'What's Skin Fair? Some kind of a sex slave auction?'

*points at headline* A male friend of mine actually asked me that question the other day. Ha ha! He has a good point. If you have no clue what a skin fair is, the mind can reel with erotic possibilities.

OK. Blogging under the influence of Ambien. Ready? Here we go:


Ahwwwwww yeeeaaaaah!

Look at that hair! Look at that skin! Now look at some words!

Miraculously someone took this blog seriously enough to deem me worthy of an early blogger's pass to the Vanity Universe Skin Fair. Before you think I'm bragging, don't. The privilege didn't include mountains of blogger packs of skins. Well, actually I did see some other bloggers get those. They're cooler than I am. As for me, I bought almost all mine. My MasterCard is wailing in pain now. Or victory.

I'm already bored. Let's switch subjects for a sec:

Hey, ever since Hamlet Au once advised bloggers to use plenty of pictures to break up SL blog posts, I've been doin' it! So before we get to skins, let's pause for a quick look at the makeover the Amaretto horses just got:


yeep get it the hell away from me

The new Amaretto update horses remind me of the first time I tried shrooms in college. I had kind of a bad trip: Angels plummeted from the night sky and smashed into millions of pieces all over the beach. The moon cloned itself and they both spun around like pinwheels. The stars literally laughed at me, raining maniacal "HAHAHAHAHAHA!"s down on my head. And you know how it is, I made it worse by thinking, "What if all this stuff is really going on all the time, and we can only see it when drugs lift the cloudy veil that shrouds our sober selves?" At one point I looked over at my then-boyfriend (who grew up to be a permanent mental hospital resident — DON'T DO DRUGS, KIDS!) and his face was stretching out in a very terrifying "American Werewolf in London"-kinda way. He looked exactly like this horse.

"Amaretto Breedables: We slap a saddle on your bad drug trip and giddy the hell up!"

OK, that was kind of a weird digression. Sorry. I'll probably come back and edit it out.

And now, back to skin.

After I got my sneak peek . . . you know what, wait. I need to say something else. I've seen way too much of this in blogs lately: "sneak peak." Please stop it. Unless it's a stealthy mountaintop creeping up behind you, it's not a "sneak PEAK." It's "PEEK." You know, like peeking through a keyhole? (Although when was the last time you saw a keyhole, let alone peeked through it?)

Anyway, after I got my sneak peek of the skin fair, I was filled with regret that I didn't take a decent picture of the venue for my SL photo album-slash-blog. So I went back to do that a couple of days after the fair opened. Here's a picture of skin fair this year:


I think the sim only allows in two people at a time. I've been trying for a week now. Sheeeeesh.

The Vanity Universe Skin Fair lasts through March 6. If you do get in, I encourage you to follow these simple rules:

1. For the love of God, be careful when you're clicking that "Buy Demo" button. There's a reason why the "Buy Demo" button is often right next to the "Buy the Fatpack" button, and it's because wise creators know there are plenty of idiots like me who are drinking cheap merlot while they're cruising the Skin Fair.

Six-dollar wine + Skin Fair = "Oh sh*t, I thought I was getting a demo but I ACCIDENTALLY BOUGHT THE FATPACK!":


This photo should be titled, "Portrait of an Oh Sh*t Moment," and appropriately, this skin looks a little pissed off. It's called Entice by Daring. I'd never heard of Daring before. Later, when I talked to Creator Daring Cresci, she told me her store has only been open for two months. You go, girl! You give good skin.

2. Wear as few attachments as possible and turn on your Avatar Rendering Cost monitor (is it a monitor? radar? display? indicator? pick a word!) before you TP into Skin Fair. That way, you can walk around feeling smug and superior to all the people with long red numbers.

3. DON'T BE A SHEEP and run to the most popular skin designers' booths first. You can get back to them another day. (Good luck with that.) Instead, sprint by those booths yelling, "BAAAAA, BITCHES!" (that was a sheep sound) and go scope out some new-to-you creators. You might be pleasantly surprised. I was!

Let's get back to Daring. Besides the skin I bought on accident, I bought two other skins from Daring:


This one's called Anxiety, and in case you can't tell, I'm wearing the boobalicious version of it. But before we go any further, you need to stop what you're doing and run over to The Dressing Room and get this Aurora hair (70L) by CheerNo. It evokes reactions like this one:

[2011/02/26 21:28] Ooolah (ulaa.coronet) shouts: omfg your hair!!! JESUS WEPT! [INSERT MORE EXPLICIT SHOUTING HERE] WHOA!

Yeah. Like that.

The Feather Outfit in Brown (120L) is by Acid & Mala. There's a longer version of the top (100L) over at the Elliot location as part of this month's Oh My Stars-Oh-Rama event. It's a little less tribal-hoochie than this one.

I also bought Daring's Moody skin in shade 5:


It's got a slightly sweeter face, IMHO. Look at the cute little nose!!  (Hair: Whitney in Treacle, streaked, by Truth)

As you know, I'm all about the face. I'm not as picky about the naughty bits as many other skin lovers are. (Probably because nobody sees them.) Those people may want to take a good look at the nips on these skins though. And the landing strips. And some of the butt shading. They may not appeal to everyone. Also, all three skins have a dark hairbase . . . and no other option. They all have cleavage options, though, and the Entice skin has abs/no abs versions.

Single skins at Daring are 799L. Fatpacks of five makeups are 2499L.

This post is getting tedious. I'm gonna stop now.

SMACK THAT TP BUTTON!
Vanity Universe's third-annual Skin Fair
Daring, the store
The Dressing Room
Acid & Mala on Elliott
Truth
Gargoyle pose at top by Saturnine Dreams


P.S. This is my cat Tila Tequila. Don't you wanna just chase her with a lemon? I'm trying to resist the lure of these things and pretty much shake my affection for breedables altogether. But I'll admit, when I clicked the "Cuddle Me!" button on the cat's menu and saw this animation, I did say, "AWWWWW!" out loud.

If you too are going through an SL cat phase and you missed out on the limited-edition colored SweetCatS for Valentine's Day, I have a ton of these boxed kittens in all colors for sale at 1200L each (not bad, considering they were originally 850L), except for the one pink one and the one rainbow one I have. (Those are significantly higher.) There's a red one out at my stall right now. If you're interested in buying another color, drop me a nc. And HELL YES, that was a sales pitch. I'm broke.

SUPPORT MY VICES, BUY MY ANIMALS!
Emerald's Seedy Back-Alley Cat Sales! (Three stalls of all your wildest cat dreams come true! OK, some of your wildest cat dreams come true.)
Emerald's Awesome Horses at Low, Low Prices!
More of Emerald's Awesome Horses at Low, Low Prices!
And Even More Horses at Low, Low Prices!
(yeah, um, oops, I've gotten a little carried away with procreating animals)
Emerald's Very, Very, Lame, Cheap and Mediocre Biobreeds Dogs (I have one thing to say about these things: YAWN. They're total fail for me - I'm giving up on them. But I have some bland-looking crated labs for sale, cheaper than the ones you'll buy at the main store. And wow, I really made them sound appealing, huh?)