Something Fishy

Ok, please do pardon the appalling pun in the title. My imagination is currently on vacation and is expected back next week.

Anyway, I was perusing SLX, as you do when those “network problems” recur and you can do nothing else other than poke pins into virtual Linden VooDoo dolls, and I came across arguably the most random freebie (or L$1-bie but whatever) I think I’ve seen for a long time.

The ‘Neko-Kid-Fish’ is simply a one prim flexi fish that you wear, well, in your avatar’s mouth. Why, you ask? Well… frankly because that’s what the picture on the listing shows. It markets itself at neko kids as something to carry around in your inventory in case you get hungry. Is there something about the appetite of pixel neko children that I’m not aware of?

Fish!
Now, I’m not a neko, I’m not a child, my avatar doesn’t get hungry and even if it did, I don’t eat fish. But I still felt inclined to take one of these. One question I have to ask… the description says it’s “always delicious fresh fish in your inventory.” But my inventory has no refridgeration system. I’m therefore wondering whether it might go off. I do hope not. Virtual food poisoning has very little appeal.

Anyone want a bite? TOUGH! Get your own here. I don’t share.

Second Life™ without teleportation

Urgh. As I write this, my avatar is stuck on a sandbox sim with no other avatars unable to teleport as a result of the problems Second Life™ is having with teleporting (again). Of all the places on which I could be stuck, I choose a blank region attached to NOTHING. I therefore cannot even fly anywhere. And of course, the status page is its usual ‘informative’ self. Allow me to copy and paste their reports on the matter so far (it boosts my word count, you see).

“[UPDATE 2:54 pm Pacific] Unfortunately this issue is taking longer than expected to resolve. However, teleport success is improving, and we’re hoping to resolve this as soon as possible.

[UPDATE PENDING 1:54 pm Pacific] We’re about fifteen minutes way from having updated information.

[UPDATE 12:52 pm Pacific] We are still working on these issues, and we appreciate your patience.

[UPDATE 11:42 am Pacific] Logins are preforming normally. Network issues are still impacting teleport attempts and causing avatar clouding and difficulties crossing region borders. Two inventory servers are resynchronizing. Please avoid in world transactions with valuable (no-copy) assets until we give an ALL CLEAR. We’re escalating our network difficulties to our provider, and we’ll keep you posted.

[UPDATE 10:57 am Pacific] We are still working to bring the broken VPN back. If you experience loading issues after login, like your avatar appearing as the white cloud, please try to login to a different region.

Due to a problem with our network, Residents migth experience a slightly decreased teleport success rate at the moment, and logins will also be affected. We are aware of this and our Ops team is already working to fix it.”

All that was taken from http://status.secondlifegrid.net the home of bad news.

So, four hours so far and still no joy. Interesting, isn’t it, how they leave about an hour between every post. This is especially interesting between 1.54 and 2.54, after telling us at 1.54 they were ‘about fifteen minutes’ from having information. You know, that word ‘about’ gets people out of a lot of bother. Basically, what the 1.54 post should have said is this:-

[STILL MESSED UP 1.54PM PACIFIC] My boss made me come and write something cos it’s been an hour since we wrote anything on the matter and people are saying nasty things in the forums about us. It hurts, you know, all the name calling. Anyway, I don’t have any information. He said tell you all we’ll know something in the next four months or so. From then it should only take another year to rectify. You know, teleporting isn’t all that important anyway. Just LOOK at how pretty the sky and water is now!!

Anyway, that’s my opinion. I will get back to harrassing people I hardly ever speak to in IM just for something to do. (For the record, yes I have relogged many times and I even set my login location to home…and it still brought me back to this sandbox in the middle of nowhere with no civilisation). If it continues like this, I might have to go play real life.

Second Life Resident Survey™ - Ha!

More and more frequently it seems these days, I am being asked one of those random questions at the login screen. I came across a screenshot the other day of someone’s login screen informing them that, due to a high level of people logged in, they wouldn’t be able to login. And behind it…a nice little question. “Is your Second Life experience getting better or worse?” What poor timing.

It’s happened to me a few times too and I’ve gotten to the stage of just checking the ‘worse’ button and adding my reasoning as ‘duuuuh’. The other questions asked seem completely random, the likes of ‘would you change your avatar’s name if you could?’ and ‘Are you and avatar the same gender?’

Now let’s be honest, the only time people are at the login screen is when they’re first logging in on a day or because they’ve crashed and burned and have to relog. In the first case, mostprobably want to just get in and get their work done, see friends etc. And on the second instance, well catching people in a somewhat bad mood with a service is always going to play a part in the results!

I do, however, have a suggestion for some questions Linden Labs might want to consider including on their resident surveys, however, if they intend to continue doing them this way,

1. Are you relogging because you crashed?
2. How pissed off are you right now?
3. How many cars do you reckon Phil has? Is it A) 10, B) 50 or C) 100
4. Would you rather have pretty reflections from the water of a functioning game?
5. Would you rather be stuck in game unable to pay for items or stuck in there unable to teleport? **This is a trick question.You’re actually stuck in there with BOTH.

Anyway, ramblings done. Yawn. Goodbye.

When Hannibal Met Second Life™

A friend IMed me today to ask me (and I quote), “Do you happen to know what that thing is called, where people cook each other and eat each other?” Now that in itself was a very bizarre message to get, and most definitely a completely different way of greeting someone (personally, I think I prefer, ‘hello’). But, I answered with “cannibalism,” thinking nothing more of it. So imagine my surprise when she sent another IM saying she meant the specific in game version of this and that there’s a specialist name for it. I couldn’t decide whether I thought she was hallucinating or not. It seems not, as a while after that she informed me that the name she was looking for had been ‘Dolcett’. I was intrigued. So off I went to do my Dolcett research.

Dolcett, it appears, is taken from the name of a cartoonist famed for his images (all cartoon-style) of women generally being spit-roasted alive or asphyxiated (and often enjoying it too). And, like everything that’s talked about (or even done) by some in real life, it has made its way into Second Life.

Dolcett has been around in game for a long time, it seems. Though it doesn’t appear to be particularly well known. Gee, I wonder why. I decided I’d go have a look at what all this pixel cannibalism is about! SLX was my first stop, where a search under “Dolcett” (in uncensored) brought up 5 fairly expensive avatar cooking appliances, one in particular boasting that it could accept “meat of any gender,” and was “menu-driven,” (because of couse it would just be wrong if it wasn’t menu-driven, right?).

Then the in game stuff. Well, “Dolcett,” as a search term brings up a lot of places. I did some teleporting and, interestingly enough, despite the fact that I came across no bots or campers, the traffic at these places isn’t bad! In one particular place I was handed a set of rules upon my arrival. These stipulated that avatars such as furries, nekos, angels, demons, fairies, elves, shemales (amongst others) were not allowed in. On the other hand mermaids, aliens, clones, dolls, robots and avatars with prim-exaggerated genitals were actively encouraged. So, let me get this right? Nekos, furries and elves are weird. But aliens, mermaids and eating people are perfectly acceptable, everyday occurences? I wonder what drugs these people are taking. The notecard also informed me of a number of tags I might opt to have in the group, which included ‘butcher’ (for men only) and ’spit muffin’ (for women who actually want to be cooked and consumed by men). The rules are very strict in that only women may be ‘processed’. Obviously cooking up and eating men is out of the question. Of course! Because eating men would be…. erm, unacceptable? Anyway, there are a number of roles you can play, which include ’snuff bandit’. These are the people who are contracted to kidnap, rape and present a woman to a client who wants to cook her and eat her. The weirdness goes on!

I dragged Jenee over to check this out with me. The following photography all comes courtesy of her!
Jenee the Centre Piece
The picture above shows Jenee being served with fresh fruit. Sheesh, what in God’s name is with these people?! Meat AND fruit? Together? Come on, folks! Get your act together! And I hope they’ll be using separate chopping boards for their fruit and meat!

Jenee Impaled
Of course, it would be silly to even attempt to cook your women before impaling them? Sheesh, can you imagine all that jerking around? You’d never get a thorough cook!

Sunday Lunch, anyone?
Barbecue, anyone?

Butcher!
I would like to take this opportunity to assure all readers that I did not already own a meat cleaver. I have not spent a year in Second Life collecting butchering tools. This was a freebie handed to me to enable me to partake in the, erm, processing!

And there we have it. Dolcett. If you ask me, they onlycall it that to disguise what it is, which is sexual cannibal play. I’ve seen some pretty bizarre things in my time in game, but I think this comes top of the heap. As Jenee did point out, it’s probably better that these fantasies are exercised in a pixel environment as opposed to in real life but I still find it all a bit weird. What I find the most crazy is that people get turned on by this? Seriously, what on Earth could be remotely sexual about pretending to chop someone’s avatar up to serve on a ‘girl burger’ stand? What arousal could you possibly get from virtual cannibalism? If you’re as intrigued as I am by the freaky things people get up to in game, then I would recommend teleporting around to some of these places. I would certainly advise, however, that it probably isn’t an ideal first date ;-) Keep an eye on your women while you’re there too, otherwise you may just find that your roast chicken dinner doesn’t taste quite like you expected.

By the way, barbecue at my place next week. You’re all invited. Jenee won’t be there, though. She’s, erm, going away. For a very long time. Muah ha ha!

Greeting Grief!

Today I’m feeling irritated. It seems almost everywhere I have teleported to this morning has greeters that essentially spam you with umpteen landmarks, notecards and random crap you really wouldn’t particularly care to ever own.

Please, please, people… if you use these multiple object giver whatsit greeters, tone it down! Maybe have a sign they can click on if they WANT to take your landmark. Don’t force it on them! I have now got the the stage where I actually tp straight out of any place that does this to me.

Can you imagine walking into a store in real life and the second your foot is over the door there’s a sales assistant flying towards you handing you maps and scraps of paper. “Welcome to our store, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, here have this useless little note…have a map, come back soon. Here take this thing. We don’t know what it is but someone paid us to give it to you. Here look at this, welcome welcome welcome1 We’re not despaerate for your custom… honest.” I’m telling you, if someone did that to me in real life I would have them charged with common assault!

If I teleport in somewhere, I like to have a moment to hang around and decide whether I like it before deciding whether I want a landmark. I don’t care to have notes about every place I teleport to. And worse than that… the greeters and givers that try more than once. Some will only attempt to give you their crap once. Others don’t have this function and everytime you step within a certain distance of the crappy little thing it’s trying to give you notes again! What in God’s name is with this? Not content with spamming you, it also suffers from short term memory loss and forgot that all of ten seconds ago you swore loudly at it and declined its landmarks, notes and miscellaneous rubbish. I equate this to a rather more annoying version of a senile grandmother or elderly relative. The second you walk into their house they’re trying to get you to eat their soggy biscuits. ‘No thanks, I’ve just eaten,’ you politely say. But then ten seconds later, ‘Want a biscuit? Ice cream? Anything?’ Again you politly decline and all of a minute later, ‘Did I offer you something to eat?’ Anyway, I’m rambling… but you get the point (maybe). Yes, I know that muting these greeters is an option. But I don’t feel like I should have to mute objects the second I teleport in places.

Anyway, rant over.

Virtual Vacations

This is new to me. Companies offering to organise the perfect virtual vacation for you (for a fee of course) in game. Now, call me a cynic here, but let’s break this down. We can ALL teleport. Nobody needs a flight anywhere, nobody needs a cruiseliner to get from A to B. Nobody needs to sit cramped up in a pressurised cabin for half a day to reach the most perfect beach in the world. So it’s clear that these people needn’t organise, as real world travel companies would, your transportation to this perfect vacation location.

So what else is there for a travel company to do? Find the perfect spot and a great hotel maybe? Ok. Well beach holidays require a good beach. And let’s face it, there aren’t any shortages of those in game. The place search function is almost like a brochure I guess. Explore. Find a beach. TELEPORT to it. Pool holidays require a pool. Adventure holidays require adventure and exploration. Activity holidays, they need bikes and canoes and all that good stuff, right? But surely all of that can be found, without paying someone, just by teleporting around. Even if you can’t be bothered to search for these places yourself, there are a million (yes, I know I exaggerate) blogs out there with lists of fantastic places to go! And guess what…. they DON’T charge!

Anyway, I just wanted to rant. And now I have done. Amen.

Pixel Pregnancy - Completely Crazy?

This pixel pregnancy thing doesn’t half confuse me, you know. From my reading around it seems, in essence, that a woman pays “Virtual Pregnancy Clinic” a ridiculous amount of Lindens for her pregnancy (see and I thought getting pregnant was free). They then give her a package, say six weeks (wow is it just me or are pregnancies getting quicker…my Mum gave me a load of bull about me being stuck in there for nine months or something). They provide her with appointments, some shapes to make her look progressively more pregnant as time goes on and some random unborn foetus pictures from google images (which she will then coo over in her picks for all to see). Then comes the prim baby and, well….the less said about that the better.

But, I decided to look further into it to see if there was something I was missing. Of course, upon spotting a pregnancy test on SLX I couldn’t resist. The funny thing is, I wasn’t aware men could get pregnant either, so imagine my surprise when…

Josue…. pregnant!

Now, this wasn’t the only pregnancy test I could have used. They even have pregnancy tests that let you choose whether you’re pregnant or not…. hmm, imagine all those panicking teenagers in toilet cubicles with their best friends who would have paid anything for a real life version of one of those. Now, doesn’t being able to choose whether you’re pregnant or not sort of defeat the object of a test? Anyway… once I’d got over the hysterics of being told by a little prim test that I was pregnant (what I mean of course is once I had broken the news to my bewildered parents) I looked towards DNA testing to establish the maternity of my unborn child. Unfortunately, and much to my shock, nobody has come up with DNA testing in game yet. And so my pregnancy progressed.
Huh?
I found myself some foetal pictures that looked vaguely like spaghetti hoops to stick in my profile and finally I gave birth to a two headed prim baby called Bob who weighed seveteen hundred pounds. Well… of course I didn’t… but that really is about how bizarre this whole in game pregnancy thing is.

I don’t get why someone would want to pretend to be pregnant in game and wear those daft attachments that shout out to everyone along the lines of ‘My imaginary baby is moving inside. I’m pregnant everyone. LOOK AT ME!! LOOK AT ME!!’ It’s all a bit, well….. desperate. Can you imagine if in real life, as soon as you had your first scan, they attached a huge speaker to your ass that screamed out to the world the development of your pregnancy. “Hey world, today I threw up like fifteen times and now I’m craving charcoal with tomato ketchup?” Why pay some clinic to play ‘let’s pretend to be Mummies and Daddies’ with you? I just do not see an appeal. I thought people stopped playing let’s pretend games once they reached like eight? Hmm, maybe that’s just sane people.

The Frustration of Greedy Greedy

I’m sure many of you will know that pretty awesome Greedy Greedy game in game, created by Karsten Rutledge. I’m familiar with it. In fact, I’m kind of addicted to it, which is really unfortunate as my table seems to have a sever preference for my partner over myself. This leads to all kinds of tantrums on my part and I therefore thought I would share with you a notecard I wrote to the creator earlier on this evening (following another ass kicking by Jenee):

“Regarding your Greedy Greedy table, I would just like to inform you of damages for which I hold you personally liable.

Owing to absolute frustration, I tore my hair out, scratched my scalp and gauged out my eyes with a teaspoon. Both eyes. In addition, I hit my head against a wall repeatedly. This caused severe concussion and the loss of four of my only five brain cells. Following this act of self-mutilation, my neighbours and close friends sectioned me in an institution, in which I remained for many weeks before I was able to prove my sanity once more.

This was because I was playing YOUR game with my girlfriend. I was stuck on 0 while she whizzed her way up to 10000 with such fortune as to roll four fours on two consecutive turns, while I rolled one five, rolled again and was greeted with that pissy whirring noise it makes when you lose all your points, as if the table is saying to you “Hahaha, asshole. You’re gonna be stuck on zero for all eternity, doomed to rot in a Hell of zero points.” Her luck manifested itself in such a way that she was able to scoop 6000 points in one turn, while (you guessed it) I was STILL on zero.

As such, I advise you of your liabilities to me:-

2 x eyes, gauged out in frustration
1 x course of miracle growth for the hair I tore out
1 x tube of cream for the scratches on my head
4 x brain cells which really weren’t worth that much so I wouldn’t worry
1 x a long stay in a home for the mental

Yours faithfully,

Josue Habana”

Let’s hope the aforementioned creator has a sense of humour ;-)

Begging!

I’ve read several forum posts of late which begin with a terribly sad story and then go on to ask for your Lindens (to help the cause, of course). Then today I was handed a notecard while out shopping which told me about the terrible plight of a single Mother in Colorado whose house burnt down. Her youngest child was killed in the fire, apparently and her elder child is severely ill in hospital. She needed my Lindens (and those of every other person she handed this out to) to help.

Now, call me a cynic (and I am sure I will go to Hell if I am wrong about this) but seriously, why would anyone believe it? It’s a terribly sad scenario if it is true (something I indeed doubt) but even if so, why is she not at the bedside of her child? How did she manage to get back online from home (she did tell me in detail about looking around the room around her at blackened walls) if the house is unliveable?

Perhaps it’s just me, but these begging efforts appear to be becoming more frequent. Do people think that because Lindens aren’t a world currency, we’ll be more likely to just hand them over? Is it because of the convenience of transferring money between people in game that this happens so much?

Whichever way, it is incredibly annoying. First up, if you have a terrible real life scenario, then go deal with it! Turn your computer off and get it fixed. You’ll fix nothing while staring at your pixels! This really makes people feel wary of genuine charity fundraising efforts in game. And the setup in game really is ideal for people to raise money for registered and genuine charities, so it would be a real shame if people became more reluctant to help charity causes because of a few greedy beggars.

Anyway, rant over.

Don’t look at me, I’m shy!

Floating around various stores (as I tend to do when I decide I have nothing better to do with my time and I’d like to spend Lindens on things I will probably never use again) I have noticed something happening more and more! So many clothing and skin stores are now putting out fitting rooms/changing rooms! I really fail to see a purpose in this other than to eat up a prim allowance for no reason whatsoever.
Pixel Fitting Rooms!

I just don’t understand their purpose. Firstly, if people can cam through your house walls to see you getting jiggy on those recent Bits n Bobs purchases, camming through a ‘curtain’ won’t be an issue! In fact, such is the nature of the game that, with such small spaces as fitting rooms, people’s cameras probably automatically catch a glimpse of you squeezing into those pixel pants in a changing room just as they’re turning around! Secondly, what are you hiding? I mean, really? Is it that you don’t want people to recognise your skin seams as freebie? Maybe you don’t want people to see that, by default, your avie has no genitals. Well let me let you into a little secret. You’re definitely not the only person who is genital-less by default! Don’t worry. We won’t all point and laugh at you. And even if you just don’t like having your avie naked in front of people (which some don’t) then…. why would you get changed in a store at all??

Personally, when I change, I put on one item in place of another and I never have to show my pixel torso at all…and I certainly wouldn’t use a changing room for any purpose in game.

At first I thought maybe decorative, not intended for use. Maybe everyone would see that. But no, people actually use them! It baffles me. Perhaps there should be a notecard giver handing out notecards to anyone who enters these changing rooms. It could say,

“Welcome to SuchandSuchaStore. Please note that these changing rooms will not prevent people from seeing you getting changed. Please also note that nobody actually gives a sh*t about your pixel tattoos, virtual body, freebie skin, demo clothing and so on and so forth.” Then if the aforementioned avatar does not vacate, they should be sent flying 1500m in the air for a lesson in ‘OMG WHY?’ studies. In my humble opinion, of course.