I'm underwater at Cyclops right now, trying to get my inventory to load. If that sentence was Greek to you, Cyclops is a water sim with not a hell of a lot going on. So if you have a massive inventory like I do, it'll load faster here. The only thing I don't understand about the place: There are AVs who have been underwater here for months. I know because every time I have to come down here, they're always here. How is this possible?
There are real things I need to blog, like Hair Fair and shtuff, but I can't take decent pics until I have an inventory. Until then, you're going to have to deal with the scraps of patheticness that are on my desktop. And unfortunately most of them are really bad pics I took in utter fascination of my neighbors' houses.
There was a time when I would NEVER cam into a neighbor's house. Ever. But I've been in SL for more than three years now and sometimes it gets boring here. My virtual scruples are fading fast, and they fade even faster if you have a fugly house that's just begging for my attention. And lately I've found a lot of them.
In fact, I wish I could partner with a home decor designer and start a cool blog series called "Your House is Stressing Me the Hell Out" and play this little game where if I find your eyesore of a house and showcase it in this blog, you win a home makeover from that designer. I'd also need a decent photog to help me pull it off. That's just a little blog fantasy of mine. The only awkward part would be notifying the unsuspecting winners. ("Hi! You don't know us, but your house is sooooo bad that we're invading it and redecorating it for you!") But maybe friends could nominate their friends or people could nominate their neighbors or whatever, and then it wouldn't be all on me to break the news. Kind of like that show "What Not to Wear," where I'm sure the people at first want to kill their families, spouses and best friends for nominating them for their horrible wardrobes, but then decide life is truly awesome when they realize they get a multi-thousand dollar shopping spree in NYC because of it. I've been running around in ugly clothes on purpose in RL ever since that show started.
WOW. I'M BABBLING. SORRY.
Anyway, let's do it! Unfortunately I don't have a home makeover for these people. They just get gently mocked this time. But with love, I swear. I say something nice about them at the end of this post, too. And I mean it sincerely.
Your House is Stressing Me the Hell Out
OK, so as some of you know, I rent a few farm parcels for my many breedable animals that eat up all my lindens and hardly ever produce offspring worth selling. It's like an extreme nicotine habit I can't shake. ("I'm chain-smokin' Red Tabbies!") Because of them, however, I've learned a new way to describe SL to the uneducated masses. During the two weeks I spent in hospice with my late grandmother, many many many many nurses would look over my shoulder at SL on my laptop (annoying) and ask, "What IS that?" I'd answer, "It's kind of like another version of FarmVille" and they'd say, "Oh!" with a tone of wisdom and acceptance and walk away and leave me the hell alone. Beautiful.
Anyway, this land where my farm parcels are located is zoned for FARMING. The land agreement even asks tenants to stick to a farm theme, but the landlady is a sweetheart and she obviously doesn't crack down too hard. But see, check it out . . . it's FARMLAND:
Horses. Barns. Sunflowers. Breedable glowy dragons in the background. Yes — in SL, dragons sometimes are considered livestock. That's why we are awesome here.
And then THIS GUY rolls in (literally, in two cars):
W T holy F? You can't see it, but those lights on the right side of the house flash. Obnoxiously.
Keep out. (OK.)
Pretty.
Look, I got news for you, man: Your gangsta sh*t is NOT THAT GANGSTA when it's surrounded by barns and horses. I'm just sayin'.
Let's ignore the "Keep Out" sign and look inside. Don't tell anyone.
OH MY GAWD, IT'S A THRONE!! With . . . boxes of ammo and a classy-looking plant to add some thoughtful decorative touches! And a little chair next to it. For . . . the queen of Gangstaland. Or something.
Ohhhhh. OK. I Googled "Saints Row" because I'm not hip to all the gang-war video games out there. Now I feel bad for making fun of the throne. I don't want the 3rd Street Saints after me. I would, however, just like to offer one small piece of decorating advice: Watch where you place that neon pink stripper pole in the middle. That looks painful for that poor guy. (Is that a neon dildo on the bar?)
I will give him 10 points for the animated aquarium and the fact that he matched his purple couches to it. And three points for his apparent love of classical music. In fact, I'll add on a couple more points, because, although I do see an old-school pose ball at the piano bench, I do not see sex pose balls ON the piano, which frankly surprises me a little. (No offense, Gangsta Farmer.)
I'm going to stop now before he finds me and shoots all my horses with a machine gun.
**leaves for a second to put ban lines around my parcels**
. . . Let's move on to the chick next to him. OH YES! If you build it, they will come. All it took was one deviation from the farm thing and then EVERYBODY started gettin' ALL CRAZAY up in the happy farming sim. Before we start perving, I should mention that I *have* exchanged a few words with this lady and she's nice enough. Sometimes I log on and find her on my parcels poking my animals though. Payback time: I poke her house.
Well. It's big. It doesn't have a neon stripper sign on it, so thank you for that. In fact, her home's exterior has a decidedly feminine touch:
Fairies! I like fairies. I like them better in person though. But hey, these aren't flashing, so there's that. (The jaggedy lines of the house are my fault. Or my graphics card's fault. Bad Mac!)
Let's check out one of the bedrooms!
Chanel.
Oh, honey. Coco says no. But look carefully: At least there's a view of HORSES from the bedroom window. And . . . spotlights shining down on the satin sheets. Hey, good sex deserves good lighting. Especially if you're filming it.
The red velvet living room. Hey, I like your boyfriend! (Before you start thinking that guy is a total douche, I'm the one who added those smooth shades to protect his identity. It makes me feel slightly less like a complete asshole right now. Not by much though.)
Since I've started perving strangers' houses, I've learned that the secret to a successful SL relationship apparently is to hang up a
BIG DAMN PICTURE of your partner or both of you somewhere on your property. Some people prefer to put it outside, billboard-style. Others prefer to fill up one whole wall of a room with it and frame it with red velvet curtains. I don't think the location matters. What does matter is that the skin and hair MUST be from the year 2008. Otherwise, the public declaration of your love will be total fail.
I'm a really nice person, I swear, so I'm going to end this post with pictures of my own house (on Bluebonnet, not the farm sim — SEE, I do it right) so you can mock me too if you want. Well, the house itself actually is a point of pride. A couple of days ago, I tried to delete some Fourth of July decorations and accidentally deleted my whole house instead (hate it when that happens), which turned out to be a good thing. Accidentally deleting my house usually is the only thing that will force me to get up off my arse and change houses. So this time I chose the "damn I wish I had this house in real life" beach house called Ariel by Funky*Junk:
If you want to make me scream with delight, put a house on stilts. Then I don't have to terraform. If I have to terraform, chances are good that I'm going to just give up and say, "Screw this," and leave a big lump of land sticking up out of my living room floor.
Here it is in the raw, without my attempts at mood lighting. I'll probably never get the hang of artfully using SL shadows in pictures, but at least I occasionally give it a shot.
(Can you find The Bunny?) That bad-ass Amaretto Charmed Nightmare Clydesdale is not included with the house, BTW. Two boring horses bumped uglies and popped that thing out the other day, which sent me into throes of orgasmic ecstasy. The cute beachy decorations on the house, however, ARE included.
Ariel is 499L and available in Mist (shown) and Kelp, which is a beachy green. It's 161 prims with all the exterior beach decor and 145 prims without it. It includes lockable doors, and the windows are tintable for privacy. Wow, that's kind of ironic, considering the subject matter of this post. I guess if you live near me, you'll need those.
OK. I'm almost done. This is the longest post I've ever written. Here's a pic of the interior of my lovely home.
Awwwww yeeeahhhhhh! Nothing but cats, baby!
The moral to this post? Props to the people — including those mentioned here —who at least put love, time and effort into decorating their houses. Some of us just throw down a bunch of cats and a pose stand in a room and call it a day.
VISIT IN WORLD:
Funky*Junk
Cyclops
Paradise World Estates leasing office — I pay $1530/week for a 988-prim Farming-zoned parcel. Smaller parcels also are available, as well as Residential- and Commercial-zoned parcels in Moderate or Adult categories.
