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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Don't Hate! I'm just confused!

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Yeehaw! It's wine-and-blog time! Tonight we're drinking Rex-Goliath California Merlot. Frankly, I'm not a fan of merlot. But it was there, so I said, "Why not?"

And yep, I'm bloggin' up a storm this week because apparently we're not supposed to tomorrow. So brace yourself.

But before I get on that topic, let's talk about this RedApple Late Summer dress by Chantkare. I mentioned it yesterday, but since then I've gotten a lot of "Hey! Where'd you get that dress?" from strangers on the streets. And I have to admit, I really love it too. I usually prefer outfits that cling to my neurotically crafted shape, but this dress proved to me that, YES, loose and flowy CAN be a win!

I paired it with Some New Hair by That Guy. I used to be slightly upset about the fact that in my popular circle of friends, I'm the unpopular one who doesn't have any hair named after her. Then I got over it. Hell, I've got a whole Second Life viewer named after me! Could I really ask for anything more?

In fact, I wanted to find that viewer and download it the other day, but when I Googled it all I found were LINKS TO THIS BLOG!! Ha HAAAAA! That's awesome.

And sad.

I don't think 800 people a day are really reading this blog after all.

Shoot where was I?

Oh the dress! I bought it at a Breast Cancer Awareness fashion event, but I wandered over to Chantkare today (because I love you) and discovered you can buy it there now for 350L. I also found it in midnight blue and brown. There may be other colors. I'm not sure because the store looked like this:

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Pretty pretty colored shapes!

That was for all you people who IMed me today and said, "I can't live without your hilarious blobby pictures!"

Speaking of, I put off buying my new computer until tomorrow. I "built it" online today first, and it's going to cost close to $3K. I'm skittish about spending that much money until I'm positive I'm not going to get fired from my new job. Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to just suck it up and get it tomorrow, because this lame laptop is going in the shop. And I need a computer because I still have a few last newspaper articles to write this week. *sniff*

In fact, I was feeling so sentimental about the death of my newspaper career today that I threw on this "Black or White?" dress from Stitch By Stitch. I bought it at Modavia Fashion Week (you had no idea I've been lurking around so many fashion events, did you?), but you can get it at the store or on XStreet for 295L:

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(Why use an expensive photo studio when you can just stand around in the vast empty expanse that is my yard?)

Then I realized that this dress really isn't about newspapers — it's about Michael Jackson. I figured that out from the words "Michael Jackson Collection" that I only just noticed in the name . . . not to mention all over the dress. But hey, that's cool! I like Michael Jackson. And I love Sevenstar Amat. I've never met her, but I want to find her and grab her and give her a huge hug and scream, "I LOVE YOU!"

But I won't. Because that's just creepy.

I wonder if she has more stuff in her Michael Jackson collection though?

As long as we were briefly on the topic of my yard, look at this picture and join me in making a big sad face:

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Yep, I killed all my chickens and removed all the chicken coops. Now my yard just has a bunch of random junk in it. I'm concerned that I'm not going to have the time for the care and breeding of chickens anymore. And I'd like to have some furniture for a change. But I feel sort of sad and empty without my brood. It's gonna take awhile to get over the loss.

OK, my headline promised you the possibility of the opportunity to do some hating, and I'm not going to let you down. I have some opinions. They may make you grumpy. They may hurt someone's feelings. I hope not, but you never know in this place. People are touchy.

Here we go.

-- I've been reading the signage for tomorrow's Artist's Voice STOP! protest. You can read all about it HERE. "No uploads, no sales, no purchases, no blog posts." For 48 hours.

So . . . support content creators and protest content theft by . . . not buying anything from the hardworking content creators??

I'm so confused. A purchase inworld is the simple exchange of lindens from one AV to another. You make something I like, I buy it from you, I get what I want, you get money, we both win.

How is a 48-hour shopping boycott gonna stick it to The Man???

"We'll show you, Lindens! We'll run our friends' businesses in the ground and then we'll scream 'HA!!!!!!!' in your big Linden faces!!!"

I have some creator friends who are concerned about the impact this protest is going to have on their businesses for the next two days if people really decide not to shop. And maybe I'm just an uneducated simpleton, but I don't really get it either. Somebody educamate me. I won't argue with you.

People have asked me if I'm going to STOP! and my answer is, "I don't know." I hesitate to do anything that would halt the SL economy because it's only going to hurt the content creators, not the Lindens. Plus, I'm still trying to collect all my Linden bears! Can't we wait a month before we get all up in their faces??

Ironically, as much as I respect most of the people who organized this campaign, I doubt they themselves could even STOP! by, say, NOT LOGGING IN AT ALL . . . for TWO WHOLE DAYS! And Plurk counts too, kids! Bring on the Haterade, but I don't think they could do it. I'll admit, I tried it two weeks ago and it was HARD! I got the SHAKES!!!!! But I did it! Some turtles and chickens had to die for the cause, but I did it!

*throws down the gauntlet*

But maybe that'd be more effective -- if we all left Second Life empty, silent and motionless for two days and, hell, even got up off our arses and volunteered in our real live communities or something!!! Gasp!

-- I read a blog post the other day that attempted to give a balanced review -- as in, both negative and positive comments -- of some new skins. I had mixed opinions about it, primarily because the post was full of grammatical errors. You claim to be a writer and a fashion expert, so you write a blog with some pretty harsh comments about some skins — yet your writing would make my dearly departed eighth-grade English teacher flip over in her grade.

So is it OK if I do the same thing and say, "This post was pretty decent; HOWEVER, the subjects and verbs didn't agree in several sentences, and several words were spelled wrong. Poor grammar is BAD! It's so sloppy when people misplace their modifiers! In my opinion, this post is worth a glance, but doesn't hold up well in the long run"?

In the real world, if your designs suck and your clothes are poorly made, unfortunately you don't make the pages of Vogue or Harper's Bazaar, period. I tend to lean toward the camp that believes that good fashion deserves publicity, and flawed skins or clothes don't. But I guess I'll compromise and say that if you're going to bring down the pain on a designer, at least get your grammar right. And don't give me that "English is not my first language" excuse either.

Truth be told, I actually like that blogger. I do! I do! I just found that particular post to be slightly ironic.

GAWD DAMN, EVERYTHING'S SO IRONIC THIS WEEK!

-- The one thing I really missed this year was House of Heart's annual Halloween pack of spooky-looking hair. I know HoH has undergone changes lately, primarily the name change to Hairy Situations. I wish they would have consulted with me first because that name makes me think of hairy legs and the need for a bikini wax. I'm not hatin', I'm just sayin'.

Now that I've p*ssed off a bunch of popular avatars, I'm gonna leave you with another hand-drawn masterpiece rendition of Prad Prathivi, surrounded by a blobby gray harem:

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We were all trying to get the Pink Fuel Subscribo to resend the recent free skin gift that we missed . . . and wailing because it wasn't working. Well Prad wasn't, actually. He was just there to give me that flower.

I want to end this post on a positive note:

THIS BLOG is the most beautiful "freebie blog" I've ever seen. (*stands up and applauds the photography*)

Do yourself a favor and check it out.

That was just for you, Prad. ;)

10 comments:

Alicia Chenaux said...

I just wanted to say I love you. LOL Your posts make me smile so much.

Amie Adamski said...

Hmm good point on the the boycotting stuff, I guess it could be compared to people declaring not to buy gas because then they will lower the prices that happened last year. Does it really matter?

Oh well.

Shattered said...

And as someone who's familiar with the petroleum industry, I can say that boycotting buying gas would not change things, even if people actually stuck to it. ;) Dropping the price of the gas does not change what they (the stations/distributors) paid for it, and would actually cause them to lose *more* money because they'd be losing money (negative profit FTL) on the gasoline sales, rather than just not selling the gas and still having it available to sell.

People organize protests, but they don't stop and think for two seconds about what they're actually doing. It all look like "Who cares if the protest does more harm than good, we screamed because being loud is cool!"

nimil said...

i really think this "protest" is silly... it hurts the creators and LL isn't really going to pay attention. did they pay attention back in 06 when a ton of shops closed after copybot appeared? no... so why do they think this is going to do anything? i definitely agree with shattered's opinion here..

ARIADNE KORDA said...

Agree totally about the protest - totally counter-productive.

An massive awareness campaign by LL would be helpful but ain't going to happen.

Creators giving stuff free or at a reduced rate for a short period to say and saying WHY, as in 'this is what I do, please don't accept copies' might have helped too but that, y'know, might have impacted their profits.

I know some creators did that. Airhead here got her dates mixed up and thought we were around November 3. This is what happens when you freelance and your deadline is 'next Monday'.

Eliza Wrigglesworth said...

I have to agree with you and your commentors Em.

Being passionate about making a difference is great, but this idea is flawed on sooo many levels. It's like last year, when all of those people were gathering at shops with stolen content, and griefing them until the whole sim crashed. It's just going to cause more problems for legitimate businesses.

And about the idea of going to infohubs, and educating the noobs. Don't they realize that these people are busy trying to figure out how to open a box, and are too new to give a rats @ss about content theft? Do you remember the frustration of the learning curve when you started out? GAH! Sure, education will help, but you have to be consistent, and target the right audience.

And before anybody gets a chance to get p!ssed off about my point of view, let me just say that yes, I do have a lot of experience in the matter. I run a group of over 600 members, and they do come to me frequently with questions about this subject. They find stolen content fairly regularly, and we handle it as quietly and drama free as possible. It's important to follow up every couple of days too.

I have no solutions, and I don't really believe there is one, but causing problems for the innocent is surely not the way to go here.

Emerald Wynn said...

Yeah, I read a post by a blogger the other day that said something along the lines of "if you don't agree with this action, don't just bitch about it -- suggest or do something else."

I admit I don't have an alternate suggestion. What if people got what they asked for and the Lindens cracked down SO MUCH that everything was TOO carefully monitored, everyone had to ONLY use Linden-created viewers, and the creation process got somewhat stifled due a massive amount of checks and balances that suddenly got implemented.

Then I bet everyone would be in an uproar about the lack of freedom.

Content theft is horrible. I would like to join residents in protesting it and supporting content creators in a productive way. I just don't know what that way is. Starting a discussion about it helps. And the INTENTIONS behind the Artist's Voice are admirable — I just don't understand the resulting actions.

Prad said...

I swear I'm losing weight. And when did I become white?

In other news, I'm boycotting prunes. Take that, world.

Emerald Wynn said...

IT'S PRAD!

Unknown said...

Oh you crack me up Em. It's 7am and I'm trying to laugh quietly so I don't wake up the house. Never leave :-))