Just because you think you’re so pretty,
And just because you think you’re so hot,
Well, just because you think you’ve got something
That no other girl has got,
I love Just Because clothing, not only because the textures are well-done and the mesh is perfectly rigged, because it reminds me of one of my favorite albums as a kid. It belonged to my parents and I played it over and over and over. One of the songs was Just Because.
My great-niece recently rescued a couple horses from a kill pen, the third generation of horse rescuers in my family. Kill pen horses are usually sold for pet food because they are considered problematic, untrainable, vicious and dangerous. They usually require a level of training most people just will not invest. In time, though, they can learn to trust and be trusted. If you want to see the evidence, see my great-grand niece cleaning this rescued horse’s hooves just two weeks into training…and the foundations for a fourth generation of rescuers begins. It was thinking about them, the work they are doing, and that two other nieces are doing, that I thought I might take this month’s house from Barnesworth for Collabor88 and set up a farm. I tinted it, one of the things I love about Barnesworth homes.
I don’t even remember when I purchased Filter Forge®, the popular third-party companion to PhotoShop® that lets you apply fancy filters to your photos. It was long ago, maybe 2008 or 2009. Anyway, I don’t even use PhotoShop anymore as my laptop has no CD/DVD drive to allow me to install it. With materials, shadows, mesh bodies, and all the other controls we have over our raw shots, there’s no real need for PhotoShop either, except for the super fancy portraits with painted hair and so on. I still use Filter Forge from time to time for the fun of it. I just open photos directly in the software. Anyway, it’s 80% off today so I thought I would play with it and let you all know that it’s deeply discounted. Please note, that is an ordinary link with no clever code that gives me some compensation for promoting their software. I just have the basic package, the cheapest one, and it has everything I need. I don’t need to do pictures bigger than 3000 by 3000, so it’s enough for me. The filter I am using today is Retro Imaging. All the filters are free, you only buy the software. Update: By the way, don’t get stressed by the discount ending today. They run a deep discount several times a year, so if you don’t do it today, you will get another chance in the next few months.
I am wearing an adorable dress and jacket from Decoy. It has a color change HUD with all sorts of options in prints and solids for the dress and matching solid colors for the jacket. The prints are inspired by Collabor88’s Greenery theme and if you get the big pack, there are some exclusive very bright, bold saturated color prints as well. That was not my mood this morning when I was snapping pictures so I went for the pastels, dreamy prints, probably because it was 3 AM and I was taking pics before I went to sleep.
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Bento makes me happier than I thought it would. My happiness comes from things like these poses from Gingerfish that have Bento hand movements built right in. When Bento first came out, I was dubious, afraid that more complexity would strain my already struggling computer to the breaking point. I also moaned about one more thing to learn. I dawdled. I did not rush to buy bento hands immediately. I waited hoping it would all be figured out by someone else or even just go away. But it didn’t and both Slink and Maitreya released hands optimized for Bento and my computer did not fold over in a faint. So here we are. Animators are busy adapting and creating poses that capitalize on this new expressiveness and I am wondering why I was such a grouch about it. I guess I must be getting crotchety in my old SLage.
I kind of fell in several sorts of love with the skirt and jacket from Emery. The Stella skirt has two options with a latte stripe or a pearl stripe. The Bastet jacket has bold lapels that give it a relaxed, casual air while being very fashion conscious. They are at Collabor88 this month and a knotted tee is also sold to accompany them. I decided to go a different way, though, and chose this top from Baiastice.
I stopped off at Gacha Gardens and picked up some backdrops for photos from RAMA. I love that they used materials, so the sunshine sets it ablaze. Continue reading
The Poetry of the Spheres are on display at LEA4 – a celebration of music and poetry in a pastoral setting with lovely ancient ruins. From the description of the sim:
Legend has it that the Ancient Gods of the Greeks have abandoned this realm, but evidence of their existence can be found above, in celestial spheres. These signs and symbols, both direct and abstract, are also reflected in Gustav Holst’s 1918 orchestral suite, The Planets, Op 32.
You can explore each of the seven movements, representing the corresponding planets, by teleporting from the Olympus Island up to that particular sphere:
Mars, the Bringer of War
Venus, the Bringer of Peace
Mercury, the Winged Messenger
Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
Uranus, the Magician
Neptune, the Mystic
There you will find a music link station for the appropriate movement – click on it to open a link to the music so you can play it on your browser while you explore. Most of the symphonic movements are less than 10 minutes long, and the symphony in entire is less than 45 minutes long.
Russia recently banned this meme of Putin in makeup that many were using to advocate for gay rights. In recent years, while the LGTBIQ community in the United States have seen some victories while still facing challenges and efforts to roll back their rights, sexual minorities have been experiencing ever-increasing oppression in such disparate places as Uganda and Russia. This is not a coincidence. As the Christianists have lost ground in the United States, they have exported their anti-gay agenda.
This week, news came out about concentration camps in Chechnya–think about that. Russia has passed legislation against gays, Uganda criminalized homosexuality and nearly passed a death penalty for homosexuality though we held off by pressure from Europe and the United States. Scott Lively is currently being sued for crimes against humanity for his role in advocating the repressive Ugandan actions, including advocating the death penalty for gays. He was also active in advocating for anti-gay legislation in Russia. National Organizations for Marriage president Brian Brown went to Russia to advocate a ban on gay adoptions and taking biological children away from gay parents. Brown is also trying to export his virulent anti-gay hatred to France, colluding with French far right political groups such as Dies Irae. Jack Hanick of FOX News is another anti-gay evangelist who has traveled to Russia to spread his homophobia, but also wants to import Russia’s authoritarianism to the US.
So what can we do now that our fellow Americans have traveled the globe to export their brand of hatred? We can support the organizations who fight them such as Sexual Minorities Uganda, the LGBTI Equal Rights Association for Western Balkans and Turkey, the Russian LGBT Network, or more generally, supporting the work of Human Rights Watch. You can do things like playing around with this image of Putin, mixing it up and making your own meme against homophobia. You can show support by making no place safe for the hate-mongers, not even fashion posts. Continue reading
One of my favorite things about NYU is that they usually release as separates and the lovely camisole and lace skirt released at faMESHed are true to form. I love separates because it’s fun to mix and match. The pieces come with multiple colors selected by HUD.
I planned to post this in the morning, but I got distracted. There are still three hours left to get chillaxed at Collabor88.
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“…that fragrance which fills the soul with optimism and faith, the fragrance of the crushed beans beneath the jet of boiling water curving from the kettle, the smell of coffee.”
In Halldor Laxness’ extraordinary book Independent People, there are well over 150 references to coffee, most of them reverent. That is as it should be. Laxness was Icelandic and they are among the world’s greatest coffee consumers–along with all the other Scandinavians.
http://www.worldmapper.org/posters/worldmapper_1038_coffee_consumption_ver2.pdf
Although Swedish-American, I am closer to real Swedes in my coffee consumption. When I was a kid, I put coffee in my milk, sometimes now I will put milk in my coffee when I get a latte, but usually drink it black. There is no perfume in the world quite so warm and evocative as the smell of coffee.
So I was thrilled by the coffee shops at The Arcade. I took some pictures outside the other day, but today I am shooting inside where I combined elements from the RH Designs Coffee House and the PLAAKA Coffee Factory. The building is from PLAAKA’s coffee factory. I just fell in love with the look of the crumbling old factory being repurposed to serve coffee. The broken down wall and patio appeals to my love of things old and worn.
There is so much happening in Second Life right now that it’s sometimes overwhelming. Consider this single post which features a casual outfit at a local coffee shop. But underneath, out of site, there a lot happening. Here are the bullet points.
