For whatever reason, the chronic pain that I am usually habituated to has decided to make itself front and center this week. I swear it’s using bullhorns and neon signs to make sure I can’t ignore it. Even my fingers ache, so I won’t write about the outfit other than to tell you that what you see is what you get. There is not even the tiniest bit of editing since I cannot save pictures to disk now and have to upload them directly to Flickr.
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I watched the penultimate episode of Parenthood last night. It was emotionally exhausting and I cried far harder than I probably should over fictional characters in a television series. When I watched the first episode of Parenthood six years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. It was such a quiet show that seemed to have such humble ambitions – merely telling the story of an American family. I think there was a clue right from the start, though, that this was going to be more than a post-milennial Eight is Enough. After all, their last name is Braverman.
Braverman! That name must be something to live up to. I actually looked up the name’s origin because I was pretty sure it did not originate with some courageous Saxon stalwart holding off a Viking horde and being called a “braver man” than most and then passing that name on for generations. It turns out to be Jewish surname from the Ukraine, a form of the Yiddish word braver which means good or honest. At least that is what most of the sources say, though one source says it means distiller. Well, the Braverman family does like their spirits. The name is perfect, though, there is something good and honest about this family and their quotidian dramas.
Art has many purposes; one is to make us think. If the greatness of art is measured by how much we think about it, Whiskey Monday is a great artist. It is difficult for a virtual artist like Whiskey Monday to get first life recognition for Second Life® art, but it is not impossible. I certainly think her work merits exposure in the broader world beyond our pixel borders.
Meanwhile, it is good to know that the powers that be in our world recognize her importance and have granted her LEA10 – one of the Linden Endowment for the Arts sims, to create art for the coming month. She’s working away and generously allows people to go there and use her builds in their photos.
Where I first saw this build, I thought of “Things Fall Apart”, the title of the book by China Achebe that a lot of us read in high school. By the way, if you have not read it, you should. I thought of coming undone, falling apart, coming apart at the seams; metaphors for the fragility of life. I do get the sense that Monday is tackling the big questions with her work.
Then I thought of creative destruction and Karl Marx’s quote, “All that is solid melts into air.” Marx believed the cycle of innovation, recession, then innovation, the boom and bust, would lead to the eventual collapse of capitalism. Free market fundamentalists love creative destruction believing it always leads to innovation that will always lead to more productivity and more wealth and so on. The computer destroyed the typewriter industry, factories closed and people were laid off. That is creative destruction. All that was solid about the typewriter industry has certainly melted into air. Even on a massive corporate scale, there is fragility.
I wonder about creative destruction at the personal level. Is there something freeing about coming undone? Can losing it spark personal innovation, re-creation and growth? Probably, for some people. But not for all. Even the strongest person has points of fragility.
When Inex Hax shared her newest release for The Secret Affair on Plurk, I had to comment that it looked like it might just be my favorite of her designs ever. After getting in world and trying it on, it turns out I was right! It’s yummy and comes in white, black red, yellow, pink and blue. I loved each and every one of the colors.
I shot these pics a few days ago wearing an outfit featuring items from last month’s Collabor88. Don’t despair, you can now find them in the store. The top, leggings and boots are all from Tres Blah. They come with a puffy jacket, too, but I left that off. Growing up in a place where it’s really cold, I have never understood those puffy jackets with no sleeves as anything more than an extra lining if your coat is not warm enough.
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I was playing with lights and shadows using a single narrow line of white light for my projector. The background prim is white and the blackness comes from wind light set to 100% black everything and bringing gamma down to 0. Then the only light there is comes from the projector. The thin sliver of light in the dark made me feel very noir
I love the modernist simplicity of NYU’s new Thalia coat. Eschewing all the usual outerwear detailing, the epaulettes, the fabric belt, the stitched edging and the rows of buttons, its design details are a simple notched collar and a single button. This is simplicity at its most stark and striking. I wanted to maintain that sensibility in styling and kept to a monochromatic palette of white with touches of black and silver. I chose cigarette pants from One Bad Pixel for their clean and simple lines.
I added a fedora (color-change) from Argace that I have had for ages. I also added a touch of whimsy with CAE’s lovely Blizzard earrings in silver.
My pumps are from Glamistry and are as chic as can be. The come with a color change HUD that allows me to select the color of the metal (silver, copper and gold) and the platform, heel and body separately. However, I did not go for parti-colored shoes with my monochrome mission. There’s a lot of intelligence behind the Glamistry brand – which allows you to add color components to your HUD so if you kick yourself for buying just one color, you can add more later without proliferating your inventory with pairs and pairs of shoes.
My skin choice is Sia (FairTales), a new release from Glam Affair for Collabor88 that features soft and ethereal makeups, several with bright, fun colors.
Store info at Blogging Second Life
****SHOPPING LIST******
Poses: Ma Vie
Skin: Glam Affair – Sia skin ( Fairy Tales ) – Asia 08 E
Eyes: [UMEBOSHI] Eon eyes dark Green (med)
Lashes: Mon Cheri *MC* “Falsies” Eyelash
Mesh Attachments:
Slink Avatar Enhancement Hands – Elegant – XSmall L
Slink Avatar Enhancement Hands – Elegant – XSmall R
Slink AvEnhance Feet High XS
Mani/Pedi: FLAIR
Hair: *ARGRACE* Fedora Hat “Wild curl”
Clothing: ::1bp:: Cigarette Pants S White
NYU – Thalia Coat, White
Shoes: Glamistry : GALLA Heels
Jewelry: Cae :: Blizzard :: Earring
I made these Je Suis Charlie pencils and have them out for free at the It’s Only Fashion office.
The first paragraph I drafted for this post called what happened yesterday at Charlie Hebdo unthinkable. Of course, I had to delete that and start again because it obviously was not just thinkable, but doable. Three of our fellow human beings went into an office and killed twelve other fellow human beings because they were offended by their cartoons. It all sounds so ludicrous, doesn’t it?
Of course, to say the murders were about cartoons is to miss the point. The killers are bit players in an existential struggle between modernity and traditionalism and modernity is winning. When you are winning, you do not resort to tactics like terrorism. Terrorism is for losers.
You see, if they were not losing the argument already, they had many other options to object to and oppose the satiric cartoons of Charlie Hebdo. They could protest outside the office. They could have billboards saying “Chalie Hebdo is a poopy head.” They could write letters to the editor or to the advertisers asking them to stop running ads in the magazine. They could call for a boycott of products advertised in Charlie Hebdo. But their side is losing and they know it. So they decided to smash things and kill people. Continue reading
Nonconformist of the Year – The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw. .
Second Life® Memestress Strawberry Singh has kicked off 2015 with a fun blogger challenge. She asked folks to shoot a high school yearbook picture with a smile – and explain how we achieved that smile. It was not easy, but I did manage a ghost of a smile.
How I Did It: I used a combination of methods, adjusting my face shape, using tips from Melanie Kidd. Then I turned on slow animations following Gogo’s tips on slow motion animation and Iris Ophelia’s tips on lip-synching.
Saying Cheese did not work at all!
I also tried using emotes on the AnyPose HUD I use to control my eyes in combination with the lip-synching and slow animation. OH well! PhotoShop can help.
I have not made any New Year’s resolutions this year. I did not last year or the year before or any year that I can remember. It has never been part of our family tradition. Our family New Year’s was a day of family gathered together for feasting and fun. New Year’s Eve was never a drunkfest either. Instead, it was a day of housecleaning and food preparation. I have cleaned the over on New Year’s more times than I can count. It all comes from this idea of starting the year as you mean to go on − with a clean house and plenty of food and family to share it with. Of course, my family always served lutefisk for New Year’s dinner and that was most definitely not how I meant to go on.
I asked on plurk if folks had regrets from 2014. Many people said they did not have any which is great for them. What I thought was most interesting is that several folks said they regretted that did not do something sooner. That means they did something that made things better for themselves and only wish they had done it earlier. That means that even their regrets come from a better place. I like those regrets. Actually, that is my big regret for the year. I wish i had put my cat Oscar on Xanax earlier, the first time the vet suggested it. I would have have saved a lot on laundry.
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