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...

The Laughing Man

So I hang out with this boy. I'll call him Clifford.

He is plagued with feelings on inadequacy. He carries a pall of sadness around like a cloak. He knows big, honkin' words. So we get along quite well. Plus, he's pleased to see me, which is a nice little bonus.

We met in a 'sex' sim, where I was testing out my new dress. It's a daft little ritual I go through; I buy a dress and then see how appealing it is by going to a sex sim and seeing how many boys and girls are drawn to me. If they are obviously talking to someone else and stop their conversation to chat me up, I know I've got a good dress. Clifford was chatting up another girl, and it was going very poorly for him. Not that the girl wasn't appreciative or interested, but the broken English made it almost impossible to make out what she was trying to convey. I teleported him to a ballroom and forced him to dance with me. "You're too much!" he said at the time, but he was content to go along for the ride. I liked that, too.

It was Clifford who I mentioned in a prior blog - the public fellow who shouldn't be found wandering sex sims. And it was Clifford who I advised about this, and it was Clifford who was quite shocked by my investigatory skills. And it was Clifford who now IMs me when I'm not online just to say hello.

Clifford and I are like people who meet on the train, both heading to distant and different destinations, who get along like a house on fire. I think he's brilliant; he thinks I'm funny. That can go a long way. Second Life does definitely help pare down the small talk and get on with the business at hand (you can't just type 'um' or leave pregnant pauses all the time or else you risk the other person getting bored - such is Generation A.D.D.). The only problem is that, although you can share great laughs and profound statements, you cannot prove a lick of them. Some of the people I follow deride those who put up a wall between RL and SL; I can certainly respect that, in some ways envy that, but I *have* to keep a wall up. If I went into why, most people would understand, but then I would have breached my own levee, so to speak.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a little bit about Clifford, the man who finds me funny in this short part of our long journeys.

Cartoon in the Louvre

Things are things, there's no doubt about it. And things in moderation are usually alright. Things to the extreme are usually harmful, or, in a worst-case scenario, really stupid.

The stupidest thing I've come across lately is the painful need of people to talk in absolutes. Examples abound in your own head, I would guess, but let me illustrate some fine examples: "omgz that's the best!!", "I feel you completely!!", "you're the best!", "I have the best friends!", "This weekend was perfect!"

I know you've heard things like this, cuz, you know, UR THE BEST. Proclamation without elaboration. A cartoon in the Louvre.

A statement that says, 'please like me because I am making a definitive effort to make it sound like I like you!', or in the alternative, 'please see how gregarious, happy and peace-filled that I am!' Where we may part company is that, when I hear something like this, I automatically and without reservation think it's bullshit. Like the bloke you don't know who insists on puncuating his speech with 'trust me', it's used-carsalesman philosophy. Say it enough and it must be true.

Admittedly, some of my negative feelings about this absolutism is that I am unable to do it. I can't get away with latex boots in real life, so it is my natural inclination to dislike latex boots. I also can't get away with Burberry scarves and... well, the list goes on. But I digress. I find myself absolutely unable to absolutely think anything is the best. Even when I look at myself, I can only consider myself the best I can be at the moment - there's always room for exploration, development and maturity. The world is almost infinite with possibility and promise; to label something the best would bring any journey to an end.

And I'm afraid I just don't want to end any journey just yet. Why are so many people so anxious to?

On a related note, I'm not all that fond of people who send me emails asking me questions and ending with 'thanks', as if I've done what they've asked already. In fact, in my journo-world, 'thanks' does not mean thanks at all anymore; it rather means 'I'm ending my email now.' Does that make sense? Thanks.