL that wouldn't be open to them otherwise. Synthetic sexual surrogates. An ideal example of technology that makes us more human.

When I was little, I always knew where the Barbies were in the toy section because of all the pink. And while it isn't one of the reasons why I'm so fond of hot pink+neon green (with stripes or dots of black), it became a prominent and recurring cue in the years to come. Whenever I'd go into a department store, I'd look for pink—and sure enough, more Barbies.

Elphaba Gould and friends have their own pink haven, a town in the aurally-named sim of Ear with the purty name of Pollyester's @ Ear (104, 148, 47). Now, it isn't all pink, but where I landed was—right at the corner of a building with attractive awnings that drew me hither. This was just a random TP, and I had no intention of running into Stella Costello, Elphaba Gould running up behind near her. On the curb was a sassy-mouthed prim "lady of the night" named Lucy, uttering saucy sayings while Elphaba handed me a gift, this snuggly bear by Ziggy Quirk.

I like surprises, being spontaneous, all of that. Back in the early 00s, I was into a lot of pyrotechnic, very tricky breakbeat music—with all ungarden variety of choppy stutter edits, filtered fills, and general splintery havoc between drum and bass, like an android lumberjack with automatic axe designed to sever wood like a machine gun, while his faithful companion, a rotund robot bearing the keys to the most resonant gong this side of the Wu-Tang, chimed in on the beat.

Here's how it happened.

It's sad Slootsville is closing.