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! :)