A symptom of the zombie disease

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

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

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

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

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....

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

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

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

A crack of opening.

Some good advice from India

Cat and mouse games we play.

Orszag Affairs - Budget Director Divides his attention

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

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

Mostly irl

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?

Jobs and the nature of the field argues slate.

Vampire Spam

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.

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

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

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

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

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