To sing in colors, to paint in sounds

I want to shout when I feel. And when I feel a wave that is physical and personal at once that rolls up the body and explodes like the heavans in my head, and reminds me to see with other eyes the light of the hidden world. It is that light, caused by the pressing of blood upon the nerves of the eyes, which is a scintillating throbbing that becomes spectral illusion, that I lust for, that I quest for.

It is a thirst that I must eat, and gasping cry for air that I must drink, and a substance I must breath. There are the suns of other worlds that pulse behind the eyes at such moments, they rise and set, they burn with noon, pulse with dawn, and burn with sunset at once, or in days so close that they meld into one.

Forget the divisions of the day into hours, the senses into numbers, words into meanings, or people into nations. Under such light and heat, the very forces of physics curve into each other. A crooner called out an invisible sun. It is behind our eyes.

Our grandparents were thrown into the world of machines, and dreamed of mechanical men. Our parents overjoyed at the RedGreenBlue highway of waves sang the body electric. We. We have no bodies at all, and search the corners until we have faces. It is behind us, and beyond us, to be restricted by the choices that chance has made for us. Name, place, feature, form.

But it was always this. The first bits of bone to have a form merge man and god-animal, the first icons of people are expanded in shape to be the topography of the goddess, who is not made as a humna, nor cast in wholey human form. The winged dragons guarded Babylonian gates, and the dog headed Anubis led souls through the Book of the Dead. We never were wholly human, and always have been aching to trans the barrier. The greeks told tales of men made into women, and beings divided in twain. Are we so different to carve in light what they carved in marble?

Cry. Cry to heavan for salvation, and it will not hear you. Cry for the drowning dead, their bodies transformed for the feasting of fish and crabs, and it will not touch the salt of the vast oceans. Cry in battle cry, and there will be winged victory in your spirit, and an eight legged horse a shadow you as the spear flies over one host or the other.

That is a that, but which is the which? We wish to make our images in the model of our minds, and thus remake our minds as they carve the nerves to feel the movement of alien shapes impressed upon our imagination. We seek to become one with what we are becoming.

The Wider World

In the comments of my slice of reality post, I realized that one thing that is wrong with my blog, is that I am not spending enough time linking to outside news sources. Many of the things I am talking about are not limited to sl, but merely the manifestations on sl of the wider world. For example consider the following story I see on CNN: one third of on line teens report being bullied, no surprise it is girls and social networking sites that are the leading group, just as in my example. Boy meets girl, boy gets girl's personal information, boy bullies girl. Not quite a classic musical.

So from now on, I am going to make a real effort to bring the wider world into this blog, and be broader in the way that I link what I see in SL, to that wider world. My subject started out as sex, now however, sex is the lens for another topic.

Us.

A slice of reality

[0:41] Pitt Foden: anyway where do u come from?
[0:41] You: I'm from the xxx
[0:42] Pitt Foden: me 2
[0:42] Pitt Foden: which part?
[0:42] You: I'm xxxxxxxxxx
[0:42] Pitt Foden: where?
[0:42] You: Dear in my line of work it is better to be vauge about such things.
[0:43] You: vague*
[0:43] Pitt Foden: fine with me
[0:43] You: I get enough random skype calls
[0:43] Pitt Foden: will mine make a difference?
[0:43] You: What do you mean dear?
[0:43] Pitt Foden: do u have a msn then?
[0:44] You: No
[0:44] You: I have Yahoo
[0:44] You: but it usually isn't up
[0:44] You: because it keeps logging me off
[0:44] Pitt Foden: can i have it anyway?
[0:44] You: Dear I only give it out to clients
[0:45] Pitt Foden: ok...
[0:45] Pitt Foden: how old are u??
[0:45] You: I'm not here for getting an rl relationship dear
[0:45] You: I am xx irl
[0:45] Pitt Foden: relax...
[0:45] Pitt Foden: i have a gf
[0:45] Pitt Foden: juz want 2 have more online friends
[0:46] You: Well you can contact me here.
[0:46] Pitt Foden: that i can chat to
[0:46] You: Dear I have an rl
[0:46] Pitt Foden: i m not here often
[0:46] You: it would come to a screeching halt
[0:46] Pitt Foden: yahoo will me much easier
[0:46] You: if people knew what I do here.
[0:46] You: I have to be very careful what I say
[0:46] You: and to who
[0:47] Pitt Foden: k... i respect ur privacy...
[0:47] Pitt Foden: rest assured i m not a bad guy
[0:47] You: Yes, but the bad guys would say that too.
[0:48] Pitt Foden: that's on tv
[0:48] You: It is true irl too
[0:48] Pitt Foden: perhaps...
[0:48] Pitt Foden: but....
[0:48] Pitt Foden: i m the truth
[0:48] You: no perhaps about it dear
[0:49] Pitt Foden: u have a reationship in rl?
[0:49] You: That's really none of your business dear.
[0:49] Pitt Foden: juz curious..
[0:49] You: Dear,
[0:49] Pitt Foden: relax a little... will u?
[0:49] You: these are questions you ask someone who is interested in meeting rl
[0:49] You: I'm not
[0:50] You: I am about here
[0:50] You: in this floating world
[0:50] You: there isn't any place else that matters right now
[0:50] You: Here you are taller than you are irl
[0:50] You: and I am more beautiful
[0:50] You: and there are no costs for what we do.
[0:50] Pitt Foden: i m not trying to meet u in rl anyway
[0:50] You: Enjoy that
[0:51] Pitt Foden: very true...
[0:51] You: Imagine you are holding me
[0:51] You: my breasts presed against you,
[0:51] You: the smell of my hair across your face
[0:51] You: lingering where I brush against you.
[0:52] You: your hands come to rest on my hips
[0:52] You: stroking them
[0:52] Pitt Foden: ...
[0:52] Pitt Foden: and enjoying every moment
[0:52] You: Take each thing as it is offered dear.
[0:52] You: As intensely as it can be had.
[0:53] Pitt Foden: as u wish
[0:53] You: let go of your cares
[0:53] You: and look over a world
[0:54] You: where it is possible to float above the clouds
[0:54] You: and dance with a woman that you find there.
[0:54] Pitt Foden: a little dramatic.... but i like it....
[0:54] Lillie Yifu brushes her hand gently across his shoulder.
[0:55] You: All the world's a stage dear.
[0:55] You: if it weren't for comedy, romance and drama
[0:55] You: we would all have no lines to say at all
[0:55] Pitt Foden: true
[0:56] Pitt Foden: u online at this time everyday?
[0:56] You: most days
[0:56] Pitt Foden: u look really hot...
[0:56] Pitt Foden: u know...
[0:56] You: beauty is my profession
[0:57] Pitt Foden: well.... u did a good job then...
[0:57] Pitt Foden: a really god job...
[0:57] You: Why thank you dear. I am complimented
[0:58] Pitt Foden: can we do something else...
[0:58] Pitt Foden: something better...
[0:58] You: It depends on you dear
[0:58] You: What is it you want
[0:58] You: and are you willing to pay the price for it?
[0:58] Pitt Foden: u say?
[1:00] Pitt Foden: sorry.... i rather do something without any conditions involved....
[1:00] You: dear there are always conditions
[1:00] You: the question is whether you like them
[1:00] Pitt Foden: juz a dumb excuse... but its true...
[1:00] You: just as there is always a cost
[1:00] You: the question is whether you are willing to pay it.
[1:00] You: Money is often the cheapest way to get something
[1:00] You: though often not the best
[1:01] You: don't fool yourself dear
[1:01] You: if you have a relationship
[1:01] You: that is its own cost
[1:02] Pitt Foden: well... true love exists in this world without any types of conditions...
[1:02] Pitt Foden: u juz have to search 4 them....
[1:03] Lillie Yifu giggles
[1:03] You: dear nothing has more conditions than true love
[1:03] You: nothing
[1:03] You: you will learn that the hard way if you don't already know it
[1:03] You: That love is costly is what makes it so valuable
[1:03] Pitt Foden: don't worry..... i sincerely believe that day will never come
[1:04] Pitt Foden: valuable in terms of??
[1:04] You: People pay more ofr a chance at love than almost anything else
[1:04] You: and die for the lack of it
[1:05] You: they make art
[1:05] Pitt Foden: mayb....
[1:05] You: and build business empires
[1:05] You: and slave at dead end jobs
[1:05] You: for love
[1:05] Pitt Foden: but................
[1:05] You: Love is not some breezy "thing without restraints"
[1:05] Pitt Foden: they enjoy it.........
[1:05] You: on the contrary
[1:05] Pitt Foden: all 4 love...
[1:05] You: it's people like me who are cheap
[1:06] Pitt Foden: that's ur thinking....
[1:06] You: Because it is the truth
[1:06] You: you cannot buy love with money
[1:06] Pitt Foden: its more in the mind actually
[1:06] You: and often people spend lavishly for the chance at love
[1:06] You: and don't get it
[1:06] You: dear it is in the mind
[1:06] You: it is in the body
[1:07] You: and it is between two people
[1:07] You: and with the potential to be the beginning of a family
[1:07] Pitt Foden: they get it 4 only a few hours
[1:07] You: with even more
[1:07] Pitt Foden: that;s not true love
[1:07] You: Yes dear it is true love
[1:07] Pitt Foden: that's that harmful effects of porn
[1:07] You: and perhaps one day you will understand how powerful and precious it is
[1:08] Pitt Foden: hopefully not...
[1:08] Lillie Yifu giggles
[1:08] You: dear
[1:08] You: I am in the porn business
[1:08] Pitt Foden: let me ask u a question...
[1:08] Pitt Foden: do u feel happy doing it?
[1:08] You: certainly dear
[1:09] You: doing what? What I do for a job?
[1:09] You: Yes.
[1:09] You: Not always, but more often than many jobs.
[1:09] Pitt Foden: are u really happy?
[1:09] You: Happier than most people you will meet dear
[1:09] Pitt Foden: juz to fulfil all desires of urs?
[1:09] You: I get to be beautiful
[1:09] You: I get to bring people happiness
[1:09] You: and I am able to take the results of that
[1:09] You: and build my dreams.
[1:09] You: Most people don't get one of those out of their work.
[1:10] Pitt Foden: " nice " logic..........
[1:10] Pitt Foden: like i say...
[1:10] Pitt Foden: its all in the mind
[1:10] You: No dear
[1:10] Pitt Foden: if u think u r happy doing it
[1:10] You: it is much larger than that
[1:10] Pitt Foden: all 4 the sake of ur dreams
[1:11] Pitt Foden: no one not even god can stop u
[1:11] You: and for the sake of other people who those dreams touch
[1:11] You: I don't believe in God.
[1:11] Pitt Foden: me too.....
[1:11] Pitt Foden: i was juz using a dumb example
[1:12] Pitt Foden: mayb one day...
[1:12] Pitt Foden: u will desire settling down
[1:12] Pitt Foden: and when u reflect on ur life tens of years later........
[1:13] Pitt Foden: ask urself...
[1:13] Pitt Foden: are u TRULY happy?
[1:13] You: Happier than you know dear
[1:13] Pitt Foden: of course
[1:14] Pitt Foden: u will say that now
[1:14] Pitt Foden: let's wait till u r eighty.... k?
[1:14] You: Dear I say it because it is true
[1:14] You: everyone has a karma
[1:14] You: and they can embrace it or not
[1:14] You: this
[1:14] You: this is my karma
[1:15] Pitt Foden: do i hear an excuse?
[1:15] You: No dear
[1:15] You: why does what I do upset you so much?
[1:15] Pitt Foden: why not carry on is the porn business when u are fifty?
[1:16] Pitt Foden: u will have menopause then
[1:16] Pitt Foden: less chance of getting pregnant
[1:16] You: Dear spare me the helfire and brimstone
[1:16] Pitt Foden: and for god's sake stop ur logic
[1:17] Pitt Foden: anyway
[1:17] You: Dear you are being tiresome
[1:17] Pitt Foden: 4 a change
[1:17] Avatar ejected.


By IM

[1:17] Pitt Foden: thank u
[1:18] Pitt Foden: what are ur 'huge' dreams anyway?
[1:19] Pitt Foden: care to tell??
[1:19] Lillie Yifu: Dear I am going to tell you to go away and not bother me.
[1:19] Lillie Yifu: Or I will report you for harassment
[1:19] Lillie Yifu: Good day.
[1:20] Pitt Foden: come on.... after getting into ur skybox or watever shit.... u think i m afraid of being reported 4 harssment?? do u really believe that???
[1:21] Pitt Foden: nice day....



This is why there is endemic sexual harassment on sl. People who wonder why I am sour from time to time have to realize that this conversation is stereotypical, that it is often going on in several places at once, on IMs. I let it run on this time, so that people could see exactly how foul the social system we have built is. Pitt isn't afraid of consquences from LL, even though he has broken the rules rather clearly. So I am going to take a chance myself.

Girlfriend of the avatar of Pitt Foden, think about how he treated me like garbage trying to get sex. He's treating you like garbage too, as he goes out trying to virtually whore his way through SL. I have no way of finding you, or getting at his rl. But his rl might have a vested interest in getting at him. It is up to you. I've revealed nothing about him.

And Pitt? I would advise you make a new avatar, your name isn't going to be very good where ever there are dancers, escorts or other women of any kind who don't want to be abused. This isn't about a romantic wanting love - it is about a monster who thinks he can abuse his way, by his own admission, to no strings attached, no conditions satisfaction of his own desires. That is something unrelated to any species of love of my acquaintance. Instead it has a different name: abuse.

It is one thing to think you can seduce an escort. Escorts do leave the lifestyle for relationships, it happens. But is saying something else when an entire species of male thinks that they can abuse their way into intimacy.

I'm told by two of my economist friends that one of the important barriers to bad behavior is reputation and the cost of misbehaving. Pitt had nothing on him. He risked nothing, even if LL should ban him, because he can just create a new playdope and start again. I on the other hand, am locked into the SL system, and have tens of thousands of Linden on my person that would go poof should I be banned.

Now think on something Linden Laboratories. What kind of perverse system have you created, when the person who is doing their entirely legal work, contributing as a member of a land owning group to tier must be afraid, because the cost of trouble is high, and the griefer playdope thumbs his nose at you. Is this the message you want to send to residents?

Happenings and a sketched thought

Sometimes a post or event is like a single curve drawn on a fresh sheet of drawing paper, it is powerfully evocative, but it is not yet, anything.

The eno painting is one. "Long Now" is everything wrong with the old world in my mind. I could not have said it better had I tried. Nowness is pastness.

Also a reminder Free prim shoes and free wedding dresses are now in the Yedo bargain basement, that is the freebies area. The dresses are the usual set of five, with full permissions. The shoes are clearly Natalia's design. I've made it so that my socks don't show through the soles, and the top fits, as well as turning the straps from 3 to 2, and making them gold. The bling also responds on channel 88, and has an "aura" effect. Also full perms.

So in the bargain basement is now possible to get "hot, fast and cheap" in one stop, plus going to Bare Rose Tokyo for their 1L AO. Judy's group is the best fashion bargain in sl, and with the AO, a must stop for everyone old or new building a good avatar on low Linden.

The Other Elephant in the Room

One blogger talks about that old obsession, how many escorts are played by men. It is one of the questions that reminds me of the blah blah blah patriarchy, blah blah blah phallocentrism of world I live in, and Second Life, the worry of men crossing dicks with other men gets a great deal more space, consideration and attention than the issue which London Spengler spends a roundabout, but candid and illuminating post on, namely the other, and probably even larger and more important population of SL's sexual demi-monde, namely: married women.

Men who play escorts do not shape the sexual environment of SL as much as married women do. This is because men playing women are either transients, or they are spending their time acting as much like women as possible, or they are non-participants in the sexual world, and are simply playing a female avatar because of the advantages that being female in sl has if you can get past the pervasive sexual harassment which is part of SL culture.

Married women on the other hand, dictate many of the spheres where they live in. First, because it is socially acceptable in almost every direction to be a married woman dancing, escorting, running a large house of slaves, being a slave, or any other role in the universe of sl sexuality, including that of the partner in a stable relationship. This is not true for men playing women. The same man who would recoil at the thought of trading virtual bodily fluids with a male, would get off on the idea that another man's woman has come to him to fulfill a fantasy that she lacks in the physical world. Thus MFF's are closeted while mFFF are out and about.

Married women can be assertive about their needs in creating a second life, men playing women who present as women, are, by definition, in the closet. You can have sex in the closet, but not a life. Even if it is a walk in closet.

The next reality of why married women have a greater weight in shaping SL's personal sexual universe is time. Married women have a trump card on the time they spend in sl, particularly if they are married with children. Few SLovers are going to be crabby and selfish enough to tell a married woman not to go and be with her children.

As importantly, married women have stronger sexual desires, often being closer to the peak of the libido, and often being ready to scratch what used to be referred to as "the seven year itch." That is, they are more willing to play around on SL than young single women, simply because the risks, hopes, terrors and dreams of single womanhood and the pressure to find a marriagable, or at least long term datable, male interest, are not there. A married woman is absolutely free to pursue whatever relationship or relationships in the sl context that she desires.

The two populations are co-dependent. One protects the other. That married women are a large fraction of the escort population means that men playing women have cover. Married women are as much, if not more, interested in protecting their anonymity as men playing women are. Married women do not want to use voice or other identifiable means of interacting, the do not want to cam widely, though the may with lovers, they will not with customers. That there are men escorting protects the married women, because customers will realize that they may not really want to know who they just had a torrid 30 minutes of virtual sexual congress with. What happens if it is a ram in sheep's clothing?

Married women are, to my experience, often the instigators of relationships with single men. They may not be the instigators of sex, but their need for romance, emotional closeness and sympathy naturally creates the fertile place where, particularly in sexualized sl, virtual sex is natural. If the man is married willing to have an sl only experience, then this kind of relationship often works out. Married man and married woman having a virtual affair which relieves the pressure from their ordinary relationships. But single men are often taken to the extremes of sex, including cam and even rl meetings, with a woman who is ultimately, unavailable. My dear friend Jazon has been amazingly open about his experience, and he is not the only example of this story in my time in sl, because someone like me is often their next stop as they try and heal.

From this, it might seem that I think that married women are negatives in SL. This is hardly the case, as we all need to find our bliss. But it is their problems more than the problems of men playing women, that shape the sexual and emotional landscape of sl: their restrictions on time, their rl commitments, their emotional needs, their fantasy lives. An sl woman played by a man who simply tries to have lesbian sex with every other dancer within reach seldom lasts long. The women around him might take him up once or twice, but often they will not. The married sl woman who plays a dancer, escort, slave, mistress or other stable role in the sl ecology, particularly if she has it worked into her life the way women of another generation might have worked soap operas or romance novels into their lives, will become fixtures of the community. They have access to resources to buy areas, build and create a space around them. Many of these spaces are the spaces that kept me in SL during that confused ugly time of my second life here. They have a richness, an sense of oppulence, a style, a thirst for role play, which is my own. I walked into several of them, and felt one word resound in my heart.

"Home."

This means that much of what is positive about old SL, is a reflection of how married women run their fantasy lives. This is true of those married women who have, or who have found, a permanent sl relationship, and are making homes. Every time you hear "build your dreams!" in a rental advertisement, or see a piece of well made furniture, realize that there is a married woman and her feelings on romance which are the target of that line or object.

I know this has not been my most poetic post, and it perhaps should be, because married women creating their bliss around them is part of the poetry of sl. In fact, it is a larger part of the poetry of sl than anything except the clattering drum beat of people trying to make money here. This topic needs to be returned to again and again, in smaller, more specific ways. It will be. To be an escort on SL, and to have emotional attachments of any kind, specifically romantic ones, is to have had romantic experience with married women playing in sl.

Often single women end up in relationships with married women. The married woman is often the individual who seeks the relationship, and the single woman is drawn into it. As an escort, a relationship with a man is problematic, because it means the end of escorting for all practical purposes. And other single women, well, let's come out and say: in the world of single woman in the sl sex trade, the relationship that tends to form and last is one of virtual sisters, sempre amiga, rather than virtual sex. Each one sees the other, and knows that a lasting relationship with another single woman doesn't meet the real needs. Hence, thre is a deep bond between single woman escort and single woman escort, a love, a desire... which is not sexual or sexualized precisely because of the empathy and understanding of the other person's position. There is a hope and prayer that this other single woman can find her dreams, find her prince charming, even if you can't find your own.

And this often leads to the acute angle of sl demi-monde romance: the married woman pressuring the single woman into the married woman's fantasy life, and the single woman, often overly eager to please, trying to find a place to be, a way to fulfill more, but not all, of that fantasy life.

I'm not just the president of the society for the study of married women in the sl sex industry, I'm at least two or three of its case studies.

That which passes, passes like clouds

This morning I had one of those ugly realizations. I went looking through so called "full permissions" stores, and found out that most of them sold, not only the same goods, but often "no modify" same goods. Saying that a box has a complete business, and full perms, and then selling crippled products.... But what made me angry was when someone was selling the standard collection of 5 wedding dresses, for 1000L. They go for 25L in some places. In response I bought these dresses, and am leaving them down stairs as freebies... full perm. Copy, transfer, modify. Whatever you like.

I also purchased the stiletto heels that are clearly based of the design that Natalia gave away in her fabulous article. I cleaned them up a bit, put the bling in a different place, made it respond to channel 88, rather than channel 0, and made a few style alternations. Other than the AO, which I am still working on, it is now possible for a newbie girl, in one stop, to get everything she needs to go about sl: a good shape, every good giftable skin in sl, prim hair, prim shoes, and some gowns and dresses. As soon as I do the AO, the sift through clothes and jewelry, the ladies project will be complete.

Now this is important. "Communities" are being made to give some groups a chance to make huge amounts of money. The reason communities are necessary is that Linden Labs won't do the job of introducing people to SL, and SL's community did a truly criminal job. Instead of fostering new people, they were robbed for pathetic amounts of Linden by people willing to do anything to make money except work, and then to earn that money were shoved into camping farms which are mind numbing boring, and offered fake amusments like orgy rooms, or escorting as entry level work.

Is there any question as to why SL's retention rate has been terrible? Every part of SL's economy, public sector in the form of the government which is Linden Laboratories, the private sector in the form of businesses and the cultural sector in the form of the inhabitants, failed to do what needed to be done to get people up to speed quickly, but instead at every turn of the way treated new people as sheep to be shorn, or campers to be shills to shear other sheep.

From now on, as I get the money, I am going to be buying up the "full perm" junk that floats around, and freebing it, as full perm. It will take a while, since I have to dance, or be fondled, or give blow jobs for that money. But one act of phone sex at a time, I'm going to be peeling what should be in everyone's hands, well sorted, not dropped into vast creates of junk, away from the clotted and sludgy world of robbing newbies to pay absentee store owners, and into the bright light of an open source day.

It's time to just do it, put the material out there, so that people can build on it. The shoes and the wedding gowns are the first step. If someone makes something they should be able to sell it, but it is time we stopped having to "reinvent the digital wheel" over and over again on sl. That is the only way to start moving fast enough to prevent SL from being just another place where a few large coporations make everything, and the rest of us sit around and complain about it.

It's time to end the huge swathes of ugly sl, filled with crates and boxes, or with signs telling people that they can have a complete business selling what other people are already giving away, and which they cannot modify even though it is "full perm."

And Linden Labs, if you let businesses engage in outright fraud like this, then don't cry when at some point in time, something thick and sub peona-like happens to you.

Shape Collections at the Yedo Gift Shop

After several requests, I am making available full mod versions of the Yedo Freebie shapes. The shapes come in three versions, and with the exception of Nanjing, each version includes both skirt and pants shapes. Also included with each is the freebie sharn skin, a bald base, a set of prim hair, and the bra and thong pictured. Everything you need to look like the poster, is in the contents. 250L each collection.

Today's release is Busan, Pacific Century and Nanjing. Available at The Yedo Gift Shop.

Busan is a pure Korean beauty. I don't know how things are perceived out in America, but in recent years, Korean women have been presented in Asia as the apex of oriental beauty. This shape captures some of the features that make this look like a perfume to the eyes. Her base height is something on the short side, but there is a taller version included. Busan is also "prete a porter," clothes and hair generally fit her with out modication.

The Nanjing shape here is a westernized one of the original, which is included as "Nanjing classic." Nanjing has a lovely profile, and she has powerful features. She is based on the southern Soong Dynasty Chinese idea of beautiful, something in the flavor of the old prints from that time. Round and ripe, she is not the thin ideal which many westerners have of Chinese beauty now, but the more fertile kind of ages past.

Pacific Century is today, and the most impressive of the shapes, long and lithe, impossibly thin. She comes in three variations, including a model thin and runway model thin variation. Her face is plastic and fits well with a wide variety of hair styles and clothes, however, because of her height and proportions, clothes sometimes need some tlc.


All are 250L, copy/modify, and with extras so that you are ready to start out of the box. The red hair on Nanjing is a variation of the "magic" freebie, but reset to fit on the skull rather than the nose.

Raise The Red Lantern:Orgies without Sex

Don't say you were not warned. This post is not work safe, not work safe, not child safe, not even orgy safe. Sexpose on how little sex actually happens at the big orgy rooms.

Summary: streetwalking has lots of women hanging around and not many men paying. Orgies have lots of men hanging around, and few, generally very low quality, girls taking what comers there are. And they could even be zombies for all I know. Something is very, very, very, very wrong, when we have this much technology and talent employed for people to not have sex.

Tennis Anyone?

IBM's Wimbeldon build is clean and pretty, their tennis game is far to processor heavy for me to play, but it looks like it is a great deal of fun. I believe that sports will replace sex as the leading industry on SL over the next two years, because the sex market is saturated, and as the outside pornography industry comes in, it will, eventually, obliterate all but the top end of the sex trade in SL.

The tennis court that IBM has built looks like a step in that direction, if I could play it, I probably would spend hours getting good at it. But it is still too much load on the processor and connection. This means, of course, that such games are really only a year or so away from sl.

So here I am in my tennis outfit, the dress is going to be a freebie at the Yedo gift shop. The racket will be free to Yedo VIP Gold and Platinum members as this month's free gift, or 150L in the Yedo shop in the mall area.

Streetwalking in SL

A good deal of what fascinates people about second life is the demi-monde, the shadow world, of creativity, of loosened boundaries, and therefore of a different kind of sexual politics. We've had a discussion about the middle, the clubs that is, and to some extent about why the top of the profession does as it does, but we have not talked about streetwalking, which is one step above orgy rooms.

I went to three of the most common places to find street whores in sl. Some were girls clearly fresh spat out, hoping to find a first job to get a skin, some hair, anything. Others were at the 300L worth of barbie. None were better than that, though in fairness, they could well have been alts of more established avatars out for a night. The rates? 300L for :30, I was offered 800L ... for 1:00. That's $3 USD for an hour of typing interactive pornography. Even if someone did 8 a day, 7 days a week, that is $168 USD. Third world wages. It may be virtual sex, but think on what people are being asked to do as entry level work in sl.

This is a giant theme park, only people are asked to do much worse than put on mouse costumes and run around in the sun. And the people running it are trying to get very rich on not paying the people who create that content.

I fished one newbie looking girl out of the pond, took her back to Yedo where she grabbed the skins and shapes... I won't tell much of her story, except to say that this was a new character because a male client was stalking her sl, and trying to find her rl. Those are the risks girls run, that everything no transfer you have may go.. pooof out of your life... because of men stalking you. Note that there is no way to get rid of these men from sl. Next time I give people attitude about the atrocious quality of government in Second Life, you'll know why, it isn't the first, second or third time I have heard this story, and it won't be the last either.

The quality of sex you get in such places, at those prices, is terribly low, but for a guy interested in no more than having permission to pump himself off, what else is needed. I saw a girl who had a "verified girl" group tag, complete with links to her, not unattractive, rl picture. She got 400L for :30. Given a bit of work she could have commanded much more.

Another girl charged rates similar to mine, and sold rl pics. However she also belonged to a group that had this description:

Rate Whores will do anything for your positive ratings. We fuck, suck and degrade ourselves for your pleasure, and it only costs the 25-75 lindens to positively rate our Appearance, Behavior or Building skills.

Why do we do it? Just for the satisfaction of another notch in our belt: the higher the ratings, the bigger the whore. This is an ongoing contest for members and the only rule is you can't pay people to rate you.

Ratings were removed just as I was coming on to SL, so I don't know what they do now.

Some other girls clearly had more skill, both in dressing and in working, and could at their top command rates that are about my bottom rate. Not bad for not having your own place, even if it is because of a lucky day.

What was also present was the sense of sisterhood. We talked, compared notes, swapped fashion tips. My heart goes out to any girl who has to stand there and wait and hope for someone to come along, and then have to bargain down to what ever pocket change he wants to throw at him. Think about it, virtual sex, personalized, for the price of the quarters someone can dig out of a sofa... And running the risk that some love struck client will decide to try and find their rl, and show up one morning at 3am screaming out what she did virtually the day before...

So why do it. Well what else is there for entry level access to Lindens in sl? 400L for :30 may be less than $2USD, but if you don't have the ability, or don't want, to jump through hoops to get Linden, then what else is there? For some people this is a fantasy, and they want to do it, but be given a bit of something so they can afford the barbie fantasy as well.

Even at the low end of sl demi-monde, the rl web pornography world, itself saturated, is coming. Since the market for escorts is also saturated, and the prices are plunging, the outside will flood and swamp the sl sex trade at every level. This isn't good or bad, it simply is. Like the web itself, demand for pornography is a vast subterrenean world.

Which touches on an issue. I hear a great deal of chanting for "bottom up." Well there is a huge demand for "bottom up" abuse of women. I don't blah blah blah patriarchy blah blah blah phallocentrism much, but it seems to me that anyone who thinks that bottom up anything is the salvation of the world has a serious blind spot about what the single largest bottoms up demand is out there. What that means to me is that for all of the chanting about how bottom up is the salvation of society, it is really a fight between two groups of men over who gets to exploit women's sexuality for their own pleasure and profit.

Dancer at the gates of dawn

Bruthea Barbarossa dancing at Yedo as dawn comes. Click on these for the full size images.

Working the Stiffs

Beth asks a question over on the Eden club review: why would anyone work an exclusive contract with a club? What are my thoughts?

I haven't worked an exclusive since the day I walked out of Twisted Orchid months ago, I agree with Beth: for me, exclusives are not a good deal. But Beth admits she's a voice girl, whose average rate is double that of top text escorts, and which is a product, phone sex, not tied to sl. SL can advertise it, but it exists outside of sl. Even more so with cam girls: the average rate for a Cam girl runs 3K :15, which is four times my text rate, and the top cam girls with HD and a good show run 10K :15, which is four times my top rate for specific clients. When that kind of money is available, a girl would have to be a naïf to sign an exclusive.

For me, as a relatively pricey text escort, exclusives don't make sense either, because the clients who seek me out are looking for me at my freshest, with a full range of imagination. The first hour someplace will fish out the interested person, or it won't. It makes no sense to grind for four hours someplace, when the last three just aren't worth anything at all.

Now let's turn this around. Consider the girl who is new, or whose rate is the more usual 350L - 500L :15 and has no equipment of her own. The 20% club tip may sound steep, but she would be earning nothing without the stream of customers coming to her off the tp drop point. I remember the early days of my being an escort, and nearly sighing with relief when a well appointed male avatar bulked out from the default female shape. At last! Money! I had only one ad placed, rather than the dozen I place now, and no expenses but upgrading my look. The result was that text escorting in the middle range kept a steady stream of people willing to buy a half an hour of my time at 1000L cost to them, 800L net to me. Now figure out how much typing you are going to do in dancing and escorting to clear 30K in a week. It's a small novel's worth.

A friend of mine, very skilled in sex, pretty, sweet and experienced, recently went two weeks without a client. She's working Elements now. For her, is working an exclusive worth it? Of course it is. 100% of nothing is a great deal less that 80% of a lot.

I believe that text escorting is doomed, personally. I think that as voice rolls out, and the cost of being "really" sure that the other person is female drops to zero, and the greater illusion on the part of the male that he has some chance of making this girl his permaslut hole, text escorting will be an adjunct to voice, a low end product, or an arcane taste of a few people who practice the old rites of old SL. New SL will have left it behind. I think that a year from now cam girls will have their own areas, not necessarily islands, just clubs, the will hire hungry text escort girls to give out essentially free sex to churn demand, and then skim off the cam customers who show up looking for cam. The text escorts will probably make something like 200L to 400L per hour, and be happy of it, and the cam girl will pay for this out of the profits that the additional customers are drawn in. I have some empirical evidence on how this would work, but don't care to share it at this time.

(This will be particularly true since the cost of building a "barbie" is dropping to zero. Right now I can design not one, but about 500 different girl avatars who cost 10L, the prim shoes being the only expense, who can get a job at any club you care to name based on their looks. When a barbie costs almost nothing, then the premium an escort can command for being better looking and better dressed than most women on sl also drops to nothing.)

(But this is a general pattern, rl money is coming to sl, it will swarm and swamp sl economics. People pay sl as if it is "play," not work. People pay rl money for rl things: voice, sight of actual pubic hairs soaked and wet. Old SL, that we live in now, is going to go away, and be replaced by a more balkanized, more integrated with rl, and pricier, place to play.)

So my thoughts: for the girl who is learning, who does not want to to the work to build a client base, and who is text only, an exclusive makes a great deal of sense. This is particularly true of working a top club: where business is flowing in like a river. However, for other clubs, other than a few very successful boutique clubs, and I would list Twisted Orchid as an example of of a successful boutique club, an exclusive is not a particulary good deal for a working girl. Many clubs harass their girls mercilessly, or guilt them into showing up at absurd hours. Many club owners insult their girls calling them stupid, or bitch or cum slut whore. All in the drive to raise traffic and have product on display.

The skin trade, even virtually, is a rough business, and the people who have made it to the top of it, or even the upper middle, make far, far, far more than than those who are scraping by at wages just above camping. A few top or niche clubs can justify demanding an exclusive, because they really can put the tips in the jar for the girl. But most clubs cannot, and yet many, many club owners want exclusives.

From the point of view of club owners, having exclusives is important. For good owners, it is because the cost of training is high. For bad ones, it is that hungry tired and confused girls are easier to push and abuse. Either way, the desire to control someone has huge payoffs for the club owner. For the girl learning, or one who is in someplace where it is easy to check in, work an hour and walk out up 3000L up, and yes, I've done it, and I know others who have, an exclusive works out just fine.

Beth mentions she wouldn't want to give any of her money over. That is true, except that if working a club brings you in more business, then the house percentage is worth it. Particularly for the new girl who has no bed or place of her own with ban privileges to work. I remember letting out a spare room for 50L, and having girls whistle with relief that I would give them temporary ban powers.

Top clubs can demand exclusives, because they provide benefits worth the 20%. Many others demand them, without giving those same benefits.

Yedo is not a strip or escort club. Were I to run such a club, I would not ask for exclusives.

The Gate of Worlds

Transmutability Blog offers the following about the Ogoglio platform:

Three simple concepts make this possible. First, each space is hosted independently. Second, we offer a simple linking mechanism: the door. Doors are bi-directional links connecting two spaces. When a user places a door in their space to connect to another user's space, they must obtain approval from the other party before the link becomes fully functional. This is how "neighborhoods" will be built: communities of like-minded space designers can interconnect as they see fit, without having to build on the same "land" or even maintain similar appearances. And third, users will also be able to embed web-style links into their spaces to connect to non-3D content.

Sounds a lot like the Web? Well, that's because Ogoglio is built on top of it! We believe the same principles that made the Web so successful can be applied to online 3D spaces. The key is to let groups of spaces form organically, bottom-up, instead of (fruitlessly) trying to maintain any sense of unity from above. We would love to hear the reactions of users coming from "top down" worlds to this idea.

But Linden Labs isn't a top down design, that isn't the problem. In fact, people are flocking to top down designed spaces in Linden Laboratories. The reality of mainland is that its clutter is "bottom up," as each land owner pursues individual vision without cooperation. And Ogogolio isn't bottom up either, it seeks to be a tier that connects bottom spaces.

We need a different vocabularly as we stand on the gate of worlds.

Now off to rl for me.

The Future of 3D PDPolydimensional thinking

Many people think of Virtual reality as "3D." However, my free backgammon game "wastes cycles by drawing trendy 3d junk," as Eudora users of a certain time would remember it, and one can find 3D all over the place in simple games. Second Life is not about 3D, nor even "multidimensional thinking". Instead it is polydimensional. Something is poly rather than multi when the concepts have blended together. Odysseus' "many turnings" are so unified as to be one thing.

A virtual world presents three dimensions for movement, but this is really one dimension, that of the spatialization of interactions, which have computer hardware and software to translate the stream of clicks and buttons, which is a one dimensional stream, into the appearance of three dimensions. But this was accomplished before I ever laid eyes on a computer as a serious user with wire frame games of the sort that boys of a certain age spent hours learning.

The second set of dimensions are the interactions. An animation is not merely movement in space, or even in space time, it is based on the restriction of movement in the three dimensions of space over time with a pattern, a texture.

Trevor Steptoe, who is rl Trevor F. Smith, was speaking at the recent metaversed Geek meet, and touched on the second set of dimensions. That of code and the building of code. This is a "space", the space has dimensions, merely not spatial. To versions of a program have a distance, that distance is measured by how long it takes, for example, to upgrade from one to the other. He argues for Open Source. Open Source, if you think about it, is a better space for development, and for the social culture of development, and that is why it gradually takes over infrastructure. Better bricks make better buildings too.

Of course Second Thoughtless argued that private property was the key, since we were meeting on "private property" a concept which does not exist on sl, which is instead a feudal system where everyone holds anything by grace of the God-King Linden. Prokofy continued to spew on for several sentences, demonstrating an amazingly thorough and broad ignorance of law, software, journalism and economics.

It's not worth debunking these things, except to note that properietary software is against private property. Consider that the proprietary nature of Second Live makes it difficult to move property purchased for animation here, and difficult to move property out from here to there. Properietary operating systems give those that make them control over computers not owned by the software maker. Microsoft can force me to do things with my computer that I don't know about, even though I bought the computer with my money. An example again of why Prokofy Neva is the most imbecilic noise amker in Second Life, and calls into question the sanity of the large crowd of people that pump her juevenile rantings.

The aspect of organization, which is partially code, partially space, but also how human beings organize themselves, both personally and in groups, is another bundle of dimensions, with their own distances. A word or an email can cast two people to an almost infinite distance in a relationship, which cannot be crossed no matter how many sims one walks through to get back. The same is true in reverse, a single phrase can draw two people close to a distance which seems unmeasurably small. I've thought more than once that one of the happiest small sights in SL is someone you care fore "0m" distant on radar.

The next aspect of polydimensionality is leads from this, if the construction of virtual "space" is the first set of polydimensions, and the construction of code and social organization the second, then the realtionships between people as individuals are the third set. Personal relationships are richly textured and operate as a space of their own.

Each of these three sets of dimensions produces interactions.

But let me get specific because the next speaker was Jeff Barr of Amazon.com and his presentation on their EC2, or Elastic Computer Cloud. The cost of the cloud is equivalent to buying a machine, roughly 10 cents an hour. However, the difference is that instead of having one machine all the time, one can buy as much or as little as one needs. So if you need 10 machines at once, then it is $1.00/hr. This eliminates the need to "lease." How is this polydimensional? Because it merges the dimensions of time, space and money that come into play when buying, leasing or borrwoing hardware, into one bundle of dimensions.

The future of virtual reality is this: by improving the meta languages which describe spaces, it makes it possible to turn a grup of orthangonal dimensions jabbing at each other into one textured bundle of dimensions. It then becomes possible to connect bundles in ways that were previously impossible. The web itself is a space that reduces the barriers of physical space.

The future then isn't better three dimensions, in itself, but better dimensions.

But I know We'll Meet Again Some Sunny Day...

Jazon Beck's creator is going to be rling for a while, and I will miss him so. But he says "until we meet again" with a poem that you have got to read, and realize that we are missing one of our best writers on sl with his absence.

Come back when you can dear, we need you here. Safe and sound, but still.

Yes Yes Yes

The last photo of this group has what photos from second life should have, "presence."

57 Miles to Graceland

If you get a hair demo at many places, a giant rotating sign appears over your head saying "Demo." Many people in second life have a giant "Don't get it" sign rotating over their heads, and yet, the world beats a path to their doorstep.

However, this does not apply to 57 Miles, who gets it, and wants other people to get it too. If he did nothing other than run the fabulous "Things to Do" group, which has hit critical mass of interesting people, places and activities, he'd be a big plus to the Second Life Community. But that's just a pinprick in the extremely valuable news source which is Meta versed. Today's sample, on a key sim sale, reports on real skills in virtual world, is a torrent of content from a host of authors, with 57 Miles' rl Nick Wilson being the driving force.

In a fragmented world, oen with broken search, hard to find truth, and information that is often kept hidden under glass, 57 Miles is a community builder, author, reporter and "key node." He's doing something different at Metaversed, and giving back to the SL community by running "Things to Do." He's also a tireless advocate for getting people skills recognized as key to the Second Life entry experience.

When you buy that hair, it doesn't have a bit "Get It!" sign over your head. And maybe that's too bad. 57 Miles isn't loud in person, but instead fastidiously dressed, understatedly handsome and moving to where every he is needed to smooth the way for people. SL would work better if more people were like 57 Miles.

End Teleport Spam Now

One of the ways that I measure whether anyone is serious about ending spam and abuse and harasment on SL is their stance on teleport spam or tspam for short. Tspam is the endemic bane of anyone in the escort business, because we are constantly fighting through menus. People go through the names on a public group, offer tps to all them them as a way of getting them to go to a club and generate traffic. That all questions become a blue dialog box means that while fighting through the blue dialogs from your tool, from animated beds, from xcite, from buying things, from "do you want to allow this to take linden" from the vendors you are setting up, there is now an uncontrolled assault on your screen from people you do not know and do not really want to know.

Often these tps are into orgy or free sex areas. Often the next word is "wanna fuck?" And it is seldom anything but ignoring you by the professional spammers. Clubs pay people to tp spam.

This has got to stop, or no mainstream business will feel safe asking people in for long. Would you want your little old lady customers accidentally saying yes to tp spam while in the middle of one of your sales pitches, only to find themselves surrounded by grinding bodies, a moan a moment sound track, and a guy with his dick out and errect saying "wanna fuck? do you have cam?"

Tspam is favored becaue the proof goes poof, and because well "you accepted it." But you didn't in many cases, and you shouldn't have to fight off teleport offers from people you haven't talked to, which more than once in my experience I've taken because I was waiting for a legitimate tp offer.

End Teleport Spam. It is harassment, often sexual harassment, and often for money. It is a simple question, does Linden Laboratories condone sexual harassment for profit, or not? If not, what are they going to do about a common business and personal practice on sl, which threatens the integrity of the system?

Or are women justified targets for anything that businesses choose to dish out, because there is clearly a large clientele on sl that wants anonymous instant sex with a woman so they can demand that the bitch worship their cocks and call them master? I don't blah blah blah about the Patriarchy often, but this looks like a pretty good candidate for "things da hoes just gotta accept."

I have a simple proposal, put on the teleport dialog a third button "block and report as spam." It is an option on myspace to report friend offers as spam, and in every email program. Everything sent to an avatar should eventually have this option: block and report as spam.

"Wanna Fuck? Do You Have Cam?"

Would people doing this to avatars with the last name "CiscoSystems" or "Linden" be tolerated? I doubt it.

Charity for the Children: Black and White Charity Ball

One of the dearest people I have met in my travels through SL is Seraphin Clary, we belong to the Tossa Allen is a Pigheaded Goon Society from our days escorting at a small club. She has been unfailingly good to others, so much that she is the only person in sl that I call "sweetness." Now she is doing it again by helping with the Black and White Charity Ball, to raise money to help children. This is a girl who went two weeks without work here on SL, and someone who has given her last linden to help someone else more than once.

She sends me this, and of course, I have to put it up in its entirety. If you want to help, or attend, then contact Shay Savon in world for details

Many of you have asked for Information on the Charity - National Children's Home (NCH) - I have quoted this info below directly from the website, www.nch.org.uk - where you can go for even more information, but here are the basics.

"NCH one of the UK's leading children's charities, helping children achieve their full potential. Through our services we support some of the UK's most vulnerable and excluded children and young people.

NCH was founded in 1869 and known for many years as the National Children’s Home. We are now known as NCH, the children’s charity.

The children, young people and families we work with face difficulties such as poverty, disability and abuse.

NCH runs more than 500 projects for some of the UK's most vulnerable and excluded children and young people, and their families, supporting over 160,000 people at children's centres throughout the UK.

We also promote social justice by lobbying and campaigning for change.

Today, NCH is the leading UK provider of family and community centres, children's services in rural areas, services for disabled children and their families, and services for young people leaving care.

Your charity legacy will help our work with over 160,000 children, young people and families, including disabled children and their families, children who have suffered abuse, young people who are homeless and young carers who look after sick or disabled family members.

We currently run over 500 projects across the UK. It’s through this work that we strive to realise the full potential of every child and young person. Legacies are vital to this work as they help us plan our projects now and into the future.

Figures for 2005–06

* NCH has nearly 500 services.
* NCH helps over 85,000 children and young people across the UK.
* NCH helps over 160,000 children, young people and their families across the UK.
* NCH has been supporting children and young people affected by poverty, disability, abuse or neglect for over 135 years. Today we are the UK’s leading children’s charity, working with more than 140,000 vulnerable children, young people and their families each year.

The areas in which we work

Adoption: projects finding permanent new families for children separated from their birth families

Disability: residential short breaks, specialist play and education opportunities for children and support for families

Early Years and Family Support: Local projects supporting children, parents and other carers through services such as practical parenting courses, advice and information services, after school activities and holiday play schemes.

Education: special schools and support services for children who are struggling to cope with mainstream schooling or those who are not attending school at all.

Family Placement: Foster care projects and shared care services linking disabled children with part-time home based carers

Health and well-being: counselling and mental health projects, projects for children with life threatening illnesses and for those caring for a sick or disabled relative, and services for children at risk of sexual exploitation or drug use.

Participation and Children’s rights: children’s rights and advocacy services, family mediation for separating parents, and mentoring and befriending services for vulnerable children

Residential Services: residential family centres that help families in crisis, residential homes for children in care or young people in trouble, and short residential breaks for disabled children.

Youth Services: Leaving care and youth homelessness projects, youth justice projects and Children’s Fund programmes "

~National Childrens Home Website


Once again, Thank you ALL so much for your interest in assisting with this event.

I am sorry I missed this one

The SF gathering would have let me wear my Trek outfit.

I am not into SF, but I am into Elusyve and London Spengler.

Take Me To the River, Drop Me in The Water

Religion of the old kind. It is almost invisible in SL. It is strange to me, because SL would seem like an ideal to make converts, and to create a presence which is broader and wider. I read about parishes shutting down, about the rise of "mega churches" and I wonder why these forces aren't here. I wouldn't mind seeing more religion in sl. A cathedral that does a mass, well, I would go to just to see it. I could write the dance ball that would last long enough to have parishoners rise and fall at the right times. I don't believe in God, but I do believe in ritual.

Is this heresy to say that?

After all, if I were something other than tangentially Buddhist, I'd want to build a temple on line. Well alright I am building one on line, but to the god and goddess that I worship here: why else would I build a tower 300M tall, but which you walk up by being enveloped? It's a union of both the phallic and the vaginal. A spire to sex, if you will.

Partially because I live in an age which has become sexualized, and sexuality is its religion. I know I am not the first person to notice this. But after the 10th rendition of the magazine newstand girl's guide to sex... seriously, the "10 sex tips you have to know" which includes brushing your teeth is a bit too tame ... which is to rl sex what pose balls are to sl sex... I really wanted something that would take me farther and allow me to have depths that others could become lost in. Sex shouldn't be left to girls who are more than all vogue on the outside and all vague on the inside. If sex is our religion, then most of us are damned.

Is it heresy to say that?

As any one who is here knws, second life is a relgion of its own. It has a gospel, gods and monsters. Heavans and hells. It has its rituals and sacrements. It has its own language. We change our names. We are baptized, sometimes by fire.

One time I was working a club, a major patron dropped out of character to ream me out from the position of his rl. It was the moment that made be quit the club. I realized I had a religion, and that religion was being immersed and emmersed in what we do here. It violated something sacred about the splace (my word! a typo that wants to have meaning!) and time.

It was heresy to say that. Because the god there was the Linden (which given exchange rates has a severe case of ED). I was gone, and wandered in the wilderness for a week, without the steady stream of tips that working there had brought me. It was in this time that I changed from the girl who came on, simply wanting to push things until they broke, and to something and someone else. Strangely enough, that event was my baptism from being an avatar that was playing the game, to Lady Lillie, living her life. I'd been half way in, wanting to have a character, and it was that moment where that character's faith in herself was born.

That time sitting in my then apartment, and putting ads on boards and looking for a next place to call professional home was a very lonely stretch. I did things that were meant to stave off the darkness that closed in around me. Someday on Raise the Red Lantern, I will write some of those tales from the wilderness.

But that period opened up into my present, even with many changes. I had wanted a confused tangle of things. But the period of wandering told me something that was a polished pearl of great price. It told me that I wanted only one thing out of the hidden gods, and not merely the demi-urges of this place. A baptism that begins and never ends.

Take me to the river, drop me in the water.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

SL Ruminations starts off with the hot topic of age play. Where is the line, they ask, where the slippery slope starts?

Video Wall at Yedo

Installed our unique video wall, and launched the Yedo 22nd Century VIP program. (And no ball sprawl! All right thinking avatars hate ball sprawl.)

22nd Century Yedo
Past, Present, Future



Welcome to the Yedo VIP Program, the most innovative club VIP program on SL. We realize that everyone wants you on their announcement group, and that most busy people have several groups just to manage their own business. Why keep us with so many others?

Because this isn't just a spam group, but instead, access to unique programs and benefits .

Silver VIP

Access to Yedo VIP Club currently being constructed, this will include special facilities for use by our members.
Special offers and coupons from Yedo and our retailers.
Entered into the monthly drawing for a $9.99 iTunes gift certificate. That is USD, not Linden.

Gold VIP

All Silver VIP plus:

Can invite people into the VIP group.
Can have one hour free rental of the main dance floor, subject to availability, with only 24 hours notice, including setting all four media streams.
Can change the media streams in the VIP Club.
Special free monthly gift from Yedo.

Platinum VIP

All Gold VIP plus:

VIP Rewards program, a weekly stipend. We will put 5% of all donations to Yedo, merchandise sales and rental income back into the VIP program, which will be sent out as a stipend every week. That's right, 5% of what we make from sale of merchandise, donations and rental income comes back to our Platinum VIP members.
Special access to our staff by arrangement.

Unique Rewards

No other club comes close to offering these kinds of rewards for its VIP members, and we will work hard to increase our member benefits with gift certificates to rl and sl merchandise, invitations to special events both at Yedo and around sl, and other unique and innovative rewards.

If you have suggestions, ideas, complaints, observations, send a notecard to Lillie Yifu and we will be happy to do whatever we can to make 22nd Century Yedo and its VIP program a better and better and better experience.

Working Together

But we can only offer this level of service and benefits because our VIPs help us. 22nd Century Yedo has the best dancing on SL, and we are building a roster of entertainers and djs that provide a wide range of special evenings. From geisha dancing to the most bleeding edge music and visual experience, includign our advanced dance floor, unique video wall and other coming enhancements to the today club goer's experience.

If you are a business owner, a club owner or designer or builder, we would love to hear from you! We love to do co-op arrangements with our friends, from advertising to cross marketting. Don't be shy! Second Life will be more of a success if the people who provide quality, of whatever kind, work together to form a strong network of retailers, locations and service providers that enhance the experience of residents of second life. The days of maze craze sl are soon to end, and we at 22nd Century Yedo are happy to help others make Second Life anything but second rate! Email me directly at lillie.yiyuan@gmail.com with ideas, proposals, or just to introduce yourself and what you do.


Neo-Modern Entertainment
Don't Be Passe. Be Today.

Open Doors

London Spengler writes about an eye opening moment of having sl sex with someone of the same gender, and asks, Carrie style:

Can it be? Can you feel attracted for people of your own gender when SL, and keep “straight” at RL?

We are all queer here on sl, and it takes as much work to hold on to the scraps of straight as it does to make almost any other decision. Any place where a man has to pay for his... equipment... isn't straight almost by defintion.

Sexual desire and imagination consist of many different parts working together. On sl we have the emotional, cultural and visual signals, but not that elusive and powerful component: scent. Scent is process differently for sexual arousal... most people are aroused by the scent of the opposite sex, and, if not repelled, neutral about the sexual scent of their own. However, this is not the entirety of sexual desire, arousal or imagination. This means people can fall in love without meeting, that we can become aroused without being present physically, and we can overcome chemical signals with the power of others.

More over, lack of consequence, social disapproval and assorted other aspects of the real world reduce restrictions. As well the peculiar lack of easy forms of intimacy short of sexualized intimacy,there are more good anal sex animations that dinner table conversationones,pushes in its favor.

So in a raw medi-geek sort of way, the answer is "you were never absolutely straight to begin with, and without certain restraints, and with certain rewards, that flowers out." But why worry about the label, a label is to help you predict how other people will act: gay, straight, dyke, femme, submissive, top, bottom, are like clothes. You wear them, you choose them from available choices, you might even make them. But they still aren't you, and sexuality is an altar that we all stand before naked.

More over, relieved from our perpetual look/age/presentation/manner anxieties, women flower on sl. So many women are able to create the space in sl that they only dream of rl.

Lesbianism is the fastest growing religion on sl, and there are good reasons for that.

it is, it is, it is not, it is

A parable as prose poem. On Raise the Red Lantern for adult content.

Touch Nirvana on an Oblique Tangent

It was a dream. In a long marbled exhibition hall, with a vaulted ceiling of wrought iron and glass, columns gilt in gold, ornamented with silver and pewter. And I am there, my some magic or art frozen too near immobility, and nude, a stride a great bronze statue of a Roman hercules, his narrow hips fit easily between my legs asunder. Around me people talk, or stare, or reflect, or sketch. From me exudes an aura that grows as I am gazed upon. But I am not quite motionless, but instead, like a living Foucault's pendulum, am almost imperceptibly shifting, grinding my hips down, riding them back up again, slowly exposing the curve and arching my back.

It is an old dream.

When first I told this story, the person listening assumed that it was humiliating, submissive. But it is not, I am not embarassed, the way the time honored "naked to the final" dream embarasses, but instead am radiant, warm, and glowing as a living work of art. The submissive has his or her own objectification fantasies, to be treated as a thing, the target against which a storm is unleashed, which comes and goes, hammers and burns. But at the heart of both is that remark by Descartes "I am practicing separating my mind from my body." The body including consciousness itself, as that other silent self looks on at even the phenomenological racket is subjected to some scathing hostile xtacy.

In the concept of chakra, or spiritual centers, I think helps describe the sense of being an object. The whole of the sense of where "I" is moves someplace, and where it is felt to have moved, is the kind of objectification that has happened. The "Muladhara" is the Chakra lowest in the body, and we have all felt absorbed by the engorged passion and desire. But it's closest neighbor, which is opposite the pubic bone, is the consuming point of destruction. This kind of being an object is to become a sex order that pressed outwards on everyone else, in a consuming and fiery darkness. My dream of being a statue is this transition from passion of Muladhara to the destruction of Swadhisthana. From enflamed desire, to destructive aura of lust. To feel and feel and feel not feeling, but imposing feeling. Where the nerves of the skin push out upon the world rather than are pushed upon it.

The life feels so drained from the rest of the body, that we feel it as "it." Since the illusion that the body and the mind are the same is the result of a great and complex dance, this vanishing of the illusion is powerfully erotic, because all of the boundaries that one yokes upon the other vanish. Blood is free to pour, and at the same time, being it, the mind no longer sees this as rebellion against its sense of self, but as the fulfillment. We become cold as mountains in winter, as the sense of being an object falls upon us, only to flood into a purer passion, as that feeling of being "it" over powers us.

Being treated as a thing is powerfully embracing. Men fight and die for territory, to be his territory implies that he will fight and die for you. Men hold territory beyond their last breath. To be territory is to be plowed by a sharp plow, and become a furrow that is waiting for seed.

Being a thing is powerful, as things beat and break our skin and bones, slap us if we dare to bend them. To be a thing is to have the power of stone, the resiliancy of wood, the temper of steel. And have we not heard these words applied to a man's organ? Even bone, as bone, is a thing, a human rock.

And down upon this from the highest chakra we look down, seeing a body being used by the world, and using it, and within this divine bliss, touch nirvana on oblique tangent.

A world without honor

I have some hair. It cost me 30L at a time when that was an amount of money I felt come out of my balance and wondered how I would get it back. I later found it, full permissions, for free. It, and a variant I've made, are now packed in the Yedo Bargain basement box. A friend of mine looked at buying a club, I told him it looked like a bad deal. A builder, with a better eye, told him that it was a stock build that cost a fraction of the price they were charging for it, in the same way I can spot a girl who is built out of free parts.

This is a lesson that I learned to the tune of about 2000L of things I have bought at inflated prices, and another 10K I've spent on second tier goods when better was available for less. That is almost as much as has gone poof out of my inventory, which should tell you the other big problem of the sl economy that is preventing this place from taking off.

The reality is that Second Life is filled with people who can't make things, but want to mark up goods alot based on how hard it is to find out the real price of anything. This has got to stop, or people will be scammed, and then get angry, and then go.

I know there are big words and long theories and academic papers that could buttress this argument and add all of the words that need to be filled in.

Bargain Basement is Over Here

I will never be a great dress maker, or even a really good one. These designs are all old fashioned, and these are terrible pictures.. However, at 1L 0L a piece, they are among the best freebie fashion you will find: Jade Circles is a dancing gown with a bustle, Black Peony has a bit of bling on channel 8888 (that's /8888 bling on), and Coppelia is a simple peasant dress. In addition to the original shapes, and the ladies skins culled from all of the full permissions skins I could find on SL.

From the Yedo mall area, just touch the teleport sign.

Oh Yes

I have fifteen of these. I wear 2. Pandora Designs tells about the single dress that the skirt bug hurts the most.

Lolita Controversy Breaks Out

Drowning Ophelia talks about Lolita style and the search ban. This story has been picked up now by Hamlet AU.

This is going after an entire fashion component, I wonder what GL stands for here... for example.

A Moment

Second Life has its magic moments. I think almost any cult status activity lives and dies by two things, one is the sense of wonder of just being there, that thrill of looking around, and realizing that you are in another world. I've heard it called "Toto, we aren't in Kansas any more." The other is the vivid and magic moment, that stands out from all the others, burns its way instantly into the memory, and colors the whole time of your life around it. The days seem whiter or greener or redder, because that is the color of that one moment.

Sex, RL, is a cult activity. The first part is just the realization of "hey! I'm having Sex!" or are about to have sex, or have just had sex. You wipe the effluvia tricking down your thigh's post sex and say "I've just been... fucked!" as the endorphins stretch the sides of your consciousness.

Then there is the magic moment of sex, something that the other person says or does, or a particular combination of sensations. Everyone as they develop a sexual.... hmmmm history is wrong.... I want to say life, but I mean that in the same sense as "life on Earth," in the sense of a sexual ecology.... Any way a sexual world within themselves, acquires those particular moments where the whole universe turns, stops, and there is an overwhelming wall of a sensation. First times are often part of this, which is why the magic moments that are not first times stand out so powerfully.

I can remember one time, I did not want to have sex with him, we had ended the affair, were in that phase of calling it "just friends," which was really a college way of saying that we were sliding out of each others lives. It was a hot May, everyone was happy to trot out their shortest shorts or summer gear. He did too. It didn't move me, even though he was trying, getting into my personal space, reminding me how hot it was by the sense of the heat and radiant sweat that flowed around his person. It was like the sense of heat rising off a hot road on a long drive when as a child, you were taken to visit some distant relative. I was being non-responsive, even a bit sullen. Not sexy catty "come and get me," but that kind of bear it because on your inside your mother is watching and it would be rude to say something that would cause upset.

But there was a moment where he walked into the shared bathroom that connected two dorm rooms, and his shorts rose up on the curve of his left him, exposing just a stretch of very toned muscle. It was clear that some of the time he handn't been spending with me, had been doing something very, very physical. I could feel that cream of flesh with my eyes, the touch of skin that is taut over muscle which comes easily to men, but is rare in women. And it was connected to a powerful stripple of muscle on his leg, that broadened out to a curve of the inner thigh, and was set against as a perfect complementary shape, the outer curve going down his other leg. He was reaching up to adjust the shower curtain, in that kind of off handed way that people who are tall enough just adjust something that is off, one of the rings had come off a hook.

But it wasn't that curve, it is only in my memory because of the next moment, where tilting his head over he said.

"You know, you could really use a shower."

Mmmmhmmmm.

Second life has those visual moments, the highs that make an addiction. The difference between second life and crack is... I'd never whore myself for crack.

One such moment for me, was when I was using a new high quality sex bed, and shifting around in camera. There was a particular angle. He was in a curled up and powerful position, that really caught the act of preparing to thrust, and uncoiled into it, I had my mouth being animated to a wide open yelp of pleasure. The two together, the oncoming male shoulder, and the wide open mouth syncronized to it, touched and tickled my senss of what the word "penetration" means. It was only a bit, the curve, the rise and fall of his back like an ocean wave rushing over me, implying a touch of chest to chest, cheek being scraped by stubble, a sound which SL did not play, but which I heard in my mind.

RL, there was a gasp from me. Being SL, it is an almost, but not quite, reproducible moment. Something about that particular client, and that particular Lillie shape. And that particular camera angle, and that particular placement of the animations on the bed.

A golden moment that rushed through my veins and explodes on the back of my eyes even now.

You are who you are

My first spat over this blog was with SL and virtual reality personality Proky Neva, who casually accused me in an email of wanting to engage in Age Play. Bad Girls, whose ownership and members of its managment, have made personal attacks into IM and in public a favorite hobby, have convinced me that anonymous comments are not safe in my line of work. So, sadly you have to have a blogger account going forward. Which means little of course, but it is at least something. I'm also going to moderate comments going forth, since continuous accusations that I am part of a "smear campaign" and so on are well outside of the boundaries of good taste.

As for the rest, it means little right now, but all runs come to an end. Search is getting harder to use by the day, and will, at some point, not be useful at all. That will leave Bad Girls, increasingly, with a huge flow of traffic, and no way to leverage it. And as they've made clear, the put the sex out there as a loss leader, which many of us do so there is nothing wrong in that, so the traffic, by itself, is not going to keep them in good shape.

So go back to your little conspiracy theories, dears, if that is what gets you hard, so be it. But paranoid rants aren't my fetish.

Giggle, Snort, Don't Drink Coffee and Click on this link!

Fellow shopaholic Tiessa covers the ground.

Club Article Revisited:

I wrote the article on the big three clubs, and naturally the reaction is different, and in fact, I've heard from two of the club owners. It has been up for sometime, and where I could find a manager, I sent a link as I posted it. So this is boiling over now not because people didn't know, but because it has been noticed.

I respect all three of the major clubs. They do well what dozens of other people want to do. The bottom line is commerce, and Elements, Bad Girls and Arsheba are the clubs that others emulate.

Bad Girls was, as you would expect, arrogant, vain, vicious, insulting, high handed and worth quoting:

[4:12] Jesse Murdock: you should be ashamed of yourself and your unfair and slanderous words, you are lying about damn good people in an unethical and unprofessional way , you have no journalistic integrity and honestly the disgusting abuse of your reader's trust in you to provide factual data that actually has reference to back it up is the saddest thing I have ever seen. You are100 PERCENT WRONG about EVERYTHING you so casually SPOUTED as if you actually had a CLUE about ANYTHING you wrote. I am so sickened by the evil and cruel things you have said about the good and honest people that give so much of their energy and time just trying to provide some decent enttertainmenrt for the residents of SL. You should be ASHAMED. MONEY? you actually think this place MAKES MONEY ??? ROFLMAO!!! You might be interested to know that my escorts made me a total of 748 Linden dollars this last week for my 20 percent cut. shakes head* http://www.reznation.com/?p=89 here have a listen to some facts....
[5:34] Jesse Murdock: your silence speaks volumes of your lack of honor and integrity, may karma have mercy on your soul
[6:06] Jesse Murdock: "bad girls is about the money", the basisi for your story... is the most untrue, and inhuman insult to me and what i have given to provide the entertainment that so many enjoy, I spend THOUSANDS of US dollars on it, never worry for profit, not even a facet of my establishment or policy, hardware shortcomings, SL shortcomings and other variables out of my control, are not fair aspects to judge Bad Girls on, you didnt even take part in the socialization , you said yourself you stood there and wrote your piece then left. You have no idea the good and positive influence that it has had on countless people's real lives, you have no idea how malicious and undeserved your lies are, I have always been a person to be able to allow others their opinions , and to each their own, but you seek to publicize your ignorant and uneducated negativity on your readers and have no regard for who you hurt in the process, slandering me is not going to gain you more clients, nor is it going to make people stop goingto the club
[6:06] Jesse Murdock: all you have done is hurt me and other good people deeply with your cruel and unfactual words
[6:08] Jesse Murdock: is it for business? you think you can improve yours by hurting me?
[6:08] Jesse Murdock: is it for revenge? were you kicked because tyou are an escort and they are not allowed
[6:08] Jesse Murdock: ?
[6:10] Jesse Murdock: what is it that has you so hatefully blabbering utter bs that you didnteven bother attempting to back up with one single fact
[6:10] Jesse Murdock: I actually find myself pitying you
[6:10] Jesse Murdock: your world must be very very miserable
[6:11] Jesse Murdock: said my peace, good day

What you aren't the number one club? You don't do well? Are you boasting about losing money? If you have traffic of 100K, as Bad Girls does, and you aren't making money on the shops, we all know that sex is the loss leader here, then there is something very wrong with your back end. If you have 100K traffic and you are not getting donations from happy club goers, what does that say about you? Or are those the quiet facts you don't want to talk about Jesse - that the club cut of escorting, note he didn't say dancing - isn't how any one makes their money? Or perhaps your escorts aren't being honest, I've paid more in club tips in a single day at much smaller places.

This is how people are. I cannot say something good about them, I must be a whore. Bad Girls is the club every club owner dreams of being. Bad Girls is also unduplicable, a unique club which uses the flaws and problems of SL to its advantage. It is also one of the most covetted jobs in sl, precisely because, as a machine, it runs well. This is the number one sex club on a service which is devoted to sex.

But people don't get angry with me for being a whore, oh no. They get angry with me when I an not a whore. Telling the truth about Bad Girls, a truth made manifest by the torrent of personal abuse from their owner, has made them very angry. It isn't enough for me to say that Bad Girls is an unduplicable club that uses SL to its advantage. No, because I wasn't on my knees, I am some how a defective person. They don't think much more of you, the club goer, either, you are just another grey blob oozing through their space.

What it doesn't do is make me angry, why should it? Clearly Jesse gets off on abusing people, and has built a club where thousands of people line up to be treated to an abusive environment where they have to check their AO's at the door.

Thus Bad Girls is a successful place. It is also a nasty place run by nasty people. It has to be a nasty place run by nasty people. It is amazingly good at it. It is designed to be easy to run, and as a result they warn people over and over again that you will be booted for even annoying them. This affliction of treating people like cattle spreads all the way down to their lowest assistant manager.

For example, what I wrote isn't slander, slander is verbal. Libel is the correct word. And for it to be libel, I would have had to either knowingly lie, or be so recklessly blind to the truth as to make any reasonable individual think so. I submit that this vicous stream of arrogant invective proves each and everyone of my accusations about Bad Girls.

However, the stream of invective that comes from it, the accusations, the lies, are also part of it. I've never applied for a job at Bad Girls. I never would. I never will. But Jesse can't understand why the whole universe doesn't want to suck metaphorical cock. And this is spiritual, you don't have to be male to have a spiritual cock, and a case of spiritual cock worship to go with it. That's precisely how I was treated, like a gutter slut who wouldn't be owned.

Bad Girls is successful sadism, and as a mistress, I respect that.

UPDATE:

You can tell control freaks because they can't let things alone. After Jesse's tirade I did the sensible thing and put him on mute. I told him to email if he wanted anything. Instead he sent Alex Lollipop to talk to me. Initially I was confused and thought Alex was from Elements, I'd been told to expect an IM from them, and the conversation proceded in one direction until Alex said "I'm from Bad Girls". It was a more polite version of Jesse's tirade.

But what I learned on sl is that people need to tell themselves stories. I did about my desires once, and most people haven't had the lesson in self-discovery that Second Life has given me. Bad Girls doesn't want me to say they are an escort club, they say, and I am paraphrasing the party line from Bad Girls here: "we don't keep any of their money! the strippers can't escort! We have fired two!"

Dears, you, and no one else, put "escorts" in the keywords. Your very title is "fetish club." Please don't lie to me and everyone else when a club that has latex events prominently pictured, fetish in the name and "Welcome to Bad Girls" as its running sound track isn't selling sex. That's our industry. How you, and here is a word I only just learned so I am in love with it still, "monetize" that is another story. The 20% club tip from escorting and dancing is only enough to keep a club a float if it is small and has a big patron. Many boutique clubs do this, but an operation like Bad Girls, could never do it.

Instead, what clubs do is they sell retail space, advertising and everything else that goes with high traffic, and traffic of a particular kind. That's commerce, that's the way it is. Thus their run around fine line distinctions about escorts and dancers "our dancers aren't allowed to escort!" is meaningless. What the people who run Bad Girls, and their clientele, don't want to admit is that this is about sex. Sex. Sex. Just innocent naughty fun. Yes dears, if you say so. And this is part of their formula, and again why Bad Girls is an island to itself.

And while talking to me Alex denied he wanted anything from me. Sure, just IM'ed me out of the blue because you wanted to chat. Then, like any individual with a god complex, claimed to be in sole possession of the truth. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. We all know what your club is about, and while you may need to play games with the public, doing so with others in the business is not going to work. We know better. In fact, half the club owners on SL would chew off an extremity to find out how Bad Girls does it.

The fact is that Bad Girls, if they didn't want to show up on a search for escorts could fix that now. They aren't going to. If they didn't want to sell overt sex, they don't have to. But they do, and the little dances they do to pretend they don't are part of their formula. They have to do them, because of what they are selling.

But that doesn't mean they are pleasant people to deal with.

Oh yes and now this one:

[11:14] Tim Gagliano: This Blog is nothing more then a poor thought out OP-Ed piece without merit. I would like to know how much time the author of this slanderous artical actually spent in Bad Girls, let alone the others mentioned. If the author would have any journalistic integrity, he/she would have interviewed the owners of the clubs listed. But no, the other chose to base this article on lies and opinion with little time spent in the club and no interaction with staff other then to break policy that would have them kick/banned in any other establishment in Second Life. I do wish that the author will rethink their opinion here and retract the filth that is in this article.
[11:14] Tim Gagliano: --Tim Gagliano Assistant GM of Sexytalk Radio...Bad Girls Dance and Fetish Club.