Caledon Downs Again

As is often our wont, Rhianon and I took a stroll through the Downs one fine evening. For a sleepy backwater of the State, changes come to the Downs with some regularity! Among the recent changes:

Miss Pearl's Opera House disapparated (Mr. Webster says that is not a word, but a Mr. Harry Potter disagrees, and who am I to cross wands with such as Mr. Potter?) one day, leaving, for the moment, a delightfully flat piece of land next to Rhianon's house, on which one can easily land a medium-sized airship. Next to that, Miss 3ring Binder has replaced the existing structure with a store: Bad Kitty Clothing. I was about to suggest to Miss Binder that the palm tree would be much more likely to survive in a climate more tropical than that of Caledon, but it was gone the next time I passed by.


Professor Swindlehurst's lab is not new, but I still enjoy the most unwelcoming welcome sign ever devised, including "Tremendous Dangers to Life, Limb, and Sanity." I've never quite reconciled "No Tresspass" and "No Breathing" with "Welcome." We moved on.

New to the Downs, along the rail tracks: Casmir's Eclectic Items.

The next two shots show the Belisa Bing estate:

Though Miss Ladyartista Labrada sold much of her Downs property, she still maintains a small, peaceful plot near Windemere:

Moving just into South End, we encountered the firing range. First, we took a rest beneath the large, gnarled tree:

Then it was time for target practice! I take aim:

As I stand aside, Rhianon adopts her best "execute the prisoner" pose:

Magazines emptied, trigger fingers sore, targets blasted to pieces (and, as an aside, one should not miss the experience of shooting at the stone target to the right of the wooden target; while it does not blast apart the way the wooden target does, giving a great deal of psychic satisfaction, it does produce some amusing statements when hit), we decided to call it a night. I love the smell of cordite in the evening!

Winterfell in Fantasy Faire

It took a little doing - and a plea for help from Rhianon to the Seneshelf - but I managed to find the Winterfell exhibit in the Wings Wands Wonders sim at Fantasy Faire 2009.


In addition to having a few items for sale to benefit RFL, the exhibit provided a little glimpse of Winterfell.


Of course, I made myself right at home.

A First Look at A Second Look

I'm fascinated by SL art. I'm not quite sure why, but it may have to do with the idea that SL is an intensely visual medium that's just a little off-kilter, just a bit away from looking real. Perhaps it's the idea that one can create things that are Not Possible in Real Life, to coin a phrase.

And clearly I'm not the only one, as actual artistic types seem to be well-represented in SL. One of those is Caledon's own Callipygian Christensen, who has art scattered about the grid, including in Caledon Cay and Victoriana. When I saw that she had a small exhibit at the Untold Ark, I decided to have a look.

Speaking of looks, the title of the exhibit is "A Second Look." As the artist explains:

"A second look can mean many things; as I go through the images I take I often set a number aside as not usable, but as I look through the ones I am about to delete some part of the image jumps out and demands a second look; sometimes as I look at various locations I don't 'see' an image but later, whether minutes or days, I might be there again with a different time of day or different windlight setting and on second look, an image is there; I guess every image taken here is actually a 'Second look' as well :), and the 12 images in this exhibit, two of them totally unretouched snapshots, are images I feel deserve a second look through your eyes as well as mine."

I'm always reluctant to take pictures anywhere near an art exhibit, especially when the art is for sale, as Miss Christensen's is. I don't want to appear as though I'm stealing someone else's IP, nor do I want to faciliate such an outcome. But I couldn't resist taking the shot below - sufficiently crappy that it doesn't count, I would think. Note the absinthe fountain, glass, and spoon in the picture on the right.


One final note: SL art seems to feature a great many geometric patterns, like a Spirograph. I'm not sure what that's all about, but it leaves me cold. There, I've said it.

I Take a Bat Ride

At the RFL Fantasy Faire, in the Dark Realms section, what do I spy but...

...a rideable bat. The furry little guy - well, not so little, really - was happy to oblige.

I bought an outfit because it was named after a Rasputina song...okay, I liked it as well, but the name sealed the deal. I'm afraid the bat ride scrambled my brains a bit.

I've noticed that there is a lot of lingerie in SL. A lot of lingerie. Even in the goth section of the Fantasy Faire there are at least two lingerie stores. (Goth bloomers...hmm...)

Why so many undies? I'm the only one who sees mine. I imagine others have more, ah, active social lives and might want a little variety, but aren't there limits? Do some people live in their underwear? Am I missing big parts of the grid where lingerie is normal attire? (Nekkid, sure. Bikinis, I'm with you. But bras and panties and garter belts and stockings and lions and tigers and bears? Oh my.)

Right Back Atcha

It sounded like a joke, and no doubt that is how it started: Be Right Back, a "Photographic Showcase of Second Life Bloggers and Friends," at the Ghambt Gallery.

Except that it's not just "bloggers and friends," it's...their back sides.


One blogger asked for pictures of his friends in a state of dishabille, and they obliged:

(I tried to pixillate the backsides in Photoshop, but couldn't figure out an easy way to do it. So you get the entire experience.)

All of the photos are fairly tasteful, and some are quite artistic.

As opposed to, say, this picture (courtesy of Miss Kiralette Kelley's camera, Miss Serra Anansi's Flickr stream, and last Saturday night's ISC chat). What was she thinking? To quote Miss Callipygian Christensen: "Oh, she bought the combo posterior and pudenda particle poofer."

I Consume - So What?

I was skeptical when I read of Consume on the New World News blog. Art commenting on consumerism in society? Hmm. As the article notes, the exhibit "ponders the question: When is enough enough?...Artists show work that expresses how and why we consume and how our consumption affects us, the people around us and the world in which we live....At the end, the visitor finds out how much they [sic] have consumed and comments on their [sic] spending habits are offered."

Fine. I like art, and I like spending. I was game. The exhibit extends over thirteen floors of a department store. To enter the building, one must obtain a HUD shaped like a credit card.


The ground floor sets the tone: images of coins and currency. The ground floor also provides some instruction for seeing the remainder of the exhibit. One uses an elevator to travel between floors. On some of those floors, one can choose to buy one or the other (or both) of a pair of products: one "necessity" and one "extravagance." The "necessity" is invariably cheap, while the extravagance is invariably expensive. The latter is also financed through debt (in the form of a charge to your HUD credit card, including some calculation of interest, though what assumptions are made regarding repayment is not clear), so the exhibit keeps a running total of one's debt.


The floors have different images of what the artists consider to be rampant consumerism. Below, I attempt a text message with the world's largest Blackberry. Oddly, the modern device lies atop a television of much older vintage. Someone was being thrifty in not throwing out those older sets!

Another floor has an exhibit that mocks our cultural obsession with medical products, particularly anti-aging products. I found it a little puzzling - the exhibit made no distinction between vanity products (e.g., Botox) and products that (arguably) extend life. One might even argue that, because quality of life is important, Botox and other treatments that make patients feel better about themselves are as important as products that extend life but cannot ensure a particular quality of life. Below, I take the treatment in a pill-shaped chamber. Do I look refreshed?

On and on go the floors, some not yet completed when I visited, and some more interesting than others. One floor contains a bumper car ride. Another contains a great many vials, some dance and kissing poseballs, and, contained in a large black box, a big Viagra pill with images on the wall of randy old people. I'll interpret that exhibit as saying either that old people should not have sex, or that impotent men should not have their ability to have sex restored. I suppose either of those is a defensible position, but both seem highly judgmental to me.

At the end, on the thirteenth floor, something resembling a bank vault awaits. One must be "scanned" by sitting on the seal between the two guards, whereupon one receives some snarky comments and some verbal finger-wagging about continuing to wear an AO despite the request to detach such. (The lag was minimal.) Tough, guys, because I'm not about to duck-waddle through your exhibit. Not only am I consumeristic, I'm vain. Sue me.

I made the Wall of Shame. The text in red reads: "Rhianon Jameson scored 16667.12 US$ in debt Your botox days are over" - honestly, they have yet to begin, so nya-nya to the effort to shame me.

It's far from clear what I should take away from the exhibit. Spending too much is bad? Well, sure. The problem is always in defining "too much." Going into debt is bad? Sometimes. But I knew that, too. And assigning arbitrary prices to "extravagances" - and isn't this really in the eye of the beholder, or the credit card holder, in this case? - doesn't really help to drive home the point that certain lifestyle choices are unaffordable for some people. What would have made more sense would have been to give everyone a budget for each floor (representing different ages), provide a price list for various goods, allow people to go into debt to finance purchases as long as the total amount spent, including interest on the debt, did not exceed the total budget. Then a visitor could see that going into debt to buy things on the lower floors reduced the total amount of merchandise that the visitor could buy over the entire exhibit.

In any event, the exhibit reinforced my view that art and politics rarely mix well. Now if you'll pardon me, there's an airship I've had my eye on...

New Brunswick Recon

After reading alarming dispatches from the new nation of New Brunswick, and reports of skirmishes along the Caer Firnas border, I thought a closer inspection might be worthwhile.


Mysteriously, the warships in the harbor appeared to be deserted. I docked my airship in an adjoining space and waited anxiously for armed guards to arrive, and...nothing. Silence. I explored the military garrison, a military supply shop, a mansion containing Egyptian-themed merchandise, and a flower shop.


One possible explanation for the silence was the presence of a Caledonian gunship patrolling the border between Caer Firnas and New Brunswick. (And a smart salute to Mr. Alex Chadbourne, who was commanding the gunship!)

But I stumbled across a second explanation: though the town appears somewhat rustic, and technologically far behind the steam-powered nations, such as Caledon and New Babbage, at least one of the Brunswickers has a command center high above the town:


I looked through the control room for clues to the townspeople's intentions, but found none. Hearing approaching footsteps, I used the mysterious transportation device to return to the surface, and ran for my airship.

All in all, a less-than-satisfactory result in terms of useful intelligence gathered. New Brunswick may be an area on which to maintain vigilance.

Naughty Alice

Striking a slightly more adult pose than the previous sims (though Nevaria promises "dark" RP), Jabberwocky, in the Oriental Express sim, conceives of Alice as a girl with mental health problems. The visitor to Alice's room is very small in relation to the furniture, which includes this prescription for Thorazine...

...and these restraints on the bed.

The real fun starts in Syryns Sanctum, a closed (one must be a group member to enter the sim, apart from the shopping area) area devoted to women who enjoy a, ah, certain lifestyle. One themed part of the sim is based on Alice - but a naughty, naughty Alice.

One starts with the hookah-smoking caterpillar, which seems to be common to a number of these sims and designed to give some "street cred" to begin with. As a non-smoker, it doesn't do anything for me.

More "drink me" bottles...

Then one sees - what? A rabbit with a young Japanese woman in a provocative pose. Did the creators have a different edition of Alice than the one I read? Where did that come from?

One of the now-ubiquitous large rabbits graces an area with more cartoon-style pictures with girls in provocative poses.

Then through the small door...

...and into an area with various NSFW poseballs. Well, to each her own, but I never did get the connection with the books.

All in all, I got the impression that various content creators thought Alice was recognizable and cool in some fashion, but didn't know what to do with the theme once they created it. The Alice ride was one exception. Nevaria is trying to take the story in a different direction through role-playing, and it remains to see how successful they will be in doing so.

Second Life's Alices

Given the Alice-in-Wonderland style of much of SL, it's little wonder that Alice in Wonderland seems to be a popular theme across the grid. A search brings up more than 30 returns, from shops to the Caledon II hedge maze to full role-playing sims. Rhianon posted on the Distorted Dreams shop recently. I decided to take a journey across various Wonderlands to see how visions of the same books differed.


Nevaria (above) has been revamped considerably from the last time I visited, back in December. Although the notecard discusses the back story, which springs from the Alice books, it never seemed to be particularly Alice-centric. Now it is even less Alice and more generic "medieval town with creepy castle." The sim is still a "heavy RP" area, so participants are expected to be in character at all times.

Black Pearl Beach has an Alice ride. Nicely done, with a buggy that takes one through the various areas. Some lag issues, but it was worth the trip.

I follow the direction

Delirium starts out in an Alice-themed area, complete with "drink me" sign, Cheshire cat, "Eat me" catnip...but then leads above the sewer level into...a grungy urban shopping area. It's as though no one knows what to do with the Alice theme once they have it.

Delirium boasts playing cards and chess pieces

I take tea among the mushrooms while the Sendak-like Cheshire Cat lurks behind

In the next segment, I discover that some people think the Alice canon is suitable for naughtiness.

The Curse of Glamorgan

Not a month ago, I noted several changes in Rothesay. Two months before that, Rhianon explored the new Wunderbar embassy in Rothesay. I saw that Miss McGimsie had placed her parcel - which carried with it the title of Glamorgan - on the market, and the other day I saw that the embassy was gone and the land was pancake flat.

On the opposite corner of Rothesay, the Four Winds people had purchased Miss Rosewood's property, though that parcel was similarly flat. Miss Anderton's land was in recovery from the recent RFL event, leaving Laird Brideswell's property the only thing I could photograph:


All these changes in ownership since the fairly recent founding of Rothesay in the aftermath of the Openspace sim debacle got me thinking: are some lands cursed? Is there a Curse of Glamorgan, given by the original Duke, Mr. Ambiant Kukulcan, and fated to remain until the Lab becomes wiser?