2nd Sex

2011-06-06T05:49:00.000-07:00

3D SL

I've done stereograph sl, and even produced some reduced photos from it. One problem is that SL's models show up the limitations of the av.

Some how there is a lesson here

2011-06-06T05:42:00.001-07:00

I think the word "legacy" is right. Some noxious, dull, large, task needs to be done, and no one wants to do it.

So everyone suffers from the 4096 bug and the 10k vanity.

Four Bars From Symphony in C

2011-06-06T05:36:00.000-07:00

A clattering clash out of key, and my feet must move to it.
An arabesque penchee is grindstone that wheels me about,
counterpoise, and upon a bridge to beauty,
to become a machine for dancing.

Another nightfall

2011-06-04T06:23:00.000-07:00

I have been looking forward to the coming of meshes for a long time, because prims, really, are parametric horrors that limit our creativity. But I've found in these waning days that there are some virtues to their limitations and the things that have been done with them show that the unexpected delights of pain in art are not to be completely neglected. The new world, like the world of clothes post-sculptie, will be better.

Much, much, much. If LL is too sloppy to make it work, then at least it is a glimpse of virtual world future, where "world class" to use a phrase which I think is destined for laugh lines, design can be almost instantly introduced. But it is also an end to the gifted amateur, because, as has already happened, you can't make in SL, which means you make as your rl self, and then push into a back world. The gift of prims was that you could be your other self while making, and develop an artistic personality that suited the limits. I've set up some of my old things, and perhaps people will drop by and see some of the raw power of what old prims could do, before setting off to remake everything. In about a year or so it will be time to take all of this down, dump it someplace in a corner, and let it gather that digital dust that time provides.

Oh yes, if you are inclined to visit, here is the slurl which is my open studio. If you run into me, I might be changing clothes or some such, and that's the hazard of walking in on the artist working. Or you might get whacked by something flying. Just so you know.

There is a meaning

2011-06-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

After a bit over a year of being hard at work paying back student loans and generally proving to the world that I am not purely a pizza addicted graduate student, it seems as if there should be some meaning to my life other than adjudicating between very very wealthy people who deserves more money.

I'm just not sure there are shoes in it.

2011-05-23T19:28:00.000-07:00

Lady Gear

2011-05-23T19:27:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I am here... Sometimes I am not

2011-05-16T17:48:00.000-07:00

A short post to keep the blog alive, no more than that really. My rl is doing well, and as a result sl has faded into the back drop. I hope everything is well in all your worlds.

The cave of night our journey's mend,
with dreams that some how cease to portend their meaning
within pretension's gossamer grasp,
the flight that was or past, now entangled,
in that the web of perception's light illusion.
Now feigning interest in the play,
that conscience's king has crowned again,
wish wallow in our wonder delights.

There is a wendigo

2010-12-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

There is an egg filled with wind,
It spirals in your hand.
It cracks and cackles with delight,
Buoyed by breath of cockatrice,
All hollow, and turned to stone.

Something I ran across

2010-11-13T03:24:00.001-08:00

Dining and gender.

2010-09-29T20:08:00.000-07:00

At the exposure gallery on tabula rasa

From the artist's statement...

Artist Statement Eliza Wierwight

"Symbolic - A woman's potential journey symbolized by the veneer of the dresses ( masks ) we wear . The trophies we acquire as we become trophies to society's expectations and our inherent values reflected by both. The darkness of that undertow contained in the veneer of beauty. I both claim and deny these duties."

Sculpture Providence

This piece was a part of Eliza Wierwight's University of Western Australia 1st Prize Flagship Challenge on June 9, 2010. It was displayed in the PATRON build designed by Eliza Wierwight which is at the time of writing this notecard in contention for being built in real life.

UWA blog announcement of winners.

This specific dress includes textures gifted to Eliza by Cuwynne Deerhunter & Igor Ballyhoo .

Wish for a baptism

2010-09-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

Pray for a baptism and the heavens will send you fire,
a drenching pain dissolving the bonds that bind one people to another.
Leaving behind a flurry gray of ash and molten mire.
A dirge writ with Destiny as hidden author.
Played for this, fifth or sixth, neo-Roman Empire

We are shouted at too demure,
We are told that we are too pure,
So much Freedom, to endure.
A knock, a bullet, an unnumbered flight,
the remnants not to come to light.

An election by election,
decision by decision,
This becomes some less perfect union,
as those who made it rebel,
and call the country they have made a hell.

Deeper into the darkness we descend,
farther into the mountains we cannot defend,
further into the night that does not end,
scourging hurts we will not mend.
Tortured tangled maimed and bloody sulk,
Behind once a country, to be reborn a twisted hulk.

For Angelo

2010-09-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

You decline.
It is class, and the nouns of ancient tongue clatter and clash
within your brain.
The nuance escapes of vocative interogative ablative instrumental.
And more of a bearded teacher grown, with age, swirled
and temperamental.
And if you were so inclined,
a flashing smile might win more than your mind.
Whether you are a boy or girl,
would not matter to him at this point.

You decline.
In the class rankings with this semester,
bloated on the food, and blissful risking trimester.
The finals were spent with sun and sand,
rather than in library cloister.
Your words are not tight, but out of hand
poured on page, to quickly scatter.
But what does it really matter?
As a sophmore, the world's an oyster.

You decline.
The offer is not fat enough,
the workload seems large and rough,
the boss is absolutely to gruff.
You're in demand, so why work, when you can slough.
But there are shadows closing in,
is this the only place there is to win?

It is twilight, and the second self has left,
you sit there drinking, alone, and berift.
The choices are simple, and of a time,
do you stand and live,
or do you decline?

I'm signing on board with a Not For Profit

2010-09-21T16:27:00.001-07:00

It will mean a largish parcel with 2500 prims to work with, which will allow me to do some of my primier projects.

Second Life's Tea Party is Pooped

2010-09-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

This is on a parcel owned by several libertarian extropians. Yes the brown things are what you think they are. No I didn't have anything to do with it, I just took the picture.

Seems like the tea is weak on Second Life. By the time I left they were blaming leftists. Obviously the anarcho-capitalist Mormon Ayn Rand following leftists about which we hear so much.

In Belly of the Beast Model

2010-09-18T22:47:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of one moment of my kinetic sculpture "In the Belly of the Beast," in model form, the original takes up a full sim. The churning and swirling shapes are meant to evoke the noise and chaos of the decade we have left behind: wars, storms, and a pervasive collapse of hope. It will be part of next week's show I am doing at the Lillie Pad.

Art Show in Second Life Coming

2010-09-14T00:13:00.000-07:00

I am putting together a small showing of some of my works in SL, largely pictures because I do not have access to the prims for my sculptures. It will include models, portraits, pictures of others builds as landscapes, and a rotating display of some of my sculptures.

I have come I have gone

2010-08-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

I have come I have gone,
I have walked, I have stood,
I have had my body pushed against the wall.
I have learned, trust no one. No one.
Not the man who warms you bed,
not the professors who fill your head,
not the parties in the fray,
whose rhetoric holds the day.

Trust no one,
not the voices that claim for good,
or the lonely misunderstood.
Trust no one my child, trust no one.

For in the bitter end,
they will steal the smallest value,
and think they were a friend.

Oh and by the way

2010-08-22T22:18:00.001-07:00

If you don't like your computer being used for a Disributed Denial of Service Attack... then vote this JIRA up....

Option to remove splash screen

Back from Europe

2010-08-22T21:25:00.000-07:00

And in second life. It has gotten meaner since I left, and this said as someone who spent time in the demi-monde of SL.

Where I am going with this

2010-07-04T00:30:00.001-07:00

I started out needing an out from my ordinary writing, which has to be much more restrictive than my mind, fingers, and spirit desire. Second Life seemed like a place to create a role that was me, but not me, and do the things that are me, and not me. It allowed me to speculate on philosophy of existence, and spurred my writing.

However, it hasn't for some time, partially because fewer and fewer interesting people are entering, and more and more it is a grind of a few places and pleasures. New technology and another wave of improvements might change this, but from what I have seen, probably not. M can be rereplaced by P but that's not the root of the problem. Second Life is caught: it is hard to be yourself, and even harder not to be. Flashes of the real person glimmer, and fade. That which was out of reach years ago, is still out of reach. Second Life has gone through its cycle and is fading, as I felt it would even as I first pushed through.

However, the same topics interest me, and still are unfulfilled in ordinary life. The same problem with writing about sex as a spiritual activity that Second Life had, is general. While virtual worlds are more visible in how people enact and expose their libido, the problems are the same. The desires are the same, only the navigation of them changes.

For the same reason there is a need to write fiction. Two novels stare back at me, unfinished, a bed unmade, creates a troubled sleep.

So later this month I will redo this blog, and see if there's light at the end of this particular tunnel. The world is still the world, we are still sexual beings, and there is a great mass of sexism to cut through, there is a great mass of racism to cut through. Consider this list of most beautiful women. All are white, except two, who are white with enough color. No Latinas, no Asians, no dark Africans. Out of 3 billion women in the world, 2.5 billion do not qualify for their taste. Those of us who don't, aren't oblivious to this message.

It's been some time

2010-06-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

I'm going to overhaul this blog, I don't spend enough time on second life to be a second life or virtual blog any more. Changes coming.

Story of the Cul-de-sac courtesean

2010-06-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

They've also been so supportive over the years. My life was turned upside down two years ago when the police raided my bungalow and charged me with brothel-keeping. The case came to court in April and I was absolutely terrified. Legally, one woman can sell sex, but not two or more working together.

UK's prostitute murders

2010-05-29T22:56:00.000-07:00

The Guardian on the recent spate of prostitute murders.

Arizona threatens to cut power to Los Angeles

2010-05-20T21:33:00.001-07:00

War over racist bill escalates.

Modern masterpieces stolen

2010-05-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Major modern art theft.

Sex trade in Dubai

2010-05-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

Just so you know where all those budget cuts are going to.

swan dress

2010-05-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

pulled this out of the closet. Nicky's classic holds up I think.

virtual make over page

2010-05-12T18:42:00.001-07:00

It has its limits, but it is also fun.

2010-05-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

If only a word, like sinew in the body,
could connect such pure tensions,
as encompass that which is... life.

If only a phrase, could flow,
in its air, pressed out from the lungs,
as the water flows to waves and tide.

If only sentences could fold their faults,
and form a ring as solid as the stone,
that makes mountains grow.

If only the days could be as pages,
to turn them when we will,
and mark them as we wish.

Or left open for all the days,
forgotten until found,
by newly flowered eager eye.

2010-05-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

Ce que je sais de vous
est ce que vous choisissez de dire
a moi.
Pas plus, pas moins.
N'augmentant pas,
ne diminuant pas.
Ne changement, ne demeurant pas le même.

Ne me regrettez pas ne vous connaissent pas mieux,
regrettez que vous ne savez pas ce qui est meilleur dans vous.

Iraq imprisons women sold into prostitution

2010-05-08T05:41:00.001-07:00

Trafficked women jailed as terrorists.

Big Copyright wins another at the FCC

2010-05-08T05:39:00.000-07:00

Big Copyright can reach into your home.

Respirez

2010-05-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

Respirez, ce des suffisances nos oreilles avec comme une marée,
noyez les pensées subtiles qui tranquillement,
sur la vaste plage de l'esprit,
sélection par le bois et les coquilles,
comme les crustacés minuscules de la mer.
Cherchant qu'un morceau vrai,
cela nourrira.
Celui-là,
parmi tout les sable non comestible.

Je sais que vous êtes désespéré,
et dans l'amour avec amour.
Mais vous ne savez pas encore l'amour,
ni vous me savez.
Au revoir mon ami, peut-être nous nous réunirons
quand vous n'êtes plus un garçon, mais un homme.

CNN: Rescuing enslaved girls from brothels

2010-04-30T07:38:00.000-07:00

Bangladesh has become the new prostitution slavery capital of the world... And yes, it is bad.

Widget Portrait

2010-04-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Philosophy Island's Racist Queen Rhiannon Dragoone

2010-04-22T13:13:00.002-07:00

Not long ago I had long discussions with a friend writing a paper on racism. I pointed him to a series of articles on Kant and racism, and while there was a great deal of heat in the discussions, because he is a tremendous admirer of Kant, it the end I think I persuaded him to see Kant in a different light.

Let me talk about racism directly. Racism is the use of power to enforce a category of race. It is the avoidance of the fabric of racism in the society, because this makes the implicit racism more powerful. This is like many other forms of discrimination, many other forms of oppression: elevating to a high level certain people and their texts, in order to force the direction of the world in particular ways. Kant is one example, he's remembered well, but almost by accident. Kant, the writer, was trying to reimpose God, and other forms of hard category. He feared a material, rationally dominated world, and so he attacked "pure reason" as a way of reasserting pre-rational ideas. It is a thread running through the skeptical philosophers: attack the connection between perception and reality, as a way of reasserting the need for a basis in reality, and of reality.

I face this on a regular basis in the real world, as there are drifting tensions in my own life. Race, and its related bundle of words, are everywhere, and in my part of the world, many of us, me and my friends, come from households that are immigrant to America, and have parents and relatives who have what they call old fashioned ideas, but are basically just bad excuses for the way things always were. I will take one example, a friend of mine is hoping to marry, she is dating a man who is not of the same ethnic background, and is conflicted because her parents don't approve. They don't approve because of the ethnicity.

Her conflict is that she has to pretend to listen, or lose contact with her parents. Visits home become stressful. She hates herself, because she is being a bad daughter in the eyes of her world, and hates herself because marrying is required to be a good daughter, and this is the man she thinks she wants to marry. I listen, because I can not tell her in good faith to not talk to her parents, or to leave the man she loves, and who, as far as I can tell, loves her. This dilemma is not tied up with race necessarily, the conflict between parents wanting to pick, or at least strongly influence, their children's choice of mate is old and comes from money, social standing, religion, nationality, occupation, and who knows what else triggers the disapproval of parents.

So I see this. And I feel it. Get along, or be true to a truth that the checkered colors of skin, or shapes of nose, or whatever else, are random, compared to the qualities of the person.

This is why I find the world I am in so intolerable, it is very clear that there is a craving for race and racism. There is a demand by people who ought to know better to conform. The only thing people can do, is to avoid such groups, because the result is always grief. One of those on Second Life is Philosophy Island, which is a racist organization that actively promotes and protects racism in its ranks, and then makes excuses for it when questioned.

While at a recent meeting on "Philosophy Island" one of the leaders there Rhiannon Dragoone began with her gloss on Kant. I pointed out that a problem with Kant's logic is his racism, she immediately said this was "off topic." As some one with the power to ban, who does ban, this was an exercise of power. However, the question was not off topic, because Kant's theory of race is not separate from his division into perceptions and reality, in that he offers the idea that there are some perceptions which point to an underlying immutable series of principles.

Kant asserts what he calls the categorical imperative as the basis for morality, and the will to morality as being in the person. If racism is immoral, then Kant fails being moral, but if not Kant, who is the perfect example of what Kant says should be a moral human being, then who? If Kant is moral, then racism must be true, since he sets these things as being equal to each other, and a direct result of the same argument that he presents in his critiques.

Then I left. Rhiannon ejected another person for elaborating, and then thanked Sunfire Langer, another leader there, for hurling insults. This from someone who makes a big deal about no personal attacks. Sunfire Langer made excuses in a private IM.

I find this a great deal on Second Life: people setting what they call discussion groups, which are really vehicles for using the petty powers of banning, and the veil of being unknown to the public, as a way of creating their own little egotistical bubble. Philosophy Island is one of these organizations: it is a racist and abusive group of people who present as being reasonable, until their underlying illogic is pointed out. Then they call you an idiot and ban you.

Sunfire said not to take them seriously, and that is the best advice I can give. Don't get sucked into them, or give them credit for being anything except what they are.

I promised when writing this blog, that I would stay away from explanations of the bigger picture, and focus only on what I see and what I know. I do not know what drives people to these kinds of categorical evils, but I see them, and wish I could do more than push words into the ether.

You.Upstairs. Bedroom. Now.

2010-04-22T12:29:00.001-07:00

Yes, that is really what a man said to a 15 year old autistic girl.

tall aspect

2010-04-22T11:19:00.001-07:00

I think I need to take some portrait aspect portraits of avatars.

Virtual Land Law?

2010-04-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

Interesting. Potentially anyway.

Killing the Past

2010-04-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

I spent some days, almost a year ago, writing about forgery and Errol Morris' posts. Morris is obsessed with the acceptable limits of recreation, because he uses it in his documentaries. He is proposing a truth in his films, or that his films are ways of getting at what actually happened. Thus he is always concerned with what kind of recreation, or dramatization is "real." Is it acceptable to re-arrange cannonballs? What makes a painting "real," or "original?"

These questions concern me in my own world, because in art we are trying to draw a line, a line that plumbs a depth. Remember to plumb is to tie a lead weight to a string. We get the word plumbing from the same place. That line is from what we see, to the thing itself, the work or text, and back to the hand that made them. From the hand, to the mind that moved the hand. That is why we worry about who did what, because we are trying to find the pattern that made Rembrandt's hand, his, or anyone else. What makes a great artist, is that they have a certain way with moving from the inner well of self, through the hand, to the result. We want to feel that process in reverse, and so, become in some way, part of it.

In painting, there is a sharp and harsh dividing line for Western paintings, as I wrote of before, that line, is Prussian Blue. Prussic acid has a complex chemistry, even today we do not completely understand its total workings. But what it did, along its successors in chemical pigments, was not only change the painter, and the paintings, but our eyes. We are used to vivid colors, we are used to blue. The era after the discovery of artificial blues, is rich in them. Before? Blue was difficult and expensive, and so it was the center piece of the composition.

That is why forgers of paintings before that line, who worked after it, are often tripped up by Prussian Blue. There are other important lines for other important pigments of course, such as zinc white, but the bluing of our eyes, is the most dramatic. This is part, of the aesthetic of capital, which is, I will argue, a fundamental part of capital-ism. Capital aesthetic is the preference for the products of technology, or other means of improving the production of labor, or reduction of scarcity. We like the substitute of being conscious of production, for the activities of labor, or ownership.

Let me start with an obvious forgery, and show why it is acceptable, only because we are conditioned to see it that way. Here is the image. On the left, a forgery, on the right, the original. The use of a vastly blue background is acceptable to us, because we have seen it in historical pictures, and in our own time. But in its time, that much blue, floridly splashed across the back, is out of place. It would have been very expensive, and therefore would have been used not merely as a background, but as the sky, or other symbol. It might as well have been gilt in gold. We have seen the productions of paintings for the rich, and assume blue was normal, because it is normal to us. But in its moment, such a portrait could not have afforded that much blue, and if the patron could have, he would have wanted an artistic statement.

We see blue. They saw a great deal of money.

Even when the artist gets the use of blue in quantity correct, the cost of Prussic Acid, is just too sweet to ignore.

As I wrote in the long series of essays, one of the great forgeries of Prussic Blue, is not in paint, but in the claims that the holocaust could not have happened, because the gas chambers are not stained with the tell tale cyanide color. The reason for this, as I also explained, is that the places where there is staining used reagent that gives cyanide a more pungent smell. It is meant to warn people, because by the time an individual smells the tell tale bitter almond, it is often too late. But the Zyklon B used for the gas chambers, had no such reagent, and the reagent acts as a binding catalyst for the formation of prussic acid in the presence of iron. The claim is false, because in the delousing stations, where everyone could admit the use of poison to kill insects, they used the ordinary chemical, with safety reagent in it. In the death chambers, the Nazi's did not.

This too, is aesthetic of capital. We learn to recognize early the hand of production, because it is important to know. Why do people fake bought cakes as home made? I remember it happening several times in my childhood. The first time, I stared at the chocolate cake, twin to the one a family friend had brought over the day before. I had gotten sick on the icing, taking a finger through it and licking it. I remembered the impossibly neat icing, and thought it odd. The next day, shopping with my mother, I knew why. The cake was made by machine, and the family friend had lied about buying it.

The death chambers of the Nazi's are acts of capital. They worked in their grisly work, because the people who built them knew how a factory of death should work, because they knew how a factory should work. They knew how to bring in inputs, and move them through a process, and dispose of the bodies. It was this factory of death aesthetic that made it possible to kill so many, so quickly, and without real understanding by the outside world. In contrast, the Japanese attack on Nanjing, with its massacre and atrocities, used capital to kill, but it was capital as consumption. Nanjing was not a death factory, but instead, a killing field. People used capital, but they did not make capital.

I think this contrast, this guilt, is what drives the making of a film about John Rabe a member of the Nazi Party in China, living in Nanjing, who saved hundreds of thousands of people, by organizing safe zones, and delaying the massacre of civilians. In a sense this is an attempt to counter the image of all Germans as being complicit in atrocities, it is also a contrast of how in one place the humanity remains, while at home, it did not.

The forger kills the past, he substitutes a faked artifact, creating confusion backwards, to the hand, the mind, the moment of the mind. And it is that inner pattern that we seek to hold, and in some sense copy. The forgery is then any attempt to distort the pattern of the past: to disclaim that past. All forgeries play, then, on our sympathies, and therefore, on our differences with the past. The past as someone wished it could be, or wanted it to be. The same forgeries that worked to perfection in one place, are embarrassing in others.

The role of Rabe then, can be either a balance, an accent of color in the darkness of the history of Nazi-ism, or it can be an attempt to wash it, to paint over that history. How we look at it, and how it is presented, is as important as the content of the film itself. It is one thing to show a Nazi businessman engaging in humanity for those he can see, while being part of a vast machine. There is a conflict in aesthetic: he cannot bear to watch being made, the tissues of his own empire.

At Franks 2

2010-04-11T17:23:00.001-07:00

At Frank's Place

2010-04-11T17:16:00.000-07:00

Giggle snort giggle

2010-04-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

Human Centipede, movie which is as clear a toilet porn play in horror as you are ever going to see, got pulled from the apple trailers site. I made the big mistake of watching this trailer.

It just shows that most western horror these days, is people who could not make it in porn.

Image Throttling?

2010-04-09T07:24:00.001-07:00

I have heard from others that there is some kind of image throttling going on in viewers other than 2.0, a very misnamed term. I talked to someone who looked at what is going on and he said that yes, there is definitely some kind of throttling going on in the 1.x viewers, probably to reduce bandwidth costs. The new viewer is not open source, perhaps, he speculated because this is required to protect web based content. His belief is that LL has to get its bandwidth bills down, and that the new architecture does that, and the older ones are just being throttled.

I am not sure of this, but I have heard similar things from several technologically inclined people. I would be happy to be wrong, but suspect that if anything the situation is worse and that LL is deliberately trying to cripple old viewers.

Linden Lab to Users: Go away, we like our PG Porn

2010-04-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

My experience with abuse reports is... they rarely get listened to. Now I know why:

Chiyo Linden: (Saved Thu Apr 8 06:01:46 2010) Please stop spamming Abuse Reports. One a day is more than sufficient.

This was in response to several abuse reports associated with a PG orgy area. Clearly, Linden Labs view is they don't do anything to enforce their own rules, and they get very annoyed when people document that the rules are being violated.

I think LL is trying to set a new low for unresponsive hostile customer service.

Your husband, and not his porn, is ruining your marriage.

2010-04-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

Over at Salon they are chattering about the old porn/romance novel debate. It started with this anonymous story about porn being blamed for destroying a marriage.

Hmmm. Yes... ummmmm.

Please grow up people? Porn, romance novels, fashion, shopping, sports, and most techno-gadgets all come from the same place. It is a place that we try and reach, where the world is more the way our feelings would want it to be. We try and reify that sense, or consume the reification of others. We want to make the evanescent fantasy moment, real before our eyes and senses. In its rarified form, it is art, literature. In its more pragmatic form it is life. In its tawdry form, it's porn, the celebration of being able to consume on camera. I've done a lot of porn, and the one question that men always want to have answered is "do you feel it? does it get you off?" They are always looking for a woman who reifies their cravings, because, honestly they want the craving without having to work, the mango that just falls from the tree.

However to blame the creation for the urges of creating it, or less still to blame the creation for the urge to consume the creation, is getting it backwards. The National Review Online's anonymous gets it so wrong... her husband, and she in all probability, ruined their marriage. Porn was just the fixation, the compression, of what was missing: visual appeal, sexual freedom, and a release from all the realities of a marriage with five children.

It is not that the pain of loss is not real, and it isn't that anyone should have much, if any, sympathy for a man who shares in creating five children, makes promises of forever, and then runs out. I certainly don't. He'll find the make up peels, the boobs sag, and probably his new porn girl will find he has moved on. If anything the post is an excellent argument for garnishing wages for child support, not about porn, because there are millions of stories of a man running out, and they don't all revolve around porn, but they all revolve around the man running out.

Recently I experienced a break up, where the guy was sort of making noises about marriage, but in reality, he didn't really consider it. Many of my friends spent their twenties with boy friends who were just not going to get married to the first girl they met. I'm sure there are big picture problems that are contributing to what, from here, seems like an epidemic. But as far back as we read human literature, there are stories of a man chasing and catching a woman, getting her pregnant, and then running on to the next woman. It's classic mythology. In some stories he runs, and in others, he gets caught in one way or another. So if the people of forever ago antiquity saw this, it's a pretty good wager to say that it will be with us for a while yet.

So the whole whose porn is worse is missing the reality: Mr. Anonymous is an awful human being with not a shred of decency. Mrs. Anonymous, if she looks at herself, will probably see some imperfections that contributed to this sorry situation. What Mr. Anonymous' excuse to himself for running out is totally beside the point. It could have been an African American girl with a round ass, it could have been a blond boy, it could have been a slinky thing with fishnets, it could have been anything. Reading between the lines, it seems like he had checked out of the marriage a while ago, and was simply waiting for his chance to leave.

If there is a discussion worth having here, it is why we spend sooo much time in this society talking about marriage, supposedly celebrating permanent monogamy, celebrating child rearing, and do so little, both as a collective and as individuals, to make it all work. Fantasy is neither constructive nor destructive, in itself, it is how we seek that concrete version of it that is constructive or destructive. It wasn't the porn that lured an otherwise good Mr. Anonymous into the arms of a bimbo, it was that he was always looking to get there. Mrs. Anonymous, if she wants someone to blame, should ask herself why Mr. Anonymous disappeared off into pornland, and the answer is probably in part her own actions and the way she treated her husband. I say this, because taking responsibility is crucial, and she can not do that, even in the after light. Instead, she turns it into a talking point in someone else's ideological crusade. An activity that others seem happy to help her with.

So I write this simple ending: I feel Mrs. Anonymous' hurt, because it is a hurt that almost every woman knows, the promise of forever and ever broken for a hand full of flesh. But don't blame the camera, or the pictures, or the society, for what is your story. Pick up, protect your children, and yourself. And, if you are motivated to political activism, then be motivated to make it so that men will stop treating marriage like a bank, which they rob and then try and make a break when they have looted everything of value.

You have five children Mrs. Anonymous, and a porn crusade has nothing to do with them. Think of your children first, you are all they have.

A symptom of the zombie disease

2010-02-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

I was, not long ago, young. I don't think I am any more. The calendar told me that recently, and my experience tells me that now. It is hard to grasp the problem, because what I see is a symptom, or set of symptoms. In the real world, in SL, it is the same: power belongs to people who repeatedly and viciously assert an unreality, and there is a vast mass of people who stay silent, or follow along. I wish I could say this was about some particular topic, such as partisan politics. But it is with every topic. Every discussion I seem to participate in, is filled with people who block discussion by being obscenely ignorant, and resting securely that no matter what happens they will not only be allowed, but encouraged, to continue.

I've tried reason, I've tried anger, I've tried personal connection. But what it really is, is that some where, not just in my home country, but everywhere, a deep infection has fallen. People do not need to bend, but find that by pure viciousness, they can make the weak around them bend. I think Yeats saw it, and his quote is all to often put forward. But perhaps his time, and ours, share the disease.

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The language is steeped in the Western Bible, particularly the Bible in English, but for all of that it projects a rough presence that could be written yesterday, or tomorrow, or next week.

But observation is worthless, because it is the common province to see the obvious, and ascribe a completely fantastical and imaginary cause to it. So I feel I must look farther away from this to another there, to what drives this. Clearly, I believe that part of this is the mere success. The vicious hold sway, the more single minded, the more powerful, the more doubtful their opposition, the more pure their victory. In critical and post-modern theory, and in science, there is doubt, and provisionality. All is in flux, and we must hold to the best we know, which is changing.

But then come the undead of discussion, the zombies who come in waves and droves, and do not relent or slow. Who wear their ignorance like a badge, and who sweep it like a banner. I am a small person, and all I can see is waves of red flags, like the revolutionary youth. I believe, at this point, that it will not end, until it ends in violence, for that is the ultimate currency of those who have no minds to change, over those who have no spines to stand.

This is why I think that zombies are now everywhere in film, because the mad undead are all around us, and they are eating the rest of us alive.

Greek Steam Punk Story

2010-02-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

The start of story with a simple premise: what if Alexander the Great had not died?

It is madness I tell you, madness. There are riots on the streets, and the shop stalls are looted for bread or whatever other small valuables could be carried away. People stood on balconies, children grabbing their parents legs, wives grabbing husbands. The news broke suddenly, and panic, that all fear, has grabbed the city.

It is 494 since the first Olympiad, the 74th year of the reign of Alexandros of Macedon, God-Emperor of the world, and he has died in Persopolis. It was 10 days, and the news has reached this, the most civilized city in the world.

The library is burning, I can see the heaps of smoke from it even at this distance, and the mayor has set himself as a ruler. He lacks for everything except spears, and that is why I am here, stripped from my master's bed, his fluids still dripping down the inside of my thighs, and his blood spattered across the throw of linen that I had just thrown on when the armed soldiers cut his head off. It was an old score, he had many of them. I tremble to survive to see another dawn.

Now trembling I write this note and hide it in the table leg, so that you will know whatever was said, what ever was written, the reality is that the city is in chaos, erupting like a huge volcano. I am called Euterpe, the giver of pleasure, but I was born Hekate, and so I sign myself. Now I must scribe the orders of the new order, the words of the new word.

Such scrapes of the past were hard to find, and from that moment, when the arms of the First Empire convulsed after the death of Alexandros III, the Great-King, the God-King, almost impossible. It was too much to ask that this scrap was original, instead, it was a copy of a copy, but that it was made at all, and that he, alone, had found it, would make his reputation. Provided of course, it was genuine.

Which is why, in this the 720th year since the Olympiad, he had settled himself to comparing the cloth on which this scrap was written, to others of the same time, and looked closely at how the ink seeped. Old inks had dried, new inks still spread. He knew the figure, Hekate would survive that night, and indeed flourish. She would pen histories, and be celebrated. The library did not burn utterly, and while some few works were lost, most would live. Hekate's now had a shelf of their own, as she described in precise detail the coming of the Pinnacle of the First Empire, under the children of the Great King.

A whistling sound blew, it was the steam of hot water, whistling through the small hole of a kettle. He stopped, and poured it into a cup of herbs mixed, as was his habit, with honey. After the infusion wafted up through his nostrils, he dolloped a touch of yogurt into it, and mixed it thoroughly. He wished he could afford more of the fragrant leaves called "cha" but that was beyond the five coins of silver that he was paid weekly. The he set the cup on the only clear section of his desk, otherwise covered with scraps, pages, scrolls. He turned the lamp down, the dawn was coming.

He heard a loud whistle in the distance, and he looked out on the street. The first street car of the day was passing, it's rails of made by the new process, and driven by the touch of steam.

What interesting modern times we live in, he thought, and turned back to the scrap, which still might or might not be by Hekate Historia, as she was known.

He held the strip to the lamp, and looked through the woven fabric, stroking it with his fingers. He stared, and finally admitted that he needed to use an object which had become fashionable, but which he was uncomfortable with: a round lens of glass, shaped in a bulge, that greatly increased the size of objects seen through it. He disliked the distorting effect it had, and the shifting illumination of objects. Frankly it made him dizzy to stare through it, but so he did. He saw the fraying of the ink stained edges. This convinced him that, at least, if it was a forgery, it was an old one.

He turned and looked out the window again, the chair creaking under him. There was some commotion below as bread was going for sale. He stared at the awning as it dropped, and wondered if, of course assuming the fragment was genuine, Hekate had seen those same stalls, little changed by 300 years, actually looted, or was she imagining it. He tried to call to mind torch lit streets, and crowds. He tried to think of whether she smelled the burning of human flesh and hair. He tried, but could not. Hekate wrote much of her private life, but only after she had almost mysteriously appeared as the author and scribe for the revolting mayor. The armies of the new king swept all resistance before them, and examples were made. But when he reached Alexandria, the raging son of the Great stopped, and was met by a few people, wearing white. One, we know, was Hekate, because she was one of the few literate people left. The scribes had been among those targeted by the raging mob. They begged for peace, and submitted. The new king graciously allowed it, or seemed to. His army entered, but that night, the cult like followers he had acquired in his time in Indya came out, and assassinated the key leaders. Hekate was brought before him, deemed to be useful, since she alone had seen all of the documents, and could name all of the names he needed. For 10 days, a slab of stone soaked up the blood of one after another of the leaders. Then, it stopped.

But Hekate lived, and from this was made a historian. Two years later, she finished the only history of the revolt. She admitted in it to being a former slave, but of anything else, before, she was mute. She said that the city had passed through the underworld, and was reborn.

Those days, now called by various names, had been a wide ranging revolt, as long pent up anger finally erupted, To history Alexander was a God King, the Great King, but he was not beloved near his death. The taxes were high, the traditions he imposed strange, the reorganization of the governing of the empire, which he threw himself into, calling it "the second conquest of the world," was foreign to people who remembered, or thought they remembered, or longed to remember, a simpler age of greater autonomy. Alexander was born great, but he thrust greatness upon his age.

And this scrap was at least 200 hundred years old. At a bound, it jumped almost all of the distance between himself, and the tormented moment which was recognized to be the vital moment in his civilization. Alexander had made the empire, but the quashing of revolt had made it last. Without it, everyone felt, it would have sunk back into the mire, as the other Greek attempts at Empire had.

He looked through the glass again, and found that more strands of ink stand cloth had frayed, and that they had not yellowed before being stained. If it was fake, he had to admire the craft of it. He toyed with one of his five pieces of silver, and thought only one thought: he would go to the boy who sold it to him and find the rest. For there had to be a rest.

He scrounged among the clothes on the floor, and found his money pouch, there were coins of bronze. He knew one would take him on the rails to the outside of the city, where there was a pier, and at that pier into the river, he would hire a boat, and with him would be the young boy, dark face shining in the sun, who would take him to the trove from which this thread had been pulled.

Areteteles gathered himself, taking his new pen, which he had only lately discarded his quills for, and a pad of paper. It's sleek sheen was different from the papyrus he grew up with. He combed his beard, 50 years in this world had left lines on his face, and a balding patch that ran back half way to his crown. The curls of youth were still there, but white and gray with only flecks of brown and black. He threw a cloak over his shoulders, and put boots on, their soft leather worn by a good deal of age, even though he walked little. The soles were sound. He thought that a good metaphor for himself, as he spiraled down the stairs encased by the plaster covered walls, beige with age and dust. Worn, but with a soul still sound.

In his satchel, the commentaries on Aristotle, and notes for his history of the New Science, that thing which was sweeping the Second Empire. He wrote the first pages as a tirade against it, against its discomforting noise, and unearthly sheen, and polish, everything polished. But now, he admitted, the new science fascinated him.

Perhaps because one of its results, was a white extract from distant flowers, that soothed the gnawing pain in his back, and let him find sleep. His legs still worked, and he trod firmly step by step down, and then out into the open, arid, air. He brushed past people wearing costumes from a dozen lands, and stopped to wait in line to buy some bread and cheese. He sipped from his cup as he waited, and then placed it in his satchel after carefully drying it. He bought a loaf, and then wandered down looking for a crowd of people which would indicate where the steam chariot would stop.

Once there he saw strong armed work men lining up for a day of labor, and a few students waiting to be hauled across the city to the Library for classes. It was a long ride, but the rents here, in what was called the Painted Quarter, were very cheap. It was a jumble of low buildings, which were, in fact, unpainted. It was the women who came out at night who wore the blues and indigos, garish jewelry, and revealing clothes that plunged down almost to their navels.

He saw none of that now, but instead, the busy gathering of a day, the orange of first light giving way to a pure yellow that seemed to wash in buckets across everything, and splash on every fold, creating a sharp relief against long shadows that were quickly growing shorter.

The chariot stopped, he grabbed and pulled himself up, and pushed his way to the front. He watched out as it slowly crept along faster and faster, until it was the speed of a trotting horse. At first he though to stand the whole way, but when a seat opened, as they passed a large boxy building where fish were brought in to dry, and wheat ready to be sent to a mill, he sat, and took out his note pad, beginning to scribble with a nub of graphite.

Hekate, he breathed, who were you?

That Today Thing... is so Yesterday

2010-02-10T00:22:00.000-08:00

Brandweek

In the middle of last year, Twitter's growth slowed from 7.8 million new users a month to 6.2 million, according to a recent study from RJ Metrics. That report also found that only 17 percent of Twitter users updated their accounts in December -- an all-time low. An earlier study by the Nielsen Co. revealed 60 percent of Twitter users do not return from one month to the next. Taking that into account, it's tempting to conclude that Twitter is following in the footsteps of another social-media ghost town, Second Life.

A difference between twitter and second life, is that twitter is ultra-public. People get mean there, but not for long, because it does more damage than good. In second life, the anonymous are either much better, or much worse, than they would ever allow themselves to be in public as their rl identities.

Twitter turns everyone into something akin to the slurry of snow and sand, and grit, that washes along the edges of city streets in late winter melting days. But the waves of pure personal hatred that second life exposes, twitter does not even begin to touch.

it is dawn someplace

2010-02-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

The light is always daying,
what ever we may rage towards,
whatever centers we hold ourselves
and where ever we stand.
Every moment the sun sets someplace,
and somewhere the dawn is at hand.
Travel to the highest peak,
in which ever land.

Do you cares the reamins of the day,
the embers of the fallen time,
or do you turn to misty moments,
that speak in undiscovered rhyme?

I notice

2010-02-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

On my news feed that "Second Life" is no longer about the Second Life World™... death of hipness.

So there I was at the Coakley Campaign....

2010-01-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

It is a reality that I live in times which are not so much dark, as kind of swirling gray. A friend of mine who was diagnosed as clinically depressed described as days where the sun was always just about to rise, but never did. There aren't vast wars and vast cataclysms that command the energy of an era, but, instead, a myriad of smaller ones, which damage lives beyond repair, and allow millions to fall down that deep hole of oblivion.

It befouls my senses to think of it, and to face the reality that in even civilized countries, there is a vast subterranean culture which differs from the great waves of totalitarian evil, only in that it does not have the courage to act on it much of the time. But then, that is probably the nature of that kind of evil, it takes the diseases of the spirit that are always present, and weakens society, until they explode the way opportunistic infections explode.

This week there was an election in the American state of Massachusetts. The two contending candidates were Martha Coakley of the Democratic Party, and Scott Brown, who is a Republican. The deciding factor was Coakley's embracing of ideas dictated to her late in the campaign, and the rise of "the Tea Party," which is an anti-tax anti-big government anti-deficit whites first movement run by people who work for the US Defense Department or it's private contractors and subsist on borrowed money from China.

Or to say it another way, they are hypocrites.

What was obvious to me in Boston on the evening after Scott Brown won, was not what other people are concerned about. I know that this election has implications for politics, and that wise minds than mine are staring deep into the futures that spin off from this moment. But that is the work of other hands and brains, because as I keep finding out, I am not very good at it.

What instead struck me was how Coakley was "to blame," for what happened. There is a story here, a narrative as my theory classes would have us say, and that narrative is deeply rooted in the consciousness of being a woman. I am going to go back to Simon De Beauvoir, who may not have seen all of these issues first, but whose book is a touchstone for me in seeing and expressing them.

One important reality is the transition from childhood to adolescence. A man's body goes through pain, but it becomes more powerful, more capable. A woman's body spins out of her control. She becomes wrapped in long surges of hormones and drives intended to make her give up her body to reproduce. Men too are chained to their drives, but they are very different in effect and result. The body shifts, subtly for some, or rapidly for others. One of my friends went from flat chested to quite busty, C Cup and the D cup, in a bit over a year. Hips widen, gravity pulls at us, we can no longer leap as we once did, or throw as well.

This means that rooted in the body is a very different story, personal story, of control. Girls are expected to be more in control of their body than boys are in a disciplined way for social purposes from a young age. We are expected to hold ourselves, walk in controlled ways and be "lady like." This is before we have reached five. My brother we his bed until 6. I would not have survived my mother's disapproval had I made it to half that age in diapers.

This means that the lose of control that comes with adolescence has different meanings to the genders. It is easy for each gender to see the advantages that the other has. Women, in general, mature more quickly, and homogenously than men. Men, as I noted, mature to being more powerful and more in control. For men the narrative of puberty seems, from the other side, to be a fulfillment. Nancy Friday commented that a man's body is a better version of a boy's body, but a woman's body often feels like a betrayal.

The lose of control is marked most powerfully by an event both longed for and dreaded, both powerful and dreadful. Namely, that somewhat monthly visit from menstruation. It is the trauma of controlling of bodily functions form childhood raised to a higher plane. Every lesson of not niceness and fear of being seen as dirty is magnified. It is possible, I think probable, to draw the lesson from evolution that women, as the bearers of children and caregivers, have a horror of infection that is burned into our genes. While I am not the best of housekeepers, I feel it weighing on me as guilt. An anthropologist in our school draws the parallel that if men are hunters, and women gatherers, then the people who are near the most stable camp must, by need, have evolved a very unprimate horror of dirt. Primates, generally excrete and leave. But to have home fires, is to mean that you must not merely learn, but evolve, not to "shit were you eat."

So genes, society, and personal sense collide, to make control of the body a very large issue, because failure to control the body in the long term is danger, and that is crowned by pregnancy.

Men too have control issues, but they are of a different kind and a different scale. Men are about a compression of control in time. They run, jump, spin, in dance, and athletics. Men achieve by control, women conceive. (ie ei ie ei... sigh the strangeness of my second mother tongue...)

What does this mean about the campaign?

The narrative of women is control of our bodies in that glacial sense of time, and for fear of isolation and disruption at the will of others. The fear of men, is the fear of falling magnified. And that narrative was on display in the campaign...

For the, mostly male, people farther up in Washington DC, this election was about, is about, will always be about, their accomplishment. And they gave her a script to follow, that of fear of Bush, and voting for health care reform. The problem with this script is that it is not a woman's script of why she should vote for someone else, and make no mistake, the core of Coakley's most loyal support saw this office as the natural culmination of her service. Older women stayed loyal, but at the party, there were few younger women visible. It is not that the young deserted her for Brown, but we weren't there.

The problem with the DC narrative was that it was an old person's idea of why young people should vote against Brown, and a man's script for what motivates women. Fear of Bush, and an offer of vague improvement in health care, which is, really, fear again.

For Coakley, I saw, that the awkwardness of this script burned through her. It was not a story she wanted to tell, and to be pushed back at the moment of potential elevation to the Senate, was destructive to her ability to control, again. Politics is about control, of the face, voice and words. Robbed of control, she was robbed of every aspect of her personality. She is a prosecutor, a prosecutor prosecutes by controlling the narrative, controlling the story before the jury, and pushing them inevitably down a line, when they cannot even visualize events happening any other way. Coakley, the cool woman slipped in support, but Coakley, the Eliza Doolittle to Obama and others, was a puppet that could only jerk awkwardly. Coakley became prosecuted by anarrative that she did not write, the narrative of a Democratic Party that wanted a health care bill written by the right wing of the Democratic Party.

I think it is wrong to over determine gender, men play women, women play men. Bart Simpson, who has been with me almost all my life as a shadow in the media, that most quintessentially boyish of characters, is voiced by a woman, actress Nancy Cartwright, who has now been bart for virtually her entire working life. This means that these scritps and narratives become important precisely at the ripping point. The reality is that the men of the DNC could not get the women who work for them, to come up with a script that was a man's version of a woman's fears.

After the loss, the control story flipped. Men made the decisions, and imposed them, but it is the woman who was immediately accused of bearing the blame. How this is so, after those same men have presided over a series of political defeats, is only possible if you see through the glasses of men in control. For them, they made the right decisions, almost no man sees his decisions as wrong at first, that means that if there was failure, it was the fault of the underlings, most particularly the woman, for failing. It's never a man's fault in his own mind that his girlfriend gets pregnant.

For Coakley's supporters, the narrative is different. Coakley was loyal, and was put out because of it. The sense in the campaign is that their "competence" was attacked by males who blamed her for their failings, and the failings that were the result of other forces. But for other women the blame falls squarely on Coakley. Defeat is an infection, not merely that she ran the wrong campaign, but that she was bad intrinsicly. Not merely guilt, but shame, bodily shame in supporting someone who was unfit. That's women asking whether Emily's List was to blame for Coakley's losing the general election, and therefore for "health care's loss."

But to accept that narrative one has to accept that Coakley lost for her support of rights that are seen as women's issues, or that she was to feminine. I don't know of any evidence, even anecdotal evidence that says this. To accept this narrative ne has to believe that even more control should be given over to men. There is excellent evidence that this is the case. And who declared that the present Health Care Reform is progress? It is worse than what already exists in Massachusetts. Worse. To accept the narrative that "health care" is defeated is to assume that only those good things that men provide, women can have. The narrative that Emily's List and other women's organizations caused the defeat is part of the "blame the caution" narrative.

But this narrative, as one of my politically astute friends points out, is wrong. While Coakley lost some support when she was not campaigning, almost all of Scott Brown's gains came after the Caokley campaign actively began promoting the attack ads on Brown, and embracing health care as the Senate has written it. This is the man in control narrative, that failure is her fault for not carrying out the man's decisions well enough.

This goes back to the heart of the control issue, and the difference in control narratives. Since Coakley was assigned the task that required time, her failure to pursue a campaign vigorously was the "failure." But if that is so, then how much larger a failure to allow Health Care Reform to drift long enough to come to the point where a special election could alter its path so violently?

In society, the issue of abortion, which is a dagger through the health care debate, is much the same way. Men, largely, run the control of the economic system, yet it is women, often young, scared, poor, alone women, who must take responsibility for each child that enters, or sometimes does not enter, the world. it is those women who "fail" as mothers if the child cannot be afforded, or does not grow up well. Control is about not only who makes the decisions, but how the blame is meted out for them

I cannot help but feel that no good can come out of this event, where a woman was left to twist and turn on the puppet strings of more powerful people. It is a story, or an event in many stories. But one story that is forward is how women are stripped of control of their bodies and lives, and then blamed for the results, in the most humiliating and painful ways imaginable.

So I'm sorry Martha, that we weren't really there for you, but I encountered, often, how many men looked at your campaign and told me that they weren't doing anything for Obama. I tried to tell them that Obama wasn't running for the Senate, and they retorted that I wasn't paying attention. I lived in enough of a bubble of denial not to see this, until a painful and tearful conversation of two older women, lesbians and long time democratic activists ended with, "So why do they hate us?"

They didn't mean the tea baggers.

Message From a Second Lie Christian

2010-01-20T09:20:00.001-08:00

My guess is that this is an alt of the person who harassed me. They are deep in sl techie circles. I am not sure why there is such pervasive misogyny among techies, but it seems to be a fact of life.

[2010/01/19 20:33] Morgan Lavarock: you need to get a life. i saw your blog and a post where you were on a egypt site and "claim" a guy was harrassing you he did not ask for sex he was polite and when you said no he stopped bothering you. maybe if you spent less time wasting time with that and more time ...oh having a life. you woudnt run into trouble.
[2010/01/19 20:33] Morgan Lavarock: and by the way no one can actually be "raped" in second life
[2010/01/19 20:33] Morgan Lavarock: unless its role play
[2010/01/19 20:33] Morgan Lavarock: you can tp out
[2010/01/19 20:33] Morgan Lavarock: or log out or .. run away
[2010/01/19 20:33] Morgan Lavarock: so if anyone says they were :raped" on second life without permission . thats just crazy.
[2010/01/19 20:34] Morgan Lavarock: anyways im sure you'll report me for sayin that. go right ahead. i need a new aavie anyways.
[2010/01/19 20:34] Morgan Lavarock: i wonder if anyone actually ever reads your blog
[2010/01/19 20:34] Morgan Lavarock: i notice your reicent posts have no comments
[2010/01/19 20:35] Morgan Lavarock: bye now
[2010/01/19 20:36] Morgan Lavarock: maybe if you were a christian fantatic your blogs woud make since
[2010/01/19 20:36] Morgan Lavarock: but your an escort?
[2010/01/19 20:36] Morgan Lavarock: and you reported a guy for iming you when your an escort/ wow how two faced
[2010/01/19 20:36] Morgan Lavarock: get a life.
-- Instant message logging enabled --
[9:17] Morgan Lavarock: (Saved Tue Jan 19 20:37:24 2010) you talk about degrading women . how is escroting not degrading women? laughs.
[9:17] Morgan Lavarock: (Saved Tue Jan 19 20:37:37 2010) oh thats right log off nothing to say? we supposed to listen to your whineing and yet you have nothing to say?
[9:17] Morgan Lavarock: (Saved Tue Jan 19 20:37:38 2010) wow.
[9:17] Morgan Lavarock: (Saved Tue Jan 19 20:37:39 2010) yeah
[9:17] Morgan Lavarock: (Saved Tue Jan 19 20:37:49 2010) ok fuck u hoe.l no one gives a shit about yoru stupid blogs
[9:17] Morgan Lavarock: (Saved Tue Jan 19 20:37:50 2010) byeeee

a canvas of despair

2010-01-12T05:10:00.000-08:00

I looked up into a starry night and saw,
the faint light,
which is a scrap of what is, and a beacon in the void.
For us, there will be , always a slender shaft of hope,
and a vast canvas of despair,
whatever we would paint on it.

Guardian reports on first gay pagent in China

2010-01-11T05:12:00.000-08:00

A crack of opening.

Some good advice from India

2010-01-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

Cat and mouse games we play.

Orszag Affairs - Budget Director Divides his attention

2010-01-10T18:20:00.000-08:00

Another political figure looks like he was double dipping....

2010-01-06T17:38:00.001-08:00

In this case, the wife of Northern Ireland's first minister.

Mostly irl

2010-01-06T06:20:00.000-08:00

I've gotten a small amount of funding for an rl project, but that means I will be working on it, a sculpture for a private collector, rather than in sl as much. Beijos!

Slate: Why are engineers more often terrorists than other professions?

2009-12-30T05:12:00.000-08:00

Jobs and the nature of the field argues slate.

Vampire Spam

2009-12-29T15:35:00.000-08:00

I got spammed by a vampire... it is a great deal les frequent now, but they are worse than ever...

[15:29] LotusEffect Darkwatch: hey cutie
[15:29] Lillie Yifu: hello
*spammed bite*
[15:32] Lillie Yifu: loser
[15:32] LotusEffect Darkwatch: i see
[15:32] Lillie Yifu: no you don't but then losers like you, never do
[15:33] Lillie Yifu: so play count spamula with some one else
[15:33] LotusEffect Darkwatch: haha your funny
[15:33] Lillie Yifu: that makes one of us
[15:33] LotusEffect Darkwatch: yeah funny looking MUTE dick head.

He's part of the management at Pixie's Paradise Club,and is a paying member, so he knows he can get away with this, since LL almost never bans permanent members for anything.

More change like this and Jeb will be in the white house.

2009-12-28T00:09:00.000-08:00

I count the bodies long in the numbering
I feel river of blood flowing down over the cataract of blivion
I don't know why we love you like we do.
You take our money and burn us like cigarettes.
Washing us clean of our birth

Take to me to river, drown me in water.
Baptism in the worship
Change we can bereave with,
only hope till there is nothing to be pried from our fingers.

1600 bodies, blown through some yet to be built wall.

Take me to river, drown me in the water.
I carry no cross,
and now you know why.

It's just war. Just war. Just war.
Just like the one, we lost before.

As they say, a memo for the clue impaired

2009-12-27T23:45:00.000-08:00

No really, I don't make these up...

[23:37] sneaky Tigerfish: u into voice?
[23:37] Lillie Yifu: with people I like
[23:37] sneaky Tigerfish: u will like me
[23:38] sneaky Tigerfish: give me a try
[23:38] Lillie Yifu: umm I already dislike you
[23:38] sneaky Tigerfish: w/e then
[23:42] sneaky Tigerfish: i did not do anything
[23:43] Lillie Yifu: I am sorry I've handed out all my clues, you'll have to ask the next person for one.
[23:43] sneaky Tigerfish: just being be a bitch for no reason
[23:44] Lillie Yifu: that was stupid

Oh and by the way

2009-12-27T22:08:00.000-08:00

for you face light haters out there, you can turn off attached particles and lights. Bling and lights go away, and, at that point, they don't create as much lag as the prim clutter you are wearing yourself.

Bling has been noxious for some time, long ago leaving the tasteful and interesting behind, and reveling in the ugly. Face lights are generally badly made, but not all of them.

If you don't know how to turn them off, don't be rude to those of us who do.

There is a sim in particular that I'm going to avoid, precisely because the local ignorati have started a crusade about this, not realizing that other things, such as color changing titlers, are much worse.

In the days of those days

2009-12-27T18:31:00.001-08:00

Julie Bindel is a long time crusader on the front lines of sexual violence. Sexual violence is a pervasive part of almost every woman's imaginary world, even those who have never expereinced more than the most mild forms of it, because I don't think any of us can say we've never experienced any of it. This is because the threat of it is all around us, and it is a fear that pierces into the core of our most hard won possession. That is, namely, our sense of personal bodily control. Autonomy is won in slow hard steps, and sexual violence, the threat of it, and the imagination of it, destroy hat autonomy.

There is also the other part, and that is that pregnancy and reproduction necessarily involve the loss of this very same thing. As a result, sexual violence stares back at us from our fantasy life. Where and how to draw the line of the push in, is no easy thing.

Bindel writes in the guardian as follows:

It started about 10 years ago: prior to this I had no male friends. There were certainly men in my life whom I liked and respected, but no one I would meet up with for a drink and a heart-to-heart. Why? Not, dear readers, because I am a man-hater. As I have written before, I only hate those who rape and abuse women and children, and those who do nothing to stop other men doing so.

The bunker mentality is easy to come by, but I can only imagine what it was like to be part of radical feminism in that time. But the bunker sensation, that sensation where it seems that there are wolves with teeth and fangs in every direction, is common to every time and place I think. Little Red Riding Hood survives as a story, because there are so many woods to travel through.

I am sorry for her that she did not have the ability to have friendships with men until late in life. I am also even more sorry for a world where I understand how it happened.

And could happen tomorrow to a young woman trying to be herself.

And is probably happening now.

Professional Sexism at work

2009-12-27T16:53:00.001-08:00

AWGroupies is a techie group. It had a prupose once, but it has become mostly a chat room for projects.

Now think on something. He's a real person, probably a manager or other person with some position. If I were to apply for a job at his company.. would I get it? No, he'd find a way to sink me,for, basically, not submitting to his "master" fantasies.

I've been told I am too aggressive about these things, but the reality is the reverse: sexism is endemic in the technical fields, and women who do not submit to it, and push back, are first treated with contempt, and then with hostility.

The half-anonymity is a threat: he can strike back at me from his real, in sl terms, identity, with his professional connections, if I don't accept his imposition on me.

[2009/12/15 0:56] Herc Serpente: There was a time when "jazz" referred to more than music
[2009/12/15 1:26] Herc Serpente swings the bat, hitting only air
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: I'd really like to get to know you, I like your blog. Chatted with you as an alt on AW Groupies, I don't usually disclose our 'relationship' though
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: add the people i meet here
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: odd
[2009/12/27 16:32] Lillie Yifu: hello
[2009/12/27 16:33] Herc Serpente flushes with excitement
[2009/12/27 16:33] Lillie Yifu: How are you?
[2009/12/27 16:34] Herc Serpente: i'm not usually so tongue-tied
[2009/12/27 16:34] Herc Serpente: you haven't even completely rez'd, but i can admire your subtle tan lines
[2009/12/27 16:35] Lillie Yifu: thank you. I like deail
[2009/12/27 16:36] Lillie Yifu: you are stillmostly gray to me
[2009/12/27 16:36] Lillie Yifu: so waht brings you here?
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: I enjoy the arts
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: theatre, especially
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: erotic themes are, in particular, attractive
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente's fingers trace the tan lines on your chest
[2009/12/27 16:38] Herc Serpente: Sometimes it's possible to find partners who share a similar appreciation
[2009/12/27 16:38] Lillie Yifu puts his hands back on his chest.
[2009/12/27 16:38] Lillie Yifu: I'm not one to be pawed randomly
[2009/12/27 16:38] Herc Serpente looks to see if his fingernails need trimming
[2009/12/27 16:40] Herc Serpente: did you think it a random gesture? It was made with careful intention
[2009/12/27 16:41] Lillie Yifu: That's true.
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu: don't talk to me again
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu spits in his face
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu: hows that?
[2009/12/27 16:43] Herc Serpente: unexpected, perhaps unprovoked? A "no thanks" would be less ambiguous
[2009/12/27 16:43] Lillie Yifu: Definitely provoked, asshole

models revolt over revolting heels

2009-12-27T06:01:00.000-08:00

There's no reason for these things.

SL Blogger/Musician Needs Your Help

2009-12-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

Details here.

She's asking to help by buying her CD of acoustic folk.

Tour Eiffel 2

2009-12-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

Tour Eiffel 1

2009-12-21T08:47:00.000-08:00

The new version is much better than the old texture driven one.

Trust

2009-12-21T08:09:00.000-08:00

I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people, those who have enough money to live, and those who don't. Quantity isn't the issue.

They don't get each other, and that leads to trust problems.

Any man who asks a woman "are you an escort?"

2009-12-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

Isn't going to score with her if she isn't.

I'm thinking of burning a bridge

2009-12-20T19:58:00.001-08:00

I will decide in the morning.

[not going to do it.]

Dark Star of the Ballet Stage leaves us

2009-12-19T17:53:00.000-08:00

Georgina Parkinson radiant physical presence who moved with a tremendous power in every gesture, and taught an exacting way for students to express that power within themselves, has died. She danced with the Royal Ballet during the peak of Sir Fredrick Ashton's reign, and came to be the ballet mistress of American Ballet Theatre.

There was an androgyny to her face, an almost vampiric stretched quality to her movements, and a tremendous flexibility that defined the unbending steel of her poses. She flowed into positions, and then sustained them, and taught that same way. At the same time, she was always discussing, always changing, always searching, always fitting. For the dancers she knew had talent, she would work and weave their own uniqueness into the steps. She talked about how having a role created on you was an intensely personal act, and how it had worked in the Royal in her time, how the choreographer would set the problem, and the dancers would have to solve it, often having their changes added to the steps.

This vibrant seeking artistic freedom rested on a basis of absolute assurance in technique, and it was liberating, even for those who could only touch their toes into the sea of freedom that she had once sailed on herself.

Near sunset

2009-12-19T06:33:00.001-08:00

2009-12-19T00:06:00.000-08:00

Wish my forgotten wishes, and feel a forgotten rhyme,
from touch of the forgotten lore,
and dust upon forgotten times,
from droplets of forgiven hours,
that fall from forsaken flowers.

Narcissus, first flower of forgetfulness,
whose Lethe bathes us in our sleep.
Give the forgotten memories,
that we never can forget.

Forge a forgotten fire,
from a forgotten flame,
forgetting is more beautiful than any recall.

Lillies that fill the valley,
roses by other names,
lilacs by the courtyard bloom,
and daffodils follow the rain.

For each forgotten petal,
that opens in forlorn passion,
their finds a place,
where rests your face,
upon my lap,
and fear no evil,
even in the valley of death.

For I have forgotten the fears,
that are whispered in years,
in cradle and crib.

Set me feet on an earth unborn,
untorn by wars,
unturned by years,
untouched by tears,
undrenched by sorrows,
unblemished by age.

It has been forgotten,
because it never was in their hearts at all.

There is something to be said

2009-12-18T21:22:00.001-08:00

about a blingtarded avatar with a tag that reads "Intelligence is hot."

2009-12-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

Delicate impulses that reach for the caress of keys,
that softly hold all the arcane secrets of the heart,
if only we should dance upon them,
and leave behind that trail of steps,
the tracks of the windings of a mind
that fumbles with the meanings of its motion

Ian Welsh's avatar

2009-12-16T05:14:00.000-08:00

I redid Ian Welsh's avatar, the first version being a rough job in a hurry. I think he's pleased with the results, even if SL isn't his thing.

Also this one...

I tried to capture a kind of brooding romantic look to him, because I think that is what lies underneath his writing, or so it seems to me when I read it on his blog.

2009-12-16T05:09:00.000-08:00

Go, give, and gain, that which is more valuable,
when given away.
Love, and knowledge, linked in this,
stationary they have no existence,
in motion they are bliss.

Not much of a poem this morning, not much of anything. But then, I'm doing art irl right now, and that means less time for SL, and all the minor things that I do. I'm actually sorry that I won't be able to show pictures of my current rl project, but that is the cost of not being an integrated identity.

back

2009-12-13T21:39:00.000-08:00

I was ill for a few days and was in hospital for the last two. Nothing to be overly worried about, but it was not fun.

I was tempted to do a parody of someone logging into my account and telling the world about my demise, but my sense of humor is still recovering.

2009-12-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

The trees, their sails of leaves once filled by summer breeze,
had set a course for wintered nights,
now frozen and becalmed, berift of billows.
It is as love is full of heat
only to turn to gray and barren stem,
a sketch of what might have been,
and what will be once again.

A Quater of Young People "Sexting"

2009-12-04T04:50:00.000-08:00

I have once or twice. Have you? Survey says you have company. Though I think the break downs would be interesting to see a

Pregnant Fish

2009-12-04T04:48:00.000-08:00

Guardian reports that ancient fossils found in Australia are the earliest indication that some fish gave birth to young alive: long before any previous evidence for it.

Every girl want to be a princess in the morning, and a queen in the evening.

2009-12-03T20:59:00.000-08:00

2009-12-03T05:44:00.000-08:00

A rivulet
     that
     falls
     and fallen is
                       the cataract of contact
                       the gushing foam and whiteness,
                       It scours out
                       cleanses us to life,
                       like growing algae
To beneath the placid pool of satiation, for which we yearn so far below

2009-12-03T04:52:00.001-08:00

I can feel the hurtling hell that comes towards us,
that eats the energy of these times
and spits it out as spires filed with marble, silk, and whores.
The finest, imported from everywhere in every color,
the marble I mean, the whores are mostly blond.
And the silk can be dyed anywhere that fingers come the cheapest.

The edges of night

2009-12-03T04:49:00.000-08:00

The edges of night bleed into day with hard dimensions,
distances between sleep and waking, which in measurement defy,
the number or the ruler.
How would our rulers tremble if the boundaries of our countries,
matched the boundaries of our souls. Unbound by petty ties to paltry pasts,
from which we did not come, and to which we do not owe anything,
except the tattered times they left us.

No fucking please, we're feminists

2009-12-03T04:41:00.000-08:00

No fucking please, we're feminists.
We want to be worse than what we oppose.
Take on the dark corners of the human soul?
Please that's hard.
So much easier to play at passion,
and scrub our sight of what offends it.

No pleasure please, we're pornographers.
Why would we want to give, what can be gotten,
when frustration pays so much more.

No commonsense please, we're cacophony,
and how much better for us,
if every scrap of sanity,
is drowned out by the din.

Falling Between Worlds

2009-12-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

Today I received nasty notes from two sides of teh world. It reminded me of a truth conveyed by one of my professors, that noise, not discourse, dominates the passions of the moment. It may not quite be nothing that is signified by this sound and fury, but it is the comments of those who are detached from it, or whose position is enclosed by art an irony, that end up being of the most interest to a waiting eternity.

The first was from someone whose sim I posted about here. It was of that genre that I was first introduced to long ago, that out the outraged club owner attacking a bad review. A parcel full of lies, and then attacks against the reviewer for not understanding the great contribution to humanity that running the sim creates. One reason, I think, LL does well, is that while ego driven meglomaniacs may be a dime a dozen, many of them are good for $295 a month in sim fees.

From the opposite side of the world came a broadside from Stop Violence Against Women, which as become the Bowdler Society of Second life in it's anti-pornography campaigns. On one hand I can understand victims of abuse becoming harpies about anything which might trigger their own deeply embedded agonies. I do not think men begin to understand the prevalent fears of unwanted pregnancy and sexual violence have in the minds of our gender. However, Stop Violence Against Women has passed from protecting people from triggering pains, and into the realm of doing violence themselves. They are not going after people who force their fantasies on others, but to try and block the working out of fantasies entirely. The patriarchy laughs, by multiplying repressive anti-sexuality, it pits woman against woman.

It is hard, again, to express the powerful sense of being watched that most women have laid upon them by their mothers, and other figures of authority. It is we who must say "no," and be the guardians of the economic and social relationships that are attached to procreation. It is not that our desires are less, but it is that our burdens are greater, that we enter into the world of sexuality with a heavier sense of our place in it. It is absolutely essential to liberate ourselves from the burdens, without losing understanding of the risks. And doing this requires claiming our sexuality. This often involves transgressive fantasies, and transgressive actions. Men transgress with permission, we envy this about society.

Often this involves pornography, partaken of alone, or shared with a romantic partner. One could stuff whole libraries with books that a woman offered up to a man, hoping he would see her secret self in it. Fantasies of being forced grow out of this, they strip away the responsibility of saying no, of beign the guardian of reproduction. They elevate the very brute aspects of masculinity. Rape, slavery, force, kidnapping, ravishing... all play some part in the fantasy of being stripped of agency, and in this, finding it. Finding a focus on personal pleasure, uncoupled from that bearing pressure of our mother's eyes squeezing at the back of the skull. It is a palpable physical sense.

SVAW has chosen to be antagonistic, and even more so, violent in their language to those people, including me, who they do not approve of. If Hard Alley is doing violence to women, so is Stop Violence Against Women, which, instead, chooses the sub-feminist and anti-feminist narrative. This narrative is the narrative of sanitization, that every centimeter of the world must be made safe for the sickest. In doing so, they would kill the healthy. They also promote an unhealthy fear of what is, in fact, feeble.

I've walked, often enough, through various rape and forced sims. I have never had anything all that bad happen to me. In fact, the reality of rape sims, and most of the men who partake of rape porn, is that they are weak and under confident in their sexual fantasy role. One time I went looking for rape role play, to see what the state of it was, and found myself having to entice and tease a man to be up to playing it. Rape roleplay is almost the reverse of the sign of a true sexual predator. Instead of being the play ground of the sexual predator, it is the province of men who really feel as bound up in their own guilt and weight of restraint as anything else. Before they can release, the need a woman who is not merely helpless, but almost vamping them from the chains.

It is not that there are not sexual predators on Second Life, there are. However, they do not, in general, put themselves in any one kind of place. Instead, abusive sexuality, and abusive use of it, are all over. In dance halls, malls, escort houses, orgy rooms, businesses, both rl and sl. I've been pressured for sex talk by Linden Lab employees, and by employees of known rl businesses, just as I have been pressured for sex at job interviews at Fortune 500 companies. It is not rape play which creates, or even houses, sexual predators more than any other. Thus protesting a sim which abides by the adult content rules, and is this known only to people who are expressly looking for it, goes against the need to create spaces which are civil, and civilized, by creating spaces that are expressly for transgression. We need our closed doors, and our carnivals, as much as our intellectual spaces. It is inappropriate for a male to enter into a group for, for example, public affairs, and then begin hitting on the builder of the set that a show is filmed on. Yes, this happens. Who is being more problematic? The guys who hang out in a seedy room hoping for a consenting partner? Or the man who inflicts himself on a woman during a book discussion?

But it is harder to go after the later, less fulfilling of gastric upset, less violent.

Let me tell a tale: I went to a sim with one of the leaders of SVAW. She was almost shaking with fear. I do not know, of course, whether this was real, or merely what she projected to get her point across, but it is how she presented. I was unafraid, and told her that in reality, there was little to nothing that anyone there could do to her, except say mean things. SVAW is composed of cowards, and is led by cowards, and preaches cowardice. Courage is not protesting the unpopular, but instead facing it, and facing it down. Pushing it back from the center stage, and reducing its acceptability. SVAW does not do this, and does not fight the tangle every day of the male dominated world of techies. Instead, they act as if street theater on a sim is some noble calling.

I say this is a sub-feminist narrative, I should, I think, explain this. The feminist narrative is simple: nature and society place upon us certain weights, and we demand that we be liberated from them as excuses to hobble our free participation in our own lives. We are feminists not to escape our gender, but to celebrate it, and, at times, places, and in ways acceptable to us, I don't pretend consent is truly the reality of entering into the erotic, express our gender. A feminist believes, and must believe, only two things. That our gender does not define us, and that we have a right to our gender as part of us.

The anti-porn crusader is engaging in an age old exchange: suppressing the freedom of women, in return for a power granted by men and other subfeminist women, to engage in oppression. Stop Violence Against Women in SL, has become Start Violence Against Women in SL. It's violence is embedded in the ideologies, and fears, of its founders. From that fear, they would deny, and indeed attack, people who have aided them and helped them. They bite the hands that hold them, they hate the people who help them.

It saddens me, because it tells me what I have read: that power is so seductive, that even those who would do good, are ensnared with it. As a nobody, writing nowhere, and for no one, these hollow words into empty airs fall, as I feel I am falling between the cracks. But it is the bellowing of those who have their pornographic needs, SVAW, is panic porn, and is everything it's founders say they deplore: anti-women, anti-feminist, committing violence of mind and spirit.

It is essential for people to claim their sexuality. As feminists, we have to accept that the process of doing so is like a journey into the wilderness, or the dark abyss, or the lands of the dead. It is a place fraught with monsters, magic, and mystery. Within the murk of the tangled forces of the erotic, including the desire to engage in that dangerous journey which is bearing and raising a child, are images and narratives that are not pure white and wedding. But only by facing, and encompassing, our darkness, can we be whole again.

I have walked through my darkness, and in doing so become a more whole person, I would wish that the leaders of SVAW would face, rather than run, from their inner fears, and rather than attacking women who are claiming their lives, learn that they must embrace the inner dragon which gnaws at the roots of the soul.

Latest Illegal Orgy Room Rockets Upward

2009-11-30T20:56:00.000-08:00

Since LL's adult content rules, one of the constant games has been the creation of illegal orgy rooms. LL does nothing about violators until there have been a flood of complaints. This should tell any legitimate business that Linden Lab is a porn company, and that any business which goes into LL has got to get used to the idea that their employees will be cruising for sex at work. With all of the problems that entails.

The latest addition to the bestiary of mature area orgy rooms, titled in a fit of ironic nuance, FREE SEX AREA BEACH & NEW COMMUNITY. It rocketed from near zero traffic to 10,000 and now to 30,000 in two weeks. It has staff. It's a very serious attempt to engage in the end run of being mature until LL gets around to warning them, and grabbing the traffic that comes with this, hoping to hold on. LL routinely gives many of it's adult content violators winks and nods, while comign down hard on others.

Now, as a person who is deeply involved in cyber-sex, you might think I am against the adult content rules. But this is wrong, though not entirely so. The entire dance about having some verification standard, which means nothing, is absurd. But the need to have a clear division between sexual and social areas of Second Life is based on a few clear realities. The most obvious is that sex areas get swamped. This means that everyone else on a sim with a sex area has their performance degraded because of this. Buying land any place was always waiting for the next sex themed build to see an unlagged sim, and set itself down.

But there is also the social reality that people in the search for their particular kind of sex inflict themselves on everyone within reach. They don't care about 100 no answers,so long as they get one yes answer. The result is human spam. There's no cost to the person serially propositioning people,and cost to each person they proposition. The reality is that men beleive that if a woman sets herself in an orgy room, even for a minute, evne once, then she is forever marked as a legitimate target for an IM for sex later. Even months later. Because of this reality, a line that warns people where they are going is important. People have a right to their fantasy lives, and to have spaces to work out their fantasies and enjoy their sexuality. Other people have a right not to get "wanna fuck?" in their IM box from random males.

This is particularly true of people who are survivors of sxual abuse or sexual assault, where such behavior is "triggering." This means that it calls up the horrible experiences of before, in a present and vivid memory.

The reality is that the people running these builds are not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, but to be able to make money. They set up their malls. Free Sex, is Cunt Camping. Guys hanging out, waiting for free... That is, traffic. Which is then sold. This is porn pollution.

On top of that, the fly by night areas are, and always were, pretty ugly. It is also the case that there is a lot less actual sex going on in them, precisely because they are magnets for freenize wielding newbies.

So that is why I am reporting on all of this. The old orgy rooms need to go, and be forgotten.

A boundary case in M Space

2009-11-25T21:58:00.000-08:00

Concurrency, that hobgoblin of many minds,
that cry out in winternight
for contact that strays
from some far beyond.
And then, in huddled nowheres
go, to solace of a solitude
shared with yet alone, another,
who, an island universe upon a quantum foam,
has found an ekpyrical encounter,
that begins the worlds a new.

Morning, Noon and Night

2009-11-24T16:20:00.000-08:00

Morning, Noon and Night,
your memory beckons me,
the feel that is the hard hand
that points to the hours of your desire,
for me.

I hope.

Mourning moon that's bright,
an orange that bloated eats the horizon,
no farther from me than your affection,
no colder than your last words,
to me.

I pray.

Now that you have gone away,
I hate, with that intensity,
of hyperion dawn electric,
that shivers away the aching hours,
of leaf swirled wind unto the dawn.

I watch.

And seen the cleansing rite,
of November dawn,
that pierces veil of gray,
and finds me lucid this first time,
with nothing left to say.

I turn,
and your ghost vanishes from my memory.

Fustino Meridoc: "Wanna fuck?"

2009-11-22T11:33:00.001-08:00

-- Instant message logging enabled --
[11:22] fustino Meridoc: wanna fuck?
[11:25] Lillie Yifu: No but filing an abuse reprot against you amuses me
[11:26] fustino Meridoc: we are in a place when we can ask free
[11:26] Lillie Yifu: nothis is an illegal orgy room
[11:26] Lillie Yifu: and youare breaking the ToS
[11:27] fustino Meridoc: u could have just answer me
[11:27] Lillie Yifu: I didi
[11:28] Lillie Yifu: I'm filign an abuse reprot again for sexual harassment
[11:28] Lillie Yifu: care to go for three?
[11:28] fustino Meridoc: no u did not answer me
[11:29] fustino Meridoc: but if u want do what u want it's a your problem
[11:29] Lillie Yifu: What leter in teh word "No" haven't they taught you in kindergarten?
[11:30] fustino Meridoc: i did not kindergarten
[11:31] Lillie Yifu: THat's obvious
[11:31] fustino Meridoc: i give u a suggestion
[11:31] Lillie Yifu: I give you one
[11:31] Lillie Yifu: stop right now
[11:31] Lillie Yifu: or you will be making trouble for yourself

[11:32] fustino Meridoc: i'm so afraid..........................

Yes, that's the truth, both rl and sl, men know there is no penalty for engaging in sexual harassment.

Ll continues to wink at mature orgy rooms, and it takes endless complaints and pushing to get them to do anything about even the most egregious violations.

Leaving Escorting Again

2009-11-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

Real life first, always.

The effect of going Adult

2009-11-18T02:49:00.000-08:00

Rape, Torture, Kill - now called BnB, held out as being "mature" rather than goign adult. I wrote here that tis mainstreamed rape in Second Life. Now that it has gone mature, we can see the effect. It's two parcels now have 20K traffic between them, when it used to have over 33K every day. More than one third less.

Not every parcel that goes adult sees such a drop off, even ones with very hard core themes. However, for generic orgy rooms, the drop off is severe. Basically, from the data, one can see that instant low investment hook ups are something that the buys who pursue them are not willing to do even the most minimal work for. It's almost like a dog sitting under the table hoping for free scraps. However, for more specific fantasies, adult registration is not a barrier.

How some poor merchant lost a sale tonight

2009-11-15T17:55:00.000-08:00

I sent a link to a specific xstreetsl item. The person logged in to the generic marketplace. I checked and got the same result after closing the browser from a link.

This is very much the wrong behavior, when someone gets a link to a specific item, then they should go there, even if login has to happen.

So some merchant lost a sale. Because the person lost interest.

A poem

2009-11-14T01:07:00.000-08:00

Ageless formless roaring void,

that now beholds my small soul in its hands

and tumbles me amongst the leaves of fair forgotten folk

who reside deep in within the grottos of myth.

I fall, I spiral, I twirl, I turn, I fly without wings,

without the aspiration of wind,

or the flutter of feathers breath.

No agnel of another age comes to catch me

and in falling find, that there is no bottom,

to the anguish of a life lost.

RTK finally moves to adult

2009-11-13T08:14:00.001-08:00

The Rape Torture Kill sim has finally been moved to adult, after dozens of ars, complaints to LL employees, and public pelting. For reference, it is usually a matter of days, not hours, before a sim is moved from mature to adult after complaints.