People Who Don't Annoy Me
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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 |
rdansky
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11:05p |
Red Cliff
If Gettysburg and Return of the King decided to spend an afternoon eating pizza, drinking beer, and playing Dynasty Warriors V co-op mode, then you'd have Red Cliff. Or, as I said to Melinda midway through one of the many lavish, gorgeously shot, hideously violent and yet positively balletic battle scenes, "This film has just achieved dangerous levels of awesomeness." |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | |
lamebookrss
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2:00a |
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| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 | |
fail_blog
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9:36p |
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scottedelman
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10:28p |
Tweet Dreams
I have quite a vivid dream life, usually remembering two-three dreams each night. I've been sharing the ones that can be explained briefly both on twitter and facebook, while those that are more convoluted get recounted on LiveJournal. But since twitter is ephemeral, I thought I'd gather my tweet dreams together in one place, both out of a fear that they might fade, and to see if there's any overarching theme. So here are three months worth of them in reverse chronological order. I already knew that many of you in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror communities had starring roles in my dreams. But what I didn't realize was how many of the dreams I'd already forgotten. Looking at these, I have a feeling that I'll someday do something more formal with them. But for now, just seeing them in one place is satisfying enough. Welcome to my subconscious! December 2009I dreamt I was in a railway station discussing the print histories of Dune and LOTR with Cheryl Morgan as ancient steam engines roared by. 7:41 AM Dec 31st, 2009I can't believe I dreamt I was driving while explaining SCI FI Wire's Moveable Type system to my bored passengers. I need to get out more. 8:10 AM Dec 30th, 2009I dreamt I was at an awards banquet, polling my friends as to whether or not I should shave my head. But I woke while tallying the votes! 7:56 AM Dec 29th, 2009 I dreamt I was reading the nonexistent The Complete Jules Feiffer, which contained thumbnails for comics I _know_ he had nothing to do with. 7:57 AM Dec 28th, 2009 I dreamt I could play the guitar, but when I tried to sing along, I couldn't recall the lyrics to a single song. But the music was amazing. 8:38 AM Dec 27th, 2009 I dreamt I was at a con dinner for ten (including Jenn Reese and Karen Meisner) in Australia. A ladybug crawled on Karen, who didn't mind. 8:26 AM Dec 25th, 2009 I dreamt I was in a corrupt Third World country trying (and failing) to convince rebel leaders to cooperate with the church, and vice versa. 8:20 AM Dec 25th, 2009 I dreamt that a strange insect, half stick bug, half praying mantis, had gotten into the house, and we were having a staring contest. I won. 7:35 AM Dec 24th, 2009 I dreamt I was visiting with Paul Di Filippo and preparing to eat at Prosciutto's, an all-prosciutto restaurant that exists only in dream. 7:33 AM Dec 24th, 2009 I dreamt I was wandering NY with Irene Gallo while describing the new mag I intended to publish, one with a different format for each issue. 7:29 AM Dec 24th, 2009 I dreamt I'd volunteered for a space mission from which I'd never return, and saying my goodbyes while trying to decide whether to back out. 7:28 AM Dec 22nd, 2009I dreamt I was working at Marvel with a suddenly alive John Verpoorten, a suddenly young Len Wein, and a suddenly in comics Paul Shaffer. 8:32 AM Dec 21st, 2009 I dreamt I was at a state dinner at which Michael Swanwick said I could sit at his table, but as a new congressman, I had to sit elsewhere. 8:46 AM Dec 20th, 2009I dreamt I spotted Fringe's John Noble visiting Syfy, and so I searched for my camera, but by the time I was able to find it, he was gone. 8:37 AM Dec 18th, 2009 I dreamt I'd moved back to Brooklyn, and was crossing Coney Island Avenue at Avenue O. I heard my wife and father talking in the distance. 6:23 AM Dec 12th, 2009 I dreamt that I parted with Bill Shunn in the Village to have dinner with Tom Disch, who had a new book out cowritten with David R. Bunch. 5:34 AM Dec 12th, 2009 I dreamt I worked at a Marvel Comics with a view of Grand Central, and saying goodbye to long-dead Bullpenner Duffy Vohland, who seemed sad. 6:36 AM Dec 11th, 2009 I dreamt I wandered a NYC that never existed, one with monuments only Jack Kirby could have designed. And I was looking for my lost iPhone. 7:50 AM Dec 8th, 2009I dreamt I was with Bill Willingham as he was interviewed for radio, and trying to be very quiet. Then my wife and Neil Gaiman showed up. 8:31 AM Dec 6th, 2009 I dreamt Will Smith dropped by, and since I am a good host, spent his visit trying _not_ to ask about Scientology, even though I wanted to. 7:45 AM Dec 6th, 2009 I dreamt I was a kid setting the dining room table with my sister, and our dad was Benjamin Linus, and he wasn't happy with us. Not at all. 9:15 AM Dec 5th, 2009I dreamt I attended a holiday party at Bob Silverberg and Karen Haber's NYC apartment, reading ancient fanzines and eating blueberry scones. 8:29 AM Dec 4th, 2009I dreamt I was at a huge convention, but every pro writer bailed except for me and Catherine Asaro, and we were forced to do _every_ panel. 8:47 AM Dec 3rd, 2009I dreamt I was working on a graffiti-spree case, first as Gillian Anderson, then as Zooey Deschanel, but I woke before the crime was solved. 8:47 AM Dec 2nd, 2009( Click here for October and November tweet dreams, so that only the truly obsessive need suffer. ) |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 |
fastfwd
|
3:09a |
And Now, In The Wee Hours Of The Day, A Birthday Spanking!
Because the Sparkly Paddle of Birthday Wonderfulness works 24 hours a day, we might as well use it on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) strangedave now, mainly because he's already been celebrating it for some time by virtue of the fact that he's in Perth, WA (that's Western Australia, not Washington state). Happy Birthday, hon--hope it's been a Totally Awesome day so far, with all the thrills and frills, all wow and no ow, and the coming year is so shiny and bright that you'll have to wear shades on your shades! And hey--say it with me so I know you understand!--don't forget to live forever! Current Mood:  celebratoryCurrent Music: hmm hmm hmm hmm to you... |
| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 |
buymeaclue
|
9:52p |
larksdream , you are a crazy person. Attempted FavsG tonight and it is ridiculous. Also: awesome. This is a 5.9 that starts into the arch, so you go up a little, then horizontal to the ground, then up again. At least in theory. I wouldn't know about the "up again" bit. By the end of the night, I was reliably achieving and sustaining the horizontal-to-the-ground bit, and then I'd go to bring a foot higher and grab the handhold that would let me start to go vertical again and then suddenly I'd be dangling with no idea how it happened--vertical, yes, and hands on, but feet nowhere near the wall. But! That horizontal bit! Amazed me that I could get there at all, let alone sustain it for a more than a second or two. It was very butch, insofar as anything can be very butch that's done while giggling madly, with one's ankle done up in hot pink Vetrap. I loffed it. re: the ubiquitous Tipsy Turvy, I fell again at the same place and tried a right foot match instead: left foot joining the right on the bigger foothold, right foot onto the tiny one, step out to the left. Much better. I surrender to the inevitable and will try that first on the next attempt. (But I am not giving up on the hop.) Also tackled bunch of other stuff, with varying but always interesting and/or amusing results, but I can't remember any of the details other than Crypt Ticket (got lost and made a hash of it, but no falling--just inelegant) and a first assault on Searchin' For Knubbin' (think I'll put that one in the rotation--good fun and hits the challenging-but-attainable sweet spot). Probably done for the week, now, what with horse and emergency back-up horse tomorrow and Thursday and then we're into the weekend, but maybe will wander up for some bouldering at some point over the weekend. Clearly I need more oomph for FavsG and pull-ups are boring, so. (Whee!) |
burger_eater
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6:27p |
Giftmas
This Christmas, my wife bought me a Wii Fit Plus and a huge (as in eight inch by five inch tin with a candy bar in it. At first, I was surprised by this. Wouldn’t the “Dark Chocolate Caramel & Sea Salt Bark” counteract the exercise games?
Apparently not, because I’m not the one who was supposed to be eating it. I had, in fact, been saving it, but when I opened it today, all but an inch-and-a-half was gone.
Now, I’ve certainly been guilty of giving people things I wanted. For years I gave books that I wanted to read to my friends, with a polite request to read it when I was done. Hey, I was poor.
But those were books. When you finish a book, you can hand it to a friend. Fancy candy, not so much. My wife, she’s a smart woman. Oh, and it’s really good candy.
Mirrored from Twenty Palaces. You can comment here or there. |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | |
genreville
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1:35a |
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lamebookrss
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12:00a |
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| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 |
warren_ellis
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6:16p |
Notebooknotes: Writing DO ANYTHING
DO ANYTHING was mostly written in a Moleskine reporter’s notepad with a propelling pencil. The page reproduced below — cranked up in GIMP to make it visible, if not legible — appears to date from late May 2009. It’s written in block caps because I needed to be able to copy-type from it, and as we know from earlier posts, my handwriting is shitty.
Pretty much every page of DO ANYTHING in this notebook looks like this:
If you’ve read DO ANYTHING, you know a lot of it is pretty densely layered with connections. The column was written in a very specific way to maximise the information. It always, always started out as longhand, early in the day. The longhand was always about the forward thrust of the column — the column meanders a lot, but it doesn’t wander, it’s constantly following a channel. As I go, I’m signposting things I need to check later, or need to remember to tie in.
Later, I sit down and copy-type the thing into Notepad, with a browser open, because I’m fact-checking as I go. The longhand draft is all mental, and that includes working in information from memory. Since I often can’t remember what I did yesterday, it needs to be checked.
I’d write the longhand version in intense two-hour stretches, and usually had way too much for a single column. After 003, in fact, I just kept writing without thinking about column breaks, and found those breaks later after the copy-typing.
Once I’d typed the column up, the real draft started. Because I’d then spend an hour plugging names from the column into Google, looking for more connections, as well as following my signposts, and layering that stuff into the piece. The Notepad draft after an hour or so on Google was the actual first draft, and that’s what’d get pasted into OpenOffice to get edited and cleaned up.
Really, an incredibly complicated and time-devouring process for a column no-one read. But it was fun, and it taught me things.
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | |
ausiellofiles
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12:19a |
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| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 |
imago1
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4:19p |
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blog_of_quotes
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11:50p |
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sinboy
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6:21p |
Happy birthday Tricia. I'm in the Michigan Millitia
So yeah. It's my birthday. 38 years old. People I know are sometimes surprised by this. I'm not sure if that's flattering or depressing. Both? I don't know. I'll be getting my bottle of Basil Bayden some time soon, so that's good. Oh, and, I had a response to a job posting that I replied to. No response to the response, so I'm not sure how that's working out. Given the givens, I don't expect anything to come of it, just because that's been the story with job hunting. But at least it was a response, so that's good. No response on anyone helping me with bit torrent. I wonder if I could get it working on the old powerbook, and just leave that on. Perhaps I'll try tomorrow. |
lonesome_crow
|
6:10p |
Yet another good review of the novel
Danielle, a reader and reviewer has posted a pretty decent review of Ouroboros. Among the things she says is: "Whether I would recommend this story to the casual reader is uncertain. This story is too heavy, too deep for the reader looking for a simple ghost story. This is for a reader who craves a story that is on the dark side; a story that probes into that reader’s heart, where the uneasy questions about life and existence are stuck at the very back of her consciousness, only to surface as she tries to go to sleep at night. I guarantee you, I will probably lose some sleep over this story." Click the link below for the full review. http://www.www.goodreads.com/review/show/80483807 |
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lamebookrss
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10:00p |
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jsridler
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2:34p |
No One Best Way
I think it is both frustrating and inspiring that there is no one best way to write a story. Sometimes, using the methods propounded by Donald Maas work, or Nancy Kress. Other times, so long as you maintain the "vivid and continuous dream" that John Gardner argued was the goal of fiction, you've done your job well, even if you can't check off a list of story elements to make sure you have everything (gun on mantle piece, mcguffin to chase, inevitable surprise) or included things generally warned against (first person, starting with the weather, starting at a tavern, having people look in a mirror). Some times tried and true techniques do their job. Other times you goddamn well better experiment, Rube, or you're just spinning your wheels. Every story is its own beast. What was easy last week might be harder today and make no sense tomorrow. At least for me. Maybe some folks can be Fredrick Winslow Taylor's of fiction. If so, sweet. I'm happy for you. My path is muddier. But if I don't lay down the tracks to stories about rose petal planes dog fighting above the trenches, or crazy Baltic automatons, or pro wrestlers who might be gods, I mean, who the heck will? Today's ramble brought to you by rats interrupting my sleep, cough syrup that's 9/10ths methamphetamine, and the letter "5" Onward to the Rat War. JSR |
warren_ellis
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3:37p |
DO ANYTHING: Jack Kirby Ripped My Flesh
The serial version of the first DO ANYTHING book concluded today. It’ll be out in print in April, and it’ll look something like this:
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) |
suricattus
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5:07p |
If you're tired of living in New York...you need to move out so someone can come in.
Tried to go to the $6 morning movie -- realized halfway there I'd forgotten my wallet. Went back, grabbed wallet, did some shopping instead (new wine glasses! New wall sconce!) and then met up with marinarusalka and Her Boy for lunch at Kefi, which is as pleasant as advertised, and I need to get back there sometime for dinner. Then I came home and found wine waiting for me (ah, our international world -- Australian wine sent to the US via The Netherlands!) and word that my betas really liked my story revisions (I guess I didn't break it after all, mizkit, or I broke it Just Enough). And a July deadline has been extended to 1 October, and while there was some disappointing news, it was news I was expecting, and there was potential good news coming hard on its heels, so... All in all, I'd call this day a win. Meanwhile, also worked on my "agency from the viewpoint of the author" blog, so look for that sometimes this week, and started compiling a list of "How to Write a Real New Yorker" list, for the benefit of out-of-towners (where "New Yorker" = resident of NYC, not NYS) p[yes, this is being compiled tongue-in-cheek. That doesn't mean it's not true] 1. New Yorkers will step off the curb while they wait for the light to change. There are a number of reasons why we do this, but we all (okay 80%) do, and we will get annoyed if you stand there and yab after the light changes, blocking our way. 2. Not all New Yorkers Live in Manhattan. There are five boroughs, and all of them contain a multitude of neighborhoods. What part of what borough you live in is very important, and can identify you to others rather quickly. It takes a long time to get from one borough to another via mass transit 2a. Brooklyn is huge. Seriously. 2b. Staten Island is a borough. We just like to pretend it's not. 2c. Manhattan is an island. So is Staten Island. Queens and Brooklyn are (on) an island (that just happens to be the same island as Long Island, no relation to NYC. It gets confusing. See scarletina's comment.). Only the Bronx is part of the mainland. 3. Central Park is massive. Not everyone goes there -- it just seems that way on the first warm weekend of Spring, and all summer. 3a. There are many other parks in NYC, many of them quite beautiful. 4. Yes, New Yorkers walk fast. Get the hell out of our way. 5. The ethnic diversity in NYC is more than many rural/suburban Americans can even imagine. We like it that way. Especially when they bring a new cuisine to town. 5b. New Yorkers think nothing of grabbing something to eat from a grease truck -- which may have some of the best food in the neighborhood. (I spent an entire winter eating lunch every work-day from the local souvlaki truck). And every second corner in Manhattan has its own bagel cart, and the locals are loyal to it. 6. New Yorkers aren't ignoring you, they're being polite. If we make eye-contact, we've infiltrated your personal space. Looking away allows you privacy even when we're elbow-to-rib on the subway. 7. If you need immediate [non-crime-related] help, go to the nearest fire department, not the NYPD. Firefighters have less paperwork, and can get you help faster [plus, they often have paramedics]. But make sure it's important before you bother them. 8. If you need information, ask a doorman. Any kind of information. They know Everything. 9. Driving in NYC isn't scary, so long as you know the rules. 9a. Except in Queens, where it's terrifying. ... anyone else got something to add? Or start up a list for your own city/locale in your LJ, and link it back here! Current Mood:  cold |
vee_ecks
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4:46p |
I was a Second Life marketer.
Yeah, I know, embarrassing. I tried really hard not to be. I tried every way I could not to be. Nobody at the company would listen to me.
But first, the best, most sane thing I've read on the subject today, sitting around reading "Whatever Happened to Second Life?" stories from last year, because I can't sleep. It's a comment from one of those stories. Sic.
I’ve played Second Life off and on for two years. “In addtion, the sex-centric elements of Second Life are in the process of being segregated from the rest of us, and the resulting cleaner image will only serve to benifit everyone.” That is ridiculous. Sex is everywhere, absolutely everywhere in the game. I agree with the commentor about the average age is much older in SL than other online games and there are many more women. There is a strong creative community. But it seems the users who spend the most time inworld are sex deviants. Yes, me included. To spend any government and/or school money on this game is ludicrous.
Yeah. So...after Second Life stopped being on the news all the time because of all the sex play in it, and it became clear to even the dopes I worked for during the craze that there really was no value there for real world companies and schools and whatnot, widespread interest dropped, user numbers dropped, Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life went through a shakeup, and they banished all the sexy stuff to one big sexy island.
So, in other words, they rejected their actual core strengths and went for the fantasy instead.
Shoulda kept the sex, folks. Shoulda built on it, even, been proud of it. It was all you had, really.
###
So the way I got this job, trying to market a real world company in Second Life was this: I tried my best to talk them out of it.
I had a few years where I barely worked, earlier this decade, and...started becoming a writer because I couldn't do anything else. I certainly couldn't do my actual job, what I was best at and was most successful at ever in my life, because...I had one of those things you're never supposed to 'fess up to later, and screw that. I had a nervous breakdown. I lost years of my life, where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do, because of it. It has been long and difficult, coming out of that. I will not miss this past decade at all.
So eventually I got a job again, and it turned out to be a crap job at a horrible company, and pretty much everything I was ever told about the job was a lie, but...this company, I figured out fairly quickly, was all sales and marketing. The products didn't actually matter, and I was working in production.
So when the owner's son, who helps run the marketing department, sent word down that the company wanted to do marketing work in Second Life, and did any of the gamers in the tech department have any ideas that way, I jumped.
There were three guys at that meeting, the other two were engineers, and they had some ideas they'd clearly written down that afternoon on legal pads. I had a full-on white paper I'd spent two or three weeks on, explaining exactly why this company should absolutely not get involved in Second Life, despite the hype, also proposing an attempt at getting in there that wouldn't at least cost the company lots and lots of money and make me look really bad if they wanted to do it anyway and picked me to do it.
Why am I such an idiot? Nobody listens to a word you say, ever, it's all presentation. I had a white paper in hand, the other guys had "Uhs" and "Ums" and some scribbles on pads, so I had to work in Second Life for a whole damn year.
Gah.
Nobody listens.
###
Anyway, I got promoted to Marketing. Which turned out to be another nightmare, but whatever about that, I've worked at way worse companies.
So they picked my proposal, because I actually had a proposal. And it was this. Rather than "buying an island," as was, at the time, what every giant organization or corporation or government was doing in Second Life, which ran like fifteen hundred-two thousand a month, something like that, just for the "land," and would involve moving resources in-company or hiring people to work with me to make neat stuff to attract eyeballs, what if we made an honest attempt to "engage with the community" instead?
My proposal was: don't buy an island, find giant malls and attractions that rent out shop space, already, popular ones. Rent spaces, build a consistent "THIS COMPANY" store model, put it all over, give neat things away, because that's always loved in Second Life, and they will come.
I did the research, found the places, that took forever, and costed it. We could do like thirty-forty locations around the Second Life world for like a hundred and fifty, two hundred a month and the joke wages they paid me.
###
The thing is, this was not a Second Life company, it was a company out here in real life. So...in order to actually market something real world in Second Life, you have to make people jump out of Second Life. Eventually.
Um.
Second Life users don't click on outside links to the web much, or they didn't back then, anyway. Most of the web links out were scammy, was one of the first things I found out, investigating Second Life to write that paper.
And the whole point of this effort was to get people to landing pages. At our web site.
You see my dilemma.
###
So the mall rental idea was a rousing success, if numbers of visits and virtual shwag taken away were your only indicators. We launched the same week as the NBA launched their island and handily beat their numbers and just kept doing so. This actually sounds impressive, maybe, except the backlash had already begun, and the NBA island is one of the early "Uh oh" stories, there.
Still, we did pretty well for an on-the-cheap experiment, and I built good relationships with land and mall owners, who were glad for the money and helpful since we were respectable tenants who were not likely to vacate all of a sudden, so...in that sense, like any real world job like that. They would tell me when they had prime spots going vacant so I could move in there, etc.
But all of this was meaningless, and I put that in the initial paper. Because nobody who visited or took things was going to click on any of our outside links and....actually do business with us.
###
The dirty, dirty sex was everywhere. And whatever you have heard about Second Life, if you've never been in there, it's more. My first impression I wrote down was something like "This is 4chan, writ large."
And without getting into details, about the nasty or my former employer, this was not a company that could possibly be associated with anything like that.
You know, like all the other companies and institutions that jumped into Second Life a few years ago, anyway.
###
So right away, I knew that we would not actually be able to put our shops into the most popular places, because all the most popular places were all about unexpurgated lusts, be they sexual or about loopholes in international gambling laws. We had to go for second and third-tier malls and whatnot, and I had to check them out and make sure I wasn't moving the company's stores right next to Have the Giantest, Most Hilarious Dick or Set of Boobs Stores, and then I had to keep monitoring all of them to make sure some store didn't move in next door, ever.
So much time.
Imagine this: you got a promotion at this nightmare company, and right away, this special on-the-job sociopath decided you were a threat and poisoned your name everywhere in your new department. And everything went wrong as a result of that, and in the meantime, you have to play around in this video game that's all about dirty, dirty sex, like half the day.
And this is not a video game company, or a porn company. People get fired for doing stuff like that, here.
And almost every time a coworker comes by, there you are, playing this dirty video game. It's not like everybody else at the company doesn't read or hear the news, too, they know what Second Life is, even if only vaguely.
And they all have to do real jobs. Like you'd like to be doing.
Just imagine the sideways "jokes" that aren't really jokes. Constantly.
Exactly like that.
###
Good thing my boss was kewl, or I'd have gotten fired, maybe, the day she came by and I was having a dispute with another shop owner whose Biggest Boobs In the World products were poking through the floor of our shop and some business partners had seen it and complained, and then his avatar showed up and changed into Biggest Boobs In the World drag to talk to me.
She just laughed, so I didn't get fired.
Yay, me.
This was one of thirty stores around Second Life. I picked better most places, but...jeez.
###
In a year, we got exactly one hit on the Second Life landing page. And every month I said "We should shut this down and I should do more real work," and every month I was told to keep it going and had my tiny budget reapproved.
This was not, by the way, a small company or an unknown one, not in the least, and due to the nature of the business, we had huge names and brands attached. Didn't matter.
My second response on diving into Second Life, after the 4chan thing, was "Are these people nuts, that they even want their company in Second Life?"
Yeah, as it turned out, they were. You should really pay attention to these kinds of rhetorical questions you might ask yourself at important junctures like that.
###
There was one cool thing ever, really, in Second Life. The first week or so I was in there for the job, I req'd money to buy myself land and build a house on it, just to get immersed. So I found a pretty place that was all beachfront and people had bothered to put dolphin and whale and squid and crab animations in the surf, and built a house there.
And this German guy who was apparently my new next door neighbor came by to comment on my house, and I couldn't understand him at all, he didn't speak any English, but he knew enough to tell me to come with him and I understood.
So I followed him, teleporting like you do, and we went to this shop and I bought a HUD that ran everything he said through Google Translate, and vice versa.
And we talked for a while after that, and then he said hey, you want to meet some people and I hesitated, so he said "Not like that."
And we teleported again and when I got there, I just went "Screw it, I'm just pretending to work if anybody comes by, this next little while." Because where we went was...I don't even remember what the landscape was about, but...it was all these people from all over the world. Like fifteen-twenty different languages spoken, but no biggie, all of us getting translations, even if they were occasionally hilarious.
That was great. That is a memory I may hold on my deathbed, I dunno. Very cool, anyway. We just talked about whatever for a couple-few hours.
That was one cool thing that happened, in a whole year.
###
So a friend, knowing I was looking for a new job, said recently "Hey, I know people at Linden Labs."
And my first thought was "Only if they put the sex back."
It's not that I thought Second Life was sexually appealing – I do not respond at all to crude 3D models. "Cybering" is like seventy-five steps above two people making models of their ideal selves do repetitive sexual animations on their monitors.
It's just...that's what they actually had, that's apparently what most likely Second Life customers want to do if you give them a giant virtual sandbox, make pretend sex with 3D hand puppets they can dress up.
So from what I read today, you go into Second Life now, and it's a ghost town. Nobody around, anywhere. Until you go to Sex Island, which is where everybody is, all the time. The whole rest of the game world is full of replicas of universities and classical structures and entire real world towns and piazzas and whatnot, all of which bore people about ten seconds after they go "Huh, yeah, looks kinda like Princeton. Got the squirrels all over, even."
Because Linden Labs thought they could somehow successfully combine outside world mega-corporate business, education and government function with a massive virtual world red light district. And when that didn't work and the corporations and universities and governments started leaving, Linden pushed all their real customers who spend all those Linden dollars all the time onto an island to make the rest of the world safe for business and education and government.
And it is. It's totally safe. And empty, like waking up at the beginning of I Am Legend or Earth Abides or something. There are all the virtual businesses, there are all the virtual colleges, there are the embassies and clever architectural fantasies and whatnot.
Not even ghosts. Not even virtual tumbleweeds blowing through them. Just...nothing.
###
So at some point, does Linden Labs give up the dream of respectability they never had, really, and admit that Second Life is pretty much all about the dirty? Who knows? Who cares? If you do, you're probably not reading this, because you're busy buying virtual fetish gear to whip your imaginary sub into shape with this evening.
I am honestly sorry, though, if you are reading this, that you've been so ill-served. Apparently, you're still spending lots of money in there. You would think, at some point, the company would figure that out and give you your whole world back.
It's hard to ask for sense from people or companies in total denial, though.
Believe me, I know. I begged a completely deluded company for a whole year, once, to let me stop playing Second Life every day and get some work done.
 Tweedle me deedles.
Originally published at Minor Bun Engine Made Benny Lava!. Please leave any comments there. |
k_dunlap
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3:39p |
TxtMsg Sanity
I ignore my phone at work unless it’s a special ring: the school, the doctor, the breakfast club. I let it vibrate right off my desk some days, ignoring calls and messages equally. Until break or lunch. Then I get to play catch up.
And then I remember why I have messages on my phone.
Because no matter how bad your day may be, someone, somewhere will eat a bagel, edit a bad novel, or some other random thing that will either make your day brighter because you’re not them or just because you know them and they’re sharing. i.e. messages from my currently unemployed sister today:
I’m flipping between leave it to beaver and jerry springer — i think my brain is going to melt.
The beav doesn’t want to kiss a girl in the school play — FLIP — jimbob got oral sex from his fiance’s mom
The first episode the parents were worried cuz wally was crushing on a girl and neglecting his homework — FLIP — my daughter is possessed by demons and is having sex with her half sister
And I quote “demonic demons”…
I need a job!
Because really. When you snort coffee in the parking lot during smoke break and the sweet little old lady in the next office giggles hysterically at you and almost spews her coffee, it’s worth waiting for break to laugh with—or is that at—your sibling.
Bring on tax time… I have text messages to save my sanity!!
Originally published at kellidunlap.com. You can comment here or there. |
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8:45p |
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