Tag Archives: Flair

and it’s hard at the end of the day

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And it's hard at the end of the day

When Sarah McLachlan wrote Angel, she was not thinking of the sort you might see in a Sunday school lesson, but one more like this perhaps. The song is about seeking comfort and escape from life’s pain through a needle, through heroin addiction to be precise. Inspired in specific by Jonathan Melvoin of Smashing Pumpkins who died of an overdose about 20 years ago, the more general inspiration came from McLachlan’s own experience of seeking comfort and reassurance from other drugs. McLachlan, when speaking about the song, seems to think the feelings of inadequacy, of insecurity, of alienation are part of the music industry. Personally, I think they are part of life.

And it's hard at the end of the day

there’s always some reason
to feel not good enough
and it’s hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction
oh beautiful release
memories seep from my veins
let me be empty
and weightless and maybe
I’ll find some peace tonight

in the arms of the angel
fly away from here
from this dark cold hotel room
and the endlessness that you fear

I thoughy this blood-tipped “angelic” gown paired with the needle-sharp Say wings from Glam Affair would be a great representation of McLachlan’s “angel” whose comfort is only temporary unless, of course, it is the final comfort of death. Incidentally, Maylee Oh of The Secret Store who made this gown also made a video of her weight painting and texturing it and while I have no idea what she is doing it is strangely hypnotic to watch.

And it's hard at the end of the day

The gown is a gorgeous brocade with a delicate blood tip. You see more red in this picture than the other because of the red projector I was using to light the scene. The wings are white and plum and the projector lights them as well. I actually selected the plum textures in the wings and tinted them bright red to go with the dress and the jacket.

And it's hard at the end of the day

My shoes are from Hucci and are incredibly elegant. I love how the leather comes to a point and echoes the feathers and the wings.

And it's hard at the end of the day

I always wear lingerie under my clothes. After all, sometimes when you TP in, your clothes seem to arrive a few seconds after you do. Luxuria is my go to brand.

And it's hard at the end of the day

A chose Truth’s Anouk hair style with the color-change bands and Donna Flora’s Julia set with rubies.

And it's hard at the end of the day

My makeup comes from Glam Affair’s newest release Mavi, a Lelutka mesh head applicator. I opted for the brightest, reddest lipstick.

Store info at Blogging Second Life
****SHOPPING LIST******
Poses: Di’s Opera
HUDS: AnyPose Expression HUD v1.0 – Wear Me
Slink Ankle Lock
Skin: Glam Affair Mavi Asia
Mesh Attachments: .LeLutka.Mesh Head-STELLA v1.1
Slink Avatar Enhancement Feet High & Handas
Slink Physique Mesh Body V2.4 (ADD ME)
Appliers: Flair Mani-Pedi 13
Glam Affair Mavi Asia
Luxuria Serpentine Red
Eyes: pc eyes by LL – shallow water – medium
Hair: TRUTH HAIR Anouk
Clothing: [Slink]The Secret Store – Avianna Dress – Blood Dip @ Collabor88
[Slink]The Secret Store – Harpy Mantle – Blood Dip @ Collabor88
Glam Affair – Sya Wings Plum @ Collabor88
Shoes: ::HH:: Hucci Minerva Sandal – Collection (Slink) @ Collabor88
Jewelry: Donna Flora Julia
(Yummy) True Fate Ring – Gold – Rainbow @ Collabor88
Location: Kalopsia Broken Floor, anc Bubbles

The Scents of Autumn

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bags full of leaves are light as balloonsFirst things first, Strawberry Singh wrote an important post about an ongoing fraud happening in SL right now. You should read it to best protect your own account. Of course, a good rule of thumb is not to execute or agree to anything from objects given to you by strangers. While it’s not true that you can never cheat an honest person, it is true that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
bags full of leaves are light as balloons
So autumn is here. Here in Oregon, it’s raining, bringing sweet relief from the heat and let us hope, from the fires that are destroying so much habitat in the Pacific Northwest and California. Here in SL, though, there are no fires and the rain is holding off for another day. However, the state fairs are all over and all the 4Hers have their ribbons and are back in school. Fruits are being harvested and canneries are running around the clock. For me, though, lounging by the barn is a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Schadenfreude’s black squirrel is much more industrious, picking up a small pumpkin to store away.
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Awaiting Myself on Both Sides

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I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.

“I am the shore and the ocean,
awaiting myself on both sides.

I travel
always arriving in the same place.”     ― Dejan Stojanovic, The Shape

Yesterday was a hard day for me. My mind was occupied with thoughts of friends in extremis, whose difficulties and hardships I cannot lighten. It was also the second anniversary of Squinternet’s death and I still miss her open-hearted friendship and humor. I guess in Second Life, as in my my first, when feeling sad and ineffective, I head for the water for new energy. Whether I find myself lakeside or on the shore of the sea or an ocean, there is something about the inexorable sound of the waves that comforts me. No matter what, the waves will continue, an infinite sound loop that I find comforting. 

I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.

I may have felt sad on the inside, but I looked anything but on the outside. I was wearing this indecently sexy new swimsuit from Liziaah. It comes in five colors. I chose the Aqua, as you can see. The folder comes with all the standard sizes plus one made to fit Slink Physique, which I am wearing. I love the marine inspired embellishments that make me think this is the sort of swimsuit that Diane de Poitiers might have worn if Henry II had been the king of Atlantis instead of France.
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Do Not Let Go

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There are times in life when people must know when not to let go.

Most self-help gurus focus their efforts on getting people to let go. Even Disney got into the Let It Go game. And it is, in general, good advice. It’s very zen. But like most advice, it does not fit every situation and Terry Pratchett, that wonderful wizard of seeing the world differently also had some good advice, “There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.” I thought of that when I shot this picture of the Pixicat sphinxes in the Vespertine balloon. Well, one is desperately not letting go and let’s hope he never does.

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go.
JUMO just released a fun high-fashion corset and pants that I could not resist. It comes in gold, ruby, purple and teal as well and all are on marketplace. The complete set also includes shoes and jewelry, even a pearl monocle. You can wear it with long pants or with shorts, but the shorts are a system layer and there are no appliers for mesh bodies.
There are times in life when people must know when not to let go.
The Vespertine balloon is beautiful, but it does not come that size. It’s much smaller and I used up a lot of land impact making it larger than it was meant to be, but just for one picture, it was harmless. Frankly, it was the flowers that really went nuts, I kept drag copying those DIY flowers all over the place. In the end, 415 LI of flowers You know how you can just get in a rhythm and not pay attention and keep repeating what you are doing. Yeah, that happened.
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Don’t Tell Me the Moon Is Shining

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“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass,” is great advice for writers. It is attributed to Anton Chekhov who did write something pretty close to that. It remains good advice whether it is apocryphal or not.  It basically tells writers to show, don’t tell. Of course, some writers go overboard and describe every single thing in such detail that they have left themselves no room for emotional honesty or plot, but in general, as a reader, I prefer showing to telling.  It’s much easier with a picture, though, and in this one you can see the glint of moonlight on the waves.

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Chekhov

Of course, what you really want is the perfect blend of show and tell. You don’t want authors telling you what every person is thinking, you want them to trust you to figure it out from their actions and their words. Writers who tell too much insult our intelligence, assuming we cannot get the point without it being spelled out. Fashion blogs often just show, with pictures and very little else. I like to add a bit of telling to explain things like why I fell in love with the Moon Lounge from {anc} at The Arcade. No one loves props more than bloggers and I was afraid I would spend a fortune trying to get it from the gacha machine, but I got it on the first pull.
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Among Punishments and Ruins

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Among Punishments and Ruins

We are living even now among punishments and ruins…Wendell Berry

Portland is not burning, but much of the Pacific Northwest is. Today, the smoke is thick and heavy and makes my throat sore. I get frequent updates from friends in Washington, Idaho and eastern Oregon. Wildfire smoke covers the region like a shroud and a new mother frets because even indoors the air irritates her eyes and wonders what it might be doing to her infant. Trying to be upbeat, a young woman snaps a selfie wearing a bandana to protect herself from the smoke with the comment, “The Sundance Kid Goes Grocery-Shopping.”  I tell a friend to go through her old photos and gather pictures for her friend whose home on the Nez Perce reservation was destroyed, knowing from my own experience that among the most enduring losses of a fire are the pictures and memories of childhood.

The wettest rainforest in the United States is burning. Widely and silently understood, the reason there are wildfires in a rainforest is perfectly clear to the people, but seldom expressed by the powerful. It reminded me of something Wendell Berry wrote. “The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us we must be less greedy and less wasteful.”

Berry also wrote, “Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

Among Punishments and Ruins

Insilco North makes me think of a fire-scorched planet, scraped bare

WrongAlthough the science is settled,  you do not have to understand science to know whether we should act or not. All you have to do is consider what the consequences are for being wrong. If those who say we must act to save the environment are wrong, the worst thing that will happen is we waste some money, perhaps some people will lose jobs and maybe there may be a recession while the economy adjusts. It won’t be permanent. If the people who say do nothing are wrong, well, the consequences are devastating, permanent and fatal. With the consequences of a wrong decision so completely out of balance, why is there even a debate?  To go once again, to Wendell Berry, “We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.”
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Symbiosis

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Oxford English Dictionary definition of Symbiosis

Oxford English Dictionary definition of Symbiosis

The relationship between designers and bloggers has generated a lot of conversation lately — and that is certainly preferable to allowing anger, frustration and resentment to bubble beneath the surface. For me, though, many of these discussions spend too little time reflecting on the symbiotic relationship between blogger and designer and that leads to an unnecessary and misleading polarization of the issue. Bloggers and creators should not be polarized, because they need each other and their relationship is symbiotic, not parasitic.

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Don’t get me wrong. I roll my eyes when I see increasingly prescriptive demands from creators, but I understand where the motivation for these demands originate. There are more and more and more bloggers everyday. It is clear that several, though not most, people who decide to blog see it as an opportunity to get free stuff. There is plenty of evidence for this from Flickr posters soliciting “blog sponsors” without regard to their own aesthetic to the fact that I, a blogger who has made exactly two projectors for sale, get random notecards asking me to add people to my blogging team. Hah!

If you are sending me a notecard, you have not looked at what I make. If you have not looked at what I make, you don’t care about the quality or creativity or any of the other reasons someone would want to blog another’s items. You just want stuff.

I do not disapprove of a blogger contacting a designer. I have myself. However, I only do it when that designer speaks to me with their creations. When a designer’s work stands out from the crowd. When I have worn it and blogged it and know I love it.  When their work suits my taste and the way I think about clothing. Yes, then I will read their profile to learn how they recruit new bloggers and follow their instructions. I may be one of the “old guard”, but I still follow instructions. The key point though, is that I only ask if their work is something I would still wear and still buy, if and when I can afford it, whether they added me as a blogger or not.

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Come On Let’s Go !

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Come on Pixel Gidge, Let’s go out.

“No,” she answers. “YOU LEFT ME HERE! YOU PROMISED WE WOULD GO OUT AND WE DIDN’T GO OUT YOU LEFT ME HERE ALL NIGHT.”

Hey, I changed your clothes and hair, and I did your nails. I even moved your bed in off the water, what’s wrong? Don’t you want to get out today? 

“You left me here,” she pouts. “YOU PROMISED TO COME BACK YESTERDAY!”

Her typist sighs, Yes I know but RL happened. But I’m here now. Don’t you want to go out and do something? Continue reading →

That shirt

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That shirt! You know the one I mean. We all have one. The shirt we have owned since forever, that repeated washings and years of wear have softened the fabric to a perfect level of comfort. It is the adult equivalent of a blankie. A shirt that ends up in every load of laundry because after a hard day, we put it on the minute we get home, as though putting on a hug. We have forgotten to turn it inside out a few hundred times and the fabric is pilling and snags are visible here and there, but we don’t care. It is our favorite shirt and we will keep it until it falls apart on our body.

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Whatever sizing and substance the fabric once held is gone. It conforms to our body like a second skin, a cozy, comfy, second skin that says “You’re good enough. You’re smart enough. And doggone it, people like you.” We have that shirt in our first lives, but now we can have it in our second as well, thanks to Vinyl’s Little Toast (sukoshitosuto) and any doubts whether this distress and well-worn look was not deliberate can be dispelled with a look at some of the other options on the texture hud.

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Yup, that’s deliberate.
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Daydream Believer

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There is a lot of speculation about what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. They used to say it was our ability to use tools, but I had a dog who used a stick as a lever to snap the boards in the fence. There’s a marvelous video of a crow using tools to get food. Some used to say it was language, but the more we learn of animals, the more we learn about their languages and realize that we made assumptions because we did not speak their language. There are those who say it is our consciousness that we will die that makes us human, but can someone see animals mourning and presume they have no sense of their own mortality? Others say it is how well we cooperate, but will we ever cooperate as well as bees and ants? Anyone who thinks about the size of an elephant or whale brain knows it cannot be brain size. Scientists spend a lot of time on this question and are coming to the conclusion it’s not just one thing that makes us human, but it is all about how we think. One of the key differences is our ability to imagine multiple scenarios,  to build complex imagined constructions. Daydreams are part of this – not dreams – but the conscious self-aware wonder of daydreams.
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