BOO! (Updated to include intelligence and caffeine)

My graphics card is shot or something. My monitor only stays up for a few minutes before it goes completely black. The computer keeps running though. For instance, I just typed this sentence BLINDLY! If I close the laptop and quickly open it, the screen comes back up for a few minutes. Then it'll go black again. Eventually, after I open and close the laptop about 95 times, it'll stay up for a few hours.

So if you're trying to talk to me and it seems like I'm ignoring you, I'm probably just frantically opening and closing my laptop.

MY GOD, IT'S A FRUSTRATING WAY TO LIVE! I feel like putting on a Battle Royale skin and beating the CRAP out of somebody right now!

For example, during those past three paragraphs, I opened and shut my laptop 14 times, not kidding. According to the computer techie on the phone, I need to take this Mac to the local Mac Genius Bar (eye roll), but I can't figure out how one goes about getting a computer fixed when one has to use said computer all day every day for work on deadline.

Anyway . . .

Last week I didn't log on for about three days. When I finally did, my turtles were all dead. So were a few chickens. I caved and revived the chickens. I'm gonna have to give one of my friends edit rights and ask someone to kill the chickens for me when I'm not in world because I . . . just . . . can't . . . do it.

Speaking of my friends, I was a little stunned because some people apparently left and other changes happened and I've sort of decided that one day in real life equals one month in Second Life. It's amazing how much can go down in three days. :(

open/close/open/close/open/close/open

Let's talk about Halloween.

I rode the Greatest Halloween Ride Ever. I think it lasted close to 20 minutes and about 65 openings and closings of the laptop. And it looked like this:



HELP! FLYING GEOMETRY!!!



SAVE ME FROM THAT BLOB OF SPIKES AND THAT THING THAT KIND OF LOOKS LIKE A BIRD!



. . . and water?



MY GOD, I DO BELIEVE THAT'S A SWINGING KNIFE!

Yeah, it was like that.

Sigh.

Go check it out though!

open/close/open/close/open/close/open

Let's blatantly call this part "Look at this cool thing my designer friend made!" before anyone can get bitchy about it. :D

LOOK AT THIS COOL THING

MY DESIGNER FRIEND MADE! :D

My friend Nimil dropped a review folder from LuNi Designs on me the other day. The artistic combination of Lucas Gerard and Nimil Blackflag is a most awesome one, and I feel pretty honored to (sort of, but mostly in a fangirl way) know Nimil. She found this blog worthy of one of her review folders and I am now the hottest witch I've ever been.

HOWEVER, I don't think the hat is supposed to look like this. When I went over to the store to check out the price, this outfit had a normal witch hat with it. I like the mushroom head better though. It's got kind of a cool Village People vibe:



Rock.

It's called Wicked, and yep, it's a tribute to Elphaba from Gregory Maguire's best-selling book and the musical on which it was based. You'll probably need a skirt shape for it, and my photo really doesn't do it justice: There are cool little buckles all over it. The complete set, with skin, is 700L. The beautiful green skin alone is 500L. The outfit alone is 350L. And that Windlight setting is Ghost and whoops, it made all the blacks look a little green.

But you don't come here for the award-winning fashion photography, right?

This set — both the skin and the outfit will be removed after Halloween, so get 'em now or get 'em never!

If being wicked isn't your thing, they've also got these kickin' limited-edition Muerta and Muerto (for guys) skins:



They're 500L a pop or 1500L for a fatpack of four and inspired by the works of artist Sylvia Ji. Very cool. That one's called Sugar Skull. My favorite is this one:



It's called Party's Over, and it looks like my face usually does after a long Halloween party. It's a bitch trying to scrub off Halloween makeup at 4 a.m. when you're still slightly trashed.

Hey Linden Lab, I did not just say that!

You can also try your luck and buy a groovy bag of treats for 50L outside LuNi Designs. One in 12 has this Ancestor skin in it:

That dress is called La Ultima Fiesta (350L) and also comes in white. And, um, I just realized there's grass all over the island where I live now, along with . . . a huge stone head over there. Right on.

Note that I have completely given up on trying to get my feet in the frame of my photos.

The skins will be removed after Halloween. The dress will not. I'm psyched that LuNi Designs is branching out into clothing now. (Does anyone even still say "psyched"? I do I do!)

This new skin's called Blight (500L). That's nasty, Nimil. I like it. Unlike the others, it's in the store to stay for a while.

I'll end this post with a new section of my blog that I like to call "Bravo, Bish!" (Yet another "new" section that probably will never ever pop up again.)

BRAVO, BISH!

I saw this chick while I was store-hopping on 50L Friday. From the grey shapes of her, it looked like she put a lot of effort into every detail of her outfit, from the Chanel bag to the, um, eyelashes to whatever the hell was going on with her mouth.

Shoot, I bet ALL of you probably look absolutely fabulous. At least you know I'm not hanging out with you for your looks though.

**gropes around blindly in a blobby grey world**

A (long-winded, rambling) love letter to a friend

I'm working on a blog post called "The Five Things You Need in Your Inventory," but it has absolutely nothing to do with SL fashion or living essentials or anything like that.

My inventory is now at 97K, and no matter how much time I devote to paring it down, it takes a mere week or so for the number to rocket back up a couple of thousand items.

I did the math and the math hurt.

If I want to get my inventory down to, say, a manageable 30K, I'd have to delete about 1,000 items a day for the next 70 days.

Oof.

So I considered closing my eyes and deleting almost everything in one fell swoop. My inventory is categorized by years and then subcategorized by ridiculously named folders: "Unicorns," "Cupcakes," "The Virgin Mary," "Bad-Ass Outfits," "Clothes I Like," "Hair I Probably Will Never Wear," and my favorite early-2008 folder: "Punk/Goth/Neko/Japanese Street." What the hell? Apparently as a noob I decided that ALL those styles fell in one category. ("Japanese Street"????)

I thought about deleting all of 2008, but then I'd be deleting some real classics, like vintage Eshi gowns and pretty much everything Tres Jolie sold that year.

So now I'm back to the game plan of separating my vintage quality items and THEN deleting all of 2008.

(This post is thrilling you, huh?)

Add to that the fact that I haven't been in world much lately. So, um, I'm not really making much progress anyway. But at least I'm not buying and shoving more things in my inventory at the moment!

In my real world, have an editor who's running me ragged -- which is a GOOD THING, Martha Stewart -- and I joined a local group of paranormal investigators, which sounds totally geek squad, but we answer calls from families (and businesses) with supposedly haunted houses and we take road trips to historic haunted hotels and it's totally, totally my thing. We use a lot of equipment like infrared cameras and electromagnetic field detectors and electronic voice phenomena recorders, so it's totally scientific, y'all!!! (Laugh -- no, I don't take it too seriously.)

Plus, one of the "ghost busters" is kind of special to me. ;)

Hey, I also have a job interview with Linden Lab tomorrow! *waves to the people at Linden Lab in case they're checking out this blog.* (God help them -- and me -- if they are.)

It's not really an interview yet; more like an "introductory conversation," and it's been rescheduled a couple of times, so I'm pretty sure they're not screaming my name the minute they leap out of their beds in the mornings, but I'm still excited about it, purely for the fact that it will be the MOST FUN conversation about a job that I'll probably ever have.

And no, I'm not moving back to Arizona for the Big Fancy Job Opportunity I recently mentioned. Thank you to those of you who've been asking, though. It just "wasn't a good fit," as they like to say in the job search realm.

Um, so back to my inventory. I got a wild idea to only keep five things and delete everything else, so then I started trying to figure out what those five things would be.

Once I do, that'll be a really cool post, huh?

HA HA HA! I'm such a dreamer.

If I actually had the cojones to do that, the first item I'd keep without a doubt would be The Bunny. The Bunny is particularly meaningful to me because I bought Bunny after reading about him in the first SL blog I ever discovered, SLFix (oh gosh, I guess that blog is called Moonletters now). Welcome to the world of blogs and letting them seduce you into buying things, little noob! :D

The Bunny actually was one of my first SL purchases. Since then, through all my changes, friends who have come and gone, broken hearts, moments of joy, weird body shapes, funky-looking skins, interesting *cough* home decor and bad hair days, The Bunny has been the one thing that's remained consistent in my SL life. I could get into a big story about how The Bunny reminds me of a giant stuffed rabbit I had as a child, but I won't.

At the moment, The Bunny is patiently putting up with my "Cute Emerald Is Gone and Who the Hell Is This Rock Star-Wannabe Chick with Way Too Much Makeup?" phase. I got sad when I looked through my SL photo album last night. I started out looking so cute and joyful. Now I'm looking rather generic and . . . well, old. A change is gonna have to come.

Anyway, last night I pulled out all my photos of The Bunny and compiled them in a separate album. So without further ado — and wow, sorry, that was A LOT of 'ado' up there — please join me in my photojournalistic walk through time with The Bunny. The pic way up top is the most recent: glammin' it up in Nicky Ree's new fur coat and leather pants.

My very first rental, a skybox after the (first) breakup with Jon. Unfortunately it used to be a skybox associated with an escort service, and way too many men (and women) had landmarked it and were scaring the hell out of me by manifesting in my living room several times a day. Thus the "Do Not Enter" sign, which didn't really help.

Sometimes The Bunny and I would sit and watch strangers TP in . . . and then quickly get ejected.

Feeling melancholy (in my favorite Amanda Bolero dress)

Surveying some Vain Ghostbuster Hunt gifts in my simple little beach house, back during the good old days when gridwide hunts only occurred about three times a year and, as such, were exciting. I kind of miss the innocence and simplicity of my life back then.

That day when half the stuff in my house disappeared, but thankfully not The Bunny! ("Less is more!")

I'll say it for you, Meara and the WTFug gals: "Oh. Honey. No."

Jon and I get back together for a short-lived . . . well, whatever it was, and The Bunny tries to adjust to sharing the spotlight with Jon's damn duck.

Emerald attempts to go Neko for her birthday . . .

. . . and then changes to the FIRST TULI SKIN (weird line on my face courtesy of my stupid computer) that ever looked decent on me, complemented by Zaara fashions.

Sorry, but it's the ugliest dress I've ever bought — and it was 800L to boot. I bought it because a fleeting friend of mine asked me to help out her struggling designer friend. Don't get me wrong, I'm a nice person, but I'm not doing things like that anymore.

Acting the fool and kind of loving it.

Celebrating a shoe . . . and my double-jointed ankle.

Um, the sexy SySy's dress is Win. The attempt to pose is total Fail.

If I were to narrow my "Five Things" challenge to just clothes, that skirt made by my friend Aisuru would be a close contender.

The Bunny gives Emerald a pep talk before the Steam hunt.

Dear Bunny,

Thank you for being a friend. If I didn't sing so off-key, I would totally bust out "The Golden Girls" theme song right now. I never thought I could get so fond of a pixelated rabbit. Cheers to many more years, many more bad skins, many more horrible hairstyles, many more wince-inducing fashions, and many more trippy little houses together — even if my time in SL eventually diminishes to a one-year reunion type thing.

In love and gratitude,

Em

----------------------------------------------------------

Hey beautiful readers, if you've made it to the end of this post, thank you for reading. Watch for my Five Things post coming in a few days. I may try to turn it into a meme then, although I'm not sure if enough people read this blog anymore to spark meme success.

And now I have to go write something brilliant about a media buyer. WOOO HOOO!

Bunny aside, I really love you guys too — each and every one of you — and no, I haven't been drinking Budweiser.

XXOO
Em

Three days of SLobriety!

. . . well now that I calculate, I guess it's only two days. Shoot.

Yep, I haven't logged on for two whole days. That's kind of a big deal for me because I'm what you'd call a Second Life Escapist, which means I use Second Life as a tool to ignore and avoid my real-life problems, issues and responsibilities.

And if you're a cynic or an outsider, please don't read that sentence as yet another person saying, "Look at this evil thing that Second Life does to people!" Trust me, if it weren't Second Life, I'd be doing the same thing with television, books, The Sims, and so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby.

The other day I took a long hard look at my life and once again vowed to try to get some balance in it . . . and not just ANY balance, but HABITUAL balance. During the past two days I've been forcing myself — and yes, sadly it has taken real effort — to incorporate exercise, face-to-face socializing, spirituality and productivity into my daily routine. On top of all that, add "cleaning" to the list because my room, office, closets and bathroom look like a tornado ripped through them.

As soon as these very necessary elements to my healthy existence become effortless and frequent, only then will the luxury of logging in and goofing around in Second Life feel like hard-earned recreation and not dysfunctional procrastination.

I REALLY need to accomplish this goal, which is why I keep aiming for it, because if it were up to me I'd stay cozied up on the couch all day in perpetual playtime mode. In fact, I pretty much have been doing just that for the past year-and-a-half.

But NO MORE! I'm tired of looking in the dictionary and seeing a picture of my face next to the word "sloth."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . However, I might need to break my abstinence streak tomorrow because I need to send all my chickens to that beautiful chicken coop in the sky. I may keep Buck Rogers and El Sopho, only because they're the only survivors of my first-generation brood. And shoot, if I'm gonna keep two roosters, I should also pick one hen.

Sigh.

Anyway, I don't want to log on in a couple of weeks to a bunch of dead chickens. So I'm probably going to do the deed tomorrow morning. Consider this post my written notice, Sion.

The turtles are going too.

And GAH, I also have a modeling job at SySy's that I'm proud to have. I love SySy Chapman's work and it's an honor to showcase her gorgeous creations. And please don't get me wrong — I didn't get that job because I'm an extraordinary AV beauty. I got that job because someone in one of my group chats said, "Would anyone like to be a SySy's model?" and I shoved and trampled about 12 other gals out of the way screaming, "ME!!!!"

So I'll be logging in occasionally to fulfill that obligation as well.

And of course there are my friends. I need to know how they're doing!

Ha HAAAAAA! My God, it's so hard to cut or even loosen the mental and emotional ties to this place, huh?

All that aside, two events today almost made me cop out of this whole plan anyway.

1. I looked at the fashion feeds, saw something enticing, squealed, "I WANT THAT!" and almost logged in to get it. It leads me back to some advice I tried to give many posts back when I was once again trying to wean myself off my SL vice: Don't read SL blogs or feeds if you're trying to be SLelibate!

As an antidote, I grabbed an Elle magazine, quickly spotted something enticing, squealed, "I WANT THAT!" and sent out a few more resumes in the hopes that maybe someday I could afford to buy it.

2. I got a dirty look from my three-year-old niece today. (Face-to-face socializing! Check!) She came over to my house with a Barbie who looked like she'd been around the block a few times. Her hair was all jacked up. Her makeup looked smeared. And she was wearing strappy do-me stilettos that complemented a gold sequined dress with a slit up the front that came dangerously close to flashing her hooha to Ken and anyone else who might be checking her out. (I'm talking about Barbie, not my niece.)

I said, "Wow, it looks like your Barbie had a rough night out on the town last night!"

That comment didn't go over very well with my niece, who hopefully didn't understand what it meant anyway. She definitely didn't like the word "rough" as it pertained to Barbie though, so she proceeded to grab the doll from me and scream at the top of her lungs.

Sheesh.

But anyway, after that episode, I TOTALLY wanted to log on and recreate Barbie's walk-of-shame look with my AV.

I resisted. But when I finally earn a guilt-free SL existence, that's totally going to be my next inworld mission.

Speaking of slut struts, DAMN, what are they trying to do to little girls with these trashy, trashy Barbies these days? In my day (rocks in rocking chair thoughtfully), you got instant popularity status if you had the Yellow Rose of Texas Barbie. She wore a yellow polyester pantsuit, had huge curly hair and a yellow rose tied around her neck with a sheer yellow scarf.

I actually got caught up in a wave of nostalgia tonight and tried to find her on eBay or anywhere else online.

I failed miserably.

[Insert snappy blog post ending here.]

Take my lindens, please!

I tipped a blogger for the first time the other day.

Bloggers usually don't ask for tips, but to me they provide as useful a service as, say, emoting strippers do to pervy AVs in clubs.

And on that note, I guess "tipped" might be kind of a derogatory term. I'm not sure. Most bloggers blog because they love to share new discoveries — mental, emotional and physical — with other people. If we didn't like to write, we wouldn't be doing it, and we sure as hell don't expect tips for it. So maybe I'll reword that first sentence and change "tipped" to "gave a gift of appreciation."

Whatever we want to call it, I'm gonna try to make it a habit.

The blog I'm currently lovin' is Miss Susa's Second Life because MY GOD SHE TAKES A PICTURE OF ALMOST EVERY HUNT PRIZE! Check out THIS POST, for example.

Or THIS POST helped me navigate the Dr. Seuss Hunt, as in "want that" and "pass on that."

In these days of insane hunts with 397 stops, I just don't have the time and am rapidly losing the willpower to even care about them. So on that note, God bless Dudda Susa. Now I look at the prizes on her blog . . . which she numbers!!! . . . and then I jump over to the equally helpful Hunt Locations blog and TP to the stores with the prizes I like.

Is that lazy and lame? I really don't care. The Twisted Hunt almost killed me. It triggered a bad OCD attack and I ended up staying awake until 4 a.m. on the last day insanely trying to finish it — like the world was going to end if I didn't or something.

After that hellish experience, I decided I'm never doing a gigantic gridwide hunt again. I'm boycotting them. Put me on the list of ungrateful A-holes who bitch about gridwide hunts. Do it! Do it! I have a permanent neck and eye ache from staring at my computer screen. The mere word "hunt" is starting to evoke a Pavlovian puke response.

In fact, I'm sort of sick of this computer in general. It's starting to feel crispy outside. I just want to jump in a big pile of leaves. In fact, after I finish this post, I think I will.

I got some turtles. They're boring as hell. I don't understand the HUD. There are playing cards in it. Can my turtles play poker or something? I've asked a million people -- even the creators -- and no one answers this question.



Oops. I forgot to show you the HUD in that picture. But there they are. Thrilling, thrilling turtles. Yeehaw.

Speaking of pets, THIS POST remains the funniest account of getting rid of chickens that I've ever read. It's hard to make me laugh these days, but every time I read that post I end up giggling in horror. In fact, I've bookmarked it so I can read it whenever I need a laugh. In fact, I just read it again and died. That is FREEEEEGIN' HORRIBLE, man. Just awful. I'm calling PETA as soon as I finish giving that post another standing ovation. Bravo!

That's about it. I have nothing else to say. Crown me the Queen of SLapathy these days. I'm worried that this blog has officially gone the route of my real blog. One day I woke up and I couldn't write my real blog anymore. It was just dead. No words. Nothing to say. So I switched to this blog. But blah, I have nothing to write about anymore here either.

I think I'm turning back into a human, one who just thinks about bills, fiber grams, car maintenance, finding a date and my real job all the time. Don't get me wrong: I like my newspaper job. I just can't fly around the newsroom whenever I feel like it.

Oof.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Maybe I'll get my blog mojo back when this never-ending migraine goes away.