Anoint

Missing Mile

“Sliding?”

“Yep. Sheep,” he said.

“No.”

“Yes. Lice.”

“No.”

“I’m telling you.”

“It was the priest thing.”

“Yes, but before that, sheep.”

“I thought it had to do with the chosen one and all that.”

“Sheep?”

“No! The blessing thing and chosen ones and… You know.”

“You didn’t think sheep were the chosen ones, did you?”

“Of course not!”

“Well, it did work. The wool got slippery.”

“You’re ridiculous!”

“It’s true though.”

“Sliding lice. What an image. You’re nuts!”

“Life is slippery, even for lice.”

Writer's Dash

Borked at Phoenix Firestorm Hours

Retropolis

Sims crashing, people crashing, logins temporarily unavailable, LL restarting sims, the production crew being ejected from where they were to the corner of the sim (that one had everyone puzzled!). It was quite an eventful experience, I must say, during which Jessica Lyon measured every word carefully, not failing to mention though that there seemed to be some inconsistencies in LL’s decisions. She highlighted LL’s willingness to incorporate a few of the features created by TPVs developers in the official viewer but also the fact that the new policies will stifle TPVs proposals since those must now be pre-approved by LL. There is still room for innovation, in Lyon’s opinion, yet when a particular feature is related to shared-experience it becomes a whole different situation. The problem is that a new feature usually is the result of residents’ needs and feedback plus a countless number of hours of development. If LL does not approve it, months of work and expectations will be thrown out the window. There will be a bigger logistic process no doubt to get new features built in TPVs and a whole more aggravation work for everyone. In my opinion, the reasons presented for the latest LL’s decisions on TPVs are, in the least, shaky and did not convince me or the audience. One of the reasons presented for the removal of the TPV viewer indication from the name tag was, as explained to Lyon by LL, the fact that many people have been bullied for using the official viewer. Ahm… What?! Being an educator for more than 20 years, I am all for putting an end to bullying, but I am perplexed, I must admit… In the meantime, everyone is showing as wearing the V2 tag, despite the fact that we are in fact using a TPV. If bullying is the reason, wouldn’t it be better to remove the viewer indication altogether?! I cannot help it, but this feels a little Orwellian to me… I have said it before, and I will continue to say it again and again, worry about lag, lag, lag, group chats, sim crossings, borked logins, sim crashings, and all those mundane issues which were exactly the reasons why this Phoenix Firestorm Hour was such a tech mess in the first place. Just a thought.

Mare Serenitatis

UPDATE: I logged in Second Life briefly today and I noticed the viewer tag was gone altogether. If it is not some sort of odd glitch of the system, I applaud the decision to implement this approach.

Vertigo

Zenfinity

“…there is no solution,” he said.

“But what happened?!” she asked.

“The toaster. It’s a piece of crap.”

“But why did you buy it?”

“I was not going to pay big money for a toaster.”

“But now it’s broken.”

“Yes, it is dear, thank you for pointing that out so eloquently. I think the flames coming out of it clearly show it is indeed broken.”

“But what are you going to do?

“Well, throw it in the garbage would be a good guess.”

“But can’t you try to fix it?”

He lit up a cigarette.

“The thing is, once the bread ignites, that’s pretty much it, dear.”

“But…” she started. Yes, she did start that sentence, that as many other sentences, with a piercing but that drove him over the edge.

In a motion he simply couldn’t remember later on when the police asked him what had happened, the toaster went from the kitchen counter to a somewhat undefined direction which coincidentally happened to be where his wife was standing.

He could remember one thing though. He could remember her eyes filled with surprise, her body attempting to stagger away and her mouth letting out a horrified “But…”

Beloved

Innsmouth

The clouds slide by in a dance of blues and whites and grays. There is a moon in the sky and the child asks her mother “why is there a moon? I thought the moon was only out at night?” The mother has no time to explain. She knows. She asks herself why, a different why but a why as strong as her child’s why. They will not own her, they will not own her, she repeats incessantly until the murmur in her mind fades away. By then her child is gone while the moon still shines above dancing with clouds in blue and white and gray.

Writer's Dash

Transparent

A Dark Fairies Dream

Transparent and old, the letter had traveled through the decades. It had been read time and time again in remembrance of their path. The handwriting, careful and elegant, was barely visible anymore, yet he carried it with him always. He would go back to reading from it every time she asked him to. It was the only way she could remember, even if for a few minutes only. That transparent feeble love letter was the strongest of bonds between them. He knew she was becoming as transparent as the letter…

Writer's Dash

Labyrinthian SL

The Labyrinth of Time

Lately, many have been highlighting the apparent state of disarray LL is in. From seemingly random purchases to pseudo mystery projects (i.e. products), from perpetually unsolved inworld issues to enraged comments by former employees, from the upheaval created by the request for bloggers to the eternal wars with 3^rd party viewers, all seems to be pointing towards a catastrophic outcome. Between the voices of doom and the LL groupies, it is difficult for an outsider of sorts to draw her own conclusions. As a content creator, both in the format of inworld products and blog material, I am a tad apprehensive, I must admit. The original plan for my second-life, when I joined SL five years ago, was simply to have fun. Being the goal-oriented person that I am, it soon became boring to jump from event to event every day and it was clear that I needed a purpose. That came in the shape of a job; first as an event moderator, then as staff coordinator, and finally, when my second-life unexpectedly ended upside-down and after wandering and wondering for a while, the job gave place to co-owning a store. The plan was still to have fun, but now the responsibilities were a bit different, especially because the inworld group grew to several hundred people, and the store committed itself to taking part in events such as hunts where dozens of people were working in the organization (hunt organizers, store owners, managers, etc.) and hundreds of hunters were participating. Numbers do bring a slightly different weight to it all. So, why not make something positive in SL that would boil over to RL? Why not take that SL business and turn it into a first life business? Well, the real question is would you? Considering everything that has been coming out lately, would you invest real money in a virtual world and take it up one notch turning your fun-to-have business, where your main concern is having high quality products and the best customer service, into a profitable mainstream store for the masses? I have seen many making that option. They may even make some money, true. But, do they have a future? And I don’t mean a playtime-type of future. I mean an investment-type of future. Well, I seriously doubt it. Continuing as it is, SL will drag itself throughout the years becoming a vintage sort of thing, where the resilient old-timers will linger on and the newcomers will pop in shortly just to leave and go back to the virtual worlds they came from initially. 
I want to believe in the future of SL, but it is getting harder and harder to maneuver in this labyrinth.

The Meaning of Life

Mare Serenitatis

“What is the meaning of life, dear?” he asked with a naughty look on his face. “Is it the two of us touching each other, up and down?”

 She had a severe cold and was certainly not geographically motivated.

“The meaning of life?”

He nodded enthusiastically.

“Well, it’s having a sweet hot chocolate, and a bitter chocolate for when I need to bite my tongue,” she said crisply.

“What about me?” he pleaded.

“You don’t taste like chocolate. You taste like… damped cereals.”

“Damped cereals?!” he asked.

To which she rolled her eyes and said, “Ok, pass the bitter chocolate.”

100 Word Stories

The Show

The Corset Theatre

It’s time.

Lights and smiles

And wondrous chimes.

Perfect steps on a shiny path.

Three, two, one, go.

The improbable rhyme of

An impossible math.

The dimes, the crimes,

All must flow.

The show, the show.

It’s time, it’s time to go.