Stumbling Into February

A writer I know once suggested that adulthood can be gauged by exactly how much of one's personal morals and ethics are compromised. The higher the compromise, the greater the adulthood. I like that sentiment, and of course by saying I like it, I mean I loathe its truth.

A hundred years of school later, I find that my bubble of life, the free-thinking freelance journalist, is in mid-burst. I am now doing marketing for a firm I dislike that practices a certain branch of law I cannot stand. And I can be proud now. At 27 and 2 months, I have achieved adulthood. All I need to do now is start selling jewelry, pump out some offspring and practice a plastic but inpenatrable (sp?) smile and I will be set for life. And by saying life, I mean a living death.

Not writing articles seems to have slowed down my inquisitive nature, as well, as my adventures in Second Life have slowed to a crawl. Also, each improvement to the viewer makes my own computer a little bit more obsolete each time, so now I'm crashing more than Mickey Rourke's career in the 1990s. I am getting on long enough to check out, say, the gallery of Jenn Villota (you'll have to find her on your own, which you can through google or flickr). Jenn's work is brutal, bloody and sex-charged. I find, the worse the economy here in Writerville gets, the more I find I like Jenn's work.

I say it's bad, but it's not sooo bad. One cannot become a freelance journalist and then count on the next story to buy one's dinner. The next story should, instead, buy the dinner you plan to have in a year. And that's where I am at present.

I haven't seen much of Clifford lately. After a bit of interest, he fell into the role of Paranoid Guy and was convinced I was out to get him. After talking him down, I found myself a bit too exhausted to persue any e-lationship with him. If I am going to be someone's mother in-world, I will go to one of the adoption agencies.

Not that the other guys I run into are much better. There's one who keeps IMing me when I am offline to ask if he can collar me. I keep writing back, 'does that mean you'll give me what a good captive should have? Place to live? Clothes? Amusement?' He does not reply to that. I'm hardly going to be online just to be the pole greaser for a fuckstick with no responsibility.

Eh, I'm babbling now. What? You knew that? Well, of course you did. Thanks for listening...

SL / RL Parallel

Whether used as escapism or exploration, Second Life proves that old addage from that terrible movie 'The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai': wherever you go, there you are.

While continuing my Never-Ending Aimless Tour, in which I plonk a random word in SL's search engine and go wherever it tells me, I met a nice guy. Good attention to his clothes and appearance (even the eyes appeared to be the result of shopping, not stumbling a box of free eyes in the middle of a cornfield). An astute sense of humour - including fairly enjoyable bad-joke exchanges regarding angles (involving "obtuse questions" and "acute avatar" - groannn) and actuarials being the only people on Earth who could make accounting interesting to the regular world. A willingness to be lured away from a couple of stumbling noobs for a short dance with no chance of it going further than that.

And my first thought, as it is in RL, is: OK, what's wrong with this guy?

UPDATE -- I later found this fellow in real life - the hows and whys I will not go into. My journalistic instinct suggested I keep the information to myself. However, my personal instinct won out and I contacted him and told him how I found him, etc. Because he has a public position with authority, I advised him to get a different avatar if he wanted to pursue personal relationships (as he had intimated). He was a bit shocked by this revelation, and I admit to being a little concerned over how he would handle it. By the end of our chat, he appeared willing to consider a second avatar - one that would have no contact with his main one. I felt dead awful for scaring him like that, but better me than an associate of his.

Second Life: The Global Community

One of the most spectacular things about Second Life is being able to meet and interact with people from all over the world. It is only here that you can effectively meet a 64-year-old retired police officer from Brussels or a 17-year-old woman from Quebec within a few virtual feet of each other. Or, if you're amazingly lucky like me...

[5:11] Nicolas Cerise: hi
[5:11] Madelyn Writer: hey nic
[5:11] Nicolas Cerise: how are you?
[5:12] Madelyn Writer: not bad, yeh. how's your travels today?
[5:12] Nicolas Cerise: good:)
[5:13] Nicolas Cerise: i look at exciting places:)
[5:13] Nicolas Cerise: and you?
[5:13] Madelyn Writer: i look at whatever can interest me
[5:14] Nicolas Cerise: let me show better place at this?
[5:14] Madelyn Writer: wow. i have no idea what that means.
[5:14] Madelyn Writer: :)
[5:15] Nicolas Cerise: :)
[5:15] Nicolas Cerise: let me show it?
[5:15] Madelyn Writer: i'm sorry? show what?
[5:16] Nicolas Cerise: you would eat better place
[5:16] Nicolas Cerise: nice, exciting
[5:16] Madelyn Writer: eat better place?
[5:16] Madelyn Writer: i'm sorry. i am not understanding you very well.
[5:17] Nicolas Cerise: sorry
[5:17] Madelyn Writer: no worries. i think i'll be moving on now.
[5:17] Nicolas Cerise: I am not very good angolbol yet
[5:18] Nicolas Cerise: where moving on?
[5:19] Madelyn Writer: i have no idea

Yes, if you're lucky like me, your chance conversations tend to look like outtakes from the movie, "Borat."