SLtweets

I joined twitter and plurk a while back but found my constant chatter to be incredibly dull. I bored myself to tears. To really take advantage of the twitter scene I'd have to spend way too much time away from rl work - so I gave it up. Until now. Today I found a clever thing. The SLtweets HUD allows you to twitter from within SL. Simply wear the HUD and post your thoughts, discoveries, and announcements in the chat bar where they'll be transported to twitterville for all your contacts to see. SLtweets also offers a tinyslurl widget so you can easily post locations. As an avid explorer, the HUD should offer a great way for me to share my explorations with you all. Away we go!

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

One of the first things I did when I logged on to SL for the first time (once I'd figured out how to keep my hair on) was to go dancing. First I did the rounds of ballrooms and jazz bars. Realizing ballroom dancing masks itself as SL foreplay I found my way to the indie clubs - first to Popscene (now defunct) and Alt7 (going strong since March 2007). Swiftly, I was tuned in to djs from around the world and introduced to a great variety of new music. I kept a pad of paper next to me, scrawling all the wicked new tracks I was hearing.

Let's hear it for the DJ!

Generating soundtracks and backdrops against which you create your own personal dramas...these DJs are the secret workhorses of SL, engaging us using their own particular techniques; some spending hours upon hours crafting a set (yes, you Ms. Lilliehook), some "curating" music, hoping to turn you on to something you've never heard before, others space out and forget they're spinning at all but no matter - they're here to entertain us and animate our experiences.

So next time you're out and about, eager to try your new dance from Henmations, remember to tip your hat (and a few linden) to the dedicated crew that make your world more aurally exciting.

A special shout out to DJs past and present Colleen Lilliehook, Darn Darwin, Enigma Bombay, Ennui Clip, Hotjack Canning, Infinite Graves, PirateDucky Constantine, The Nachts, and Warrick Renfold, who've each created brilliant soundtracks to my slife...

Burning Life is coming...

Nature Never Wears A Mean Appearance

I’m prepared for autumn. I collect apples and press a riot of leaves between the pages of unread books. Autumn is for Emily Dickinson, whose grave I used to sit on to make diary entries, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and his transcendentalists. Transcendentalism is linked to German romanticism and Buddhism. It believes in the soul’s intuition, inspired, in part, by poetical experience, of nature as the most awe inspiring work of art. “Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament”, Emerson writes in his essay Nature, 1836. The transcendentalists experimented with a utopian community called Brook Farm, begun in 1841 by Unitarian minister George Ripley. The mission of the farm was to “insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor ... guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor...” In other words, everyone, at all levels of society, could share the workload, ideally giving everyone the same opportunity to pursue leisure activities. Brook Farm failed – no one wanted to give up their leisure time to harvest the hay (Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “Thank God, my soul is not utterly buried under a dung-heap.”) - But still, society experiments with idealist communities.

Burning Man is one such experiment. Founder Larry Harvey explains:

“If technology itself is left to dictate our ends, then I think we can look forward to an increasingly disassociated way of living. Real community can only be attained through the experience of certain primal unities in the physical world....For the past 12 years I have directed Burning Man—a project dedicated to discovering those optimal forms of community which will produce human culture in the conditions of our post-modern mass society. Within a desert wilderness we build a city, a model world composed of people who attend our event from all over the globe. This virtual community is demographically diverse. It is multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and represents a wide range of age groups. It is formed in the image of the great ecumenical world that surrounds us; a teeming population of uprooted individuals. In other words, this intentional community that we create from nothing, and that returns to nothing when we leave, has been 'liberated' from nearly every context of ordinary life.”

Sound familiar?

Autumn is also for Burning Life (beginning October 17^th) which is a microcosm of the Second Life experience itself and is modeled on the RL Burning Man event. Run by a slew of volunteer builders, musicians, artists and others, a temporary city and entertainments will be created, a testament to the power of the ephemeral. Write the organizers, “Together, we will build a city, and we voluntarily accept many of the same restrictions that Nature imposes on the real thing. We do this to see how creative we can be with the same palette of materials and to revel in the beauty of simplicity.” The most remarkable thing to see at both events is to watch how a city grows out of a blank canvas, and disappears again. The abbreviated life of anything transient, such as Burning Life, adds to its remarkable allure.

Perhaps the most successful communes are those that are ephemeral. At least in SL, you may choose to avoid being mired in the dung.

Manifold Destiny

I’ve mentioned before that I feel rather like a tethered traveler. I like to be on the move, and SL often offers a feeling of adventure, of chance encounters; the imagination is stimulated. We work hard in our real lives to get to “that certain place”. That’s what we’re meant to do, yes? But it’s funny, once you get to that place, there’s a little itch that makes you want to tear it up a bit, toss aside the careful planning and see what might happen. The documentary film Alfred and Jakobine is a story about my friend’s parents, who took a chance with their lives and literally took to the road...in a taxi. Alfred is an anthropologist, Jakobine, an artist. In 1953 they made their way to Casablanca and found themselves smitten with a nearly ruined 1953 London taxi which they used to adventure around the world. The film ought to teach us all a few lessons about getting up, getting out, staying put...

virtual is an illness that must be treated

A new voice, not my own, do read: Less Traveled By.

Ready, Aim...

Today I thought I’d share with you a little about stone slinging. I’ve practiced slinging in rl, an ancient but still active sport in the Balearic Islands. El foners (slingshot warriors) use a sling (fona), made of cord or leather. First, you gently place a stone onto the pouch. Next, hold both ends of the cord in one hand. Finally, very carefully, begin to spin it above your head, take aim, and *snap*, release one end of the cord and set your projectile flying. It’s really satisfying to hear the crack of the cord as you release it. It’s also really painful if you tangle yourself up in it. Slinging was historically used for hunting and defense. Now it’s a sport, rather male dominated, with annual competitions held in Mallorca. I practiced shooting my rocks into the Mediterranean, over the heads of unsuspecting sunbathers in Deya, and would duck into the spiky bushes when I missed the sea.

I was in the mood to hurl some rocks today so I searched on the slexchange for a slingshot. Among the scary flossy thongs also known as slingshots (very Borat), I found a catapult styled weapon at a Gorean supply shop but can’t figure out how to use it...do I need to go to Telnus? Would I be collared if I went? Surely I can’t go unless I know how to defend myself, so a bit of shooting practice first. I typically don’t play video games unless I’m waiting at the movie theatre (Lethal Enforcer, thank you very much), but Dangerous Geisha at Grossglockner is a great place for a gal to let off some steam without being bothered by obnoxious bling covered brutes thinking they're the Terminator. The games are free and, if you're a primitive like I am, they offer a bow and arrow to shoot with. Later, I took to the sims for some in-the-field target practice, and found a suitable spot at Aught, shooting projectiles among the ruins.

For more about slinging, look here and here.