You never know when you'll need a good monkey

HEY look at my monkey!

I am blogging right now because --

1. I'm supposed to be writing a PR plan and I can't get started. This is not procrastination. It is terrified writer's block. So I figured maybe if I could just get some words down somewhere, they'll start coming out everywhere.

Kind of like taking a literary laxative.

2. I am so sick of seeing that fugly cow-suit picture in the previous post as the lead pic every time I come over here to scan my blogroll. I'm gonna admit that deciding to be a cow for a day was a post-oral-surgery Vicodin moment, and the LAQ Tasha2 skins on me are kind of a mistake. Tasha was the first skin I bought as a noob. I feel obligated to buy her whenever she's updated, as an homage to my SL beginnings. (laugh)

So along the lines of frivolous purchases:

3. I thought that since it made headlines, maybe I should say something about my inventory.



But first, I urge you to LOVE MY MONKEY up there. It is, hands down, the most awesome monkey I own in SL and that's saying a lot because I consider myself to be a connoisseur (wow, that word is a bitch to spell) of pixelated monkeys. It looks kind of flat and one-primmy in that picture, but it's actually a reasonable, fully dimensional eight prims.

So if quirky cartoon animal friends are your bag, I suggest you check out Duggy Bing's Cartoonimals store, which DELIGHTS the hell out of me. I got a pack of three monkeys for . . . yikes, I can't remember. Maybe in the range of 400 - 600L. They're animated and respond to movement around them. I have two of them out in my yard right now. I don't like the third one because it throws monkey poop at people. If that one were trans, I'd give it to one of my crude friends.

I want Duggy Bing to make a cartoon unicorn. Maybe I'll drop him a pleading notecard.

I guess discussing the cartoon animals in my inventory is a good way to lead into why my inventory is a newsworthy monster. I posted the above picture on Plurk and the next thing you know, BAM, 15 minutes of New World Notes fame. WOOT!

YES, my inventory was at 105K last week. And when Hamlet wrote a blog post asking "How does something like this happen?" I had to laugh at one outraged comment that said, "I would like to hear an explanation from this user."

OK, here's my explanation:

I could tell you that I'm a sentimental fool and that every precious thing in my inventory has a story, but that would be a fib. Granted, there *is* a folder called "the first dress I ever bought" and another one called "the first fancy dress I ever bought" and another one called "special gifts from special friends," but I'm not kidding myself much on the nostalgia front beyond a few select folders.

Of course there's also the entertainment factor. I have my inventory primarily divided into years with subfolders in them, and looking through those folders *is* a little bit like taking a journey through my whole SL, watching how my taste in clothes changed, seeing what things grew to hold more value to me, reading notes, looking at "favorite landmarks" and how they've evolved (from Club Chillaxin' to Life is Good, haha!) -- to me, my inventory is a little bit like walking through a museum and it never ceases to amuse me in that respect.

But that's no excuse for hoarding 105K items.

When your inventory hits six figures, your memory lane becomes the road to hell.

I guess "hoard" is kind of the key word. I approach things -- freebies in particular -- with a hoarder's mentality, as in, "Hey, I might actually NEED this nine-piece latex outfit someday" or "You never know when an occasion might call for a cupcake hat or a talking tampon!" or "Maybe one day I'll decide to go Neko!" or "Someday I'll wear this koala bear backpack. I will! I will!"

I don't think that way in real life, and maybe I stockpile things in Second Life because you never know where the day will take you. Anything is possible. One minute you could be slumming around your prefab house and the next minute you could be sitting on the moon with some new friends from Japan:



Bad picture, sorry. But would you expect anything else?

I am also at times a lucky chair stalker, but to be honest, I stalk lucky chairs not so much for their prizes but because I usually make friends around them. I feel blessed to be a member of Serenity Semple's Lucky Kitty Crew — they are all beautiful, interesting souls and we're sort of a very mixed bag of characters brought together by the alphabet and a fondness for staring at ugly chairs.

I like the fact that I can just hang out around them and sort inventory silently without feeling pressure to say anything entertaining, knowing that I don't have to be anything more than The Letter E if I don't feel like it, that they accept me the way I am:



. . . even when I'm not wearing pants. (That's me with the butt hanging out.)



There IS a long leggings option with this Scylla Bounty Hunter Outfit by Nardcotix (bought at the "2010 — The Future is Now" Rezzables exhibit), but why wear those when I can get all Apocalyptic Lady Gaga on yo ass? :D

(Shades were a group gift from Lelutka; boots shown in the top pic are from Anexx; hair is from . . .  TUKINOWAGUMA!)

Uh, so yeah, that pastime can lead to inventory accumulation. Add to that my former enthusiasm for gridwide hunts and the fact that 2009 was my Unemployed Year of Chasing Freebies and, well hell, before you know it, you've got a six-figure inventory.

Those are all lovely reasons, but if you want the bottom line, the truth is that I'm just DAMN LAZY. I love the thrill of the hunts, but I hate unpacking the boxes. As for group gifts, subscribo gifts, the fruits of many sales, the aftermaths of my shopping-addiction sprees and all the other stuff I manage to accumulate, I know I should be sorting them, wearing them and/or deleting them -- but I'm never in the mood.

Someone in the NWN comments said that I'm probably the type of person who lets her e-mail inbox fill to impossible proportions -- and that's actually true too. People like me -- and I know there are more out there -- lack the self-discipline and organizational skills to control things that build up on a daily basis. Am I proud of it? Nope. It's just one of my many flaws that I've come to know and accept.

I've heard that a huge inventory can cause lag. I would love to know if this is really true or just a myth. The aforementioned outraged NWN commenter said that I'm not only lagging myself with my monster inventory, but also any people around me. If this is true, I'm horrified. Because I'm loving! And caring!

Anyway, I'll have you know that I've been deleting things like a mad woman all weekend. My inventory is down to 82K today and counting. That's kind of a huge feat for two days.

YIP YIP! :)

Are we normal? Do we care? Look at my bellybutton with me.

My friend Fricker walked up while I was rolling around in the snow taking this picture. That's not embarrassing or anything.

Hell yeah, I got milk.

Camp for 15 minutes at Cutie Honey to get this whole cow ensemble, minus the shoes. The shoes are from Anexx. The cow (ACTUALLY, it's a BULL!) hat with hair is included though! So is the darling little purse. And those eyes on the hat are animated. Cutie, honey! That skin is in the Tasha2 fatpack at LAQ. And that's my bullish Look of the Day for you.

I love my friends because they tolerated me in this outfit for a whole day.



That sexy chick in green actually is a male friend of mine in his female alt. It irritates me to no end when a man creates a female AV that's hotter than mine -- with better clothes, nonetheless. Sheeeeeesh, I am a complete failure as a woman in all worlds. *weeps*

As long as we're on the topic of friends, I have one in real life who tends to drive me insane. (And I hate the fact that I have to distinguish "real life," especially in this particular post.) I'm not going to psychoanalyze her or anything, but I do think she's the type of person who can't be alone with her thoughts -- mainly because she calls me about 35 times a day. I can only take her in small doses because she's a little clingy and Never. Stops. Talking.

Even at our age, which is crawling reluctantly towards 40, she's still really big on going to bars and picking up men, and she'll pretty much go home with any guy who gives her the time of day. Then she wails all week about why he's not calling her. It makes me sooooooooo damn tired. And hell no, she doesn't seem to have any other friends. I wonder why.

The one thing she simply cannot compute is why, if I'm not doing anything on the weekends, I sometimes don't want to go out. And these days, "sometimes" is a lot of the time. It's cold outside and I'd rather stay home in pajamas with hot chocolate and goof around with my friends in world than go to a lame bar and sit around dork-watching. I'm perfectly content to hang out in Second Life, and when I do, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I don't feel socially unfulfilled. I probably laugh harder at things in SL than I do in real life . . .

. . . like at my friend Soph and her creepy, creepy Zooby baby:



That thing is disturbing and expensive.

(runs and hides)

Meanwhile, I bought a cheaper one for 200L at a black-market baby store:



The stuff horror movies are made of: that baby and my ugly hand.

Back to my friend -- I finally broke down and came out of the SL closet one night when she was being annoyingly insistent in demanding an explanation about why I wouldn't go out. I gave her the whole "sometimes I hang out online with my friends who live in other states. We use this forum called Second Life. It's like a chat room but a lot more fun. I just feel like doing that tonight instead of the bar thing" spiel.

I gave her the Second Life Web address. I encouraged her to check it out. She did. Later she called me complaining about it. She didn't understand it. It stressed her out. She thought it was stupid. She couldn't figure out how to do anything. It seemed weird. Was I being serious? Why didn't I wanna go get sushi?

I started wondering if any shrinkish-type people have done any studies on what type of personality embraces and thrives in a virtual world and what type of personality shrieks in protest and runs from one. Demographically, my friend and I are the same: We're both single professional women in the same age range who are pretty much hanging out with each other by default in a land of married people. Almost everyone else we know here in suburbia is part of a couple. It can get lonely, so I choose to seek solace in a virtual reality while she strives to create one that looks like everyone else's. We both look at each other's recreational lives and balk.

When I first logged into Second Life, my initial reactions were those of delight -- "Oh cool, look what I can do!" -- and curiosity -- "How can I do this? What happens if I go here?" But meanwhile, the majority of my friends who have checked it out have reacted with "This is stressful" and "I feel stupid and weird." Even my younger brother -- a Sims fan who also worships his PS3 at age 30 -- "doesn't get it" and thinks "it's for losers."

My friend gave Second Life a whopping 15 minutes before she returned to doggedly plugging along in pursuit of her ideal reality, which boils down to some resemblance of a social life and a husband. If I don't go out with her, she goes out alone. Although I want fun and a husband too, right now I'd rather stay home in flannel pajamas than get prettied up and go out and hunt for them. I'm tired. At the moment my job is kicking my cow tail.

But notice how I described my very determined, no-nonsense, "Second Life is bizarre" friend in this blog -- I made her sound as dysfunctional, lonely and unappealing as possible. Did I subconsciously just do that to make myself feel better? Flip the scenarios around so giving it your all in real life is annoying and weird? She kind of is annoying and weird though. SHE IS! Maybe I'd rather be alone on my laptop in a fantasy world than plummet to that depth of desperation in the real one. Maybe WE ALL need help.

Does the fact that I'd rather hang out in Second Life these days mean that I'm lazy, scared, unmotivated, introverted, depressed, unable to function in normal society and/or a geek? Or does the fact that I take to a virtual world like a duck takes to water mean that I'm more open-minded, technologically advanced, forward-thinking, imaginative, a better communicator, a curious explorer and/or a creator by nature? Am I embracing a boundless and futuristic concept or am I hiding from the real world and its challenges? While I'd like to think it's the former, sometimes I worry that it's the latter. Truthfully it's probably a little bit of both.

I guess the bigger question is do I care?

Usually I don't, but occasionally when I witness such a visceral unpleasant "what the hell is this" reaction to the concept of Second Life, I worry that maybe I'm the one who's not normal.

Then I wander off to camp for cow outfits.

/me shakes off the emo and scares you with a big damn picture of my face

This'll be fast because I have to go to work!

Tasha by RaC was the first skin I ever bought as a noob. And since we've all been reflecting on our noobish looks lately, I'll admit that any time LAQ updates Tasha, I buy the skin purely out of sentiment. I actually liked the last update and I'm wearing it in my current profile pic (that really needs to be updated).

I just wanna say the word "update" again: Update.

I logged in this morning to find a note that Tasha2 is now out at LAQ, so I ran over there like Flo Jo and grabbed the demos.

Ummmmm . . . what do you think about that face?

Wow, the lips seem really huge to me. I'm not a fan of the big-lipped, blow-up doll look. (Oops, I just ticked off a bunch of big-lipped people.)

I love those free Aurora eyes by Poetic Colors (they're out now, go get them!) but I think they're also kind of distracting me from making a skin judgment. It doesn't help that I'm wearing the light prim that comes with them.

(Prims on my eyes! My eyyyyyyyyyyyyes!)

If I didn't have to jump in the shower right now, I'd act like a professional blogger and show you the rest of the Tasha2 skin and more makeup options, but I must pound coffee and fly like a briefly escaped parakeet returning to its dirty cage of captivity.

Apologies — as you can see from my post below, I went to bed feeling tired and overloaded with emo last night. I found out that they're probably going to shut down my account at work and lay off me and my team. We're kind of on death row right now.

Sigh.

I hate working anyway.

But I don't wanna get all mopey about that here! So here's a picture of something that makes me happy!



I got this Keytar for 100L (I think) at Miyoko Magic after I saw my friend Ali post a pic on Plurk. It looked like my kind of thing and it totally is. It has an animation that makes you look like a little Keytar star when you wear it.

That dress is the new release at Vita's Boudoir, called La Fenice, and I'm so not doing it justice in my Keytar star pic. As much as I love the dress, it's kind of a bitch to mod the skirt to fit my shape. I ended up giving up and modding my shape to fit the skirt, but it still looks a little wonky. I'm never buying a skirt made entirely out of feathers again. (No offense, feathers of the world.)

That cute (yet blurry) dolly-looking skin is the Tres Blah Hiccup skin from the Designers United 3 event. Everyone was talking about it so I didn't mention it here at the time, but NOW I WILL! I like how it makes me look like a character in a book.

I'll come back and edit in the name of whoever makes those shoes, but they actually are SO COOL in that they come in a prim-toe version and a non-prim toe version. Since I'm banning most prim toes from my life, I'm rocking my feet au naturel right now. Go ahead. Laugh at my ugly toes. I don't care. You have them too!

I have to go -- have a great day!

my apathy is killing me

Blue Song
by Tennessee Williams

I am tired.
I am tired of speech and of action.
If you should meet me upon the
street do not question me for
I can only tell you my name
and the name of the town I was
born in — but that is enough.
It does not matter whether tomorrow
arrives anymore. If there is
only this night and after it is
morning it will not matter now.
I am tired. I am tired of speech
and of action. In the heart of me
you will find a tiny handful of
dust. Take it and blow it out
upon the wind. Let the wind have
it and it will find its way home.

Random-ass stuff that's going on in my yard

As you may know, I try really hard to make my yard into a wonderland for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment of those around me.

Combine my artistic landscaping with a bunch of rowdy neighbors and their friends and God only knows what the hell goes on over there when I'm not online.

Unfortunately yesterday, as part of my New Year's resolution to delete at least three things from my inventory a day, I saw something in there labeled "Yellow" and rezzed it out of curiosity. It turned out to be a mother-bleeping animated built-to-scale solar system and I ended up chasing planets around for an hour.

I still haven't caught Earth and Mars. Or maybe it's Mercury, actually. At first it was amusing but now it's irritating me to no end.



GAH!!!!! Those suckers are fast. It took me nine tries just to get them in a photo.

If you care about fashion at all, you've already read about that dress, but I do want to point out those cool Ribbon Seams Leg Tattoos (50L) from JetDoll. Who needs stockings when you can ram a needle into your skin and permanently draw a long black line down your legs?

I also can't get enough of those Vivien shoes from Courtisane. I got mine at the shoe fair, but I believe you can get them at the store for 1200L for a color pack of three.

I need a segue RIGHT HERE.

You know how I'm always begging people to slap the Midnight Mania board for the animals at Neon Frog? Well, yesterday I moseyed over there with the intention to -- GASP! -- just buy one.

I didn't realize the animals there come in three versions: copyable for 700L (in case you want to fill up your whole yard with a pride of lions), trans only for 300L, and ANIMATED for either 1200L or 1600L (sorry, I forgot).

I bought the giraffe. Close up, it's kind of creepy actually. But it can move by itself, you can ride it and control it, you can ride it while it controls itself, or you can tell it to ATTACK people!

WOOT!


(I've been neurotic about the length of my AV's neck lately, so I thought I'd point out the difference.)

Back up off me and my Attack Giraffe, bishes!

Um.

Lately I've been getting a bunch of notecards begging for more pictures of me in my underwear.

OK, if you insist.

Night Singh has a groovy little lingerie shop called Nightsong Lingerie and Babydolls, and I think his work is just beautiful. What's more, I'm pretty sure everything in there is an affordable 100L.

If you read my last post, you saw the back of this Blossom Babydoll. Here's the front:



and here's a picture of . . .

uh . . .

Shoot, I thought I took more pictures than this one. Oh well. Next time.

In other horrifying news, I went to a new hairstylist in RL last week and she chopped the hell out of my shoulder-length hair almost to look JUST LIKE THAT HAIRSTYLE in that picture, except without the hip asymmetrical element.

The problem is, I don't have my AV's cute little delicate face in RL, so I look like Queen of the Soccer-Mom Dorks now.

I cried about it yesterday. Seriously. It took me a year to grow my hair to its former length. Now I have to start all over.

*sniff*

And on that depressing note, I brought two folders worth of work home this weekend. I'd better get to it.

:(

Anti-SLocial (or 'Emerald kicks off 2010 bitching and moaning')

Rough weekend.

I'm not gonna tell you what I'm wearing in that picture because, really, who the hell cares?

I will admit that I have a fondness for making my AV look completely trashed. It's right up there with my passion for collecting SL Virgin Mary kitsch.

Anyway.

I have a toothache right now that makes me want to sit in a corner somewhere and scream like a small child. It's the kind of toothache that can only lead to waaaaaaaaay more pain in a dental chair sometime in the near future.

That could be one reason why I just don't feel like talking to anyone. Apologies for my anti-SLocialness. I've run away from so many people and dodged so many parties lately. But it's not you. It's me. And if you think it's bad in SL, you should see me in RL. :\

So yeah, I'm in pain and I'm really prone to irritation these days and unfortunately one of the things that's currently bugging me is the iheartSL fashion feed. (Sit back and watch as all the men flee this post now . . . . . . . . )

Let me preface this bitch session by saying that I'm not bashing Gogo. In fact, I love Gogo for all the work she does to organize that feed. Without iheartSL and New World Notes, I honestly wouldn't know what the hell is going on.

I used to turn to that site for fashion inspiration and ideas. But now on many days, reading it is like listening to a broken record skip over and over -- in more ways than one, actually. Because there's one particular chick on there who writes something like six posts a day and it's never anything new and it's mainly just "look how cute I look in this thing that everyone else is blogging!" posts and it makes me want to shake my computer and scream,


"YOU! YES, YOU! SHUT THE HELL UP!!!"

(God, that is bitchy!)

. . . and that's kind of my clue that it's time to turn off the computer, go outside, get some fresh air, circulate around the real world and let some real people piss me off instead.

AND HEY EVERYBODY! Did you know that --

-- Designers United 3 is all carnivalish and cool?
-- Elate sent out a cute dress to its Subscribo members?
-- Exodi gave out a fabulous skin as a NewYear's group gift?
-- And so did &bean?
-- If I see those Miel snowshoes one more time, I'm going to throw them at somebody?
-- The 50L Friday dress at Luck is must-have?
-- Exile has new hair?
-- The Atomic VIP group has a sweater dress gift you shouldn't miss?
-- Pacadi Jasha's free red Amba dress is fab fab fab?
-- Lelutka distributed three stunning gowns to its group members?
-- Evie's Closet has a gorgeous 50L gown out right now? (Actually I can never get enough of Evie and her closet.)
-- DCNY released a new outfit just for the Annie Hall in you?

Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.



I can totally relate to Chic Aeon when she posted a plea for people to stop writing about the same things. I'm starting to question the point of having a fashion feed if it's just going to be the same stuff in every post. You could argue that although everyone's blogging the same thing, each blogger is visually and fashionably interpreting that thing in a different way, and I could argue back that I'm STILL SICK OF IT.

Hey, speaking of Chic, I want to THANK HER for sharing all her Windlight settings (link is HERE). I've been having such a blast with them. They are going to make for a truly bright and beautifully lit 2010.

*wink*

HA HA! Sorry, I couldn't resist that. I've been reading Chic's blog since I was a scared little noob and she almost always slips some winks in.

Speaking of (yeah, I like that segue) being a noob, I resolve to change my blog header this year. I know it looks amateurish and lame, but it has such sentimental value.

And one last thing that's been bugging me: I never found out who my Secret Santa was in the Fashion Bloggers group. I want to thank that generous person profusely. So if you're out there, hugs and please holler at me! As for me, I sent my person a final gift with a "Surprise! I'm your Secret Santa!" note and never heard anything. Ooch. I guess you can chalk me up as a total Secret Santa FAIL. Either that or she missed it because her inventory was overflowing with shoes? *wipes away a tear*

AND ANOTHER THING! Dutchy, I love your blog but WTF IS THIS? (rolls around on ground shrieking and laughing)

Anyway . . .

Let's kick off the New Year with a picture of my butt:


(Blossom babydoll lingerie, 100L, at Nightsong Lingerie and Babydolls)

Happy New Year everyone!

*kicks 2009 to the curb and beats it to a bloody pulp with a leftover candy cane*