It’s so cold outside, but I am snug as a bug inside the little snuggery from tarte for The Arcade. With a wall of windows facing south I get enough sun to warm up.
Of course, layering is the real secret to warmth. This lovely outfit from PixiCat for Collabor88 is not only warm as the rug that snugs the bug, but it is really an entire wardrobe. The leggings and the jacket come with texture-changing HUDS. The sweater is tentacle, so the only limit is statistical. Continue reading
Delta Bluesman Bukka White wrote the Fixin’ To Die Blues and later it was covered by Bob Dylan and by Dave Van Ronk. I thought about it yesterday when Second Life® had another auto-update that resulted in immediate crashes when I tried to take a picture. I thought they are fixing me right out of Second Life – each update and “improvement” making my experience more laggy and frustrating. And yes, I did all the requisite attempts to fix it including a clean install. I ended up installing an older update and crossing my fingers. For whatever reason, though, I cannot save a picture to disk without crashing, even in the older version now. The only way I can take pictures is uploading them directly to Flickr®. Oh well, here they are, raw shots that are not even cropped. The clothes are still gorgeous!
When I was camming around I accidentally cammed in on my face though the street light globe. I thought the effect was freaky and fun.
Since my five siblings were married before I turned four, I essentially grew up at Grandma’s House. My mom and dad were Grandma and Grandpa. My nieces and nephews loved to come stay during summer break and during Christmas vacation. Living a lake with more than twenty miles of forest behind us, there were always plenty of things to do.
We loved to have winter skating parties. My dad, my uncle and I would clear a big square on the ice and put up posts about every eight to ten feet, stringing Christmas lights from post to post, encircling the open skating area. We piled a big stack of wood and brush at the deep end for a bonfire and set down some logs around them for seating while we roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. We laid an old wooden door on the piled snow for a table for our hotdogs and marshmallows for roasting and there was always a pot of baked beans and some casseroles resting on cans of Sterno® to balance the meal. Picnicking in the snow is something not to be missed!
Mom had an outdoor speaker system to pipe music down to the lake and we danced on our skates. My brother would bring his sleigh and horses, the neighbors would bring their snowmobiles. We partied for hours and the signal to go home was when the bonfire melted through the ice and fell into the lake – which usually took about four hours or so since the ice was so thick.
Through pure coincidence someone shared this on Facebook last night. When I saw it, I burst into tears because it is just so perfect, as you will see when you discover what made this the best Thanksgiving ever in the history of Thanksgiving.
Alchemy is more a philosophy than a study. A belief that somehow base metals can be transmuted into fine metals, as water is into wine in Christian communions. In the abstract, though, we can think of alchemy as the process of changing elements by bringing them together. This modern kimono from Atomic has some alchemical magic of its own coming in 3 colors and 6 tank colors that can be transmuted with a HUD. The other alchemy at play is adding an overlay of a light leak to add some color to my blue sky. You can download that video and screenshot individual light leaks from it. I used this particular capture.
In this shot, you can see the gorgeous amethyst crystal necklace from BOOM at Collabor88. There is a lot of interest in crystals for use in healing and balancing our lives – a belief that they focus energy. I think they are pretty and that is all they need to do. The gorgeous manicure is from FLAIR.
One of the most satisfying pleasures in Second Life® is witnessing moment of true innovation – the imaginative brainstorms of creative people that change our ideas of what is possible. We did not have prim hair or flexi hair until someone thought of it. And then everyone thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Once someone thinks of it – it seems so obvious, doesn’t it?
Someone had to come up with the idea of a sculpted foot in a shoe. The Slink hands and feet were an innovation that sparked an explosion of mani/pedis and Slink-compatible shoes. I have seen capes and jackets before that come with poses so your arms go in the pockets, so when I first saw this cape from ISON, I did not realize how innovative it is. But those arms in my pockets are part of the cape. It comes with a collar and gloves that can be set to a range of colors using a HUD or turned off altogether. It’s magnificent and innovative and I wage we will see more outfits with built in gloves.
The hat hair from Little Bones is a perfect match, controlled by a HUD as well, from which I selected a red hat and teal band and silver metal findings. Continue reading
When long-time model Fuzz Lennie told me she had begun designing for Zanze and had just produced her first dress, I had to see it. She has a great sense of style and exquisite focus on detail and I was eager to see what she was going to make. All I can say, is wow! if this is her first, I cannot wait for her second. This dress spoke to me on another level though, reminding me of one of my favorite gifts I gave for Christmas.
It was several years ago, back when I had my very first job in political organizing – working for the mission more than the money. My “discretionary income” was close to nil and in choosing between getting the NY Times of a telephone, I opted for the Times and walked two blocks to a convenience store for phone calls. So Christmas would have to be frugal and I would have to make gifts. Well, I grew up on frugal Christmases with homemade gifts, so that was no problem.
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Misogynist bullshit from TIME magazine’s annual ban-a-word poll.
I was feeling fiercely angry after learning that TIME included feminist on a list of words to be banned from common usage. I will not provide the link because they did it for traffic and they should not be rewarded for their indecency.
And it is indecent. For clicks, shits and giggles, a human gerbil desperately spinning for male approval and working far above her competency suggested that feminist is overused and included it in a list of words that should be banned. Responding to richly deserved backlash, she demanded we consider the context; she is critiquing media trends, not feminism. This is doubly shameless when she blithely ignores the context in which the “I am a Feminist” campaign came to be. I am sure she is proud of herself, though, because she is the kind of feckless crystallization of vapidity that always will be very, very, very proud of itself.
I am not going to rehash GamerGate or the War on Women or review the depressingly long list of women whom retrograde knuckle-walkers have tried to silence with rape and death threats. I am not going to list the long list of anti-women legislation proposed and passed. I will only sadly mention that 36% of Oregon voters voted that women should not have the same legal and civil rights as men. It is all sad and depressing, but, Katy Steinmetz, that is context.
Feminism is controversial because as women have become more economically independent and achieved a measure of parity in society, they are less susceptible to social and economic extortion to remain in bad relationships. Is a good relationship possible with a man who thinks women are second class citizens? That, Katy Steinmetz, is context.
Of course, Katy Steinmetz is not that important and she never will be. Though I imagine someday she will realize that she is paid significantly less than men in her same position – notoriously common in journalism. She may be angry, she might want to express that anger with a word. I wonder what word she will use?
One of my favorite groups back “in the day” was Bettina Tizzy’s Not Possible in Real Life (NPiRL). Tizzy gloried in the freedom of Second Life® creation – unshackled from the laws of Euclid and Newton – free to create anything they could imagine. Of course, Second Life has its own laws that result in some things common in real life becoming Not Possible in Second Life. Something quite simple in real life can become very complicated, even impossible, in Second life. One of those things is fringe.
Fringe is one of the fall’s hot fashion trends and promises to be an even hotter item in the spring. However, the physics of SL are not fringe-friendly. Of course, we could have flexi-fringe, but after two years of not having our clothes fall through our bodies, I think that is not the solution we want. We know from reports that flexi-mesh is not even under consideration right now. So I am excited to see Sunami Beck of Emery look for a work around. It’s not perfect, perfect is impossible, but it is a valiant effort that works pretty well overall. This fringe dress is a la page fashion – and it looks great. You can find it at Collabor88 with a bundle of coordinating loose sweaters like the on I am wearing.
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Bizza’s Asymmetrical Jacket is fun, casual and goes perfectly with the Josie pants.The Josie pants come with a HUD offering three options for each pair of pants. The details on these pants are out of this world.
Most of our friends are not our friends; they are acquaintances, contacts, colleagues and associates. However, in social media, we lump the people on our mobilization phone trees together with those for whom we would give up a kidney. The act of reading each others timelines foster that sense of shared intimacy that is the hallmark of real friendship. The boundaries blur and sometimes we invest more emotionally in those who are merely ships passing by, mistaking acquaintanceship for friendship. More than one person has been devastated recently by opinions of “friends” they have mistaken for friends.
However true friendship requires more than knowing the name of my cat or my political persuasion. Friendship is an investment in trust and intimacy. We share our best selves with our “friends” and share our flaws with our friends. You know someone is your friend when you know you can safely confess some petty, spiteful thoughts and feeling, secure that your friendship will not falter. That is why the opinions of “friends” should be taken lightly. They know of us. They know about us. They do not know us.
